Copyright © Ryan O’Riordan 2011
Smashwords Edition
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used ficticiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
First published in 2011
Summary: Oscar Knight discovers the death of a twin brother he was separated from at birth. On visiting his brother’s bleak home town, he uncovers secrets buried by his friends and family. But the worst secret of all is that his brother has now become a vampire.
Print edition ISBN: 9781466324244
“The creepiest thing about it was that with the lid shut, it squashes your nose.”
- James Dean
People have to be the most confusing beings in the universe. With enough skill and determination, you could eventually excel at any given subject: maths, science – hell, even rocket science if you really wanted – and you could even predict the results. The same couldn’t be said for people.
People are a law upon themselves and almost everything they do is to try further their own lives at the expense of others.
Sebastian despondently trudged through the deserted streets of his pathetic town with this beguiling thought circling his brain. The evening had all been going so well. It was supposed to be a celebration, but it had turned into a funeral.
And all because of a kiss.
He could only blame himself for not reacting quickly enough, but it didn’t explain why it seemed everyone was now annoyed with him. It was his birthday after all and he shouldn’t be the one walking home alone. He was however, dressed in t-shirt and jeans, the 3am summer’s evening warm enough to enable him to be without a jacket.
Sebastian was sweating and his legs ached. He had been walking for half an hour already and figured he was another few minutes from arriving home, at which point he would have to wake up his parents to let him in because he’d forgotten his key. They wouldn’t be happy. They didn’t want him to stay out late and they definitely wouldn’t want like him walking home alone. But having spent all his money on drink, he couldn’t afford a taxi. It served him right though, because he was angry and drunk enough to go on foot.
“Hello,” It was the single most ubiquitous conversation starter in the world. Sebastian jumped because he hadn’t encountered anyone on the journey through his empty town, so it seemed strange to meet someone so near to his house in the suburbs. The voice identified itself as a tall woman, who crawled out of the shadows of the streetlights. Though she was overdressed in a scarlet evening gown, it was barely distinguishable against the blackness of the night.
“Hi?” Sebastian said, detecting his own impatience.
“Do you know who are you”? The mysterious lady asked him. She had to be old, at least thirty. Was she…? To her credit, she was attractive.
“Uh, Sebastian?” He replied, wondering why he asked it like a question and altogether unsure how close he should be getting. He looked around nervously, half-expecting waiting police to bust him for soliciting.
“Sebastian,” The woman repeated dreamily. “It’s a beautiful name,”
“Err – yeah.” Sebastian replied awkwardly. He had never heard his name described as ‘beautiful’ before and was cautious of the woman’s own inebriation.
Only out of politeness, he enquired “What’s yours?”
The lady smiled bashfully before slowing answering, “Mine is a name that has to be lived; it can’t be told.”
Sebastian deduced she must have been at a costume party or something. He laughed purposefully and started to make quick strides away from her.
“Where are you going?” She called after him seductively. He couldn’t help himself turning back around to explain his motivations for getting home, but when he turned, she was already gone.
Sebastian looked left and right, across two streets bathed in the hazy amber light, but couldn’t make sense of where she had disappeared to. Skittishly questioning his own memory, he rotated back to his path and half expected to see the woman standing in front of him. Thankfully, it was clear and he continued onwards.
He quickened his steps to try to get home faster. He’d never been in this situation of walking home alone before and he had expected it to be a serene, tranquil experience – and without a single car on the roads, it was that. But the tranquillity was quickly being etched away by a more sinister undertone. It could just be the alcohol in his blood talking, but Sebastian was convincing himself that it was unsafe to be outside now. He heard a dog barking viciously somewhere nearby which prompted him to break into a run. It didn’t feel wonderful with the alcohol sloshing around in his stomach, but it seemed necessary.
His street came into view and he hurried towards the house. He slowed as he reached the driveway, trying to recapture his breath and aware of how silly and distressed he had just been. It didn’t seem smart to be running late at night and he needed to convey the belief he had got a taxi home. He reached for the doorbell.
“Hello,” It was that voice again. This time it was taunting him.
He spun around on the spot and choked on his own heart as he saw the lady of the night, not even out of breath. How had she caught up with him so fast? He had ran almost half a mile and felt like death but she hadn’t even broken a sweat.
“How did you do that?” He asked dumbfounded. Ideally, he wanted to sever communication with the mysterious figure as soon as possible but there was something appealing about her that made him unable to.
“As I said, Sebastian. It’s an experience.” She moved closer to him. “It has to be lived.” She whispered and put her hands on his forearms. Even they were ice cold, meaning she couldn’t have run it as he had. But he would have heard a vehicle if there was one, surely?
The lady kissed him on the forehead, her cold lips cooling his warm brow before bowing her head to nuzzle his neck and Sebastian’s heartbeat increased tenfold. Did she want to seduce him outside of his parents’ house? He couldn’t help but be enamoured by her charm. It was all wrong because she was too tall for him, but he let her do whatever it was she was intending. Her nose sniffed at his neck.
“Mmm.” She said sensuously. Perhaps she had a thing for sweaty boys, Sebastian thought, exposing himself to a new level of how messed up this whole charade was.
Her hand soon found its way onto his chest and she stopped with her palm flat in the middle. She was feeling his rapid heartbeat.
“Sorry,” He muttered, feeling embarrassed by the tell-tale organ.
“Oh, sweet boy,” She whispered into his ear. “Don’t worry; that won’t be a problem anymore”
Something was burning Oscar’s face so irritatingly that he opened his eyes. The heat source revealed itself as irregularly bright sunlight, which forced him to scrunch up his face. That helped, though the bright white light had now transferred onto his retinas. Through the hazy forest of nothing in his mind, he started to become painfully aware of the state of his condition. His head throbbed. His neck pulsated. His back was tight and his extremities were worn out.
Oscar peeled his sweaty back away from the bedclothes and gingerly rolled off target from the mean, inanimate intruder and attempted to see again. He expected to see the empty other half of his bed. This image was dashed when instead he saw an impostor. Oh bother, he thought. Who was it?
All he could see was
a mish-mash of long, brown hair; the back of a head. Looking further
down the body, he noted the absence of clothing. That narrowed down
his relationship to her, but the issue of identity was still
undetermined. From the shallow breaths coming from the figure, he
decided that the girl in question was still asleep. Far too tired to
resolve the mystery with inevitably awkward dialogue, Oscar reached
back into the scorching path of sunlight and retrieved his phone,
incredibly in its normal place next to his bed.
4 missed calls, 2
voicemail, 7 text messages received. The time had found its way to
7.14am. Oscar struggled with recollecting how it came to be this way
and what he could last remember.
The headache
worsened to a sudden bout of nausea and he decided that the heat trap
was the worst place to be. He clambered out of the bed, suddenly
aware of his own nudity and quickly headed for his bathroom,
purposefully bypassing his opportunity to glance at his bed’s
co-occupant.
His mind stuttered with disassembled thoughts. What
discovery was most awkward – a stranger in your bed, or a friend? A
naked friend. Sebastian decided to brush his teeth, so rancid was the
aniseed smell punctuating his breath. His throat was stripped dry,
the by-product of excessive alcohol. He looked in the mirror on the
wall and took in what was left of his reflection in shameful pride.
His muted-blue eyes were the most telling; dark bags and burst
capillaries hid none of the frivolity from the night before. His
unkempt black hair was even more of a mess than usual, his lips
chapped and there was a red smudge on his right cheek which upon
closer investigation revealed itself to be lipstick.
Had it been
a good birthday? It must have been. It was all over his face.
This was it: eighteen years old and now legally an adult.
“Aren’t you scared?” His friend Kelly (luckily, a blonde) had put to him at the start of the night. “Now you can do anything.”
It was true; with age came power and with power came responsibility. He may have subpoenaed that ethos from someone else, but it made sense and he wanted to stick by it.
He returned to the bedroom and nervously noticed the figure sharing his bed had started to move. The moment of truth had arrived and he would either be very pleased or very upset. She exhaled slowly and wriggled onto her back before opening her eyes. Oscar, standing foolishly at the door of his en-suite, realised that it might not be preferable to wake up in someone else’s room to find them staring at you all creepily and naked. He grabbed a towel from over the door and wrapped it around his waist. He allowed a few moments of self-correction time for the girl to sit herself up and preserve her modesty with the duvet before he turned back to her.
“Hey,” She said.
“Hey.” He echoed in pleasant surprise. It was Eva, a girl he knew from the going out scene who he had been pursuing for a number of weeks. He felt some jubilation that he had finally had the nerve to act on his feelings for her, more so that it had happened on his birthday. The only drawback was that he couldn’t remember the specifics.
They both were silent for a moment until his supportive smile broke into a nervous laugh.
“Well this is awkward,”
Eva laughed. “Shut up and get over here,”
She was nothing short of forceful and so he complied, returning to the bed and getting underneath the covers next to her. He sat up so the glare of the sun didn’t impact him again and she kissed him on the lips, but it didn’t linger. Oscar doubted his apparent conquest of Eva was down to his own pick-up skills; this was just the way it was for him and his friends. Promiscuity ran rife like breathing. Except for the rare exemption, nobody was anybody's for very long. In the law of averages, he was going to end up with Eva eventually.
“Last night was fun.” She said. She was half-Spanish, but had moved to Brighton with her family when she was little. She still had a twinge of the accent, but it only came out on occasion, for example when she was speaking passionately – as she was to him.
“Yeah,” Oscar conceded though he wasn’t sure what he was agreeing to. He scratched his formless hair as Eva cuddled up around his torso.
“Did you have a good birthday?”
“I presume so,” He said blankly and she laughed.
“You don’t remember?” There was warmth in her voice that took away the bluntness of the question.
“Well,” He managed and she laughed again. “What’s to remember, really? There were people; you were there.” He said and gently touched her nose with his finger. “Probably a cake; I know there was alcohol.”
“You become someone else when you drink,” She said judgementally, “Like Jekyll and Hyde.”
That was one viewpoint undoubtedly, but as his Hyde transformation had obviously wooed the girl, it seemed an auspicious comparison.
“Is it bad?” He asked her tenderly, hoping for an objective viewpoint.
“No, it’s not bad.” She said carefully. “But it’s more…intense. You seem to know what you want a lot more.”
“I bet I do.” He said and his hand found its way around her naked frame.
She seized at the tickling sensation and playfully smacked his chest. “Oscar!” She said anxiously and he stopped himself.
“Sorry,” He said shyly.
“I should hope so,” She started to get out of the bed.
“Oh,” He sighed, “Don’t get up yet. Then I’ll have to get up, and I don’t want to get up.” He pulled the covers over his head and burrowed deep down under them. Eva stood unimpressed at the foot of the bed and started retrieving her strewn about clothes.
“What are you doing?” Oscar’s muffled voice sounded from beneath the duvet. He was getting too hot, the combination of the black, opaque bedspread and the boiling sun rapidly becoming unbearable.
Suddenly, the duvet was flung from over him and he was exposed, unattractively lying in a foetal position in the middle of the bed. Eva towered over him holding onto the duvet, her slender figure now spoilt by underwear.
“Wake up, Oscar; today, you are an adult.”
“Yesterday I was an adult.” He writhed on the bed as he stretched back out to full-length.
“Well, today you need to prove it.” Eva demanded gently and replaced the cover over his body.
Oscar wasn’t keen on that and swatted it out from over him. Eva was already pulling her dress from the night before back over her.
“I don’t think I like striptease in reverse.” Oscar said bravely. Eva was unabashed by the remark and pointed at him threateningly. “Don’t make me make you spend your first proper day as an adult saying a little girl gave you a black eye.” She said and made her way into the en-suite.
Oscar wished he could remember more about the night before – hopefully it would come back to him.
Eva didn’t want to stay and once she had been dispatched, Oscar clattered into the kitchen and encountered his mother who was cooking something that smell so bad, it made him feel queasy.
“How’re you feeling?” She asked compassionately.
“Urgghhh…” Oscar grumbled and slumped into a chair at the table. His mother seemed amused by the expression.
“That takes me back.” She said nostalgically, though it was hard to imagine given her tall, prim appearance and cropped black hair. “I assume you don’t want any of this then?”
“What is it?”
“Five-bean-chilli.” She said gluttonously.
“Urghhh!” Oscar shouted back. His father came into the room as a result of the rising commotion. He didn’t like to miss out.
“Oscar, did your friend not want some breakfast?” He asked innocently.
“You were watching?” Oscar replied, aghast. His parents were normally quite chilled-out with whatever endeavours he pursued. It stemmed from their ideology of letting the child prosper on their own.
“No!” He said defiantly. “But I did happen to notice some heels at my front door this morning and I also just saw a brown-haired girl in a party dress breeze past the front room window.”
“Dennis!” Oscar shouted back. He rarely called them mum and dad since finding out he was adopted.
“Well what am I supposed to think?”
He lightly pecked his wife, Alice, on the lips. They were an odd-looking couple; Dennis’ portly body contrasting widely against Alice’s and her demur, form-fitting clothes the opposite of his baggy polo shirt and trousers combo.
“Urgh!” Oscar howled, felling the source of the noise pushing itself further up his windpipe.
“What? I’m happy for you,” His father said then quietly enunciated, “She looked stunning!” causing his wife to haphazardly smack him on the arm.
“I’m just saying! Can’t a man say?”
“A man can, yes. You can’t.” Alice teased and Dennis replied, “Oh har de har.”
Dennis joined Oscar at the table. “So was it a big night? Did you get into a few scrapes?” His desire to be down with the lingo was sickening. “I had a wonderful time, thank you father.” Oscar teased, deploying the formal label as if it were a weapon. Dennis dismissed the name feverishly and said, “I’m only asking! You don’t have to say anything.” The truth was there was nothing to say; whatever had happened, whoever Oscar had inadvertently loaned his body to for the previous evening’s frivolities, had returned it without cleaning up…like the carnage from a horrific exorcism. The only physical evidence that he had even had a birthday was the remains of his cake that leered viciously at him from a box on the worktop.
“What about Max? Did he get in alright?” His mother asked. There was a thought; Max was his only friend who was younger than he was. He was still seventeen for another few weeks and there was some discrepancy as to whether he would succeed at getting in the club. Oscar’s face obviously revealed his cluelessness as his mother said “Can’t you remember?”
“Err,” Oscar stammered, frowning and trying his best to recall. How bad was it that he couldn’t remember something as simple as who was there? “Yeah, he got in.” He declared. He still had no idea.
“He did?”
“Yeah,”
“Oh. That’s good then. So you all had a good time?”
“Yes,” Oscar said, getting to his feet.
“Where are you going now?” His father asked.
“Toilet,” Oscar said as he started vacating the inquisition.
“Oh right,” His dad said slyly. “Throw up some of that drink from last night, get it out.”
“Dennis, please.” Oscar said feeling more ill than ever but not wanting to give his father the satisfaction.
The rest of the day was a write-off. Oscar kept alternating between the checkpoints of his bed, the sofa in the front room and sitting in the garden, gently exhaling in the futile hope of not feeling so abysmal. His parents continued to find the whole thing completely hilarious. He finally remembered to check his phone, hoping it would decipher some of the things that had been lost in recollection.
The missed calls and voicemails were from Max, as were a few text messages. It seemed he hadn’t managed to get in the club after all and had gone home instead, eventually texting ‘Home now. Gutted but playing Fifa.’
It was an acceptable enough conclusion. Max was safe, but he would have also been his best bet at finding out what happened during the night, as he was the only straight-edge non-drinker of the group. With him dismissed from front line action, he wasn’t sure who was left to spin a truthful tale.
He checked online for photos of the night before, but it seemed none of his friends were rushing to share their visual evidence.
Oscar also had a text message from Eva saying ‘Where are you?’ about an hour before the usual club closing time. He knew how that had ended up. The last text was from his old neighbour, Kelly, which simply said ‘Had to go home, talk tomorrow. Have a great night xx’
This seemed the most interesting thing to chase up. Steadying himself to make the call, Kelly answered on the third ring.
“Hello, birthday boy.” She said mockingly. Somehow she made his birthday into an insult.
“Hey,” Oscar replied.
“You sound awful.”
“Oh yeah? Because I feel wonderful.”
“And is there a story behind that?”
“If there is, I’d be happy to hear it.”
Kelly laughed, knowing Oscar’s recklessness all too well. Though he didn’t see her as often since she’d moved further out of town, she still made frequent efforts to see him.
“Did you have a good night?” He asked her attentively.
“I did.” She said shortly. He maintained his silence hoping for her to elaborate, but she didn’t. “And?” He asked.
“Nothing, just boy drama.”
“Oh yeah, as usual.”
“Oscar,” She said threateningly. Kelly had been in an unhappy relationship with her boyfriend, Aaron, for almost a year. They spent half their time falling out, a quarter of it making up and the other quarter ignoring each other so they could quietly pass the relationship longevity milestones that seemed so important. Kelly wouldn’t accept that Aaron was anything other than perfect, however.
“What?” Oscar asked defensively and knew it was all he needed to say. He had made his opinions about Aaron well known, to the point where Aaron refused to attend the birthday (not that he would have been invited) and probably called Kelly home early too.
“Oscar. You don’t get it.” She sighed.
“What don’t I get?” He asked, hating her patronising tone.
“When you love someone, you will do just about anything-”
“-Steady,” He laughed.
“-I mean you look past the problems. You barely even see them. Everyone’s saying shit about me and Aaron but they’re not involved in the relationship, are they?”
She didn’t wait for his response. “I don’t know. If you’re not in it then you can’t see it. It’s all well and good looking in from the outside, but if you’re not the people effected then you’re just judging based on nothing.”
“That was beautiful,” He said sarcastically.
“Shut up.” Kelly said.
“Seriously, I’m going to get that for my bathroom wall.”
“I’m going to kill you.”
“Yeah, well, get in line I’m sure.”
*
At some point, Oscar fell asleep watching The Shining – which in hindsight wasn’t the best choice when he had felt on the verge of vomiting all day long – and he woke up sprawled across the sofa in the small hours, the onset of daylight hanging just below the horizon line.
24 hours ago, I was probably having the best time. He thought miserably as he looked up and released the creatures of his mind onto the plain ceiling. The nap had been a misguided necessity. Now he felt awake and alert and didn’t know how long he had been asleep. He wondered whether Dennis was still awake as he liked to listen to American radio at night but doubted it considering his early start.
The last time I woke up, it was next to someone amazing.
The thought cycled around his head, making him feel worse. Now he was drooling slightly and couldn’t even manage to hack a whole film. Oh, how the mighty have fallen, he thought.
He forced himself up the stairs back to his pitifully dark and empty bedroom. Everything was as he had left it, down to the discarded towel he had worn on the bed. The room felt hollow and uninviting and he considered whether it always looked this depressing, even when he had brought Eva into it.
Oscar grimaced at his dishevelled bedclothes, not wanting to return as its sole occupier just yet. Instead, he took to his desk and sprung his computer to life by jarring the mouse. He checked his online page where there were a plethora of tagged photos from the night before.
“Oh my god,” He said incredulously, catching a glimpse of himself looking dumbfounded at a girl who must be a pole-dancer, who seemed to have thrust her breasts at his face. This looked like there would have to be some immediatedetagging and some long-term ‘report inappropriate content’ deletion. He couldn’t entrust his friends with that request, as they would probably just rag on him harder. So it was better to act anonymously.
Oscar noticed another picture of him that must be photoshopped, because it showed him in clothes he didn’t own. He clicked it for the enlarged version and was instantly surprised by the level of detail in it. There he was, stood in a classroom he didn’t recognise, wearing a suit as though it was the last day of school, with a horrendously mismatched red shirt and black tie. He edged closer to the screen, trying to make out where the detail gave it away as fraud but it was faultless.
He checked who had tagged him in it and found it was Max.
Max was usually online even when he wasn’t, so Oscar posted to him, ‘Amazing work.’ He wasn’t sure if there was anything else he wanted to say and he looked at the photo again. It was perfect! He was the right height, had the same skinny, muscular frame, the shoulders even looked the right diameter. Had Max really spent all this time making such an impervious reproduction?
Max enjoyed his computer games and weed too much to be a digital artist. The box finally chatted back as Max replied, ‘It’s real man! You’re DEAD!’ Along with a weblink to a news article from a site called ‘Grimsby Local.’
Drawn to it, Oscar clicked the link and the headline popped up first.
“LOCAL TEEN DEAD AFTER PIER FALL.”
It was a bit of a bubble burst, but he read on and was amazed to find the website page was the source of the photo that looked like him.
“An 18-year old died early this morning after falling off Grimsby Pier.
Police and paramedics responded to the scene at 6:05am after receiving calls from distressed fishermen who had discovered the body floating in the sea. The victim, now identified as 18-year old Sebastian Radbourne (pictured), was brought to land and pronounced dead at the scene, Grimsby Ambulance Service said.
It is thought Mr Radbourne was intoxicated and fell to his death from The Pier, where he is believed to have spent his last night. The Pier is Grimsby’s premiere late-night entertainment complex and made no comment on the circumstances of Mr Radbourne’s death.
Mr Radbourne’s parents are said to be ‘in shock’ and that he was a ‘greatly loved’ child.
It is the third incident of its type in the past 6 months. Locals have already called for the Pier’s closure.”
Oscar skimmed through the article first then read it again slowly. It was too real to be fake and despite an uncanny likeness, Oscar could now see a slight difference in Sebastian’s face to his own. Barely detectable, but when you see yourself in the mirror every day of your life, you would know when the slightest detail had been altered. This was in his eyes; they seemed different somehow. The picture began to take on a haunting quality, as the cheery student in the photo knew nothing about his forthcoming demise.
Oscar leant back and considered what all of this meant. For some reason, he really wanted to know where it had come from. Max had sent him a slew of messages, ‘What do you think?’, ‘Isn’t that weird?’, ‘Oscarrrr!’.
Oscar typed, ‘Where did you find that?’ and luckily didn’t have to wait long for the response, which came back ‘Mum used to live in Grimsby, she goes on the news site every day, saw that + shat herself.’
Oscar immediately did a web search for ‘Sebastian Radbourne’ and quickly found another picture, from his online profile which showed him more recently, with his arms linked around another boy and girl. Annoyingly, the profile was set to private so Oscar couldn’t see most of what was there, but the displayed birthday corroborated with his own; June 6th.
Oscar wasn’t sure what to do first. The late hour didn’t help his processing of the situation. He read the article through for a third time before finally realising that it wasn’t going to serve him with the answers he so desperately craved.
Dennis and Alice had explained his adoption to him when he was ten, then revisited it again when he asked at fourteen. They had been unable to adopt in England and so had travelled to France, where he was already six weeks old by the time they arrived. There was nothing about a twin brother mentioned, but the mother had died giving birth and the father was unknown.
Could this be real? He thought. He wasn’t sure whether to sleep and examine the evidence again when he woke, or whether he’d even be able to sleep in the first place. How was it possible he had a twin brother he’d never even known about? Had he really died before he had the chance to get to know him? It all seemed ludicrous. But he knew he was adopted and that was half the belief that it was at least possible. He felt suddenly enraged at the Radbourne’s. If his own parents were telling the truth, then it seemed the Radbourne’s got there first and opted to only take one of the children up for adoption.
He knew there was an expense involved, but it baffled belief as to why anyone would consciously split up two brothers when their birth mother had already left this mortal coil unwillingly. Ridiculous, he thought angrily.
Then, he started to root through the drawers in his desk. In the interest of full disclosure, his parents had given him his birth certificate at fourteen under the strictest instructions that he look after it.
After being encouraged by his parents to learn French from a young age, he already knew how to interpret the document .The only handwritten addition which had evaded his logic was a circled ‘1/2’ on the document next to his time of birth. He felt sick again as he realised this wasn’t a page number referencing a misplaced second sheet; this was confirmation that he was the first born. And with that, he tore into his en-suite, the inevitable finally coming to pass as he vomited.
Oscar returned to his computer feeling woozy and brittle. He sipped at a glass of water he had fetched for himself, hoping it would repair everything that felt so wrong with him – before realising that he had pretty unrealistic hopes for a drink.
He suddenly wanted to do something and his best chance of that seemed to be talking to the parents of the boy who looked so much like him…the Radbourne’s. He used an online telephone directory to find their home phone number. It wasn’t hard; they were the only Radbourne’s apparently living in the Grimsby area. He had their number – he was pretty sure he did at least – and now there was nothing left to do but wait until morning.
Screw that.
He took out his phone and started jabbing the numbers in, the ‘01472’ area code fuelling his hate. Brighton started with ‘01273’ and Sebastian should have shared that number, not some stupid one way up in the north of the country. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to say to the Radbourne’s but knew it wouldn’t be pleasant. They had separated him from his one chance to know his only brother.
He paused for a moment with the entire number on his phone screen. Did he really want to do this? Yes, he did. He hit call. It started to ring. It was 3:30am. Would they mind? He hoped so. This had strangely become incredibly personal despite the fact that he’d never met them.
“Hello?” A gruff male voice eventually answered, unquestionably disturbed from his slumber.
Oscar lost his train of thought completely and wasn’t sure how best to continue the conversation.
“Mr Radbourne?” He asked meekly, his bravado lost along the way.
“Yes.” The man on the other end said.
It suddenly occurred to Oscar how cruel this was to do to someone who had just lost their child. He couldn’t be angry with the Radbourne’s surely; the anger he felt was coming from never knowing Sebastian and now not having the chance to. Was it a self-fulfilling prophecy? Would he even have ever found out about him were it not for a miniscule article commenting on his death?
“Who’s this?” Mr Radbourne sighed as Oscar still hadn’t said anything of use.
“Oh, no one. Sorry,” He said. He meant his apology for wasting his time but considered how it might serve a dual-interpretation as a feeble attempt at compassion.
“Wait!” The voice of Mr Radbourne said dexterously, more forcefully than his previous remarks. “Who is this?” He asked with far more urgency.
Oscar didn’t know what to say as nervous tears welled behind his eyes, so he didn’t say anything at all. The man’s fragile voice whispered down the line, “Sebastian?”
Oscar remained mute. It must come across as a cruel trick to Mr Radbourne. “Who is this?” He asked again, louder than before. “Speak!” But Oscar hung up.
He looked at his phone sadly. He hadn’t even considered that their voices might sound the same.
Oscar sat still for a few moments wondering just what he had done and what it all meant. Would it be wiser to ignore any more details about the tragedy? He wasn’t sure he could do that now he knew he’d had a brother. Suddenly, his phone started ringing and he quickly muted it. The last thing he needed was his parents complaining or asking for a coherent answer to ‘What’s happening?’ right now. The incoming call was from a 01472 area code. It was the number he had just called, ringing him back. Oscar freaked out slightly and rejected the call. Then his heart skipped a beat again as he realised it was his own voice on the answer phone recording. “Alright, this is Oscar. I’m here if you need me,” Preceded the beep.
His stomach lurched at the overwhelming feeling it would have been better to answer the call and not say anything. He didn’t know whether Mr Radbourne would be freaked out, whether he would leave a message or whether he would try and ring back. Oscar didn’t want to have to speak. He didn’t even want to hear what he had to say. In panic, he slid the back cover off of his phone and took out the battery. They couldn’t get to him now, at least.
Max had gone offline so there could be no respite there. He considered calling him, expecting him to still be awake. But he wouldn’t have anything major to say, probably just passing remarks, like “Wow, deep.”
He didn’t need that right now. His eyes felt heavy and he sipped at the water again. Was it time for bed? It probably was a long time ago. He looked at the black bed in discontent. He couldn’t sleep. There was only one thing he could do. He sprang up, then felt a bit worse for wear for doing so, loudly opened his bedroom door, walked down across the landing and knocked on his parents’ door. He didn’t wait for a response before promptly barging in. They were asleep but tussled quickly in the dark, not used to being disturbed in such a way.
“Oscar?” His mother said while his father grumbled incoherently.
“Hi,” Oscar said, controlling himself from yelling, ‘You must wake up!’
He switched the light on and instantly regretted it when his parents started to groan.
“Oscar!” Dennis croaked.
Oscar silently stood his ground and waited.
Alice reached out to her glasses on the nightstand and reasonably asked, “What is it?”
She sat up and interlocked her fingers across herself. Dennis yawned widely and reluctantly pulled himself up.
Oscar didn’t quite know what to say.
His parents appreciated full disclosure, so he led the only way he could: “So, I have a brother.”
They both asked “What?” in confusion, leaning their bodies closer to him as though expecting to have misheard.
“Well, I had a brother. He’s dead.”
They looked at him unsure if he was joking and he took it that they were as clueless about the discovery as he was. It made him feel better to know they hadn’t been lying to him the whole time. He wished he could say the same for Sebastian’s parents.
“Oscar, are you alright?” Alice asked him, her brow laced with worry as though believing he had lost his mind. Perhaps he had.
“No,” Oscar admitted bluntly.
“What are you on about?” Dennis was failing to understand any of it.
“Come on,” Oscar said and walked back out of their room. It took them a few moments to gather themselves, but eventually he heard them clambering out of bed and following the path to his bedroom.
He sat poised at his desk ready for the intake. Yawning unsteadily they approached him.
“Oscar,” His mother said like he was a nuisance. This was the middle of the night and they both had work in the morning. But this could be one of those emergencies that could take precedent over the regular schedule.
“Look.” He said gesturing at the screen.
“What are we looking at?” His father asked, kneeling down next to his chair. “A picture of you?”
“Dennis,” Alice said tentatively, being the first to spot the awkward truth.
“That’s not you, is it?” Dennis asked and Oscar felt validated that his father, with enough coaxing, could tell him apart from an identical stranger.
“Oh my god,” His mother said in a way he rarely heard her speak, as though something had pierced her tough exterior and finally shocked her. She was reading the Grimsby Today article, gasping and tutting sporadically.
“That’s not right, is it?” His father responded though it was anyone’s guess what he meant and how it could be doubted.
Alice put her hands on Oscar’s shoulders but it was unclear whether it was to comfort him or steady herself.
“What do you think?” He asked. He was effectively seeking validation that he wasn’t delusional and that his parents would somehow innately know how to deal with this inexplicable situation, the way that parents should. But they didn’t know what to say to make it alright, due to the barrage of nonsense happening at the ungodly hour.
It was Dennis who spoke first.
“Are you sure it’s real?” What a shame he said something wholly unhelpful.
Oscar rolled his eyes. “I’m sure! Look.” He snapped impatiently. “Alright, alright!” Dennis said. “Just calm down.” He looked to his wife for support but she was struggling to hold herself together.
“Don’t look at me.” She warned.
It took half an hour for them to compose themselves. Alice reiterated again and again that the adoption service gave no indication that there were two children born of his mother or that one had already been claimed. They shared feelings of compassion for Sebastian’s parents – whether they had acted wrongly or not eighteen years ago, there was no denying that they would now be going through the mill of emotions.
Sebastian admitted to calling Mr Radbourne soon after hearing the news.
“You did what?!” His father shouted. Even his mother didn’t seem supportive of that manoeuvre. “Oscar,” She said while shaking her head, “You have to understand, you can’t just do that. These are real people, somewhere, going through god-knows what.”
“What was I supposed to do?!” Oscar replied, on his feet and seething with anger. “Either they should have adopted both of us or left him – but they shouldn’t have done it this way.”
“Now hang on,” Dennis said. “We don’t know if the adoption service told them there were two of you.”
“We’ll give them a ring and find out.” Alice suggested helpfully and then looked out the window at the changing glow of the sky beyond them. “In the morning.”
“I want to go to the funeral.” Oscar dropped the bombshell. His parents both looked at him shrewdly, speechless for several moments.
“Oscar,” His mother said shaking her head slightly.
“You’re joking.” His father said declaratively, not expecting a reply. He was not so lucky.
“I’m not.” Oscar said.
“Don’t be so stupid!” His father raved.
“Dennis,” Alice said softly. “The neighbours,”
“To hell with the neighbours!” He said angrily.
Oscar couldn’t see what the problem was. The injustice was done; he just wanted to see the end of the person he had shared a womb with for nine or thereabout months.
“Do you realise how that would look? I forbid you to go.” His father spoke so formally because he had never used the words ‘I’, ‘forbid’ and ‘you’ all in the same sentence before in his life. Oscar wasn’t appeased. “What do you mean how it’ll look? Is it not right to go pay my respects to my brother?” That felt strange to say as well, considering the only recent discovery of having one.
“Oscar, I think it would upset a lot of people if you went to this boy’s funeral,” His mother said cautiously, wanting to quieten the loud and aggressive tone of the room.
“How would it?” He said, thinking they meant how it would colour the perceptions about the other parents.
“How do you think it helps grieving friends and family to bury someone they were close to, when there’s someone who looks just like him standing right there, next to the grave?” His mother said plainly and he finally understood it.
“Well, we don’t look completely identical,” He argued, hoping everyone else was privy to the differences carried in their eyes. Dennis snorted at the remark. “Could have fooled me,” He said.
“Near-identical then. But enough to cause some serious distress.” Alice added.
Oscar could see what she was getting at and perhaps in the heat of the moment he was proposing things without properly thinking through the consequences. He wouldn’t like Sebastian to have shown up out of the blue at his funeral. It would have confused people and stolen the moment of his (obviously) very sad and tragic death. The shoe on the other foot made sense – he couldn’t attend the funeral. The bleak prospect made him feel even worse.
“Yeah,” Oscar said sombrely.
“I’m not saying you can’t pay your respects, because obviously you have to do that now you know, but just not when other people are in such a vulnerable place.” His mother added and he nodded through a grimace. The three members of their family stood silently for a moment, Alice’s calming words having a placebo effect on the room.
“Is that alright?” She asked lastly and he nodded.
“Let’s get some sleep and deal with this in the morning,” Dennis suggested and started moving out from the room. “Night, son.” He said disinterestedly and left it at that before adding to his wife, “Alice?”
“Coming,” She said and moved to hug Oscar. “I’m very sorry,” She said and he laughed. It didn’t feel right for sympathy to be coming fast and loose in his direction. “What?” His mother asked and he said glumly, “I didn’t even know him,”
She smiled sadly and said, “I know. But you could have done and that’s what’s so horrible, isn’t it? Wasted potential.”
“I suppose,”
She opted to repeat one of her long-standing mantras: “The world’s a messed-up place.”
Oscar said, “Yeah,” exasperatedly, not knowing how else to take it.
“Night,”
“Night, sweetie.”
She walked out and closed the door behind her. Oscar was suddenly very interested in finding out if Mr Radbourne had got back to him. He returned the battery to the handset and powered it up. After a few tense moments of waiting for the phone to realign with the signal, he jumped as it beeped at him with an answer phone message. Nervously he put the phone back to his ear as it started playing. For the best of the next three minutes, his ear was clamped to the handset like a seashell, though he heard only background static, the echo of a ticking clock and the occasionally overloud exhale of Mr Radbourne. It was sinister that he allowed the answer phone to record up to its time limit before it cut out.
Oscar could only guess that he hadn’t reacted very well to hearing a voice not completely dissimilar to his son’s, identify itself with a different name. Possibly a name he had rejected eighteen year’s earlier at an adoption office in France?
He wasn’t sure what his next move should be. It was now 4am and obviously too late to call back. Unless of course, Mr Radbourne was sitting rigidly in an armchair in a Grimsby living room wondering the exact same thing.
Oscar reluctantly got into bed, felt the uninviting coolness of the sheets and smelt the unpleasant left-over odour of sweat and alcohol. This would never work. He thought. He wouldn’t be able to sleep now; his brain was abuzz and wouldn’t shut itself down. So many questions revolved around his frontal lobe like a carousel gone berserk.
Had Sebastian known he had a brother and if so, why didn’t he try to contact him? How do you get so drunk you fall off a pier and die? They had a pier in Brighton and Oscar had never been tempted to capsize himself. Was he depressed? Had he jumped deliberately? Or was it something more sinister? What if he was pushed?
He had to get to Grimsby and find out for himself; he knew the local news wouldn’t keep reporting on the incident forever, no matter how small the town was.
He turned over trying to ignore the unrelenting stream of questions and was surprised to smell sweet eucalyptus on the adjacent pillow. It was Eva’s alluring aroma and he found it strangely comforting to be around again. He inhaled deeply, wishing she were still there, or that he could transport himself back into the previous evening where none of these things were problems for him.
Where would she be right now? Probably in bed. She worked at a clothes shop and went out quite regularly, but surely she would have informed him if she was going to go out again?
Great, now he was paranoid about her. It helped though, to think of someone else and what they were doing. Blissfully unaware of the horrible truth that had found him.
He suddenly felt betrayed that she wasn’t with him, that she was enjoying her own life in peace and that he was stuck alone, angry and upset dealing with a major revelation and all he had was a depressing empty bed that she had briefly dwelled within.
The smell was sickening him. He reached out for the pillow and angrily threw it at the floor.
The coming days were uncomfortable to say the least. Eva didn’t care. He had called her the next day and asked her to meet him. She couldn’t, so he had opted to explain his grim discovery by phone. She said it was outrageous and that he should speak to his parents about what he wanted to do. That was it. Then she claimed to be busy and asked whether she could call him back. Naturally, he had said yes, only time had passed and she still hadn’t returned the promised call.
Once they got past surprise, Max and Kelly meanwhile didn’t seem to understand what the big deal was. They knew he was adopted and to them, that seemed the pivotal revelation he was going to get in life. They sympathised that it was ‘messed up’ but didn’t think it was worth obsessing about.
“What’s gone is gone,” Kelly had reasoned. “It doesn’t affect your life.” Like there was some mass-production baby factory out there.
Max was slightly more straightforward. “What do you want me to do about it?” He asked.