Page 131 of Drift

Drift stopped, trying to distance from the anger. “Sweat stung the air: Farland’s, and something—” He wrinkled his nose. “Something I didn’t understand, not fully that night. And Grace? She was naked, half in, half out the covers, as if he’d just lazily tossed them back on her after he got out of the bed. That same sweat touched her, like moonlight touching ice, and it offered the same disjointed coldness that Farland’s sweat had, only hers was like a frozen pond with steam rising off it before the heat cracked it and broke it apart. And Grace… even if she didn’t know it, she was close to breaking. I just didn’t understand in what way.” He twisted the phone in his hand. “I was eight years old, her the big sister who put most things right in my world with a cuddle, and I was used to getting in bed with her and holding on. But it felt wrong then. So I didn’t. I sat by her until sleep settled in, how it started to twist her body beneath the covers as she fought something off. I told her we’d run. I didn’t care where, just that we’d run far, fast, and bloody wide in the morning.”

Martin frowned. “Only she didn’t, did she?”

“No,” Drift said quietly. “She didn’t run. Not until a few weeks later, when she’d mouldedhometo fit her needs.”

Martin eased forward in his chair. “Strange word choice: moulded. How?”

Drift looked away. “Pips,” he muttered. “Apples or pears for parents, we all grow in shit.” He snorted. “But it’s always the ones who stay in the shit despite knowing the stench is rotten that kill me.” He shook it off and looked at Martin. “But it’s the ones who stay in the sickness and twist it into their own kindof sickness that scare the fucking shit out of me more. That… they’re a rare damn breed.”

“Oh….” Martin cocked a brow. “When she followed you two weeks later… that was the first time you saw black in anyone’s eyes.”

Drift frowned. “Yeah,” he said eventually. “Something had… snapped. But I think it started the night I said we’d run.” He fought down sickness in his throat. “In the kitchen next morning….” He shook his head. “Grace, she sat on Farland’s lap, arms wrapped around his neck almost like he’d never touched her. I…” He frowned. “Looking my way, she whispered something in his ear, and blackness… like fucking oil in water swamped her eyes. Even Farland… the look in his startled as he looked sideways at her, possibly more from what Grace had whispered because he looked like he’d just been given the key to hell’s gate….”

Drift fell quiet and let his look fall to Neffi. “Farland got up and called Crank in. The mutt was mine, always there as much as Grace at the end of the school day, but so damn cranky if you went near him when he was hungry. Hence the name Cranky.” His smile lasted only a second. “Crank came in, and Farland grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, then broke it.”

A long slow exhale of breath came from Martin. “Psychopathy emergence,” he said quietly. “Most start with killing animals. But, oh… Grace?” He leaned forward a little. “She showed potential fast lane manipulation, and top-tier with pinpointing a weak, sick mind to do it for her at the young age of ten.”

Drift carried on stroking through Neffi’s fur. “It didn’t really hit home who was doing what back then. But with another tug at Farland’s sleeve off Grace, he took the thick collar chain fromaround Crank’s neck, and he didn’t stop chain-whipping me until I passed out.”

Martin stilled for a moment, then tapped a finger at the table, and it helped Drift in some small way, almost like the steady heartbeat of a clock that didn’t break pace no matter the fire burning down the home.

“The picture of you in the backyard with Crank…. The one that was circulated after you did manage to run,” Martin said to him. “Did Grace whisper in Farland’s ear then too? It was handed over not to get you to come home, but to warn you to keep running?”

Drift didn’t let his look fall off Martin. “Yeah. But it took far too long for me to figure that out. How it was her warning to stay away until she was done there. Her part of the double tap.” He shook his head a little. “Always… it’s all about the control with Ava. And she was young, so bloody young but learning back then. And she… she wanted Farland house-trained properly, an alibi for all the bad in life that would come her way, where she could go back and be Grace, be seen to go to school, have friends, a home, go on to university, with an option to learn remotely because she took care of her ‘parents’.” He fought down anger. “She goes back home, even now. And Farland, he loves her bastardness. But him and his wife, they took the place of Crank, all chained and let out only long enough to… play.”

Martin tilted his head. “Her part of the double tap you said…” he said quietly. “What was yours? What did you do?”

Drift frowned, then wiped at his mouth. “I couldn’t run, not for a while, days, maybe a week.” He tensed his jaw. “After Farland chain-whipped me, I caught an infection from some of the cuts, and I lost track of time. But Ava… she’d be there in bed with me, that same soft offer of a cuddle….” He looked down athis hands, then rubbed them into his jeans. “And…. just for those moments she was there, she… she made it so didn’t hurt in a whole different way….”

Martin didn’t utter a fucking word, not one, and Drift was so damn glad because too many details were lost to the dirt and fever in his own head.

“That last night.” Drift glanced around the kitchen, how pristine-clean the units were, not a speck of dirt anywhere. “She lay naked next to me, and Farland, he—” Drift cleared his throat. “Farland sat on a chair close by, half hidden in the darkness. Then this whisper came off Grace in my ear. Of being family, of being a part of it, of sharing the love… with everyone….” He shifted awkwardly in his seat, in part needing out through the door, yet stuck in the mud, never able to run free. So what was the point of running now?

“Testing manipulation of her environment,” said Martin. “She wanted to control when he touched, how he touched… you.”

In the cinema suite, Jan couldn’t find any words. He couldn’t process what he’d just heard West say. “Drift,” he stumbled. “What… what the hell happened…? What did he do?”

West stayed quiet, and Jan got a bad feeling… a really, really bad feeling.

“Farland, he wasn’t into… boys,” said Drift quietly. “I knew that, she knew it. But she wanted that final break in him.” He shivered. “For all the fever, I went so cold, but he seemed to give in so damn easily. But Ava… she was there on the bed with us. She used his own sickness against him to—”

“Make your hurt stop too, if only for a while, hm?” It came so softly off Martin. “Purely because she was there for you as well and you needed to hide from the hurt just a little longer.”

Drift stilled for a moment then nodded, just the once this time. “All I knew was that Ava’s touch was so damn kinder compared to a chain-whipping.” He frowned, so badly. “And part of me wanted it not to hurt with Ava, to hold on to her again and… and find a different way of not hurting, of not feeling like I’d lost everything I’d known. And that… touching her… it was so fucking wrong. I knew it back then. I damn well know it now.”

“She’s not your sister,” Martin said flatly. “Legal paperwork is just that: paperwork. And she’d schooled you to want her. Ava as well when it came to Farland, but she turned the tables on both of you. Only where Ava’s psychopathy was triggered long before her and Farland touched you…?” He turned his ear to listen. “You did what to Farland? How did the headaches start?”

Drift couldn’t really remember. “I got so mad when he tried to join in and touch both of us. Then… nothing,” he said flatly. “I stumbled away from the bed, stars dancing in my vision froma headache that seemed to bleed in my skull, and the sweat on my body, on hers… Farland’s… Next thing I remember, the nightlight was broken, and Farland had a chunk of skin missing from his scalp… blood running like thick black ink down his face. And Ava… at first Ava sat on the bed, looking so damn scared, then this smile… her smile was so fucking…dark.”

Drift focused stroking on Neffi. “I threw up, maybe at the loose flap of skin on Farland’s scalp, all the trouble I was in for doing it… for touching Grace, at how Grace felt good yet… so dirty on my skin all at the same time. So I ran. And yeah, it was to find safety away from numbers, from people. From Grace because I learned the lesson: how she wouldn’t ever run untilshewas finished with Farland.”

Quiet came from Martin, then— “And Grace… she followed you eventually. She saw you push away violently from Farland’s sickness, but not hers, and she came after you.”

Neffi’s head shifted on his thigh, and Drift stroked distractedly at the back of her ear. “Yeah, she followed.” He fell quiet for a moment. “Y’know, the streets offer this whole new displacement and dirt, but it felt… clean out there.” He smiled thinly down at Neffi. “I’d had time to grab this football onesie from downstairs, trainers, a coat, but no socks, so for those first few nights, I must have stuck out like a bare arse in a paedophiles’ playpen.” He looked at Martin. “Grant gave me such a sodding clip up the ear for it when I wondered out of Bristol town centre and found the cave he was staying in. I don’t even know how I survived those first few weeks on my own. But I took nothing for granted after that, not even the food Grant offered when he found me. I wouldn’t go near him without him backing off, and it took me a while to see just how much like Crank I’d become, never really taking an offer of a meal withoutwanting to hurt someone for it. But that was okay, you know?” He snorted a small smile. “Grant came with that same… warning growl my way if I got too close. But it was like he mimicked more than marked his no-go territory. He taught me it was okay to stay safe in my corner and to keep boundaries no matter who growled back, and Grant… he was the fucking scariest out there for a long time.”

He gave a really rough sigh. “But Grant… like Jackson, he was all for looking after the kids. And he followed the breadcrumbs over why I’d ran to the streets. But he only had guesses, assumptions, and my name: Jude Farland. So he went back to Farlands’ one night.”

“He went back for Grace.”

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