Chapter Nine

The shaking increased ten-fold. Jamie was sure the whole street was shaking. Jade smirked crookedly, evilly, before her eyes rolled into the back of her head.

The whole street exploded, and Jamie was rocketed out of the memory.

When Jamie had regained his bearings enough to reopen his eyes, it was to a well-furnished, but old-fashioned living room, the kind he saw on school trips to stately homes. There was a family sat around a fire on brocade settees, dressed in clothes he knew to be Victorian.

“1860,” Jade announced, and he jumped – he had not noticed her presence. “The Smiths. He,” she gestured to the father, who was reading a book with a small, nightdress-clad girl balanced on his knee, “is Thomas Smith. Second cousin to my father. They moved here four years after our deaths.” She scowled. “They stole my house, Jamie. Just barged in and started rearranging things, moving things after I’d spent four years making the place to my liking.”

“So you got rid of them…” Jamie said slowly, the newspaper article making more sense. As did, when he thought about, his feelings when he’d read the article, those flashes of a memory that was not his own.

(This is my domain I’ve always been here always been here always been here)

“Yes,” Jade hissed, looking almost proud of herself. “It was easy. I started small; you know, flickering candles, chairs on ceilings, the odd flying book. Then I started giving the children nightmares.” She grinned horribly at him. “I’m good at nightmares.” Then she frowned again. “They were scared… terrified…but still, they wouldn’t leave.”

“What did you do?” Jamie whispered, almost afraid to ask. He wished he hadn’t when that hideous smile made a comeback. Jade glided over to the son, sitting with his mother, and her incorporeal hand stroked over his head.

“I just told them the truth,” she said. “About here.”

Jamie remembered.

(You’ll die here everybody dies here you’ll leave or you’ll die here or you’ll die here die here)

“Did they?” he asked quietly. “Did they leave?”

“1861,” she replied, and this time there was a definite note of pride. “They were never the same.”

She regarded the family almost fondly; like one would look at a friend you had when you were very young.

And then the scene vanished, to be replaced by a dark brown limbo, as soft and warm as the inside of closed eyelids. Jade was standing a few feet away from him, her back turned, as she gazed, seemingly transfixed, out into the dusky abyss.

“I did try to help,” she murmured, almost to herself. Jamie moved closer, hesitantly, afraid of calling attention to his presence and pulling her out of the trance.

“At first,” she continued, “I called them my catalysts. Which is stupid now, because that’s not the right word. But it’s what I thought it meant, so it stuck. You were really more like anchors.”

Her whole body seemed to sigh at this.

“I did try to help,” she repeated, turning to look at him. There was something almost earnest in her expression, as though she was desperate for him to understand – just for a moment, and then it was gone again, and she turned away.

“Who did you try to help, Jade?” Jamie asked softly, hoping not to break the spell.

“Children…” Her voice was toneless, barely a whisper, yet strangely harmonious. “Children like me.”

Jamie sucked in a breath.

“I was their patron saint. I helped kids who suffered. But…”

There was a silence that Jamie dared not break; he held his breath in anticipation of the next words.

“But…I became…calm, I think. Peaceful. I liked helping them. It made me…forget. And then…one day…”

Another full body sigh that seemed to originate from the surroundings themselves, and pass over Jamie like a breeze.

“I realised I was…fading. Passing over, whatever it’s called. Moving on. But…I wanted to stay, and help. So…I found a child…one I couldn’t save. He was…his mother was poisoning him, you know. Arsenic. Nowadays, they’d say she was ill…what’s it called…Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy. Back then, she was called evil, and they hanged her when her boy died. But I digress. The point was her son. I couldn’t save him. I knew I couldn’t, there was too much of the poison in his system, he would only last a couple of months at best. So I visited him one night…and I anchored myself to him. Because he was still attached to this world, and therefore, so was I, through him. Like a kite and its string.”

She snorted humourlessly at that.

“And…I cut his hand, made a scar. And I made it so if he ever thought of telling anyone, it would hurt, and he wouldn’t.”

She turned to him again, and her eyes were wild once more.

“You never tell, you know? You mustn’t ever tell what they do to you. It’ll only get you more hurt. You know that too, don’t you, Jamie?”

Jamie nodded, and the madness seemed to be placated for the time being. Jade turned her back on him again; it seemed she could talk better when she wasn’t actually looking at him.

“And that worked, for a time,” she said slowly. “But then the boy died, and I needed to find someone else. So I found another child that was already so hurt, I couldn’t help, a child destined to die at the hands of their abusers, and anchored myself again. And then when that one died, I found another, and another, and another. And I kept on helping the ones I could save, and when I couldn’t, I’d avenge them. I’d make sure those who’d hurt them, suffered as the child did. And so it went on.

“And then I thought…there are people who I know are going to become abusers. So why am I waiting for a child to get hurt before I do anything? Why don’t I stop them now? A…what’s it called? Pre-emptive, that’s it. A pre-emptive strike.”

There was a moment of silence, where all that could be heard was Jamie’s heavy breathing, and a soft hum that Jade was making in the back of her throat.

“And I’d hurt those who hurt children, and I’d hurt those who had the capacity to hurt children, and I think…in the end I got so caught up with making sure they paid for it, that I forgot to actually help the children. I got lost. I forgot what was fair.”

Jamie watched her carefully, and what he saw disturbed him. He saw a girl who died too young to know how to deal with it. He saw a girl who had gotten vengeance and justice so confused, she couldn’t tell them apart anymore.

Most of all, he saw a girl who had suffered.

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“The problem,” Jade suddenly began again, some time later, “with using children I knew were unsaveable, was that they died quickly. I’d get a few months out of them at best, and then I’d have to move on to another one. So I…I started using children that maybe I could have saved. Ones that would last longer. But…I think…I think I create bad feelings in their tormentors…I make them more violent. And those children die too, after a couple of years. So eventually…” She took a deep breath; her shoulders hunched, and she looked more vulnerable than he had ever seen her. “Eventually, I started using children who should never have needed me at all. Children who, if I hadn’t come, would have had fine lives, would have been loved and cherished. Children like you, Jamie.”

There was a horrible pause as this sunk into Jamie. No, he would think later on, ‘sunk in’ didn’t do the feeling justice. ‘Sunk in’ suggested that it happened gently, slowly, but really it crashed down on him like a ten-foot wave. He actually staggered backwards under the weight of the realisation.

He could have been loved.

And Jade tilted her head upwards, and closed her eyes, and began to sing that lullaby that always soothed his nightmares. Her nightmares.

“All you that in the condemned hole do lie,

Prepare you for tomorrow you shall die;

Watch all and pray: the hour is drawing near

That you before the Almighty must appear;

Examine well yourselves in time repent,

That you may not to eternal flames be sent.

And when St Sepulchre’s Bell in the morning tolls

The Lord above have mercy on your soul.”

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A/N: Hello? Readers? Are you out there? *hides head in shame* It’s been what, six months? Seven? You’d probably all thought I’d died. The good news is, I haven’t abandoned Bloodstained. The bad news is, I doubt I’ve got any readers left.

A few things about this chapter – 1) It’s almost definitely the penultimate chapter, not including the epilogue. 2) I have no idea how long arsenic takes to kill someone, nor how much a person can take before they are doomed. 3) The lullaby Jade sings I found on the internet. If I remember correctly it’s what the guy who turned out the torches at night in the Tower of London used to sing, before the prisoners were sent off to be executed the next morning. It seemed to fit Jade and the story quite well. I was never sure if the actual words were going to be included, but this was always what I imagined Jade’s lullaby to be. 4) This chapter was a bitch to write, and I’m still not happy with it. I may come back and rewrite it at some point. Not now. 5) And this is important – Once I’ve finished this story does anyone want me to post Jade’s timeline? Just so you can know what happened when, because I appreciate that the explanation Jade gives is a little disjointed – it had to be to fit the character.

Now, dear readers, please review, although I do not deserve it. Because, you know, I knew a girl once, and she didn’t review, and she got eaten by a bear! You don’t want to get eaten, do you?