Music had been playing. In the background of Alec’s thoughts there had been strings and possibly piano, comforting in their distance like the ebb and flow of an unseen ocean. Now there was only the cadent tick of the clock and the crackling of hot logs on the fire, its light shivering across the rug as far the armchair’s back legs. He reached for his brandy, deliberated for a moment, and then withdrew his fingers back to their locked position. Alec hadn’t been listening to the music. But the realisation of its absence further accentuated his sense of loneliness. During these fugitive and altogether futile moments he would often reflect upon his parents and the fraction of a life they had given him.
Alec had no children. In light of his life’s experience the man viewed having a family as an act of cruelty. It was no better than adopting a dog only to throw it into a cage. He had never broached the topic with his parents when they had been alive. But he would often ponder how exactly they had deemed it admissible to have a child. What selfish lies had been shared between them? Was it love or simplicity that sealed his fate? They knew of the horror that he stood to inherit, of the curse that was not his doing but his to suffer all the same. Cruelty was too tame a word.
His mother was the first to go. She thought that she could live with it but the restrictions became too much. Alec remembered only her silence and short temper, and the way she used to stare down at him like a metal ball chained to her freedom. The woman’s anger eventually turned to distrust. She came to doubt if any of it was necessary. Her death was proof enough for Alec. He still recalled her screams with crystal clarity, and the turmoil of that night when they were cut short.
His father persevered for some years after, but he was never the same man. The memories he clung to – of a love and companionship never to be repeated – turned cancerous, blighting whatever happiness his life might have held thereafter. He taught Alec how to survive – inspiring in him the fear that was essential – and saw to it that his son was financially self-reliant in the event of his death. That had been the man’s ultimate plan all along: to die, but by his own doing. A rare feat for any Sparling. He drank too much. He ate too little. Eventually, he became reckless and as a result his plan never came to fruition. He didn’t scream like Alec’s mother had done. He went quietly and without complaint, as might a drunk who had lingered after hours by the bar, all too aware that he had outstayed his welcome.
Mr French and Ms Coogan had been carefully chosen from a long list. Alec predicted that their financial circumstances would ink their contracts without great debate. Neither of them had any children. And they each possessed the essential skills that he had been searching for. On paper they were the perfect candidates.
His only regret in his handling of this project was that he hadn’t organised it sooner in the year. Other matters had demanded his attention, as choppy waters call the captain to the quarterdeck until he sails again through the calm. This storm had, unfortunately, lasted late into the summer. Alec emerged from it unscathed. But the long evenings had been squandered. Daylight truly was more valuable than gold, and one of the few luxuries that Alec’s commanding wealth could not buy.
The October days were too short. With any luck, Mr French had the know-how to organise his interviews before nightfall. Otherwise, it would all have been for nothing. The man’s master’s thesis had certainly shown some promise, and judging by his focus during Alec’s presentation, he also shared a keen eye for cartography. Nevertheless, it bothered Alec like a loose marble rolling between his thoughts.
Alec was only a boy of seven years the first time he saw him. It wasn’t an act of disobedience, nor was it truly his parents’ fault. At that age and having demonstrated the care that would come to define his life, they assumed that he was safe to be left alone. But he was still a child and still susceptible to childish curiosity. It took something as simple as a noise he didn’t recognise to draw his eyes outside, into the night, where he saw him standing at the edge of their estate. Strike one, and he hadn’t even hit puberty. Panels were added to the windows shortly after, becoming a staple of Alec’s life from that point onward.
The second mishap occurred fifteen years later. His father was still alive. Alec had to visit the university for the sake of sitting an examination. It was scheduled to finish later than the hour he would have liked to be home, but there was no evading the issue. The university had already been accommodating enough, and Alec was confident that he would be safely indoors before dark. Of course, the car’s unprecedented breakdown could never have been foreseen.
His home was isolated as per his father’s design, and Alec ran for miles, racing against the sun. When he climbed the front steps and fell against the door, there was still time. But a mountain of sand had slipped through the hourglass. He had made it, though only barely. He hammered down the knocker until its iron almost split. No response came from within. All windows had already been sealed with their wooden defences, denying any points of entry. Alec’s father was in the study, passed out drunk, leaving his son outside in the night for the first time in his life. Strike two, and Alec hadn’t seen the darkness since.
He slouched back in his chair and cast a disappointed eye over his lot in life – the room that had, since birth, been his prison. It was a solemn place. A sepulchre of unwanted memories. Every year it felt a little smaller as though its four walls were constantly shifting inward ever so slightly. Given the lifetime that Alec had spent there, it was a wonder he hadn’t been crushed alive already. Where had the years gone? His hands were those of an old man; veins and grey-skinned bone. He had never known love or meaningful friendship. The world’s offering was denied to him. If it was pity he deserved, then there was no one to give it to him.
He knew that his father would never have approved of what he had done. But then, every Sparling eventually cracked in some way or other. Addiction, depression, even madness; they were as common to his blood as the curse that sired them. For Alec, it was his obsession with escaping his fate, to do what his father had deemed impossible. So many had been sacrificed by his own self-concern and cowardice. And still it remained, as contagious as the day it was first spoken.
It never changed. Not since it had been created. It didn’t age. It didn’t die.
‘Bedtime,’ Alec said as he raised himself to his feet, quitting those thoughts, flinching slightly from that rusty feeling in his lower back. He walked over to the fireplace and shifted its iron guard in place. His shadow came to stand in the cage now strewn across the floor. There was still a spit of brandy in the glass beside his armchair. Memories of his father tainted even that simple pleasure. The grandfather clock read half past ten. Its eleven chimes would be loud and long, and he would rather not be around to hear them.
The repairmen had come that afternoon to service the faulty shutter in the master bedroom. Although they had other appointments to attend that day, the persuasive power of Alec’s pocket convinced them to inspect every security feature on the premises. They spoke to him as though he were odd or eccentric, sharing jokes at his expense. Their camaraderie wasn’t something that Alec could relate to, and the laughter between them seemed far too forthcoming to be genuine, he thought. Perhaps falsities were simply the social norm.
This was the only occasion that Alec could recall Lara donning a frown. Such were her reasons for doing so that it left him feeling quite flattered. She had obviously overheard the mechanics deriding her employer. Far from subtlety were these men born. They were the crass, mouth-breathing sort and the Italian blood must have simmered in her veins at the impertinence of it all.
Lara had subsequently checked each room by Alec’s request. She was the only person he enjoyed any regular contact with. He trusted her above all others because there were no others. Not that Lara was any the wiser, but upon Alec’s death she stood to inherit a handsome sum. A posthumous gesture of his appreciation as he could never truly find the right words to say in life.
The hallway was lined with lamplight. A dark green runner covered its length, leaving only the narrowest strip of mahogany on either side. There were no windows, paintings, or other ornamentation. Its only function – for Alec at least – was to access the stairs. These Lara swept each day and polished occasionally.
Upstairs, doors stretched down to the far wall; rooms that Alec had no use for. These included the bedroom once belonging to his parents, and his old nursery, windowless but well ventilated. His mother’s perfume still haunted the air where her dressing table – like all furniture – had been concealed for decades under white sheets. Its smell didn’t trigger any fond, nostalgic reminiscence. Instead, it caused Alec to pity his youthful past self, with all those idle years laid out before him, not quite understanding back then how or why his life was different.
His steps carried him quietly to his bedroom. Big houses never felt empty. They stored too many memories. He would often pause and listen, and hope – more than fancy – that he wasn’t alone. And then he would enter, closing the door quietly behind him.
Alec’s room was always well lit. Lamps occupied its four corners and his bedside cabinet. The fear instilled in him throughout his formative years had embedded in his psyche a terrible indisposition to the dark. The curtains had, as expected, been drawn. Behind them the shutters had automatically locked in place. Lara had left a glass of water by his bed and a single tablet to aid his sleeping. His pyjamas were neatly folded atop his pillow. It was always the same.
One more mistake – one more sighting – and his miserable, lonely life was done for. Would that really be such a terrible thing? Nobody would miss him. Not even Lara, his only friend, though he doubted that she saw him as such.
Alec sank his head into the pillow and lay, staring at the ceiling. The pills had helped for a while. But sleep had grown more and more elusive, his body more tolerant to the drug’s effect. His nights were plagued by the same thoughts – the same image. He knew that behind the shutter he stood with his face inches from the glass, smiling, and waiting for strike three.