The Curse: Chapter 1

It’s a snowy, cold day in mid-April when the body of a young man is pulled from the Monongahela River (the Mon, to the locals) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The lead detective on the case, John Paul Gilmore, watches with a horrible sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. He prays that the boy isn’t the seventeen-year-old Euwenn they’ve been trying to find for three days now, missing after never returning home from school at the Roseheart School -- one of those schools that pretends to be religious but is in reality teaching young magic users how to control their gifts.

Gilmore hates this case. He wants it over, wants Euwenn found, wants him safe at home with his family, not cold, dead, waterlogged, snared on a fallen tree in the water. He hates all cases having to do with boys gone missing, because he always thinks of his eldest son -- his red haired, blue eyed, precocious and magical son. He always rushes home after these cases, wraps his arms around his boy, and thanks the gods that his boy is safe.

But he can’t do that today. And as he gets a good look at the body that the workers have gently laid out on the shore, he realizes that he will never hold his son in his arms again.

Lying dead on the shore is his son, Euwenn Allen Gilmore.

*********

Telling his family that they’ve found Euwenn is the hardest thing that John has ever done. He’s made these house calls before, of course. It’s standard as a homicide detective in Pittsburgh, knocking on doors and delivering the worst news possible to families who have been praying for the best. But walking into his own home, smelling the pie that his wife baked -- she stress bakes -- and knowing that it’s Euwenn’s favorite … it nearly breaks him.

Tara, his second oldest, and toddler Ryan are in the family room, kept home from school as their family tries to cope with the terror that has seized them since Euwenn never came home from school three days ago. Gilmore tells Maeve first, finds her in the kitchen with the pie she baked. He pulls her close and whispers in her ear he’s gone.

Bless her, she stays strong for them all. She doesn’t scream, barely even cries right then. She just turns in his arms and clutches him close to her. She’s small against his broad frame, so fragile, and yet he clings to her as his only source of stability while the winds of grief whirl in his soul.

Eight-year old Tara wails when they tell her that her favorite brother isn’t coming home. She’s inconsolable. Four year old Ryan begins to cry as well, more from fright at his sister’s tears than any actual understanding of what has happened. It breaks John’s heart to know that Ryan -- who adores his older brother now -- will have little to no memory of Euwenn in a few years. He knows the little boy will cry for his brother in the next few weeks -- Euwenn has always been his favorite next to Maeve. Euwenn always had a sixth sense for what his younger siblings needed, he understood them in ways that even Maeve, with her slight magical inclination, could never achieve.

Late that night, once the little ones are in bed, John holds Maeve as she finally falls apart. They stand together in Euwenn’s room, covered in crystals, plants, and his decorations for Ostara. His art is on the walls -- paintings, stained glass, drawings -- his story manuscripts piled next to his computer, and the various stim toys he’d collected scattered about. The room feels alive -- almost as if it were waiting for Euwenn to walk right back in and pick up where he left off.

“What are we to do now?” Maeve murmurs into John’s chest.

“Live in his memory,” John whispers back. He glances around the room with tear-blurred eyes. “We don’t let Tara and Ryan forget him.” He swallows. “Send Tara to Roseheart when she’s ready.” He takes a deep breath. “Try and keep Ryan out of trouble. We … we can do this, my love. We have to be strong for them.”

Maeve nods, he can feel her against his shirt. She inhales as if to say something, but only a soft whimper comes out.

John holds her as they both grieve the loss of their first born, their eldest, their sunshine, Euwenn.

 

********

Outside, standing in the pouring rain, is a young man -- pale with freckles, redheaded, with wide, terrified ice-blue eyes. He’s the spitting image of the young man who will be laid to rest in two day’s time. He watches as his father and mother mourn him, watches as his little sister cries herself to sleep in her mother’s arms an hour later, and watches as the lights slowly die in a house he used to call his.
Euwenn Allen Gilmore is not dead.

But he can never return home to the people who loved him.