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“You have a point,” Dervish chuckles.
I shake Shark’s hand, admiring his tattoos one final time. He salutes sharply when I let go. Then I shake hands with Dervish. “Your spikes have gone floppy,” I note.
“I feel floppy all over,” he says, grinning.
The four of us share one final glance that says more than any words. With a tired wave, I turn away from the three Disciples, face the village lights, steady myself and wonder what Mom and Dad will say when I step through the door. With an excited but nervous shiver, I start on the short walk home.
HOME ALONELY
IT wasn’t a glorious homecoming.
Nearly seven years had passed since I stepped through the window in search of Art. I found it almost impossible to believe, even though Lord Loss had warned me. Seven years of change, births and deaths, the world moving on — and I missed every minute of it.
Mom and Dad looked a lot older than I remembered. Wrinklier, greyer, a sadness in their eyes that hadn’t been there before.
They thought I was a ghost. Although seven years had slipped by, I looked exactly the way I did when I disappeared, even dressed in the same clothes. Mom screamed. Dad too. They spun away from me, covering their eyes, panting with terror.
I hadn’t expected such a reaction, or prepared myself for the experience of having Mom and Dad scream at me with horror. I fell apart. Collapsed in tears. “It’s me!” I kept wailing. “It’s me! Me! Me!”
Eventually, shaking with fear, Dad edged forward. Maybe he wouldn’t have been so brave if I hadn’t been crying like a baby. He poked my bald head, finger trembling, expecting it to slide through me. When it didn’t, he frowned and poked me again.
“I’m real,” I moaned, looking at him, wanting him to hold me, hug me, tell me he loved me. “It’s me. Kernel. I’m real, Dad. I’m back.”
“Kernel?” he croaked, shaking his head softly. “It can’t be. You’re...no...it can’t . . .”
Then he fell on me, folded his arms around me, bellowed my name and burst into tears. Moments later, Mom was beside me too, the pair picking at me, poking me, clutching me. Crying and laughing at the same time.
I spent ages trying to explain. I told them about the lights, the window, the kidnapping, stepping through after Cadaver, Beranabus, my journey between worlds, Lord Loss, Artery. They didn’t believe me. Couldn’t. But they had no other explanation for how I’d turned up unchanged (except for lots of cuts, scars and bruises).
“We should take him to a doctor,” Dad said. “Have his body and mind looked at by experts. They might be able to uncover the truth.”
“No!” Mom hissed before I could insist that my story was the truth. “He’d be a freak. There’d be questions we don’t want to answer. They’d take him away. We might never see him again, lose him like Annabella and.. .” She didn’t say the name of her third child. She refused to discuss Art not being real. Dad didn’t probe either. It was the one part of my story neither asked to hear a second time.
With no other option, they reluctantly accepted my outlandish tales. But they didn’t tell the neighbors about me. Dad said we’d be treated like lunatics if I repeated my demonic stories. Also, a lot of the people of Paskinston had lost children when Cadaver attacked. He wasn’t sure how my reappearance would affect them.
They hid me inside the house while they tried to think of a way to introduce me back into village life. Mom wanted to pretend I was an orphaned cousin who just happened to look a lot like their supposedly dead son. Dad entertained a deep-freeze theory — he thought he could convince people that I’d been kept on ice by scientists for the past seven years.
When they realized how weak those explanations sounded, they decided to simply leave without saying anything. Running away had worked once — why not a second time? Pack our bags, move to where nobody knew us, start anew. Mom and Dad loved Paskinston, but they loved me more. Stealing away like thieves in the night, saying nothing to any of their friends, seemed like the only solution. So that’s what we did.
After trying out some small towns, where Mom never felt comfortable, we ended up in a city. Dad found work on a construction site, Mom in a fast-food restaurant. They teach me when they come home at night. During the day I stay in-doors, watching television, reading, playing games, making model airplanes. Not safe for me to go out and interact with other people. Mom and Dad are afraid I’ll be taken from them if the truth emerges.
I’m not enjoying this life. It’s not how I thought it would be. I did a brave thing, risked all to save my brother, went through torments and overcame obstacles that most people couldn’t even imagine. But I’m not allowed to talk about it. I have to keep it hidden, like something shameful. We don’t even talk about Art, what happened to him, the fact that he was a demon in disguise. I tried discussing it with Mom once, but she clapped her hands over her ears and shrieked at me to shut up and never mention his name again.
Mom and Dad aren’t happy either. They don’t say so, but I can see that secretly they wish I’d never returned. Losing me and Art was hard, but after seven years they’d learned to deal with it. They’d found peace in Paskinston, were getting on with life, grateful to have each other and a place to call home.
I’ve wrecked all that. Turned their world upside down and inside out. Forced them to abandon their home and friends, take to the road, live a life of secrets and fear.
I didn’t want to ruin their lives. I wanted to save Art, bring him home, be a hero. I wanted Mom and Dad to hold me and love me, for everything to be all right after that terrible universe of monsters. I wanted my life back.
Instead I’ve returned to lies and disguise, a nightmare every bit as awful as the one I hoped to escape forever when I left the universe of the Demonata.
The loneliness is worse than ever. Trapped indoors most of the time, nobody to play with or speak t
o. It was bad enough when I felt like an outsider, but at least I could mingle with other children, go to school, act like I fit in. Now I’m totally alone. I can’t even talk to Mom or Dad. They’re always uneasy around me. They love me because I’m their son, but I’m sure they wonder sometimes and ask themselves, “Is that really Kernel? Can it truly be the boy we thought we’d lost? Or is it some monster pretending to be him?”
They have nightmares. I’ve heard them moaning in their sleep. Sometimes one will wake screaming, and sob for hours, held by the other, comforted.
But they never hold or comfort me.
