Free Brooding City: Brooding City Series Book 1 by Tom Shutt Page A

venturing to the Tower, playing with Ellie in the garden, and picking fruit with his mother in summers past. They were more than just a part of his father—they were now a part of him. And there was so much to go through.
    He left his mother and returned to his room. The infernal book from his summer reading list was still open to the first page, which was as far as he had managed to concentrate with the pain in his head. The painkillers would need more time to take effect, so he went to move it away. As he lifted it from the bed, however, a sudden realization came over him. He had not even passed the first page, but he already knew what was going to happen in this chapter. And the second, and third, and so on, all the way to the end of the book. It was a fuzzy memory, but it was there. He flipped to the last page of the book and read it, just to be sure.
    He had read this book before.
    But it was impossible. The price tag was still on the back cover; they had bought the books on his and Ellie’s summer reading lists at the beginning of summer, but this was the first time it had been opened. The crisp paper still crinkled as the spine flexed in his grip, and Jeremy understood where he had read it before.
    It was his father’s memory.
    Somehow, more than just that first flash of memory had made the trip into his head. As he thought about it, concentrating, the pain in his head increased tenfold. And he remembered so much more.
    None of them were his memories, but they belonged to him all the same. Places he had never visited, people he had never met, all flashed through his mind. A rush came over him.
    He flipped open a notebook and took a pen in his left hand. He was a righty, but his father was left-handed. He wrote out his signature— Nathaniel Scott —on the page. It was an exact copy, except for when he thought about it a little too consciously and marred the double-T at the end of ‘Scott’.
    He looked down at the book again. The Picture of Dorian Gray —it had been years since he had read it. He opened it to the first page and read, “The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.” The words greeted him like old friends—the passage was made familiar again. He looked around at the changed room in which he found himself.
    The cheap linoleum was cold beneath his feet. A foldout table was propped against one wall, with three low stools sitting around it. He held a worn book in his hands, a secondhand copy with a sticker on the back indicating the library’s ownership of it.
    The room was small and dank. Mildew crept out from beneath the peeling wallpaper. He studiously ignored the shouting and sounds of crashing glass from the apartment next door. Beyond the mildew was the smell of something else, like warm beer left in the sun for too long. It was late, and he read by the light of the streetlamp filtering in through the dirty window. He didn’t know where his father was, but that was a good thing; better elsewhere than here. His brother was gone, too, which bothered him somewhat more.
    “Derrick?” he asked. Empty silence answered him.
    He got up and walked into the only other room in the cramped apartment. A queen-sized mattress and a bunk-bed dominated the room, and what little space remained was taken up by a dresser that held clothes for the three of them. The room was dark, and his eyes hadn’t adjusted yet.
    “Rick?” he called again, but his words were swallowed in the black.
    It wasn’t altogether surprising; Rick often strayed from home, especially when he knew their father wouldn’t find out. He was a wanderer by nature. But it always made it worse for the few times he was missing when their father stumbled home.
    Somebody was calling out a name now, but it wasn’t his. The neighbors were still