Supernatural Boarding School #3 - A Brush of Death ✅

Chapter 10 - Dylan

Dylan's point of view

If you've ever lost someone, I'm sure there is a certain day every year that is hardest on you. For Eros, it was the day his father died. For my father, it was my Mom's birthday. For me, it had always been Mother's Day. It had been her favorite day of the year and we always spent it without my dad, heading out into town just the two of us. Somehow, she had always managed to get out of bed for that, even when she'd been depressed or crazy. We would walk around the town, have lunch, buy stuff we didn't need... Nothing all that special and I hadn't thought much of it back then, but they had grown to be my most cherished memories of my mother.

Normally, I would try to stay away from all mothers on that ungodly holiday, but this year I decided to do something different. I'd checked with my dad if he was okay with it and luckily, he had agreed right away. In fact, he sounded like he was fighting back tears when we talked on the phone.

That Sunday, I rang the bell at the small apartment building that I'd only visited a few times before. Immediately, I was buzzed up.

"Dylan!" Ellen Hollow was already waiting for me, door open wide, when I got to her apartment. "This is a lovely surprise!"

I handed her the flowers I'd been holding and gave her an awkward kiss on the cheek. "Happy Mother's Day."

At first, it seemed like she was going to burst out in tears. Her lip trembled and she clutched the flowers so tightly I was sure not all of them would survive. Then, she managed to control herself and she gestured for me to followed her inside as she put the bouquet into a vase.

I knew I had done the right thing, even if it was hard on both of us.

"It's been a long time since anyone brought me flowers," she told me, trying to keep her voice steady. "Your dad can be romantic at times, but he's not big on gifts."

If Eros had been here, he would have made some stupid comment about my dad being 'big' in other ways, so I was more than a little glad that it was just me and Ellen here today. I didn't want to think about my dad and Ellen that way, even if I liked the woman and I knew my dad was happier now that he had found her.

For a while, we just exchanged pleasantries and drank tea. It took me a full hour to work up the courage to ask her for a favor. I had truly come here just to see her, to make this day easier on her, but I also like killing two birds with one stone.

"Ellen..." I swallowed. "Would it be okay... I mean, Demona told me that her dad..." Come on, Dylan, get on with it. "Is it true that there is research?"

She smiled. "You don't need to walk on eggshells around me, Dylan. Yes, there is research. I've been going through it for weeks now, but I haven't found anything to help Dem out yet. Of course, you're welcome to have a look if you want to."

Ellen showed me to Demona's old bedroom, that looked nothing like it had before. There were stacks of paper everywhere: on the desk, the bed, the floor... Dem's stuff had been put into boxes that Ellen had stacked up in a corner just to make more room for everything.

"I'm sure that you've already read some of it."

We both thought back to the day Ellen had thrown boxes filled with paper out of the window when Demona had dared to ask about it. It were those notes we had used to find both Jack and Ben. It was how we had discovered that Dem and I were related.

This was far more than just those few boxes, though. There was so much I didn't know where to begin.

"I talked to Jack," Ellen explained, taking some papers off a chair and offering it to me. "He doesn't fully seem to understand what is going on, but he did grasp how desperate I was to help our daughter. He told me where to find his old notebooks and gave me everything he's written in prison, but most of them are ramblings of a crazy man. The ones on the desks are the ones from around the time Dem was born. They seem most coherent."