If he couldn’t, did that mean that even though his eyes were open, it was only the darkness he saw? Only the darkness he felt? Only the emptiness he lived in.
And that’s where my mind would end up. Every time I thought about my beautiful baby boy. To the emptiness of forever. The one, the only consolation I ever had was his heartbeat. In that emptiness, in that despair that always overwhelmed me, I always had the hope of his heartbeat.
His cot is empty now. Cold. But that isn’t what has changed. Something is different about the room from last night, from every night I remember. What is it?
How I remember, with such vivid clarity, is to take my mind back to the moment, to find a chink in the memory and to start opening it up, an iota at a time. So last night, the mobile was turning. I had my fingers through the fourth bar in the cot, gently clasping Jacob’s cold sheet. My other hand was circling a half empty bottle of vodka. The mobile was turning and the shadows were dancing. Bouncing off the glow of the nightlight, flickering from the ambient light coming in through the slightly open blinds, angled in such a way as to make the shadows dance in the chaos of the elements.
They aren’t doing that tonight. It is just the steady mechanical turning of the shadows.
I stand up quickly and shuffle over to the window. The blinds have been moved. They have been angled downwards. I didn’t move them. How have they moved? Why have they moved?
I bend down and look out of the blinds, up along the angle of their decline. Dusk is settling in as I scan the tops of trees visible through the slits, my eyes coming to rest on one particular tree, with the dark, hollow holes of glassless windows staring back at me.
Jacob’s tree house. It might sound strange that I had built a tree house for him. After all, he couldn’t really climb and play like other boys. But we spent quite a bit of time up there, with me pointing him in a direction and explaining what it was he could see. More therapy for me I think, to at least cushion the reality of the sparseness of his life with some normality.
Now who the hell has been using that as a vantage point to look into Jacob’s bedroom? More to the point, how did they get into the house to do it, and why?
I stare into the darkened windows for a moment, waiting to see if there is any movement, if anyone is still there, watching. All is still. I turn from the window and walk eagerly across the room and straight over the landing into my studio, grabbing a remote control from the pile of pictures of the other me, my doppelganger, I had been poring over earlier.
I had stuck a couple on the case wall, next to the blurred image of the Limousine driver who had taken Rebecca and Michael to Featherstone Hall on the night he died. The Limousine Driver who looked like me. Next to those was a photograph of Rob Adams and two post-it notes, one with the words ‘Unknown Caller’, one with the name ‘Dr Ben Hanlon’. The only thing that makes any logical sense in the uncertainty of this case is that the other me, my double, my doppelganger was the same person as all of the other personalities.
Which means, if he was, then he knew Jess intimately. Which means that the two of them could have been colluding for years to setup the events which happened at Featherstone Hall.
Why? I don’t have even a crumb of an idea.
How? Even less of an inkling.
I know she was with me all evening the night Michael died. That is fact. That is indisputable. That is what is driving me mad. That’s why I had gone to lie in Jacob’s room, to distract my mind, to think of something else, to think of my beautiful baby boy. That’s when I noticed something had changed. Now who the hell moved the blind?
Well, I should be able to find out exactly who has been in Jacob’s room. It’s the one place inside the house
And that’s where my mind would end up. Every time I thought about my beautiful baby boy. To the emptiness of forever. The one, the only consolation I ever had was his heartbeat. In that emptiness, in that despair that always overwhelmed me, I always had the hope of his heartbeat.
His cot is empty now. Cold. But that isn’t what has changed. Something is different about the room from last night, from every night I remember. What is it?
How I remember, with such vivid clarity, is to take my mind back to the moment, to find a chink in the memory and to start opening it up, an iota at a time. So last night, the mobile was turning. I had my fingers through the fourth bar in the cot, gently clasping Jacob’s cold sheet. My other hand was circling a half empty bottle of vodka. The mobile was turning and the shadows were dancing. Bouncing off the glow of the nightlight, flickering from the ambient light coming in through the slightly open blinds, angled in such a way as to make the shadows dance in the chaos of the elements.
They aren’t doing that tonight. It is just the steady mechanical turning of the shadows.
I stand up quickly and shuffle over to the window. The blinds have been moved. They have been angled downwards. I didn’t move them. How have they moved? Why have they moved?
I bend down and look out of the blinds, up along the angle of their decline. Dusk is settling in as I scan the tops of trees visible through the slits, my eyes coming to rest on one particular tree, with the dark, hollow holes of glassless windows staring back at me.
Jacob’s tree house. It might sound strange that I had built a tree house for him. After all, he couldn’t really climb and play like other boys. But we spent quite a bit of time up there, with me pointing him in a direction and explaining what it was he could see. More therapy for me I think, to at least cushion the reality of the sparseness of his life with some normality.
Now who the hell has been using that as a vantage point to look into Jacob’s bedroom? More to the point, how did they get into the house to do it, and why?
I stare into the darkened windows for a moment, waiting to see if there is any movement, if anyone is still there, watching. All is still. I turn from the window and walk eagerly across the room and straight over the landing into my studio, grabbing a remote control from the pile of pictures of the other me, my doppelganger, I had been poring over earlier.
I had stuck a couple on the case wall, next to the blurred image of the Limousine driver who had taken Rebecca and Michael to Featherstone Hall on the night he died. The Limousine Driver who looked like me. Next to those was a photograph of Rob Adams and two post-it notes, one with the words ‘Unknown Caller’, one with the name ‘Dr Ben Hanlon’. The only thing that makes any logical sense in the uncertainty of this case is that the other me, my double, my doppelganger was the same person as all of the other personalities.
Which means, if he was, then he knew Jess intimately. Which means that the two of them could have been colluding for years to setup the events which happened at Featherstone Hall.
Why? I don’t have even a crumb of an idea.
How? Even less of an inkling.
I know she was with me all evening the night Michael died. That is fact. That is indisputable. That is what is driving me mad. That’s why I had gone to lie in Jacob’s room, to distract my mind, to think of something else, to think of my beautiful baby boy. That’s when I noticed something had changed. Now who the hell moved the blind?
Well, I should be able to find out exactly who has been in Jacob’s room. It’s the one place inside the house
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