The Weight of Souls

Dad sighed. “I need another sample. Give me your arm, please.”

“D-Dad.” My eyes flicked sideways. Justin had stepped towards the kitchen as if to give us privacy, but he was watching. “Can we do this later? I’m in the middle of something.”

“I need it now. Are you sick at the moment?”

I showed him my gloved hand.

“That’s… good.” He rolled the syringe between his fingers. “Come on then.” He waved me ahead of him into the study. “Our evening out was good for me, it cleared my head. I think I’m onto something.”

A sigh quivered on my lips as I passed the threshold and took in the mess of equipment on the desk. “You’ve said that before,” I reminded him.

“This time is different, there’s a definite change in your blood when you’re sick.” He frowned. “I’ve booked a session with the electron microscope at Kings, but I can’t get in for a couple of months. I think the change might even be at a mitochondrial level. That’s where your cells make energy. But I can’t see it clearly with this thing.” He gestured angrily at his microscope, the best money could buy outside a real lab.

“Then why do you need more blood?” I huddled over my arm. “Can’t I have a break? I’m sore.”

He turned his frown on me. “You’re right; your arm does need a rest. I’ll take a few mils from your leg. Take off your trousers.”

“Dad!” I looked at the door. Justin was staring into the room.

“Come on, Taylor, we haven’t got all night.”

“I don’t want to do this any more.”

He tapped his fingers on the wheel arch of his chair. “I know this is hard, Taylor, for both of us. But I’m close, I can feel it.”

Looking for something to distract him I thought of The Tale of Oh-Fa that he'd left in the dining room. “Why were you reading Mum’s book?”

Dad followed my gaze towards the door. “Obviously it’s only a story, but there’s a bit in it that’s interesting, perhaps a kernel of truth. Oh-Fa’s granddaughter writes that he drank something after he made the so-called deal. Maybe your ancestor ingested some infected blood when he was in the tomb.”

“Blood?” I frowned.

“If you swallow blood containing a viral vector that carries an oncogene, it can insert itself onto host DNA and disrupt normal genes.” Dad raised his eyebrows. “Whatever you choose to call it – curse or illness – what you have has to be genetic; a dominant gene on the x-chromosome with a marker that kicks in at puberty. If only I could work out how to find that viral vector...” he shook his head. “Well, it’s only a story.”

He pulled the wrapper from a sterile syringe and I stepped backwards.

“Taylor,” he sighed. “Will it help if I overlook the conversation I had with Mr Barnes this morning?”

I pressed my lips together. “I want to keep Mum’s book and see her notes.”

The creases in Dad’s face deepened. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. I put your Mum’s things away because I don’t want your hallucinations being fed with yet more stories.”

“But–”

“I’m not ready to give up on you yet. Let me have this sample and I won’t ask for any more for a while, you can have that break.”

“Fine.” I sighed.

“And you'll go back to school?”

I nodded, then paused with my hand over my belt.

“Taylor, I’m your father, just take them off.”

Justin backed into the hall. When I was sure he couldn’t see me I slid out of my jeans. Dad pointed at a stool and I brushed away a thin layer of dust before I lowered myself onto the seat. Then I looked away as Dad approached with the needle.

I held my breath as the point broke my skin and tried hard not to wince at the insistent tug of blood being taken from the vein.

“All done.” Dad pressed a pad of cotton wool over the needle and pulled it free. An ampoule sat on top of his desk, ruby in the light that shone through it.

I took over the pressure on the pad. “You really think you’re close?”

Dad considered the brimming vial. “If I can duplicate the effect I’ll be nearer to the cure. Now I’ve seen a difference between your blood samples I’m going and try infect a sample of ordinary blood – my blood. If I can do that, then we know it’s an illness and reversible.”

“It isn’t an infection, Dad. If it was you’d have caught it already.”

“Not if it’s passed directly from blood to blood.”

“Like AIDS you mean?” A shudder went through me and I grabbed my jeans from the floor. Quickly I pulled them on, feeling exposed and grubby.

“Taylor.” Dad reached for my ungloved hand and I dodged him.

“I’m tired, I’m going to bed.”

On the landing Justin moved into my peripheral vision. He followed me silently and I closed the door behind him.

“Don’t say anything,” I warned. I hurled myself onto my bed and pressed my face into the pillow until the heat in my cheeks was cooled by the smell of laundered cotton.

17 A weapon in his arsenal

“Your Dad must really love you.”

I rolled over. Justin was standing by my picture board of Mum and staring into her serious eyes.

“What makes you say that?” I growled.

His fingers hovered over Mum’s face. “He’s working so hard to make you better.”

“He’s not trying to make me better,” I snapped. “Well, he is, but that’s not the real point.”

“That’s not what it looked like.” Justin cocked his head at the baby Mum cradled in her arms.

I swallowed. “That’s because you don’t know everything.” I rose and stood next to him, soothed by the image of Mum’s knowing expression.

Justin shrugged. “Tell me.”

“There isn’t that much to tell. Mum died in a car crash.” I looked at her picture, then at Justin.

“I remember it happening.” His face twisted into sympathetic lines and my stomach soured.

“Yeah, well, they’d gone to a party and Dad had drunk a bit much, so Mum was driving. Apparently she suddenly jerked the wheel left, like she swerved to avoid something.”

“A dog?”

“He says there was nothing there.”

Justin was quiet for a moment, then understanding dawned. His eyes widened. “She saw a ghost, and she didn’t realise.”

I nodded. “I’ve thought about it a lot. Maybe it was a kid in pyjamas or something. She’d have had a split second to ask herself: is it a ghost, or has the kid just managed to wander out of her flat and into the road?”

“She had to assume it was a real person.”

“I know. I’d have made the same call.”

“But your Dad…”

“The curse is his enemy. It’s taken Mum and his legs. He’s trying to defeat it. I’m a means to an end, a weapon in his arsenal. As long as I’m around he has a way of getting to it.”

“He’s your Dad, I’m sure there’s more to it than that.”

“Yeah.” My fingers trailed over Mum’s face and I gave my shoulders a shake. “We would have lost her at some point anyway.” My smile was a fragile papier-mache construction. “My family doesn’t have a long life expectancy. As if tracking down killers isn’t dangerous enough, we pretty much always go mad.” I tried to sound matter of fact, but I knew my voice was drum tight. “When I was a baby my grandmother hanged herself. My