Bournemouth, UK
Remus rolls over in bed, unsettled by the silence in their home. He stumbles to their empty kitchen.
“Mam!” he shouts. No response.
Still unsettled he makes his way to the bathroom. Pees in silence. Brushes his teeth to the sound of water rushing from their squeaky faucet. More confused than ever, he notices an envelope on the kitchen table, under a cassette tape. He warily places the cassette to the side and opens the envelope to find his birth certificate and a small wad of cash. He feels his heart stop for a moment, he dashes to the living room window. Driveway empty.
There’s absolutely nothing stopping him as he crumbles to the ground. A hyperventilating heap of long limbs clutching each other on the damaged hardwood floor. A ringing in his ears persistent. She’s gone.
☾✧
Feeling numb, Remus stands in his mother’s room, listening to the cassette start to play. It takes a moment to start, in this moment Remus looks into his mother’s closet. Half empty, sensible. He snags a brown jacket off a hanger, it was always too big on her. He still smells her woven within the fibers of the canvas. The cassette starts.
“I have a lot to say, things you need to hear. But, please for goodness sake, love, destroy this. We can’t have this lying around with my voice for the police to find-”
He pauses it.
☾✧
Remus now sits at the kitchen table, cassette and envelope across from him. He unpauses it.
“The first incident was just before your fifth birthday, just a wee-”
Remus thinks he’s going to be sick all over the table. He was only four. He rips off the headphones. He’s been a monster since he was four.
He fumbles with the envelope and rips open the birth certificate. Eyes over his info, “Remus John Lupin, Male, Born March 10th 1970, Swansea, Wales.”
His eye flies past his mother’s information.
Lyall Lupin. Stirling, Scotland.
☾✧
Remus speedwalks to the bus service station, rucksack slung on his shoulder. He swings the door open and rushes up to the counter, to a particularly bored looking employee. Pulling out the map on the counter, he points out Stirling on the map.
“Ello, erm see, I need to get about here, what’s the closest I can get by bus?” the words stumble from his mouth.
“Closest our buses can take you is to Glasgow, after that take a local service. You’ll have to transfer a few times.”
“Right, so how much do you reckon that’ll be?” his voice cracks.
“A hundred twenty pounds, one way.”
“How about just to Manchester?”
“Shouldn’t you be in school?”
Remus hates this fucking question, despite his height and scars, adults still see him as what he is, an awkward teenager. Voice still cracking at eighteen and perpetually tripping over his skinny legs.
“You’d think.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means, I’m 18, and old enough to ride the bloody bus without getting questioned.”
The attendant just looks at him for a moment, “ I need ID.”
Remus unfolds his birth certificate, ignoring the wary look from the agent as she inspects, surely noticing that his birthday was only yesterday. She hands it back.
“To Manchester, it’s 60 pounds. You’ll be dropped off at Reading and then catch the bus to London, where you’ll transfer to the bus that’ll take you all the way up to Manchester.”
☾✧
Remus plops into a window seat near the back of the bus, rucksack taking up the seat on his other side. The bus pulls off and it only takes two minutes of listening to someone’s grandmother gossip about her pregnant niece before he slips on his headphones. The cassette player lies in limp finger for a short while before he presses play.
“You still had all of your baby teeth. I was working the graveyard shift and that lovely Marlene from the pastry shop in town was babysitting you. I can’t remember her last name.”
Remus’ throat feels thick.
“I found you two in the bathroom. She was on the floor in a pool of blood. And you sat in the bath awaiting, thankfully the water level was low, you were so small- the water was bright red. For a moment, I thought you died. Until you looked up at me with your big brown eyes. Her face was completely torn apart, starting at her neck. I do reckon she was lowering you into the tub, and you did that little bashful thing you always did when scared, hid your face in her neck. It was clearly too late when she noticed what you were doing. [hiccup] Most of her fingers were half-bitten off. That was when you started coughing, I did everything to dislodge whatever was making you cough. I was, as you can imagine, hysterical, I saw a silver thing fly out of your mouth. I picked it up, it was the jewelry from the tops of her ear, this one always stood out to me. I couldn’t dwell on it, however, my baby almost died, but you were okay. When you saw her as I picked you up, you looked confused… and-and you said her name. She was your favorite babysitter, M-Marlene. [shaky breaths] I dragged her body out, bleached every square of the house, and moved us out. Don’t know what the police deemed it as, Marlene lived alone. After we left Swansea, I never used the last name Lupin again.”
Remus felt his hairs stand on end, hearing his last name. So unfamiliar to him.
“I couldn’t leave you alone anymore, so I had to start working as an at home caretaker for the elderly so I could bring you with me. You were fine, quiet and calm as always for a while, and that made me relax. Pretend Marlene was a one off incident. The next year you started school and I was sure that you wouldn’t do anything there, and I was right, you didn’t. You’ve always been a smart boy.”
The bus stutters to a stop, breaking Remus out of his trance. He stuffs that cassette in his rucksack and walks off the bus. Only then does he realize how late it’d gotten. He had no place to stay for the night until the train to London the next morning. Zipping up his jacket, he leans against the brick wall of the bus station and lights his last cigarette.
