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| The Storm at the Courthouse |
A storm raged overhead and pelted the onlookers who eagerly awaited the accused Welshport Witches in the rain.
“Do you feel the air?” A man asked his shivering wife. “A storm is here.”
She looked up at him, her gray eyes filled with worry.
“The storm isn’t in the air.” She said to him as she turned her face slightly and looked towards the street as several black cars with chrome mirrors and trim rounded a street corner and drove into the area the police had marked off for convoy.
As puddles began to form in the crevices of the cobblestone street more villagers gathered and stood on the courthouse steps on either side of a narrow pathway that led up to the courthouse iron doors. It was like the Red Sea made of black umbrellas had parted and Mary, Evie and Matthew were about to cross.
“It’s them!!!!” A voice on the street shouted towards the opening car doors.
The guards opened umbrellas and covered each of the accused, shielding them from the rain and the cruel eyes of the angry villagers.
“WITCHES!” A woman shouted.
Then another shouted the same, then two more than four more than the entire crowd began to chant the word as the three slowly made their way up the slippery steps.
Evie’s guard, that held her closely by the forearm, tilted his umbrella alight up revealing a solemn Evie to the front row of villagers.
A woman standing under her own dripping umbrella tilted it up and spit at Evie pelting the accused witch in the shoulder and arm.
Evie was horrified and turned away from the screaming voices in either side of her. Seeing this Matthew began to jerk in his captor’s grasp. His anger began to build up and the pain of seeing the woman he loved treated with such vitriol and disgust made him see red.
“Oi!!!! The guard yelled out in his Irish brogue. “You’d best calm yaself before we get in there!
“Look what they’re doing!” Matthew shouted continuing to try and pull himself out of the guard’s grip.
Then someone spit at Evie again. Mary gasped as this time the spit went directly onto Evie’s face.
There was no holding him back, Matthew jerked so forcefully out of the guard’s hold and lunged towards the crowd and balled his fist so tightly and punched the man who spit on Evie the second time square in the nose.
Evie screeched Matthew’s name as the guards jumped on Matthew and pulled him back into the isle going up to the doors. The rain poured as flashing cameras caught the entire split second alternation.
Evie had never seen Matthew react in this way. With such violent anger. With such fire. With such pain expressing itself through his body; through his fists.
“You’re going to regret that.” A guard whispered to Matthew finally getting him back under control as Matthew’s thick black hair drained the rain down on to his face and neck.
*
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| Inside the Court |
Inside the courtroom, the three accused sat behind a long beech wood table. Their lawyer, Lear, quickly exited the Judge's chambers where he and Eden Syndey met with the judge to go over the morning's preceding. Lear sat down and looked at his clients their faces pale and restless with the long weeks in their cells with little to no sun.
Evie, her hands bound in front of her, reached over to Matthew who had not recovered from watching villagers spit on Evie as she walked up the front courthouse steps.
She squeezed his bound hands. He turned to her with a cold look in his eye, a look she'd never seen before. At least not from him
"Are you going to be ok?" She whispered.
"Those people. They don't know what they're doing." He said back. "They spit on you Evie. They actually spit on you."
Evie watched as Matthew's face turned from stone cold to emotional and heartbroken. There was something about that moment, that sick moment where strangers decided to humiliate an already humiliated person was not something Matthew could get through mentally.
He'd been in Evie's position many, many years ago. When he was a child. When he'd walk around Welshport and the villagers treated him and his family the same way. His people, native to the island, had seen this sort of cruel treatment of people who were marginalized and 'different'.
Seeing Evie treated this way, a woman he loved more than life itself triggered his long-term memories that had faded away after he'd been lost at sea and like the debris from the ship he was on that sank, those horrible and sad memories float back up to the surface of his traumatized psyche.
"Everything will be alright." Mary whispered to them. "I told you; I'm going to tell them it was all me."
"Mary, we are not going to let you ...." Evie began before Lear shushed them.
"They want to kill us. They want to kill us like animals sent to slaughter." Matthew said his voice slightly raised.
Evie turned to Mary, the worry for Matthew's mental health all over her face.
Mary whispered to Evie "We have to get him home."
"Shh. You have to stay quiet. Everyone in this room is watching you." Their lawyer Lear ordered.
The accused quickly looked around and saw their families there just the few rows behind them at their table: Nik, Aurora, Jacob, Celeste, Rebecca, Caspian, Cora, Lucas, Father Donavon Ryan and even Fatima Braga. Mayor Churchill, his assistant Nathan Cramer and staring directly at them too right behind Barrister Eden Syndey as he took notes of their whispering interactions.
"ALL RISE." The bailiff shouted at the front of the court. "Presiding here, Magistrate Coleman Banning."
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| Judge Coleman Banning presides |
"Be seated." The judge said. "This is a very peculiar case that we are all here for today. I understand that there is law to guide us on this matter before us but in all honesty, I find it very strange that the prosecution would ever consider charges such as these to begin with in a world where we know what is real and unreal. Nevertheless, the law is the law. I cannot question why this law still exists, that is not my job, my job is to sit on this bench and weigh the evidence accordingly to see if this should ever go forward. My hope is that we all can come to an understanding of what the evidence suggests and what the eyewitnesses saw and experienced first had to see if indeed this very archaic and superstitious law was actually broken by the three accused. Councilors, please state your names for the record and representation."
"Barrister Eden Sydney for the prosecution, your honor representing the State of Maine and the United States Government."
"Your Honor, defending the three accused, Lear Lockwood."
"Thank you, gentleman. Before we begin oral arguments, I'd like the three accused to please stand and one by one I will ask how you plead to the ...." the judge paused when looking down at his paper reading the charge of Witchcraft, which again, felt idiotic to even say out loud. "yes, uh... to the charge of Witchcraft and murder."
Evie, Matthew and Mary stood up almost in unison, but Mary spoke up before the other two could even muster any words.
"Guilty your honor. Just me. I am the only guilty one." She said to the shock of the crowd. "Ms. Jordan-Lord and Mr. Winterborn are innocent of everything. They are only here guilty by association, and I beg you to please release them from this."
"Mary!" Lear said, quickly standing up next to her.
"Quiet!! We'll have quiet here!!" The bailiff shouted over the Judge's gavel.
"Alright, alright. Seems like we're going to get off on a very wild start, aren't we. Ms. Jordan-Lord and Mr. Winterborn, is this true? Are the two of you in agreement that Ms. Goode is a witch, that she indeed is some sort of sorceress and that what she did caused the horrors we all witnessed the night of the Full Moon Celebrations? Because, that is what we are up against as we face down this trial."
Evie and Matthew shot each other looks. They did not want to abandon Mary but Evie had a child to think about. She had to think about her future and Matthew too. They were in love and had been apart for so long while he was lost at sea. Not to mention all this time in jail accused of such terrible acts had already taken so much from his personality. They could not risk any more.
The two nodded yes.
"I'll need you to speak this so that the record may show." The judge ordered.
"We are innocent." Matthew said.
"Innocent." Evie said in a shy voice.
"And you agree that Ms. Goode is guilty?" The judge asked.
Mary looked at them her eyes told them to agree.
"Do something." Churchill whispered to Sydney.
"Uh, I'd like to object your honor." Eden Sydney interrupted.
"Your honor my clients are speaking directly with you. This is not testimony yet -- they deserve to reply directly to your questions without prosecutorial intervention." Lear said.
"Your honor it's clear that Ms. Goode has influence over the other two. How can we be sure that their pleas are truthful and not based on some kind if spell the already confessed witch Mary has placed on them?" Sydney replied.
"Why would she place a spell on them to seek innocence when she's plead guilty, Mr. Syndey?" Lear asked.
The audience murmured behind the two lawyers.
"Order! I'll have order here." Judge Banning gaveled. "Your objection is overruled Mr. Sydney."
Churchill's brow furrowed.
"Mr. Winterborn and Ms. Jordan-Lord, I asked you a question: do you both agree that Ms. Goode guilty of being what she is being accused of? A witch? By saying so she is fully responsible for the deaths and horror we all witnessed the night of the Full Moon Celebration?"
Mary again turned to Evie and Matthew her face begged them to agree. She wanted to take all of the blame off of them and clear the way for no one to ever find out that Filipe was the actual cause of the terror the night of the full moon.
"Agree." Evie said. Matthew nodded and said the same.
"Your honor..." Sydney began before the judge silenced him.
"Very well. Your pleas have been recorded. Mr. Syndney, you may begin your oral arguments." Judge Banning said.
"Thank you, sir." Eden replied in a frustrated tone.
"Wait? What just happened?" Mary whispered to Lear as they all sat down, thinking Evie and Matthew would have been let go.
"Mary, you just made the case against you that much easier for conviction. Just because you've separated yourself from Evie and Matthew for their own good doesn't mean the judge can just drop everything on them at this point. He still has to hear the case against all three of you—only after can he decide if there is enough to go forward to a trial. What you've done is only locked yourself into a guilty plea and possibly a conviction.” Lear replied angrily.
“But you said the burden of proof is on Sydney's side.” Evie reminded. “He’ll have to find proof she really says what she says she is.”
“I thought I made this clear, even though it’s his burden he still has the power of the eye witnesses. My job now just got ten times harder if you’re already guilty.”
"What happens next?" Evie gulped.
"Oral arguments. I have to find a way to untangle Mary’s guilty plea from my strategy now. They're not going to let this go, they want three convictions, and they'll do whatever they can to get it." Lear explained.
"I'm so sorry, I thought they'd release you and Matthew." She whispered to Evie. “I’m so sorry.”
Evie smiled politely and grabbed Matthew's hand. He sat silently. His face frozen with worry.
"Your honor, ladies and gentlemen in the court, my evidence will show that the three accused here today were part of an occult coven that by means of their own witch crafter were able to devise a plot to kill several of citizens the night of the full moon celebrations and before. Eyewitness accounts of situation that proves their ability to kill will be presented. As his honor has stated here today, this is indeed a strange and unusual case that perhaps has not been presented in a court of law since the late 1600's. Regardless of time the law is the law, and people were killed because of something unnatural that occurred in the weeks and days before the celebrations. Motive here will seem just as alien to us but relevant. Sacrificial killings on days and events like the full moon have been recorded through history as a way to appease some sort of deity, a god, a goddess. The devil. In fact the moments at the Caves where hundreds of native people are buried, the three accused were caught red-handed in some sort of bewitching ceremony among the dead." Syndey said in his oral arguments.
"No." Mary's voice was heard.
"Quiet." The judge snarled at her.
"Why can he lie like this?" Evie was then heard.
"I said quiet, Ms. Jordan-Lord. Mr. Lockwood, contain your clients." The judge said again. "Continue Mr. Sydney."
"Evie calm down, calm down." Matthew whispered to her.
"Evidence will show that a book, which has been missing since that night, was the guide to these witches and that their poisoning of some Feral animal from the Tirymor Forest caused it to go mad and kill. It did so, 11 of our citizens among them two fisherman days before then Constable Reigns and two young women who had not even arrived at the festival are dead. The State of Maine requests the maximum punishment for the already admitted witch, Mary Goode, and we hope you find the other two, Mr. Evangeline Jordan-Lord and Mr. Matthew Winterborn guilty and punished the same. Thank you."
"Mr. Lockwood, please." The judge requested.
Lear stood from the long beech wood table and gulped. He was shaking. He had never had this type of courtroom attention before. All his other trials were involving the Lord Family business, corporate law, never anything like this. But he promised he'd do what he could.
"Thank you, sir. And thank you to all here today to witness something of a spectacle that my prosecutor friend Mr. Syndey quickly glossed over in his opening argument. Yes, a trial on witchcraft has not been since on this side of the Atlantic in over 220 years. In fact, the trials that were dragged out for months and months in old Salem-town just 200 miles south of here were based on old superstitions, lies, hysteria and public that could not separate themselves from their own religious persecutions. Instead of looking inward and finding that they were just as guilty of something, they pointed the finger at innocent people to explain away things they could not understand."
The audience in the courtroom murmured low like a purring cat at Lear's words. They wondered if they'd been like the people of Salem, hysterical. Irrational. Overly superstitious and worst of all gullible.
Lear continued.
"My clients here are not what the prosecution has deemed them to be. Witches? Far from it. And before anyone jumps up and says one has already confessed, she has confessed only to save her friends -- mistakenly of course. She is no witch, your honor. Neither of these people are witches. They are no more witches than I am invisible to your eye. What happened on that terrible night, the night most of our lives were put in danger had nothing to do with my clients. Nature, ladies and gentlemen, has a way of changing the fabric and biology of all living things. An animal, Feral and diseased did come into the park that night and it did kill. But it was not some sort of magically poisoned wolf my clients bewitched. And the events witnessed by an already angry mob that had already caused horrifying and disgusting attacks on a private home would see anything to point the finger at some to justify something they did not understand. Ladies and Gentlemen here today and Your honor, the evidence that will be presented is tainted by the hopes and desperation of people who have jumped on the bandwagon of a mayor who desperately needs to remain popular with the people and small village government he controls. How could a town trust a man who allowed sickly animals to get even sicker and diseased to the point where they then come into the village and kill? Where is our Mayor's guilt in this? Because it is not witchcraft we should be charging here, it is the malpractice and neglect of our village leadership that is truly to blame. My clients, Sir, are merely scapegoats in the Mayor's attempt to push blame away from himself. The three sitting here, they are innocent. Thank you."
"Well now." Rebecca said to Jacob in a low voice sitting in the courtroom audience. "I didn't know he had that in him."
Jacob turned to his mother, as the storm outside the courthouse windows blasted across the sky and raised a brow. "We pay him enough to bring that."
"Pay him?" Rebecca questioned. "You pay him to watch over the company, are you paying him for this?"
Jacob lifted a brow and shrugged his mother's questions off.
"Thank you both." The judge said. "As with many trials, we will have days to go over evidence and testimony and, in the end, I will decide the fates of the accused who sit before me. This will not be an easy trial because as I mentioned we are basing everything off of a law created very long ago. But I have decided based on the attached crime of murder, that we should at least hear the entire package. The defense has chosen a bench trial, and I will be the deciding voice here, no jury. Ladies and gentlemen, the storm is quiet plaguing, let us reconvene tomorrow at noon."
The judge gaveled the end of the oral arguments, the bailiff requested all to rise as he exited.
"Wait... that it? That's all?" Mary asked Lear. "Why didn't he set Evie and Matthew free?"
"The judge can't do that Mary, not just because you said you were guilty. Now they'll go over the evidence and eyewitness accounts to be sure what was seen was truly seen and if it's credible. This will all be discussed at the official trial starting tomorrow." Lear explained.
"What happens now?" Evie wondered.
"We wait." Matthew said. "We go back to our cells until tomorrow and we wait. But I believe in you Lear. Whatever you have planned, I believe in you."
Lear smiled and mouthed a kind 'thank you' just as the three accused were rushed of the room by several strong-armed bailiffs back to their dark cells below Village Hall in a flurry of shouts and photographer's just outside the building.
"Pinning this on me are you Lockwood?" The mayor said back in the courtroom walking over to Lear.
Lear smirked as Lucas walked over to congratulate him.
"I think you know what you've done." Lear replied to the Mayor.
"You can stop all of this, sir, if you just admit you saw nothing of the sort." Lucas replied trying to defund his new friends.
"I wasn't the only one who saw 'what they saw', Mr. Mural. Mr. Lockwood should be careful with how far he takes his case. The truth will always set you free." Mayor Churchill added.
"MAYOR CHURCHILL! MARYOR CHURCHILL!!!" Baxter shouted from the back of the courthouse pushing though several people standing in the isle. "Any comment on the preceding thus far? It was a bit of sleeper there for a minute."
Churchill smirked and lifted a brow as Barrister Eden Sydney approached. "As I mentioned to the defense, just now, and again you can quote me Bax, I've always believed in the truth shall set you free, but in this case the truth of these monstruous people will keep them locked away for all the days of their lives."
"If they're convicted, they're up for execution, you ok with that?" Baxter wondered.
Nathan and Lear shot each other looks; they knew one another quite well. Nathan was a major reason Lear's relationship with Baxter crumbled and here they all were caught in Churchill's web of publicity and scandal all for his own grab at power and adoration from the town he already led.
"We have a 3 o'clock sir." Nathan said to the Mayor, quickly rushing him out of the room away from answering anymore questions.
As Nathan and Churchill exited from the Courthouse out into the storm dropping torrential rain just outside the iron doors of the court, Lucas hugged Lear.
"Your speech was very well said, you did great!"
Lear smiled. "Thank you."
"I think they have a chance." Lucas said helping Lear with his papers.
Lear shook his head unsure as lightening lit up the courthouse from the six large windows in front of him. "They need a hail-Mary."
****
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| Aaron catches the intruder |
As day turned to night and the storm continued to swell in the sky above Welshport, a widow near the servant's entrance at Tirymor House began to slide open.
The person entering knew that this window had never been well kept and that if pushed to the side and lifted slightly off it's internal pully would slide open without anyone hearing a single thing.
This was a person who'd been here before. Knew the grounds at Tirymor like that back of their hand and had no fear of the shadowy corridors they began to walk through as the storm raged outside and everyone in the mansion slept.
The person, in shadow showing the silhouette of a man, quietly walked his way through the mansion’s maze of corridors and came upon a large brightly colored painting. He looked up towards the paintings, it was of Calgary Lord, one of the great patriarchs of the family. Next to Calgary, a painting of a little girl with dark hair sitting next to three little dogs in front of a landscape, the grounds of Tirymor.
The man smiled at the little girl, Rebecca and Albert's late daughter: Vivian Victoria, Vivee as they called her.
He continued on, but he was not alone. Aaron Hamstead had heard someone walking the halls. It was his job to be sure everything at Tirymor was running like a well-oiled machine. Believing it to be someone of the family awake and searching for a midnight snack, he peeked through his own bedroom door down the hall and saw the person walking through and did not recognize the shape.
Aaron followed the mysterious man but stayed quiet to not startle the intruder.
The man left Vivee's painting and continued into a study in the east wing of the mansion. There he would find a vast Lord family library of photographs of Summer's gone by, weddings and funerals. Winter snowstorms where the wealthy children-built snow armies on the grounds. Books of family trees and family history.
As the intruder continued to fumble through the Lord family world, Aaron pushed the door open, the light of his lantern glowing bright around his face.
The person turned to reveal to Aaron the face of Christopher Wesley, more recognized as David Lord.
"What the devil?!?!" Aaron said at the sight of Christopher. "David??"
Christopher smiled kindly and shrugged.
"A ghost." Chris said with a grin.
"I -- I don't understand."
"I don't go by that name. That life is gone." Chris said.
"But it's you?"
Chris found a way to confirm without confirming "How are you Aaron?"
A flash of lightening lit the room, Aaron walked over to Chris and pulled him into a hug. Before Christopher, when he was still calling himself David, vanished into the sea he and Aaron were best friends. They had grown up together and David had even gotten Aaron the job at Tirymor. Over the years, Aaron had become the most trusted member of the Lord family household and even when everyone thought David was dead, Aaron remained on, in a way become his proxy to Rebecca who never recovered mentally form losing two of her three children.
But Aaron knew David never died. Aaron knew David had simple decided to vanish forever because of what Jacob had convinced him he'd done. Sabrina's death weighed on David's mind as if he had committed it in a drunken rage -- the lie Jacob convinced David of.
The night at the lighthouse, when David stood on the very balcony holding himself with both hands preparing to jump off, Aaron was there. Aaron begged him not to jump, to stay with him so that they could figure out what really happened to Sabrina on that beach. Aaron tried to sway David from not jumping into the ocean to his death because of the guilt he felt for Sabrina's life being lost and Sebastian never being able to see his mother again.
It was Aaron who came up with the plan of David vanishing into the night -- alive -- and he'd be the one to tell the family and the rest of Welshport that David jumped to his death.
He'd keep that lie for almost 20 years.
"What are you doing here?" Aaron asked again.
"I had to see this place. It's been so long. You still sneaking around the island doing my brother's bidding?" Chris said.
Aaron smirked. "It's a living. We've missed you, I wish you had told me you were coming back." Aaron said. "Your mother would be so happy to--- " Aaron continued before being interrupted.
"No! No, that is not why I'm here. I'm not here to reunite with the Lords. That life, David's life is gone. I'm no longer David Lord. Aaron, I've moved on and I've had a good life since I left here, since you helped me leave. I cant go back to it. My name, Aaron, is Christopher Wesley. That is who I want to be and who I will be until the day I die."
Aaron nodded. "Welcome to Tirymor --- Christopher." He said.
Chris smiled.
"There is one thing though." Chris said as he picked up a newspaper from weeks before that had been left on a pile on the desk of the study. "This."
Aaron took the paper Chris was handing him, the headline was one of Baxter's vicious attempts to pin the deaths that were happening in town before the Full Moon Celebration on Sebastian, David's son.
"You don't know?" Aaron asked, Chris shook his head.
"Sebastian's life has not been one that aligns with -- well -- the norm."
"What do you mean?" Chris asked. "The norm?"
"Sebastian isn't exactly the man you think he is, in fact we don't really know where he is. The paper, this headline, is a lie. We know he wouldn't hurt anyone. Not the Sebastian we love, but there are some things about him we can't ignore." Aaron explained.
"Is my son alive?"
Aaron smiled seeing Chris take on being Sebastian's father even though he refused to identify as David.
"He's alive. But he lives in the shadows now."
Chris was confused.
"In hiding?" He wondered.
"You can say that. Yes." Aaron added.
Chris felt like Aaron was talking in riddles, like he was only giving him part of the information. There was clearly something about Sebastian that made Aaron hold back and not explain but he could not figure out why. And why would Baxter write something so strange? Why would they believe Sebastian was something of a creature hunting people at night?
The questions poured into Chris' mind like an untamed waterspout.
"I want to find him, I need to." Chris said. "I have a lot to make up for.
"We don't know where he is." Aaron confessed. "So much has happened over the years that it would take days for me to explain. I'll help you find him. I'll do everything I can, but at some point you'll have to reintroduce yourself to the family. It's the right thing to do. No one, and I mean no one, thinks you killed Sabrina."
Christopher thought about it for a minute. He looked around the study and all the books his family had put together about who they were, who they'd come from, and what they were meant to be. His family's legacy was all there in the history of those pages.
Chris walked over directly to a large leather-bound book with a blood red silk parker right in the center. He knew this book so well. It the edition of his family tree where he and his own family had been recoded. He opened the book where the red maker had been holding place and turned to where his name, his old name, was written.
There it was. His life
DAVID ALBERT LORD BORN 20th OF MAY 1868, PRESEUMED DECEASED 1st OCTOBER 1899.
MARRIED SABRINA ELIZABETH SPENCER BORN 8th JANUARY 1870. DIED 25th SEPTEMBER 1899.
ISSUE: SEBASTIAN CHARLES LORD. BORN 14th JANUARY 1890
"We'll find him." Aaron said. "Ill help you."
Chris did not answer. The rain spoke for him as it spilled down the glass like a waterfall.
"Charlotte." Christopher said, to Aaron's confusion.
"What about her?"
"Find Charlotte, she has... abilities. She'll be able to tell you exactly where Sebastian is."
Aaron had known there was something special about the young Lord heiress but he had never truly dived into it himself. But he agreed. He'd get with Charlotte and together, they'd reunite the Lord family in one form or another.
****
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| Johnathon & Sebastian on the edge of a cliff |
The wind was relentless, and yet there was finally a break in the rain.
On the cliffs above a crashing sea standing in the darkness, Johnathon DeViana stared out onto the dark horizon in front of him letting the wind blow across his exposed skin like an icy kiss.
As he stood there his mind filled with what happened only a few days ago. He saw his wife Jacqueline freeze him in time, heard tell Sebastian of all her horrible deeds and then, when Filipe arrived, he watched them tussle and then the stabbing. The stabbing that took her life and his child's life right there in front of her.
Near him, the Welshport Lighthouse spun. It's bright beam of light hit the now ghostly Goode Island. The waves crashed against the rock below him with such power he could almost feel them himself.
His heart hurt. His mind began to break. The vision of Jacqueline dead on the floor of Lockwood Thicket would not leave his mind.
He took a breath with tears streaming down his face and screamed out into the wild wind.
He begged God to tell him why he had even met her. He begged God to take him right there on the cliff below the lighthouse. He screamed into the wind again, cursing his guardian angel for not taking care of his fractured soul.
Then, as he began to shake with the cold, he realized what he had to do.
What did he have to live for? No wife. No child. The Lords only patronized his existence by using him to battle each other, they never once treated him truly like he was one of then. His own sister kept him on a leash. Her priority much more on her own son Fabian than her little brother Johnathon.
He moved closer to the edge of the cliff and looked down. The rock and crashing waves looked blurry in their distance. He could barely make out the bottom, but he knew that is where he wanted to go.
His foot moved across the edge of the cliff. Part of the earth breaking free and falling down to the rocks and vanishing in the waves. He moved closer, the wind blowing all around him like a wild vortex as the lighthouse spun wildly in the back.
Then a voice from behind.
Johnathon turned towards the voice in a snap, wiped and almost fell but the person who called to him grabbed him by the collar of his coat and yanked him back to harder land.
The two scuffled and fell to the floor. Johnathon forcing himself back towards the edge of the cliff hoping to end his misery. But the person pulled him around and the two faced each other.
In the blur of his sadness, there stood the face was of his father, the man he barley new Albert Lord.
His dead father.
That face, and man, obscured by the shadow of the lighthouse began to shift and change as Johnathon started to finally come out of his mental break.
The voice spoke again "Johnathon." But the wind carried the name out to sea and soon the man in front of Johnathon that saved him from a terrible self-inflicted fate to the bottom of the cliffs was not the ghost of his departed father Albert, it was actually Sebastian Lord.
Johnathon had hallucinated Albert.
"Sebastian? What -- What are you doing here?" Johnathon asked, shivering in the violent storm's wind.
Sebastian didn't want to tell Johnathon the truth. In the dark wooded area around the lighthouse is where he'd come to feed on animals in the night. A way to keep from seeking the blood of humans.
"I come here to think." Sebastian said, his voice, now audible above the wind. "What are you doing here?"
Johnathon shivered in his skin. He adjusted his coat that had gotten tabled up in itself in his scuffle with Sebastian. He turned and looked out on to the sea again, this time far from the edge of the cliff. But the urge to jump still burned inside of him.
"To think too I guess." Johnathon replied.
"I didn't pull you back from a cliff because you were in deep thoughts. I'm glad I saw you when I did."
Johnathon shrugged and realized there was no hiding what he was about to do. "What difference does it make? I'm alone, Sebastian. Look at everything that's happened to me. Why shouldn't I just wash it all way down at the bottom of this cliff? The family barley acknowledges me, my wife and child are dead. What's left for me?"
Sebastian took a breath. His poor uncle Johnathon, new to the family, had never quite gotten his footing within the Lord family pecking order. Jacob and Rebecca only used him as leverage against each other; Celeste did all she could to protect him but even she paid any attention to him since he ran off and got married. The poor man was left in a terrible lonely place.
Sebastian walked over and put his arm around him just as the storm clouds began to again flow in from the east. A slight drizzle fell on the two men and Sebastian squeezed his uncle close.
"I know right now things seem as if there is no hope, I've certainly been in a situation where I just wished I'd be gone and forgotten too. But something keeps bringing me back, Johnathon. Something in this universe, whether it is good or bad, continues to bring me back to this world and continue to live. Maybe not in the way I'd have chosen, but I'm here and I continue to press on. I have a child out there that I want to see grow up. I intend to do that."
"Well good for you. I don't have that anymore." Johnathon replied.
Sebastian's face sorrowed. He knew the death of Johnathon and Jacqueline's child was heartbreaking, but Jacqueline was still alive. And even though Sebastian hated the witch who'd done terrible things to him and Evie, Johnathon loved her. And he couldn't help seeing the parallels to Johnaton on the edge of a cliff and his father's own - supposed - death from the edge of a lighthouse.
"You should know that Jacqueline survived. I went back to the thicket, and she was gone. She's not dead."
Lightening lit up the sky and Johnathon's face as the cold wet drizzle hit his face as the wind picked up again.
"But how? She... I saw her die. How could she have survived that horrible stabbing?"
"You know as well as I do how strong that woman is."
"And so that could mean our child is alive??" Johnathon hoped.
"That I don't know. Jacqueline will have to reveal that when, and if, she ever comes out of hiding."
Johnathon suddenly felt sick. He didn't expect this news and suddenly the happiness of Jacqueline being alive wasn't something he actually wanted. She'd lied to him. She'd told him the child was his but it wasn't his. He heard her say it. Maybe it was best, Johnathon thought to himself, for her to really be out of his life.
Their love was one sided. He loved her. She used him.
"I don't know what I'm going to do with myself. I thought I knew, I thought I had it all but, she used me. What am I even happy for? Why would I even care if she was alive? She deserved the pain she got. She lied to me and so many people and then tried to use you against us all!" Johnathon recalled.
Sebastian could see his quick emotional swings was not a good sign for his uncle's mental state. Like the storm, he was unpredictable and unable to control how he felt from one second to another.
"You should take yourself somewhere where you can be safe and think about what you want to do next. And it's not here at the base of a lighthouse on the edge of a cliff." Sebastian said.
"Where should I go? I don't want to go back to Tirymor or Philadelphia. I've made this my home and yet I have no home." Johnathon added.
"There is a place in the village. Nikolas can help you, you should go there Johnathon." Sebastian said, trying to hint at Johnathon getting help.
"Nikolas? Are you talking about Churchill Green? The mental institution??? DO YOU THINK I'M MAD!?" Johnathon said, quickly walking backwards towards the cliff again.
"Listen, Johnathon, listen to me." Sebastian said reaching for his uncle and grabbing him by the coat. "Its not the type of place we all think it is. You need help to sort things out and you can get that help there. Don't fall into patterns like my grandfather did."
Johnathon froze. "Albert?"
"Grandfather had a lot of ghosts in his closet too. He fought so hard to rid himself of these things and, in the end, they took him. He fell into the world of madness and, Johnathon, he never came back. Don't let that happen to you. Don't let this curse of our family take another one of us. Go to Churchill Green and get healed. Find your new path with their help and return to the family better than new."
Johnathon thought for a moment and turned back to the sea. The waves, unseen from his vantage point now, boomed down at the bottom of the cliff. The spray still lifted into the air proving their existence to those on the cliff.
The storm, strengthening as they stood there, continued to pelt them with rain and wind. But in the distance out over the sea on the horizon, as Johnathon quietly in his mind asked for a sign, a peek of sky opened up with not a trace of the storm in sight.
The storm was clearing, but it was far. And inside of him too, his own storm would clear and perhaps a trip Churchill Green to find his way through the storm was the best way forward.
"Alright."
"You'll go?"
Johnathon nodded.
And then, a surprise: Sebastian grabbed his uncle by the shoulders and hugged him tightly as the wind washed over them.
"And you? What'll you'll do? You can't haunt this world forever as you are." Johnathon added.
Sebastian was confused. "I don't know. I'd like to get my family back." He said.
Johnathon grinned; a cruel icy wind blew over them both. "That's impossible."
Sebastian didn't know how to answer his uncle, a man on the verge of madness. He could tell there was a still a streak of cruelty in him, but the next thing out of Johnathon's mouth was surprising.
An idea, something he once read about but then a friend of his from his time in Philidelphia confirmed it was real. A place so strange and out there it could only be written in fiction; a novel by Braum Stoker even.
"I've heard of a place, in Europe.” Johnathon revealed in a quiet voice to his nephew. “A place you can go and be there safely. I've never told a soul about it; in fact I wasn’t even sure it was real.”
Sebastian moved closer, he narrowed his eyes as the wind blew colder and through his thick dark blond hair.
Johnathon continued with tears in his eyes realizing the end of a very long tug of war with Sebastian was coming to an end. “It's a place a friend of mine told me was real, he’s there now even. I'll write him for you. I’ll set you up and tell him about you. You can be safe there. Forever." Johnathon said.
Intrigued at first Sebastian quickly realized his secret life could not come out. “No! You can't tell anyone about me. Why would you do that?" Sebastian asked.
Johnathon did not reply directly, he only said "Trust me, it's where you will be safe."
Sebastian did not answer. He stood there, on the edge of the North Shore Cliffs as he watched Johnathon walk off into the darkness but not before he turned back one last time to look back at Sebastian under the glow of a crescent moon.
Later that night, Johnathon signed himself in to Churchill Green Asylum while Sebastian watched from the shadows of the hospital gardens and he did what he told Sebastian he would do too, he wrote his friend in Europe.
A man who lived in America most of his life but followed a secretive dark world of the underground. Filled with people that Johnathon did not understand at the time, but meeting Sebastian and Jaqueline he now did.
It would be a place that if exposed to those in Welshport, would change the existence of Sebastian and those he loved for all eternity.
