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would seek his vengeance against me when the opportunity
allowed.
The interior of the house became a ghostly memory of my
past, and I remembered with painful difficulty the features
that greeted me as I lowered myself into the hateful din of
a man’s commanding voice—a man who called himself
my father. As I went along, I heard strong winds roaring
at the glass of the now unbroken windows. I could smell
the acridity of fresh blood. With each step I took down the
stairs, a feeling I had rarely known began to freeze every
layer of my being. I was terrified.
The darkness at the bottom of the stairs began to drift
away at the somber touch of candlelight, and the twitching
shadows that remained were not my friends. There, framed
by the clutch and titter of the gnarled branches moving
against the windows behind him, stood the man who had
stalked unnamed and unrealized behind the scenes of my
every nightmare—my father.
There was a haze upon him borne of candle smoke, or
my mind’s mercy perhaps—I could not tell which. But I
could see that he was average of height and quite lank, not
at all like the thing his son would become, if indeed I was
his son. He was dripping with blood, and his eyes played in
tones of rage and hate. Yet there was a graceful repose to his
glare, the whispered poise of a perfectly balanced weapon.
And his hands were liquid in their movements, aglow with
a quantity of natural talent rarely concentrated within such
dainty things.
His voice came at me again, but this time his words
carried the prettiness of a cleverly baited trap. “Ah, there
you are, my very good boy. How the dim light loves you,
Vincent. Not even the sun could better reveal the truth of
you. I’m so lucky to be one of the few who can recognize
your potential—what you truly are. Those better not be tears
I see on your cheeks, my boy. If they are, they had better
not be for that mother of yours, or your sniveling siblings.”
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