Memoirs of The Brown Recluse: My Tangled Skein cont.

Chapter 2: Prolegomena

Madeline has, against my requests, been reading the notes I’ve prepared for this memoir and suggested that I explain some things about my familial situation so as to better illuminate my feelings at the time of my “secret origin” as well as to explain some of my actions. I am unsurprised by this development as Madeline has ever gone against my requests and has typically turned out to be as correct as she is infuriating. This is almost certainly why I couldn’t stand her when we first met, why I eventually married her, and why she eventually came to fight beside me as the Crimson Widow. Therefore, I will indulge her in this as I indulge her in the gallows humor that makes up her crime fighting nom de guerre.

For me as for all boys, it begins with my father. Michael Matheson, ran away to Canada and lied about his age in order to fight in the Great War at the tender age of sixteen. By all accounts, he was a scrapper, unwilling to leave any fellow soldier behind and risking his life in a daredevil fashion. Undoubtedly, this mixture of superb physicality and complete disregard for personal safety is how he found himself recruited into a burgeoning Royal Canadian Air Force and why he excelled within it. His exploits on the battlefield as well as in the air are legend, and it isn’t the pride of a son that makes me say that; I barely knew the man. Knowing that, I will skip to what, in my opinion, was my father’s most important mission. Lt. Michael Matheson shot down his fifth enemy craft, becoming an official flying ace, at the selfsame moment that he was shot down himself. The mission wherein my father became an ace (the first time) and was shot down also happened to be the first time his path crossed with Rachel Smythe-Pierce of the Royal Archeologist Society. Dr. Smythe-Pierce, a not inconsequential title for a woman to hold at the time, was the foremost authority on aboriginal peoples, their languages, and was the first to be described as a “crypto-occultic anthropologist.” She would also become my mother.

It would be years before I discovered that my parents met on Operation: Black Rock and even then I would only have a codename with no details. It would be even more years than that before I discovered how my parents’ first meeting would set my own life’s trajectory in a manner nearly as profound as being born in the first place. The things they saw together in Africa would forge a bond between them that nothing in this world or the next could break, a bond that would have me as its chief totem. Those selfsame experiences would leave them with a final gift, or curse, to the son they’d barely know. Before I was born, before they were in love, when they were simply two of His Majesty’s best doing for King and Country, the chain of incidents that would result in the Brown Recluse began, half a world away, shrouded in mystery both spectacularly mystic and banally bureaucratic.

But, I get ahead of myself. When I was a boy with a smashed face, they were simply parents I’d never known, strangers as distant to me as the monarch they once served. Mysterious beings that gave me life and then died doing something wildly exciting and intensely secret. The only good thing they had done for me, other than bringing me into the world, perhaps, was to give me guardians who would love and cherish me as my aunt and uncle did when the danger with which they flirted snuffed out their two lives.

When my father ran away, he did so very much against the wishes of his father. My grandfather vocally felt that the Great War was a fight happening a world away and, therefore, had nothing to do with America or her native sons. While Uncle Dan never agreed with my grandfather’s views entirely (apparently my grandfather continued to decry America’s involvement even when it became official), Dan did feel that his primary duty was, had to be, to his family. While my grandfather never forgave my father, Dan understood his brother’s priorities instantly even if he could never agree with them. When my father returned home with his learned, English wife, he returned to his own parents’ graves but the welcoming arms of his brother and sister-in-law, April.

Dan and April lived quite modestly in Queens in the home they inherited from my grandfather when he passed away. They had been living there for some years, Dan working at various jobs to augment a household income otherwise made entirely of my grandfather’s pension, and April working as a live in caretaker for the ailing old man. It was the outright ownership of the house that kept Dan and April, and, later, April and myself, from ever quite hitting the same economic lows that the rest of the nation faced, especially under the Great Depression. My aunt and uncle were decent, honest, hardworking people who always spent a great deal of time keeping their heads above water financially but who never had to worry about being thrown out in the street. My grandfather’s legacy to them was more of a blessing than the old man could ever have known, and my aunt and uncle practically venerated him as a saint for it. This is perpetuated in my own feelings on the old man, despite the fact that I never knew him.

When my parents were abroad, which was quite often, I stayed in the care of my aunt and uncle. Once, when I was around three years old, my parents departed the country with their typical unclear aims and hazy ideas of when they would return. This in itself was not unusual, it was something they had been doing for years before I came along and it seems that a young son never slowed down the globetrotting. Also as usual, Dan and April received regular correspondence from them, always arriving like clockwork but with deliberately unclear descriptions of where they were or what they were up to. Then, after several months of this, no letter appeared. Another month passed and another letter failed to materialize. Dan and April began to fear the worst. A lack of correspondence continued for some time, my aunt and uncle’s only clue that something was wrong. Time continued to pass and their worry constantly grew until reality forced them to give up hope entire. After the requisite, legal amount of time passed, they had my parents declared legally dead. My mother was wealthy in England, but one of many siblings and her family had never entirely approved of her marriage with a common Colonial so very little of the family fortune was likely to come to me without her direct intervention. No, they made this move chiefly to clear the way for them to adopt me officially and become my legal guardians.

I have only the vaguest memories of my parents and, at this point in my life, I fear that many of what memories I do have are built more on details delivered to me from others more so than my own recollections. However, I never lacked for affection, even without them, because my aunt and uncle doted upon me. They loved me as though I was their own and were always a true mother and father to me. Later in my life, I discovered that, unbeknownst to either my aunt or uncle when they were wed, a nearly fatal brush with childhood illnesses left my aunt barren. By the time I came into their lives, they had discovered this fact and had often, quietly and privately, lamented their own lack of a family. This is primarily why they were so pleased to care for me when my parents were off doing whatever it was they were doing. It is likely that, even if my parents had survived, Dan and April would still have been my main source of parental guidance and love. My parent’s apparent demise simply allowed the arrangement to become official.

It is possible I sound bitter or angry with my parents, but that has rarely been the case and certainly isn’t at this late stage in my life. I never knew them, but I believe their actions during the first years of my life, as well as everything I have discovered about them myself, bear out the fact that I was a surprise to them and not entirely a welcome one. Out of respect for my deceased parents, my aunt and uncle insisted on my referring to them as such and they did their best to make me believe, in admittedly obscure terms, how much my parents loved me before their disappearance. It may be cynical, but I suspect this is because my Uncle Dan believed quite the opposite and bore a certain amount of guilt over the ill feelings this engendered for the brother he otherwise loved unconditionally. Perhaps I should share that love and guilt for a father I never knew, but my honest belief is that I found myself in a much more loving and nurturing environment and with people for whom I answered every prayer. Admittedly, this turn of events was somewhat macabre in its origin, but I firmly believe that everyone involved, including my parents and myself, received exactly what they desired from the arrangement. Or, at least, we had for the first fifteen years of my life, until I murdered my Uncle Dan and ruined my Aunt’s life forever.

Not Dead Yet

This is just a quick update to let any faithful followers know that neither I nor this blog have died. This has just happened to be a couple weeks that have been devoted to my upcoming Legend of the Five Rings roleplaying game campaign and editing Hell Bent for Leather, my first novel. It hasn't left much time for writing that can be posted here. Two or three updates next week GUARANTEED!