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Nothing's been the same since Charlie died.
My father wasn't around much physically before his death - he worked long nights at the wind farms and would collapse into bed when he finally returned. He used to sleep late, trusting the three of us to look after ourselves and each other. But now, well, it was almost like he was choosing to avoid Eddie and me. We knew he wasn't sleeping well. We'd catch glimpses of him pacing or hear his mumbling from behind the closed door of his room. At first, I think I assumed he had figured out what I had done. That he was figuring out the best way in which to deal with me, or that maybe he feared me. No. He must have thought that if he pulled away from us first, it would hurt him less if we met a similar fate.
That being said, nothing of importance changed at first. Eddie began to walk me to school. Dinners became even more tense - all three of us gorging on the thick silence of what we couldn't (or wouldn't) say to each other. And the gap between us all grew from a crack in the asphalt to a great canyon, with no hope of building a bridge across it. Some early mornings, when I heard him return from work, I'd watch our father from the door of Eddie's and my bedroom as he paced around the kitchen. He never noticed me. He was always in his head too much. If I had stayed in the kitchen, we wouldn't talk. He'd simply give me a curt nod and retreat to his room. Occasionally, he would grab himself a beer and turn on the radio. Stuck in the loop of our little routine, we'd listen to whatever show was on in silence.
It didn't take long for the walk to school to grow silent, too. Eddie stopped his usual fussing of "(Redacted) you really should look after your uniform better" and "Did you remember (blank)?" for whatever class I had that day. He would see me walk into the school gates and then silently begin to trudge back to our home. It was no life for a seventeen-year-old, and watching him, I'd often feel a sharp pang of guilt and shame in my ribs. He never complained when I was in earshot, but I knew things were harder for him than they were for me.
When I brought my report card home, I could feel the change in the atmosphere. My grades had always been middling, which I used to put down to being due to my attendance. But that year, they were especially average. Neither my father nor Eddie had anything to say in response, neither congratulations nor lecturing. I was not in the habit of feeling disappointed. We went about our routine in miserable silence as usual. And nobody complained.
Summer offered little reprieve, except for my newfound freedom from my elder brother. Even then, I was given a strictly enforced curfew to stick to. I'd explore the plains and woodland for a long time. Sometimes, I was joined by other kids in the neighbourhood; often, I was alone. I enjoyed the silence out there because it was different. It didn't mask unhappiness and discontent. It wasn't heavy with the shared thoughts we couldn't bring ourselves to verbalise. The world was moving, not trapped in time, stuck in a moment. The silence out there was peaceful. It allowed me to hear His voice.
Then, all at once, the silence in our home was broken.
Summer has been and gone, and school started up once again. Eddie served my father and I dinner in the kitchen. I had seen Eddie's dissatisfaction growing over the months. He didn't want to be stuck in this role, pseudo-parenting me forever. For once, I couldn't accept my father's absence. It angered me to be sat opposite him while he looked right through me. He might as well have not been there at all, this shell of a man. There, for a moment, I despised him for his weakness. Before I knew it, I was speaking directly to him.
"How long are you going to be like this?"
For the first time in almost a year, his eyes met mine. I held his gaze.
"What?"
"How long are we going to do this for? Forever?"
Eddie placed the bowl he was holding down, glancing between the two of us. He tried to catch my gaze, shaking his head at me as though telling me to drop the conversation. I ignored his plea and refused to look at him.
"Come on, let's not-" Eddie gestured helplessly.
"No, I want him to answer me. He owes it to us," I said indignantly. I hadn't broken eye contact with my father, "I want to know when we'll be able to go back to normal."
"Charlie's gone," my father answered flatly, "We're not going back to normal."
"Everyone knows Charlie's gone," I didn't try to hide my anger, "But your other kids are right here. Eddie and I are right in front of you, and you're too busy... thinking about the dead son to notice us!"
My father stood, and my anger spurred me to my feet as well. I went on, practically yelling in his face.
"It's not like you ever cared about us much - how long did it take you to notice Charlie was missing? Where were you? At home, hoping we would raise ourselves? Oh, but you're all too happy to take the credit for it. You are a pathetic father to us, and you were worthless to Charlie!"
In hindsight, I should have seen it coming, but the speed at which he threw me against the wall, forearm pressed firmly against my neck, still came as a shock. I'd never feared him before, but the terror I felt at that moment still haunts my nightmares. Something told me that he wouldn't have cared if he killed me.
"Shut up. You have no fucking idea what you're talking about." I grabbed at his arm, digging my nails into his flesh, gasping. The anger in his eyes replaced the emptiness. After what felt like an eternity, he released me. My head hit the wall again from the momentum, and I heard his bedroom door slam as I sank to the floor.
My vision blurred, but I wasn't sure I was crying. I heard Eddie follow my father into his room and snippets of the conversation that followed. My head throbbed, and my throat burned; it felt blocked when I swallowed.
"-completely inappropriate response-"
"-talked to like that in my house-"
"-you're the adult-"
I traced the outline of the cold-tiled kitchen floor. It seemed incongruous that my whole body could feel on fire, yet the floor remained as cold as ice. I clung to the sensation as my breathing went from short, gulping breaths to steady and determined.
I pushed myself to my feet, and without stopping to retrieve my shoes or keys, I walked out the front door. I walked into the dark, into the forest, with no direction in mind. My feet carried me to the water tank. It was a coincidence. A shockingly timed coincidence. I sank to my knees in the clearing before it. And I sobbed, finally, allowing all of the determination to leave my body. In its place was humiliation and loneliness. There, in the clearing, a small, quiet voice told me that I was destined for more than this. That one day, no one will be able to fathom treating me like an object to discard once they grow tired of me - I will be indispensable. People will revere me.
I returned home on my own accord. We never spoke about it. I wish I could say that now that I knew what he was capable of, I didn't provoke him, but it often didn't take much to do so. Walking on eggshells was putting it lightly.
I wasn't surprised when Eddie left. By that point, abandonment was second nature. First, my mother, then Charlie, then the emotional absence of my father - Eddie's absence was anticipated. More so now that I seemed to be the object of everyone's anger and resentment, I'd stolen Eddie's youth in my need to be looked after, and I'd taken what we had left of our father from the both of us. That night, I'd returned late from school. I'd found myself in detention for one reason or another and ended up missing dinner. I knew I was in for an earful when I stepped across the threshold, so I took my time walking home. But when I entered the home that evening, it was empty. I wandered into the kitchen, the sound of my footsteps on the tiles cutting through the silence. It was as though the house was holding its breath, waiting for me to understand the situation and respond to it.
Instead, I helped myself to some leftovers before falling asleep at the kitchen table.
A blanket being draped over my shoulders gently roused me. I lifted my head, blinking sleep from my eyes.
"Eddie?" I called, groggily.
From the doorway, I heard my father sigh.
"Eddie's gone, Richie." I couldn't have imagined the regret in his voice. The shock instantly woke me up.
"What? What do you mean-"
"He's on his way to Glottage as we speak and... and he's not coming back," his voice trembled as he spoke. A long moment of silence passed between us. He kept glancing at me with an expression that I couldn't quite make sense of.
"It's my fault," I said simply. My father didn't respond.
"It's late. You should go to bed." I watched him walk into the hallway and waited until I heard the front door close. All at once, our tiny house seemed far too large for only two of us.
For a long time, I despised Eddie for leaving me alone in that house with him, for leaving me to navigate an endlessly complicated minefield of anger and hurt and betrayal on my own. It was the kind of hatred that was immediately followed by guilt. He had only been a child himself. Who was I to keep him trapped inside that house with us, just so that I wouldn't be lonely? That realisation only came to me after I'd packed my schoolbag with provisions, intent on bringing Eddie home from Glottage. The shame of not being seen as worth taking with him sat heavily on my chest. But it was the knowledge that I wouldn't have left - that I couldn't have, at the time - that pushed my head underwater and left me gasping for air. I sat heavily on my bed, looking at the two empty ones that took up the rest of the space in the cramped room. I was the last son left. I would be the last son to leave.
I am not brave. Eddie saw an escape, and he took it, walking head held high into the unknown cruelty and hardship that awaited him. He wasn't going to wait for himself to become something greater; he was going to seek it out. A small part of me knew, even then, that it was bravery. I stayed, not because it was logically safer, but because it was the cruelty and hardship I knew. The weeks of being in the same house as my father and never once seeing him, only for us to yell and scream at each other the moment we did. The humiliation from my schoolteachers commenting on the length and appearance of my hair so frequently and with so much malice that I took a pair of kitchen scissors to it in anger until blond locks piled up in the bathroom sink. My schoolteachers faked concern and empathy and yet never followed through on anything. Because they didn't have the resources to help me. Because every child in that godsawful place needed their help. Instead, they helped no one. But it was what I knew. All of it. I had the skill set needed to survive it; at least, I thought I did. How could I run away when this was everything I'd ever known? No. Eddie was the brave one. I was not.
Without Eddie's supervision, I stopped going to school. I started to shoot the shit with some other kids in the neighbourhood, but we had very little in common. They only provided me with new, fantastical tales of the Trawler-man. Rumours, of course, spread through the schools in the wake of the Drowning Song. I was completely enamoured hearing about the rumoured hidden chapels of the Parish of Tide and Flesh. For once in my life, without a second thought, I knew that He was calling to me. I knew that He would always be there for me. I just had to be brave enough to chase after Him.
When I returned home, my trust in Him would dissipate. As though entering that house was like putting up a barrier between us, between me and my god. In His place was carefully masked fear and emptiness. I mourned His absence every moment I was out of His reach. In that house, no god could reach me, save me. Perhaps no god really wanted to. Or perhaps it was a test, to see if I could save myself. Every hour went by slower here. My discontent grew with every passing moment. Yet, I didn't act on it. I couldn't.
The day my father left, I knew he was gone before I entered the house. I sank to a well known part of the kitchen floor, my back pressed against the wall. I resented him. I resented myself. But more than anything, I was relieved. My decision had been made for me. There was nothing left here to return to, nothing keeping me tethered to this place.
I was going to find the Parish. They were going to accept me, love me. And no one was going to abandon me again. The Trawler-man would see to it. I had been naïve and cowardly, but I wasn't going to be anymore. I will be decisive and when threatened, I'll act first. I will be important. Even if I have to claw and fight and kill to get there.
That night I slept there, on the cold kitchen floor. I told myself it would be the last time I would ever be forced to. Alone and shivering in a godless family home.