KIN

Chapter Two

My marks began to drop at school. I spent much of my time in class explaining the work to him. My mother enrolled us both in an after school Physical Training program. We would get home do our homework, swim some days, other days we would re-enact our favourite cartoon series and ‘battle’ in the pool or on the lawn. We immersed ourselves in a world where we had super powers, could fly and allow our imaginations to run wild. At around four o’clock every day we would watch our Television Programmes, then eat dinner and bath after. Slowly but surely we developed a bond of brotherly love. I shared my parents love with him, and my parents loved him as one of their own. Every weekend he would go home to his parents, but some weekends we were inseparable.

One night at dinner; Mac and cheese with bully beef – The most disgusting meal on our weekly eating roster, my father’s fork slipped out of his hand. We dismissed it as a clumsy accident, yet slowly over time, more ‘clumsy’ accidents happened. We had a few of my parent’s friends over one night and flame grilled our meat over an open fire, making a bond-fire after. My father fell to the ground almost falling in the fire, when he came to; he had no recollection of the event. We went to our doctor the following day, who recommended a neurologist. He told us about a patient that had similar symptoms that was diagnosed with brain cancer.

That evening I lay in bed, Dequan didn’t understand what was happening, neither did I. Once again a shadow fell upon our home, and the lounge door left ajar, reclaimed its place as the entrance to darkness – A hole in our home.

“A cave, I need to go inside” I thought to myself. The cave was dark; its entrance darker than the entrance to our lounge. As scared as I was, I couldn’t resist, something drew me in. I navigated through the darkness, it was cold and wet. The floor felt slimy and I could smell the sweat dripping from my brow. The air inside began to feel thinner as the tunnel began to close in around me. From walking to crawling to sliding on my stomach, I moved closer and closer to the darkness that was inside.

A blue light shone through, not a bright blue, more white with a touch of blue. It reflected off the damp and the slime all around me. Sadness took hold, ahead of me I knew I would find nothing but darkness and despair.

I slid out of the tunnel and stood up inside a hall, stalactites and stalagmites lined the ceiling and floor. Sharp and jagged, the damp on them made them glisten like dark shards of glass. I walked past them and around into the centre of the hall, their sat a figure. A girl who looked the same age as me, perhaps a little younger, sat cross legged on the floor she had black hair, pale, dirty and damp skin, wrapped, in a tattered and torn grey blanket. I wanted to hide but her head turned, our eyes met I was frozen and tried to scream. “Wake up, Wake up!” Dequan shouted as he tried to wake me. I woke from the dream my pyjamas soaked in sweat.

The library in our school had a*****e room atop a mezzanine level where unused items were stored, like the anatomical skeleton model that nobody used in science class anymore. Outfits from past school plays. Cardboard models of buildings, built to scale, by students that were no longer on display, old broken trophies, tambourines and an old xylophone. Younger students were never allowed to go up there, but Dequan and I would always sneak up there and run back down, it was eerie and every student spoke about ghosts that lived up there.

Dequan wanted to go up there during break, but after the dream I couldn’t. The little girl in my dreams’ dark brown eyes looked at me as if she knew me. My thoughts were plagued by that dream, every single day. At night I couldn’t fall asleep, afraid of being drawn into that cave once again. I made sure, every evening, before I went to bed that our lounge door was closed so I would not have to look into the darkness that the reminded me of the cave.

My father drove through to the neurologist alone; my mother was a senior partner at her accounting firm and unfortunately couldn’t go through with him. He was going to stay over at his brother’s house in the city. My mother, Dequan and I lay in one bed that evening waiting for my father to call while we watched movies and ate popcorn. My mother had a beautiful room. A king sized bed, a crisp white feather duvet and crisp white feather cushions. She had a landscape painting above her bed of a field filled with white flowers, a blue sky and grey-blue mountains on the horizon their peaks covered in snow.

She had an en-suit bathroom, with a rounded mirror, lights shining down. A white sink, perched on top of a white bathroom cabinet. She had a bay window over-looking our swimming pool area. Brown wooden, inbuilt cupboards, and a dark-stained rose wood dressing table with a mirror above it. A brown wooden frame around it, her grandmothers old mirror from the farm.

The phone rang and my mother answered immediately. “Hello?” Dequan and I sat up. “Oh no.” Dequan looked at me with a worried look. “Goodnight, I love you.” My mother broke into tears, “What is wrong mommy?” My mother pulled me and Dequan closer. “Daddy has a brain tumour.” “What is brain tumour?” Dequan asked. My mother turned down the Televisions’ volume and began to explain to us what a tumour was. My father was going in for a test to determine whether it was benign or not. The light from the Television flickered as the scenes of the movie we watched changed. Switching from blue to white, orange, red, green and then darkness as the film faded to black in a particular scene. A chill took hold of me, in the darkness I felt the fear that lingered in my subconscious. The little girl was trapped inside my mind.

We slept in my mother’s room that night after fetching our single bed mattresses from our bedroom. I slept directly next to the bed on my mother’s side, Dequan lay next to me. Holding my mother’s hand I fell asleep. I dreamt that my grandmother was riding a motorcycle around our back garden pulling a cart with me inside. She wore a white dress with flower patterns on it. She was barefoot, her bunions seemed particularly prominent. I woke and needed the bathroom; I stood up and used my mother’s toilet. I was relieved that I didn’t have to walk to the toilet at the end of our passage. I lay down and reached for my mother’s hand, before I could grab hold I was dragged underneath the bed, I clawed at my blankets but was pulled into darkness. I lay down and shivered, I felt cold, the floor felt hard and the tips of my fingers hurt.

I looked around me as my eyes adjusted to the light; I saw multiple tunnels around and above me, all of them dark. I stood up; feeling like somebody was watching me. My fingertips hurt and I saw my nails peeled back and my skin raw, blood covering them, injured from clawing at my sheets and the floor. There she was, dragging her body along the floor of one of the tunnels towards me, her face expressionless and her eyes an even darker brown than before. I stood frozen; she crawled out and walked slowly towards me. I wanted to run to one of the tunnels and escape, but which one. One particular tunnel to my right looked bigger than the rest, and running would be better than crawling and so I ran.

The tunnel had multiple tunnels leading into it, a maze that I needed to navigate to escape, dimly lit with the same white-blue light I had seen in the dream before. In the corner of my eye I could see her running after me, she knew these tunnels, she dwelt in this place, and this place was all she knew. Cutting me off at every turn, I changed my direction, running frantically, my heart pounding. I had asthma since I was a child, the burning sensation in my lungs began, I was about to have an asthma attack. I didn’t see it, a hole in the ground; I fell and hit my head. Everything faded to black.

I woke underneath my single bed in my bedroom; the wire looked like a cage with the mattress no longer on it. Did I really go to the bathroom or was that also a part of the dream? My curtains weren’t pulled closed, the street light shone through the trees in our front yard, illuminating my room. I rushed back to my mother’s bed and got in next to her, hiding my head beneath the sheets. The sheets smelt like my father, and I could smell his breath, coffee and cigarettes.

The dream bothered me for weeks, constantly afraid of the dark I would leave my curtains a little open to let the street light shine through into our room. I hadn’t told my mother about my dreams at all. My father received the news that his tumour was benign, which lifted our spirits. The tumour was about the size of a large egg, the pressure in his brain had pushed his right eye about three millimetres out of its socket. He was scheduled for brain surgery two weeks after we received the news that it was not cancerous. My mother had collected every single article she could find about brain tumours, stories of survivors and stories of fatalities, immersed, in her anxiety and fear for her husband. My father however was positive and keen to get the tumour removed as soon as possible.

My marks were dropping; I no longer played as much with Dequan which frustrated him. We had fights more frequently and no longer shared our passions. One night in the bath we began to fight. I was mad that he would play with my toys, I began to detest having to share my family with him, it felt like he didn’t belong and had stolen my place. “You are always mean to me.” “You always irritate me” I snapped back. We began comparing what we had, “You get more food.” “You have nicer toys.” “You have more water in the bath than me!” I laughed, “Because I’m sitting at the plug Dequan, how would the water run out if it wasn’t slightly deeper this side, stupid.” Dequan got out of the bath hair still shampooed, wrapped his towel around his waist and took his pyjamas with him to the bedroom.

I finished bathing and got dressed. By the time I got to the bedroom he had fallen asleep. I was relieved. I detested the idea of him being present. At least being asleep he would be out of my way.