Chapter One - Summer 1977

A Chapter by Alison Kershaw

This is a supernatural thriller fused with urban fantasy action and a twist of romance. (I think I got it all covered.) Anyway if you leave a review or comment and you like it I may add the next two chapters to titilate... This book is actually published

Joseph Brannigan fidgeted in his first class airline seat. He looked over at his son Jason. He smiled wanly at him as they buckled up for the landing at Manchester Airport in England.

Joseph took a deep breath at the thought of meeting Lily this summer. Normally he met her in July at the beginning of her school holidays, but this year she had finished her A Level exams early, at the tender age of sixteen now he and his son Jason were flying over to England after a frantic phone call from Carmel to say that Lily had been arrested and was being held at the local police station under the charge of Grievous Bodily Harm.

He thought this was totally out of character for Lily. Joseph knew his daughter was a quiet and sensitive girl who had slowly started to grow into a very sophisticated and elegant young woman. He had never seen her lose her temper let alone beat some boy to within an inch of his life. They hadn’t come over to see Lily at Easter this year because she had claimed she was studying for her exams, but Joseph now felt this was merely an excuse to keep him away. ‘Why?’ He kept thinking all through the flight.

He wasn’t sure yet, but he was about to get the answers he was looking for.

Joseph wasn’t looking forward to meeting Lily’s “dad” Andrew Roberts who had agreed to collect them from the airport. Joseph walked calmly out of the baggage collection area, but his inner feelings contradicted his cool exterior. He found Andrew’s solemn and pallid face staring blankly ahead in the crowd easily enough and walked towards him, aware Jason was dutifully following behind.

“Joseph, Jason. I wish I could say it is a pleasure, but as always it isn’t.” His greeting was cool and aloof as always as Joseph watched Andrew’s facial expressions turn sour at having to shake his hand. Jason always used to say to him that Andrew was suspicious of his transatlantic brother in law and nephew and that he never trusted them. Joseph could hardly blame the man for feeling like that, but Joseph also suspected that he resented having to look after his daughter and now that she was in trouble it was the perfect excuse he was looking for to get her out of his and Carmel’s home.

“Andrew, how are you?” Joseph’s voice was low and gentle, he made sure that Andrew never forgot just how powerfully strong he was as they coolly shook hands. Joseph turned his head away from Andrew not wanting to even look at the insipid man in the eye and caught his reflection in the dark glass window he concluded was some two way mirror for the airport security to spy on the unsuspecting public. He checked his neatly short cut brown hair was perfectly in place. He hated long hair on men despite it being the fashion of the Seventies to have floppy mop hairstyles. Everyone seemed to have long unkempt hair with huge sideburns and moustaches. Joseph didn’t like this style at all. It seemed like too high maintenance for his liking.

He glanced briefly at Jason who was more like his twin brother rather than his thirty two year old son. He stood to attention proud of his family and on guard for any impending danger, he admired his son’s chiselled jaw line and high cheek bone structure, sculptured physiques and emerald green eyes made them both look like devastatingly striking film stars. Despite them both dressing down for the trip they always seemed to turn heads when they were out in public together.

Joseph realised when he saw Andrew, his look of confusion was always there with a questioning look which would one day have to be addressed and soon. Joseph was beginning to realise that Andrew knew he was fifty four yet he looked more like thirty four. Joseph also guessed he was thinking “How can he still look so young?” He would sort something out after he had cleared this mess up first and foremost.

They didn’t bother with any pleasantries as they all walked in silence to the bottle green Avenger car parked outside the terminal. Andrew drove them down the motorway to his and Carmel’s home in the Rossendale Valley. Joseph had noticed all the streets were lined with Union Jack buntings. The National flag of Great Britain hung from nearly every home. He had never noticed this immense sense of patriotic sentiment before and he realised Jason was thinking the same.

“What are all the flags for Andrew?” Jason’s voice was much deeper, with a harder and more noticeable American accent than his own.

Andrew looked through the rear view mirror at the usually mute handsome man.

“It’s our Queen’s Silver Jubilee. Everyone’s been having street parties to celebrate.”

“Street parties?” Joseph turned in his seat to look at his driver questioningly.

“Yeah you know, all the neighbours get together and line the streets with tables and chairs and all the kids sit round eating beef paste sandwiches and jelly and ice cream.” Joseph continued to look blankly at his brother in law, so he continued.

Andrew rolled his eyes at him and Joseph wanted to hit the weak insubordinate in the head for such a display of facial disdain.

“They play games, like ‘Simple Simon Says’, the egg and spoon race and pass the parcel, that sort of thing. Then when they’ve finally worn themselves out and gone to bed, the adults get together in the evening and let their hair down, it’s great fun. It gives everyone a real sense of community.” Even when he spoke Joseph shuddered.

Joseph felt Andrew was too proud of his standing and popularity in the local community and he thought he should have tried harder to understand Lily’s predicament instead of concentrating on trying to sort out some damage limitation with his neighbours at the shocked reactions to Lily’s recent antics.

“Don’t you do anything like that in the States?”

Joseph looked forward again to the road ahead. “I can’t say I ever have been to a street party Andrew. Did Lily go to your street party?”

”She most certainly did not!” Andrew flushed with annoyance at the mention of her name. “She is seriously grounded, for the rest of her natural born life if I had anything to do with it.” Joseph raised an eyebrow, but decided it was wise to keep quiet.

“Has Lily been released from the Police station yet?” Jason interjected.

“Yes, she’s been bailed to appear in court next week.” Andrew replied.

“So what on earth happened?” Joseph was concerned now.

“I’m not sure, Joe. All I know is that some poor lad is in traction in Intensive Care and YOUR daughter has been banged up for GBH.” Andrew was in a foul mood.

“Please don’t take that tone with me Andrew.” Joseph decided to be on his best behaviour, ‘keep the conversation light but firm,’ he thought. He needed to coerce more information from him. “There is obviously some underlying reason for her sudden change in behaviour and if you resented having to care for Lily for the last sixteen years then you should have said something earlier, like when we made the decision she continued to live with you and Carmel ten years ago.”

Andrew shook his head. “I’m sorry Joseph, but I can’t help the way I feel. She has just become uncontrollable the last few months. It’s gradually become worse to the point that neither of us can cope with her anymore, she is making our lives a misery.”

Joseph was beginning to simmer inside and decided to keep quiet for the rest of the journey. A good meal and a run later on would soon relieve his tension.

As they arrived at the Roberts household, the door was unusually opened by Carmel. In the past Lily had always been so excited to see Joseph and Jason that she would run out to greet both of them before they had even had chance to get out of the car. Joseph remembered with a pang of reminiscent pain of how from being six years old, this exuberant and happy child had jumped up at him and wrapped her arms around him tight, snuggling her tiny head into his neck giggling and every year since she had made the same greeting to both him and Jason.

Now though he was dreading what he would find behind that front door and hoped it wasn’t the snivelling little wretch he had first found here at the tender age of five, crouched in a corner shivering and shaking from gross neglect. He prayed silently that his Lily, he knew and loved, was still in there somewhere. Joseph realised that Jason was thinking exactly the same as him as he looked tentatively over to his father from over the roof of the car they had just been travelling in.

As they entered into the dark oak panelled hallway Carmel greeted her brother with the same frosty handshake as her husband rather than her usual frigid hug. She looked up the staircase and called out to Lily. There was no answer from upstairs. Carmel called again.

“Lily! Uncle Joe and Jay are here. Please come down.” There was a long silent pause, then a loud set of banging noises, as if a stropping teenager was slamming cupboard doors. Joseph and Jason both looked up to the ceiling as they heard a curse from the bedroom. A curse neither Carmel nor Andrew heard. They looked at one another again as if they were talking to one another aware that Andrew had noticed this quite often and found this silent conversation disturbing. Finally Joseph spoke.

“I’ll go up and say hello shall I?” Joseph pulled his hands out of his trouser pockets and made his way up the staircase and disappeared to the left on the landing. He stood by Lily’s bedroom door and listened carefully. All had gone quiet inside and he knew Lily was listening too, directly behind the door.

He knocked lightly. “Lily, can I come in?” He heard the faintest shuffle from behind the door, but no reply was offered.

He sighed. “Look Princess, I know you probably feel ashamed and embarrassed, but you don’t need to be. We’re not mad at you!” He heard the barest cynical scoff. “Okay. I just want to talk to you. Can I come in?” He inhaled deeply and stopped abruptly with his lungs full of air. He was shocked at the smell seeping from under her door. He knew his acute sense of smell never failed him, but this? ‘It’s impossible,’ he thought.

“Right then I refuse to talk to a door all evening, I’m coming in.” He slowly turned the brass handle on the colonial panelled door. He heard her move away from the door and flop onto her bed. ‘No doubt lying with her back to me,’ he thought again.

He twisted his head around the door and was stunned at what he saw. The usually immaculate room looked liked it was in a war zone instead of a middleclass suburban English home. Clothes were strewn all over the floor; posters of Donny Osmond, Bay City Rollers, and Starsky and Hutch had been unceremoniously ripped from the walls and left where they had landed. Obscenity and profanity had been scribbled all around the walls with a black marker accompanied with some very disturbing pictures of humans in various positions of torture. The only clean word that had been scribbled hap hazardless on the walls was “Hungry! Hungry! Hungry!” Ornaments had been smashed and Teddy bears and Dolls had all had their heads ripped off and knives, scissors and pins stabbed in them.

“Well we have been busy in here haven’t we?” He looked over to Lily’s bed. Curled up in a foetal position, predictably with her back to him, was a skinny girl with long fiery red hair that draped over the side of the bed. The smell though was so pungent yet intoxicating to Joseph. ‘Stop It!’ He thought. ‘She’s your daughter.’ He tried to switch his brain off from it and went to sit on the edge of her bed and began to stroke her soft hair.

His voice was so yielding. “Do you want to talk about it Princess?” Lily merely shook her head. ‘Well I am getting some kind of response.’ He thought.

“I understand how you feel. Trust me I do. I know what is happening to you.” She rolled over and looked so forlorn and gaunt that Joseph was initially taken aback. It had been less than eight months since he last saw her, but her metamorphosis was so dramatic. She had literally changed from gawky teenager to entire woman. She looked emaciated though and this worried Joseph more than anything else. He put his arms out to her.

“No hug for your favourite Uncle?” She responded to his request, but her sadness seeped through every fibre of his being, to the point where he almost cried for her. He looked up at the walls again.

“What are you hungry for Baby?” He hugged her more tightly now so he could feel her ribs through her tank top and he winced, he stroked her hair for more comfort. She shrugged and began to weep quietly into his chest.

“Shush shush. There, there now. Nothing can be all that bad. Surely?” He cooed and rocked her as he continued to smooth her hair, he needed her to know she was no longer alone in this hell.

Finally she looked up at him with her large almond, emerald eyes. Tears rolling freely down her cheeks. “Nothing can be that bad!” She sniffed “I put a boy in hospital, I can’t control my temper, I’m awaiting trial for GBH and my mum and dad hate me.”

“They don’t hate you Princess, their just….” He paused to find the right words. ‘Scared shitless of you! God help me!’ He thought. “….concerned at your sudden change in behaviour. When did you notice you were changing?”

She shrugged again. “Not sure.” She sniffed again and wiped her nose on her white blouse sleeve. “I guess I first noticed something was wrong when I was repairing a flat tyre on my Chopper at school. Some kids had let down my tyres for the umpteenth time and I got so mad I bent my bike.”

Joseph looked surprised for an instant, but recovered quickly.

“You bent the spokes on the wheel of your bike?” He questioned her cautiously.

“No. I mean I bent the entire frame in two! Then I picked it up and threw it at the school window and it smashed. I got a week detention for that.” Joseph continued to stroke her hair as if all this information was normal teenage behaviour, but inside his brain was screaming. “What the f**k!”

“I don’t understand Uncle Joe. I feel terrible afterwards, but at the time, when I see red it feels the right thing to do. Then I have really bad dreams. I wake up upset, but I can’t remember what they are about. I just know they are sick.” She began to sob at admitting this.

“Oh Baby, don’t cry. Uncle Joe will sort it out for you.” That was what he always said to her and what always comforted her. Uncle Joe came up trumps whenever anything went wrong. She trusted him implicitly and began to calm down. Her sobs turned to hiccups.

After being in her room for an hour he promised to fix her something to eat as she also admitted to him she hadn’t eaten for two days. The trauma of what had happened had affected her appetite, but Joseph was concerned about her weight and insisted she ate. As he walked down stairs and back into the hallway, Jason almost ran out of the living room.

“God I thought you were never coming down. One more cup of tea or awkward silence and I was going to change in front of their beady little eyes and make them really piss their pants.”

Joseph rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Jay please try to control your sadistic urges in front of our human family, we’re not going to be here long. Keep your voice down too. I’m worried that Lily will hear us.”

“Hear us? She’s upstairs, well out of earshot.” Jason searched his father’s eyes for answers. “Did you get to the bottom of what’s wrong?”

“Oh yes.” He said slowly. As Jason began to walk back to the living room Joseph grabbed his arm and swung him back round to face him. He glared intensely then said at last.

“She’s agreed to come down.” He heard her bedroom door open and he said quickly. “DON’T react to the smell okay!” At first Jason frowned as if he didn’t understand, but as soon as Lily began to descend the stairs the aroma hit Joseph’s nostrils again like a thunderbolt and knew Jason understood immediately what he had meant. Joseph watched his son trying desperately to recover from the initial surprise. Then he tried his best to behave normally towards his unsuspecting sister.

“Hey Pongo.” Joseph winced at the seriously faux pas statement and glared at his verbally challenged son and heir, but Jason shrugged off his father’s facial chastising as he had figured that if he didn’t greet her as he had always done she would get suspicious. Jason had nicknamed her Pongo Snodgrass as a six year old child, because she always had a runny nose, goofy teeth and big ears like a comic book character he once read about as a kid, or so he had always teased her. She gave him a shy smile as if she hardly knew him

“Hi Jay! How are you?” She said tentatively and stepped forward to give him a hug. Not the usual arm flinging and jumping up to wrap her legs around him as was their usual greeting. He looked over her shoulder at his father and made a face as if he had smelt the sweetest and most exhilarating perfume ever.

He mouthed “What the hell is going on?” to Joseph, before breaking away from the embrace and smiling broadly at Lily once more.

“My you look…” He paused trying to find something flattering to say to his kid sister, which normally wasn’t that difficult, but today he was lost for words. She didn’t even look like his Lily and she certainly wasn’t behaving like her either. “…All grown up.” He managed at long last.

“Don’t lie Jay, I look like I’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards.” Her forlorn expression did not change nor did her monotone voice. She trudged passed them both as if her feet were stuck to the floor by some malevolent force. Joseph shrugged at his son who stood rooted to the spot with his mouth open.

“Shut your mouth son, you don’t want to be catching flies now.” Joseph pushed his chin up as he walked passed him and followed Lily into the kitchen.

Joseph walked straight to the fridge and peered inside for something substantial to eat. He found some huge rump steak fillets and decided that would be sufficient.

“Those are for our guests, invited for dinner tomorrow night.”

Joseph spun around to see Carmel stood in the doorway. ‘I guess she finally found the courtesy to speak to me.’ Instead Joseph decided to be as polite as he could.

“Well, we will go out shopping and buy some more before your guests arrive.” Joseph gritted his teeth in irritation to his sisters’ selfishness, but managed a smile for the sake of Lily.

“I thought you would be busy all day tomorrow, and Andrew and I don’t have time to shop again.” She marched forward into the kitchen and tried to snatch the bag of red raw meat from his hands. At the last moment Joseph swung the bag up in the air out of reach from Carmel.

“Stop playing games Carmel, you honestly would rather feed a bunch of scavenging acquaintances than feed your own family.” His head nodded towards Lily, who actually looked remotely intrigued by this exchange of words between mother and Uncle Joe.

“Joseph. It’s a very important dinner, Andrew is trying to gain promotion and make some attempt to apologise for Lily’s….” she realised that Lily was in the kitchen staring at her. Her olive eyes bore down into Carmel’s soul, which unnerved her. Carmel stood there frozen to the spot, and then cleared her throat to start again.

“Andrew has great standing and respect in this community. We have to do something to repair any damage that has been caused in the last few months.” She glanced sideways at Lily. “Besides Lily has to realise that appearance is important at her age and eating lots of fatty red meats is bad for her, you should be feeding her salads and fruit.” She looked up at Joseph with a challenging glare.

Lily rose from her chair that she had pulled up tight to the large solid pine kitchen table. “I’ll get out of your way then.” Lily mumbled in this unusual dull drone.

“Stay where you are young lady.” Joseph commanded as he pointed at Lily. “You’re eating a proper meal tonight.” Lily sat back down as he turned back to Carmel who had been joined by Andrew for moral support. Jason was now stood blocking the doorway between the kitchen and hall, leaning against the architrave with his arms folded.

“You are a snob and a half Carmel.” Joseph was going to try and contain his anger, but it was proving difficult. “Who cares what the community thinks. Lily is going through her own personal trauma and all you care about is what the f*****g neighbours think. Look at her. Go on look at her. Can you honestly say that fruit and salad is working nutritionally for her? She looks anorexic!”

Lily looked dolefully up at Uncle Joseph. Joseph’s heart sank as he realised she didn’t really like being compared to a skeleton, but at least someone was finally defending her and trying to understand that her problems weren’t just because she was a temperamental teenager, but something much worse was happening to her.

“She needs protein, and lots of it. If you two don’t like it then it’s tough s**t. Lily, how do you want your steak Princess?” He turned at last to her with the warmest smile. He thought she seemed to be sitting up a little straighter.

Without even thinking she replied with a nervous smile. “Blue.”

“That’s disgusting.” Andrew muttered and walked back towards the kitchen door. Jason refused to budge from the doorway that led into the hallway and bore down on them with the same intimidating stare Lily had given Carmel just moments earlier. Without even looking around Joseph busied himself with cooking utensils and merely commanded.

“Jason let them pass.” Without a word Jason moved only a few inches to allow Carmel and Andrew to squeeze past and scurry in to the hall and slam the front door behind them as they stormed out of their own home.

Joseph waited to hear the car reverse up the drive, before clapping his hands together and beaming broadly as he turned to face his children. “Right then! Six blue rump steaks it is then.”

“There are only three of us!” Lily declared with a sudden flush in her cheeks that Jason and Joseph noticed immediately, as a sign of her relief that her so called parents had left the vicinity.

“Well that’s two steaks each then. I hope you’re both hungry?”

“Starving!” They replied in stereo, Jason chuckled low as he sat down at the table to join them and Lily giggled back, comfortable once more. Joseph turned back to the steaks and smiled to himself; he knew he could drag Lily out of her depression and whoa betide anyone that stood in his way