"Oi, watcha doin' there?"
Enoch looked over his shoulder as the clip clop of horse's hooves and the grinding of wheels as they came to a stop on the road announced someone's presence. He groaned at the familiar face and turned away to look back at the river as his uncle jumped down from the wagon.
"Yer up early, Enoch." Uriah patted the old horse's neck as he walked around it and over to his nephew sitting on the wall and blatantly ignoring him. "What're ye doin'?" He rolled his eyes when Enoch still didn't respond and tapped him on the shoulder, "Ye not in one'a those moods again, are ye?"
"Leave me alone." Enoch said dryly without turning around. He was quietly relieved that at least it had been his uncle to come across him who had been out of London the day before and didn't know anything of it.
"Uh nah, come on I'll give ye a ride 'ome. We got a job, didn' ye dad tell ye?"
"I don't know."
"Right...alright...now get up, come on."
Enoch really didn't want to. He'd been wandering the streets for over an hour and knew that by now his parents would probably have noticed his absence. Would they be worried and think he'd run away? He had to go back, he knew that, even though it was only a little piece of vain hope that kept him thinking that maybe they would accept it eventually if he did.
"Fine..." He muttered and swung his legs over the wall as he pushed himself back up to his feet. Adjusting his cap on his head, Enoch sighed and climbed up into the front of the wagon as Uriah ducked under the horse's neck, gathered the long reins and hopped up the other side behind him.
"What're you doin' out 'ere so early anyways?" Uriah asked with a raised eyebrow as he clicked the horse into a walk, looking sideways at his nephew who looked even more absent than he usually did. "Your parents even know?"
"I ain't a little kid, don't need permission ta go for a walk." Enoch mumbled and Uriah laughed quietly.
"So, no then...what's up wiv you?"
"Ya really wanna know?" Enoch asked dryly and turned on the wooden seat to properly look his uncle in the face for the first time that morning.
"Do I?" Uriah raised an eyebrow and flicked the reins lightly against the horse's back as he steered the wagon around a corner.
"I can bring fings ta life." Enoch said in what was the most bluntly honest sentence he could remember speaking for a long time. His face remained an unreadable mask of emotion as he watched his uncle for any reaction.
"Ya what?" Uriah started in such surprise he tugged the horse and wagon to a halt and stared at Enoch like he was trying to decide whether or not he was joking. After several long seconds he laughed loudly and shook his head in disbelief. "Better lose that attitude 'fore your dad 'ears it. Don't try that on 'im, lad."
"It's true."
"Yeah, yeah...an' I'm actually the Duke o' Kent."
xxxXxxx
Enoch jumped from the wagon as they drew to a halt outside the front door. The horse snorted and huffed out a breath as Enoch passed close to its nose and sucked in a breath through his teeth as he pushed open the door and stuck his head inside.
He almost walked right into his father as he stepped inside and jumped back a step.
"...I went for a walk..." He muttered, clenching his jaw and looking his father firmly in the eye as if daring him to start the same argument again already. He would tell Uriah, without a doubt.
But his father, unshaven and half-dressed, said nothing as he looked at Enoch. There was something strangely vague in the man's expression that did not go unnoticed by Enoch's uncle standing behind him.
"Owen? D'you forget we 'ad a job?"
"No..." Even Owen's voice was strangely quiet and without a word to Enoch he let his son step around him and towards the kitchen to get his breakfast. "Enoch won't be comin' today."
"Why ain't 'e comin'? What's 'appened?"
Enoch paused inside the kitchen to listen. His eyes were fixed on the bowl of cool porridge and trickle of milk at his place at the table but his attention was on the hall where he heard his father and uncle speaking in hushed tones he couldn't quite make out. He chanced a glance around the doorway in time to watch his uncle head towards the stairs and his father run a hand through his receding hair and grip a great chunk of it.
His gut twisted unpleasantly as he sank into his chair at the table, tossed his cap onto it, and tried to stomach a few mouthfuls of the disgusting, lumpy porridge. He had barely swallowed a spoonful when he heard someone's heavy footsteps on the stairs and his uncle's unmistakeable voice curse loudly.
Enoch didn't move from his seat for several long minutes. His restless fingers tapped his spoon against the edge of his bowl though he didn't feel hungry at all enough to finish the breakfast his mother left out for him. It was still early, Faith would probably still be in bed but he hadn't seen or even heard his mother in the house yet.
He didn't move until he heard his father in the doorway and slowly looked over his shoulder at him.
The chair scraped against the floorboards as he pushed it back and got to his feet but otherwise made no movement closer to his father.
There was a long moment of tense silence between father and son before Owen spoke in a low, barely measured voice that trembled with some suppressed emotion.
"You won't be comin' into the shop today, Enoch."
Enoch didn't need to ask why. He wasn't entirely surprised that his father no longer wanted him around there but all the same he looked over his father's shoulder to his uncle who stood in the room beyond. The man whose face had minutes ago been laughing and happy was looking at Enoch with an expression of disgust and fear Enoch had never seen before even when he raised the dead in front of him.
"Look at me when I'm talkin' ta ya."
Enoch's blue eyes snapped back to his father's face and he clenched his jaw in an effort to resist the retort that tingled at the tip of his tongue.
"You will not leave this 'ouse 'til I get back."
"I what?" Enoch snapped, his eyes wide with shock at his father's very stern order. "D'you really fink I'm gonna 'urt someone? It ain't doin' no 'arm! Y'can't-"
Smack.
Enoch staggered sideways and whatever he had been about to say was lost on his lips as he stared in shock at his father who was staring at his own hand like he hadn't really meant to strike with it.
While his son raised trembling fingers to his cheek and stared at him like a frightened dog, Owen swallowed a lump in his throat and stood his ground.
"I'm yer father, you'll do as I say. I wouldn't do this if I fought I 'ad a choice. You will stay in this 'ouse 'til I come back. Do ya understand me?"
"...Yessir."
"Good."
Enoch remained rooted to the spot and staring at nothing as his father walked away towards the front door. Uriah looked over at Enoch but seemed to think better of saying anything to him before he followed his brother out the door.
Only when he heard the front door close did Enoch move. His fingertips traced circles over his cheek where he still felt the sting of his father's blow. He was stunned, but not entirely surprised. Slowly the hand holding his cheek dropped and curled into a fist as he shook with barely suppressed anger towards his father. All this just because he'd seen Enoch make a few dolls dance around. Or was it? Something had made even Uriah look at him like he was a freak now after laughing with him and thinking he was joking about his abilities.
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."
"'art's...Enoch. Nofin' but bloody 'arts and you wanna tell me you ain't 'urtin' anyone?"
"Animals...rats and fings..." His case was grim at best and Enoch knew deep down that this was it and he wasn't going to be able to convince her otherwise. "I never 'urt nofin' bigger than a sick cat, and never cold blood..." Now that was half a lie but what was one more now when the evidence was damning enough?
Valentine pursed her lips in much the same way Enoch sometimes did when he was trying to hold back some foul word or insult. She kept her back flat to the wall as she edged towards the other side of the room closer to the open door. Something went cold in her blue eyes she shared with both her children and Enoch felt sick at the sight. "'E was right...I didn' wanna believe 'im, ya know? Yer dangerous, Enoch."
"I'm your son, Mum...I'd never 'urt no one..." He tried, turned on the spot as she edged around him and took a step back. His foot slipped over one of the jars which toppled sideways and rolled across the room towards his mother who scuttled out of the way of it.
"I dunno what you are...but you ain't my son."
Enoch's heart seemed to sink right down through his feet and into the floor. Did she really believe that? She thought he was a freak and immediately the shocked shouts of the policeman echoed in his head again. Demon.
"I don't 'urt no one..." He tried again and in a desperate attempt to make her believe him he bent down, picked up a jar and started to unscrew the lid. "It ain't a bad fing, I swear...I can show ye...it's a good thing."
"You put that fing down now!"
But Enoch didn't, he reached inside and pulled out the preserved pig's heart, watching the solution trickle over his fingers as he held it in one hand and slowly put down the jar. His whole hand tingled with an energy it needed to expel as he curled his fingers around the heart and swallowed.
"I can't 'elp it...it's 'o I am...but I ain't no killer, look."
Valentine pressed a shaking hand over her mouth as she stood in the doorway of Enoch's bedroom. She didn't want to look at the horrible thing in front of her that her own son, if he really was still her son, was holding like it was nothing. Still, she couldn't tear her eyes away from Enoch as he closed his eyes and closed his fingers around the organ. She didn't miss his hand twitch and the tremor that ran down his arm as he concentrated on something.
Then it happened. The heart Enoch held in his outstretched hand that had been motionless and dead a moment before, began to beat before her very eyes.
"It's-it's...what did ye just do? 'Ow did-" She couldn't even finish her sentence as she stared half in fear and half in wonderment at Enoch who had opened his eyes and was looking almost desperately at her.
"I do it wiv the dolls...it's why I 'ave em. It's alive. See? I don' kill anyfin' that matters...it's the opposite, see? I can give it life."
For one long moment Enoch was hopeful that she believed him and she could see that it wasn't a bad thing to have. She seemed to hesitate for a few seconds as she stared entranced at the beating heart in his hand. The dull, soft throbbing filled the silence as he waited in hope.
"No one should be able ta do that...no one..."
"Well...obviously I can." Enoch couldn't help himself from responding before he lowered his outstretched hand and dropped it limply to his side as the heart still beat within his fingertips. "It's a good fing...please?"
It happened in less than a minute.
Enoch dropped the still beating heart to the floor and tried to take a step towards his mother, pleading with her to accept him more than he had ever wanted to belong before. At the same time she stepped backwards out of the door and away from him as her fear overcame how desperately she wanted to believe him.
The jar that had rolled her way and out of the room minutes ago had come to rest at the very top of the stairs and Enoch was the only one to notice it as he ran to the doorway as his mother moved away from him with such a cold expression that looked wrong on her face.
"Mum..."
She hadn't looked behind her, only felt with a hand out behind her to find the top of the banister as she kept her back to it. Suddenly Enoch saw what was about to happen before it did. Her shoe made contact with the ankle high obstacle that was the jar and no sooner had he shouted she fell backwards.
xxxXxxx
Enoch could do nothing but stare in horror from the top of the staircase at the spot his mother had fallen. She wasn't moving and he'd heard the sickening crunch of skull hitting the end of the banister when she fell.
"Enoch?"
He spun on the spot and very nearly toppled backwards when he saw Faith rubbing her eyes in the doorway at the far end of the landing. Before his sister could so much as say another word he had run across the landing and swept her up and back into the room.
She laughed and Enoch for once hated to hear it. He set her back down on her feet and knelt down to her level to look her in the eye. "Stay in 'ere, okay, Faith? I'll come get ye...just stay in 'ere..."
The smile vanished from her face and she tilted her head up at him but before she could say anything Enoch ran from the room and pulled the door closed behind him, pleading with anything and everything that she wouldn't see.
The jar of pickling solution had toppled down the stairs and shattered on the floor leaving broken glass strewn over the wooden boards and the stairs as Enoch almost fell down himself in his rush to get down. He dropped hard to his knees on the floor and winced as glass sliced his finger but Enoch didn't care about that.
His mother lay at an odd angle unmoving and glassy eyed as blood trickled from her head where it had struck the banister hard. Enoch didn't need to feel for a pulse to know she was gone, he knew death better than anyone. His breaths came fast and broken and he didn't bother trying to stop the moisture stinging his eyes. It was his fault. It was because of his hearts that she'd fallen. She had been afraid of him and he may as well have driven her to the stairs himself.
Any pain from the bruise on his face and the glass driven into his hand was diminished by the pain that Enoch felt ripping his own heart apart as he doubled over his mother's body and let sobs begin to wrack his body for the first time since he could remember. All his anger to the people who didn't accept him, and the fight to belong somewhere drained out of him in grief because now nothing else existed except the too real body of his mother who would never try and coax him out of his room with a kind word again. What about Faith? She wasn't even four years old yet, could she even comprehend it?
She didn't need to know, and as long as Enoch was here, she wouldn't know until he couldn't shield her from it anymore.
Enoch trembled as he sat up slowly on his knees again. His face was wet with tears that still kept falling silently as he tried not to look at her face. He pushed himself up to his feet and slumped heavily against the banister to support his legs that felt strangely weak beneath his weight as he forced himself back up those stairs and over the landing towards the door that was still mercifully closed.
He pushed open the door and before his sister could say a word he dropped down onto her little mattress beside her and pulled her into his lap. The boy was still shaking and he was sure she would be able to feel it through her little frame as he hugged her uncharacteristically warmly to his chest and sniffed back tears.
"Are you cwying?" Faith's high little voice chimed up where she was squirming against him but Enoch didn't speak and certainly didn't let her go yet. "Enoch?" She squirmed more, peeking her little face over his shoulder and he knew she knew something was very wrong.
"Where's mama?"
Enoch choked back a sob and slowly let his sister go so she could actually look at him. He tried his best, and failed, to give her a convincing enough smile. "Out...just you 'an me for now." For how long, he wasn't sure. Something in the back of his mind and the tug in his gut told him he wasn't going to see her again either for one reason or another.
"You promise me, Faith...ye won't come out unless I get ye'...okay? Ye understand?"
Faith's normally happy face turned into a scowl and she wriggled off of her brother's lap and crossed her arms over her nightdress.
"'Old on..." Enoch wiped his nose with his sleeve and left the room, returning a minute later with a mouse heart behind his back and a new homunculus in his other hand. "'ere...another one for ye..." Keeping his back to Faith, he coated the heart in clay and squeezed it together. With another push of his thumb, it sprang to life and he left it go to run around the room for her.
Almost immediately Faith's scowling face started to twitch into a smile and she tilted her head up at Enoch again. He had just turned to leave the room when there was a patter of footsteps and she had thrown her little arms around his legs in a warm hug that almost hurt Enoch more.
"I'll come get ye soon, okay? Maybe we can go to the park..." He lied and ruffled her hair one more time before leaving her with her animated doll and closing her in the room again.
Enoch paused halfway down the stairs and stared at his mother's unmoving body with shaking breaths. His eyes tore away from it and his fist clenched as they were drawn to the cow's heart lying in a pile of glass on the last step.
Did he dare?