He had just turned fifteen when the Bagleys one day upped and left their London house without telling anyone where they were going. They loaded a bunch of suitcases with their clothes and personal belongings into a carriage and rode off while he was still “at work”. When Drake returned, he found Bessie cussing and talking to herself, while the whole house looked like it had just been robbed.
‘What happened?’ he asked her.
‘They left us. They left us,’ Bessie kept repeating as if she couldn’t believe it.
‘What do you mean they left us? Where did they go?’
‘I don’t know, do I?’ she yelled at him, though clearly he wasn’t the object of her anger. ‘They sent me down to the market bright and early for groceries, and when I came back they were gone.’
Drake had never seen her like that, so angry and out of control. The vain on her big black forehead was throbbing as if it was about to burst. Her arms kept waving around as if controlled by an invisible puppeteer and she could not stay put for more than a second. It broke his heart and at the same time scared him a little. She’d always been calm and collected with him, cunning and calculated, yes, but never like this. She had a downright murderous look in her eyes that made him feel like he did not know her at all.
But then again, he did not blame her. He was feeling rather furious himself. He’d worked so hard for as long as he could remember to make them the money that would buy them their bloody dream house, always believing that when the time came they would all move in and start a new life. But now, it appeared his own parents had used him and then left him behind.
‘Are you sure they’re actually gone and are not just visiting someone?’
‘Oh, don’t be daft. Look around you, everything of worth is gone, along with all their belongings. They’ve gone and so is all my money; all my savings of twenty years. Everything I’ve worked so hard for, washing and cleaning and scrubbing and looking after you…, it’s all gone. They stole it. I got nothing left.’
Drake felt really bad for her just then. He collected her into his young arms and tried to console her as best he could. He was barely an inch taller than her and it felt weird that he was the one to comfort her now, when usually it was she who played that role with him. But Bessie would not be comforted. She pushed away from him and kept cussing and swearing, moving around the house and kicking stuff.
‘Bessie,’ Drake called after her. ‘Maybe they haven’t left us. Maybe they will be back to take us. After all, I’m their only son; papa would not leave me behind.’
Bessie snorted.
‘Ah, poor little Drake. You know nothing, do you?’ There was a sarcastic tone to her voice that he did not like. Bessie continued, now looking at him straight in the eye, her stare sharp as a butcher’s knife. ‘They have no son. That bitch is as barren as a brick, and with good reason too. There’s not a maternal bone in her body, not one. Why do you think she kept me around; so that I could look after you. God knows she couldn’t.’
Drake felt his blood pumping faster now and his face grew red hot. He didn’t understand.
‘What are you saying?’ he yelled at her, without even meaning to. ‘What are you saying?’
‘You’re not their child,’ she yelled back at him, anger still getting the best of her. ‘You’re stolen, just like everything else in their miserable lives. They snatched you out of the womb of your dying mother, and just left her there to be eaten by rats. They took you and raised you so they could pretend to be a normal family while you stole for them. And now that they got what they wanted, they got no more use for you or for me.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ Drake yelled even louder, anger now raising up a storm inside of him.
‘I was there,’ Bessie would not back down, her voice thunderous. ‘I was there; I carried you away myself.’
She suddenly stopped there. They both fell into silence for a heartbeat.
Drake's head was buzzing. They say change takes time and comes slowly, but they’re wrong. Change happens in a split second, bringing your entire world upside down so that you find yourself unable to simply stand, let alone put one foot in front of the other and brave through it. In one cruel moment that was exactly what happened to Drake; everything he had believed until that day had been nothing but a lie. He finally understood why Mrs. Bagley was always cold and distant with him; she had never loved him, for he had never been hers. She was never his mother, and Mr. Bagley was never his father. They had used him all this time and finally left him behind to fend for himself and his Bessie.
Bessie.
She was the only real family he’d ever had, the only one who had ever loved him. At least she was still with him; he wasn’t alone. So what that they’d left? They were better off; he could still provide enough for the both of them. He would work twice as hard as he had and make even more money than before. It would be just Bessie and him; they didn’t need the Bagleys.
‘Bessie,’ he called, in his voice a touch of sorrow and his eyes glistening with tears of sadness. ‘Don’t worry, please; I will make enough money for the both of us; we don’t need them. We still have the house and each other.’
‘We have nothing,’ replied Bessie, fire still raging inside her. ‘The house was in their name and I’m sure they’ve sold it already. Pretty soon someone will come and we will be kicked out on the street.’
‘We will make due,’ Drake kept trying to calm her down, though this new knife managed to dig a little deeper inside his own chest. ‘At least we have each other.’
And just like that Bessie started laughing hysterically. Confused, Drake actually started to worry that maybe she was losing her mind.
‘Bessie, you’re scaring me.’
Bessie ignored him, her laughter ringing ever louder in his ears. Drake grabbed her by her shoulders and shook her lightly.
‘Bessie, please stop this.’
The old woman whose face he saw every night as he went to bed and greeted him every morning as he woke up suddenly appeared lifeless. Her dead eyes now pierced through his like fiery darts.
‘This is all your fault. I would have left this shithole a long time ago if it wasn’t for you. It’s all your fault that I am broke and homeless all over again.’
‘I will make it up to you, Bessie, I promise,’ he pleaded with her, still holding her. ‘I will make sure you have everything, you’ll see.’
She looked at him for a moment, during which he hoped life would return to her eyes again, but it didn’t. She then opened her mouth and spoke three stabbing words.
‘I hate you.’
Something hurt even more deep inside his chest; the same kind of pain he had experienced only moments ago when he’d found out about his “parents”, but now magnified.
‘You don’t mean that,’ he muttered, his throat aching bad.
‘I hate you,’ Bessie repeated louder. ‘All the years I spent raising you, running after you, telling you stories every night; they’re years you stole from my own children. And for what? For nothing. I hate you,’ she screamed at him.
‘Stop saying that, please,’ Drake begged, his eyes now swimming in unrestrained tears. But Bessie refused to stop.
‘I hate you. I hate you. I hate you…’
‘Stop it. Stop it. Stop it,’ Drake kept screaming, while his hands tightened around her soft neck and began to squeeze hard. Bessie’s eyes finally lit up with a strange light and her lips formed a wicked smile. Her now feeble voice kept repeating the same words over and over again, even as life was being choked out of her.
Drake was taken over by such a terrifying and uncontrollable anger that he could not see what he was doing. First his parents had abandoned him, leaving him behind with nothing to live on. Then he’d found out that they had not been his parents at all and that all he’d known had been nothing but a lie. And as if that wasn’t enough, the only person he actually cared for and who he thought had loved him, kept screaming at him that she hated him. He needed her to stop, but sh
e wouldn’t, so he kept squeezing and squeezing until she finally did. When that happened, she grew heavy in his hands and fell down on the floor, eyes bulging out of their sockets.
Relieved that there was silence once again, Drake looked down at her. His gaze stuck on the soulless corpse and did not leave it. For one fleeting moment he felt something snap inside his chest, something that felt important, and he winced as if from physical pain. But then it was gone like it had never happened, leaving behind an empty feeling.
He stood like that for what must have been hours, not really understanding what had just transpired, what he’d just done. The only thing he felt was relief; relief that the screaming had stopped, that the Bagleys were gone, that he no longer had to worry about pleasing his father or getting the attention of his mother, that he finally had a reason to leave this world and this life behind. He never belonged here; his dreamworld was where he wanted to be.
As the evening came and the dark covered the streets of the city, Drake finally took his eyes off the now cold corpse lying at his feet, and slowly turned towards the door. With nothing but the spoils of the day on him and his new independence, he walked out of the lifeless house where he was raised, never intending to return again.
Chapter 5
A Turn for the Worse