Page 74 of Razors & Ruin

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair.

37

Sweeney

The boy is no boy at all. Johanna stares at me from beneath her mop of flaxen hair, her eyes wild like her mother’s.

“You murdered my parents,” she says. “Didn’t you? Papa said you would come for us. Why aren’t you dead?”

“I don’t know,” I reply. “Ishouldbe. God knows I deserve it.”

“And what of it now, my son?” Sommers asks, wrapping a protective arm around Johanna as she starts to sob. “You can take much more than a pound of flesh if you choose, but to what end?”

It’s a pertinent question.

I came here to uncover the brutal truth about my child’s fate and, therefore, my own. It’s fair to say I fulfilled that goal, but not in the manner I expected.

I thought I would be met with a sordid tale of a young life stolen, a child debased by corrupt, aberrant men who hid behind a carefully woven tapestry of wealth and entitlement.

The world has always been this way; there are no heroes, only opportunists, in it for themselves.

But this priest and his mission make no sense to a mind like mine. I can’t wrap my head around someone who chooses sacrifice without demanding his own prize.

“How could you live this way?” I ask Sommers. “Was there no other way but to fight it from the inside?”

“Better men than me tried to take them on.”

The old man shakes his head sadly. “The bishop himself would not hear of it, and those who tried to convince him met with grief. I expect you will not be surprised when I tell you the bishop was one of the first clients to benefit from Wetherby and Beadle Higgins’ nasty little cottage industry.”

I watch Johanna cry, but I feel detached from her emotions, numb to her pain. I should feelsomething—anger, perhaps? Sadness?

But there’s nothing. Just emptiness.

Nellie was right; Johannawasdead. Dead tome, that sweet mirage that sustained me through years of toil and solitude.

Veronica, too, was nothing more than another vessel for my deluded psychosis. The woman I claimed to love but never gave a scrap of my true self.

How could I? Veronica was a fragile, fleeting dream of another life. I see that now. She wanted me to hold and shelter her but never accepted the monster beneath the surface.

Not like Nellie. She gave her body and soul to me, every sinew, artery, tendon, and heartbeat.

Her last breath, even, although I returned it to her. How perilously close I came to undoing the only thing in my wretched life that was real.

“I ask again, Mr. Brook.”

The priest watches my face closely. “What will you do with the truth? Nothing impedes you; I am an old, sick man with no strength and precious few resources.

You could kill me and Johanna too, and in time, with nurturing, your deluded memories may cloud your mind and give you solace once more. But remember, God’s judgment comes to all.”

There it is—the priest’s veiled reminder. He knows exactly who I am, what I’ve done, and what I’m capable of. But he also knows I’m lost, more so than I’ve ever been.

“Go away.” Johanna’s voice is a choked whisper, but there’s more than terror in her eyes. I see something more profound—a glimpse of betrayal. “You’re a bad man, a demon. Don’t hurt my Papa. Let us go.”

Her words hang in the air, trembling between us, and I see it. The flicker of questions she’ll never ask aloud.

Who was I to her mother? What could I have been toher?

But instead, all she can see now is the monster, and that’s fair enough; there’s nothing elsetosee.

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