Death's Puppeteer

22nd July 1909

Enoch wasn't locked inside. He could just as easily run away now and never come back but something kept him rooted here. He hadn't seen his mother yet but she had made them breakfast.

Eventually, after full minutes of just standing there in shock, Enoch wandered from the kitchen and stared up at the stairs. Home no longer felt happy and safe for him but more like a guarded cage in which he'd been captive so long he wasn't sure he wanted to leave.

A sinking feeling filled Enoch and every footstep felt heavy as he started up the stairs. At he reached the landing he drew in a long breath and walked towards his bedroom. The door was open. He had left it closed, he knew that and the feeling of dread grew stronger as he walked towards it.

"No, no, no..." The scene that greeted Enoch was enough to make him step backwards out of the doorway of his own room. A low groan escaped his throat as the boy looked over his bedroom. His bed had been pushed aside and the covers were piled up at the foot where he had left them. The small table and stool had been overturned and his drawers were open like someone had been searching for something. They had found it. His heart sunk to his feet and he immediately understood the strange looks on his father and uncle's faces as he stared at the torn up floorboards. The insulating straw littered the wooden floor and everything he had so carefully hidden for years was on display before him. Balls of unused clay and homunculi, both completed and half made ones, were strewn around. Worst of all was the jars. The pickled hearts of all sizes were all too visible in their clear jars around the room and knives and scalpels only added to the morbid scene before him.

He wasn't just a freak who made inanimate things come to life anymore to his parents. He was a killer and a collector of the macabre.

A quiet sobbing that he hadn't noticed before caught his ears and Enoch snapped his head to the side to find, to his horror, his mother kneeling in the far corner of the room. He had been too distracted by the rest to notice her before but now he looked he saw her almost white hands twisting and tearing her apron as she rocked and hid her face in it. She was crying, and that made Enoch feel worse than he ever had.

"Mum..." He whispered, and his voice came out hoarser than he'd been expecting. "I can...I can explain it..." Could he really though? He'd been asking himself for years why he was the way he was and never had an answer. Was 'I use dead hearts to bring things to life' really much better than the alternative? Enoch knew himself that it was, but to his own mother...he wasn't sure it would be.

Valentine said nothing when her son tried to speak to her but slowly lifted her head to look at him. His cheek was bruising and she could only imagine that Owen must have struck him after all. Now she looked, really looked at Enoch, she saw it all. She saw years of secrets in the dark rings around his eyes, a strange nimbleness in his hands, and something peculiar in the paleness of his skin. She even imagined she saw something frightening in the blue eyes she once thought of as sweet and good. The young man that stood in front of her was not the same boy she had raised anymore in her eyes. He was different. He was strange and the things he must have done made her weep.

"Mum?" He spoke again and his voice finally sounded childlike again. For one moment, just one, Enoch sounded like a little boy who wanted his mother and not like a cold, broody teenager who kept secrets.

"Don' try to. I seen it all..." Valentine's voice came out wavering as she leaned back against the wall to support herself as she stood up to face him.

"I didn'..." Enoch swallowed and tried not to let her distance hurt him more than he already was. She had practically flattened herself against the wall and closely resembled the frightened animal he so often felt like now. "I ain't no killer or nofin', I swear."