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Sweeney

T he boy is no boy at all. Johanna stares at me from beneath her mop of flaxen hair, her eyes wild like her mother’s.

“You murdered my parents,” she says. “Didn’t you? Papa said you would come for us. Why aren’t you dead?”

“I don’t know,” I reply. “I should be. God knows I deserve it.”

“And what of it now, my son?” Sommers asks, wrapping a protective arm around Johanna as she starts to sob. “You can take much more than a pound of flesh if you choose, but to what end?”

It’s a pertinent question.

I came here to uncover the brutal truth about my child’s fate and, therefore, my own. It’s fair to say I fulfilled that goal, but not in the manner I expected.

I thought I would be met with a sordid tale of a young life stolen, a child debased by corrupt, aberrant men who hid behind a carefully woven tapestry of wealth and entitlement.

The world has always been this way; there are no heroes, only opportunists, in it for themselves.

But this priest and his mission make no sense to a mind like mine. I can’t wrap my head around someone who chooses sacrifice without demanding his own prize.

“How could you live this way?” I ask Sommers. “Was there no other way but to fight it from the inside?”

“Better men than me tried to take them on.”

The old man shakes his head sadly. “The bishop himself would not hear of it, and those who tried to convince him met with grief. I expect you will not be surprised when I tell you the bishop was one of the first clients to benefit from Wetherby and Beadle Higgins’ nasty little cottage industry.”

I watch Johanna cry, but I feel detached from her emotions, numb to her pain. I should feel something —anger, perhaps? Sadness?

But there’s nothing. Just emptiness.

Nellie was right; Johanna was dead. Dead to me , that sweet mirage that sustained me through years of toil and solitude.

Veronica, too, was nothing more than another vessel for my deluded psychosis. The woman I claimed to love but never gave a scrap of my true self.

How could I? Veronica was a fragile, fleeting dream of another life. I see that now. She wanted me to hold and shelter her but never accepted the monster beneath the surface.

Not like Nellie. She gave her body and soul to me, every sinew, artery, tendon, and heartbeat.

Her last breath, even, although I returned it to her. How perilously close I came to undoing the only thing in my wretched life that was real.

“I ask again, Mr. Brook.”

The priest watches my face closely. “What will you do with the truth? Nothing impedes you; I am an old, sick man with no strength and precious few resources.

You could kill me and Johanna too, and in time, with nurturing, your deluded memories may cloud your mind and give you solace once more. But remember, God’s judgment comes to all.”

There it is—the priest’s veiled reminder. He knows exactly who I am, what I’ve done, and what I’m capable of. But he also knows I’m lost, more so than I’ve ever been.

“Go away.” Johanna’s voice is a choked whisper, but there’s more than terror in her eyes. I see something more profound—a glimpse of betrayal. “You’re a bad man, a demon. Don’t hurt my Papa. Let us go.”

Her words hang in the air, trembling between us, and I see it. The flicker of questions she’ll never ask aloud.

Who was I to her mother? What could I have been to her ?

But instead, all she can see now is the monster, and that’s fair enough; there’s nothing else to see.

I sit back in my chair and regard the scene, aware of a fundamental shift within me. It should feel worse than death but hits like a good whiskey.

God fucking damn.

Johanna represented goodness and purity, yet I believed she came from me. That dissonance, that disquieting contradiction, drove my vengeful ire all along.

I had to find out what happened to my child because I could not tolerate the existence of hope. In her dwelled the potential I never believed I had, the possibility that my darkness was a choice.

If my daughter was dead or living a cursed life, it would have been confirmation that my blood had damned her. Had I discovered her alive and safe, I would have been tormented by the mockery of fate.

Either way, I had to know because her innocence was part of me .

I begin to laugh, and Sommers recoils, his face twisted with concern.

“My son,” he says. “I know you are in pain.”

“Pain?” I cry. “Don’t you see? Johanna was never mine, and neither was Veronica. I had no salvation to lose, no love to cling to. It never belonged to me in the first place!”

I rise to my feet. “Pain? No fucking fear , my friend! It’s clarity, and it feels fantastic.”

Never did I speak truer words. I can be who I am, full-throated and unsurpassed, the bastard king of death and fucking and whatever else I conceive to unleash.

No more false hope . No more delusions of redemption. I am finally free to be all I can be.

Nellie will be thrilled .

“Thank you, Sommers,” I say. “Do me a favor and curse my name as I leave. It’d really give a little extra something to this moment.”

“I will not,” he says, rocking Johanna gently. “I will pray for your soul. Will you let us go?”

He’s braver than I gave him credit for. There’s no tremor in his voice, no begging or pleading. Just certainty, a steadfast belief that prayer and forgiveness still mean something.

What a joke.

“Yes, if you swear to go far away and never return. I can do without anyone sniffing around my end of town looking for Currer Brook, and I’ve done enough harm here already.”

“As you say. We were leaving anyway.”

Johanna lifts her head, and our eyes meet. Veronica’s cornflower blue eyes.

“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry,” I tell her. “No matter what this man tells you, do not forgive me. A little hatred is good; it reminds you you’re alive.”

Johanna says nothing, and I don’t look back as I leave. I hear the priest murmuring behind me, trying to soothe her sobs.

Everything is now in its proper place except me .

I have no business here anymore; my territory is in Fleet Street, and my true solace awaits me there, locked away, her throat blooming with bruises.

Outside, the rain is torrential. I tilt my head and open my mouth, letting it fill, and I gargle before spitting skyward.

Take that, God, right in your fucking all-seeing eye.

I laugh as the downpour soaks my clothes, shaking the rain from my hair and letting the storm wash away the remnants of the old lies I clung to.

Nellie is waiting. She’s always been waiting.

Finally, for the first time, I am free.

And I’m going home.