Matthew Blackthorn

Matthew was twenty-three—a tall, slender young man with an attractive yet naturally sorrowful face, curly ash-blond hair, and blue eyes. Matthew Blackthorn was a mix of genes—part stranger, part Blackthorn bloodline. At twenty-three, he looked like a living portrait from the Romantic era: curls tumbling over his forehead, glacier-colored eyes, and that elusive sadness that made women glance back at him. But behind that facade, there seemed to be a ticking clock. He rarely blinked, and his smile appeared half a second too late, as if his body were mimicking emotions from a manual. Locals whispered that he wandered the beach at night, collecting bird feathers and sharp stones, and that he had a room in the hotel basement where the walls were covered in scribbles.

They called him "the quiet ghost of the Big Wave." Guests—rare as sunny days in Cornwall—noted how noiselessly he moved, appearing suddenly behind them to straighten a tablecloth or ask, "Are you cold?" His voice, monotone as if recorded on tape, made them shiver. When Lillian mentioned his father, Matthew’s fingers clenched into fists, but his face remained smooth as a mask.

But in truth, all the rumors about Matthew were false. He collected smooth stones worn down by time and tides, colorful seashells, and interesting bird feathers, placing them in a box at the reception desk—free souvenirs for the hotel’s guests. The children adored it.

"He’s a sweet boy," said Mrs. Crowley, the baker. "Yesterday, he brought me a blackberry pie... I love them. How did he know unless he remembered such a small thing about me? He has a kind heart." "He offered to carry my bags to the car," recalled a tourist, "then asked if I often went out of town. His eyes... like you could fall into them, but he seemed genuinely concerned. Said people needed more time in nature—good for the health."

What was real—his quiet modesty or the paranoia of those unsettled by his unnaturalness? People still weren’t sure. On the hallway mirror, someone had scratched "PSYCHO"—maybe a guest’s joke, maybe a confession. The only real oddity was Matthew’s hatred of rain. When droplets drummed on the roof, he locked himself in his room and played old records, drowning out the sound.

Matthew lived with his mother, Lillian, at the hotel in Cornwall, near Looe. The Big Wave Hotel—a two-story in a style of 19th-century cottage—once belonged to Matthew’s grandfather (his mother’s father), Gary Blackthorn, who built the place on a lonely cliff by the sea for his dear wife and their furure and lived like a recluse. At first, guests loved the place, but then locals called it "a lovely spot, if not for the mad old man haunting it after his wife’s death."

The truth was, after the death of his wife, Fiona, Gary lost his mind and became dangerous. He beat his daughter—Matthew’s mother, Lillian—and little Matthew himself badly right until his death. His madness smelled of sea salt and rum. After Fiona’s death—a woman of enchanted beauty that was venom and whose words were manipulative blades—he bricked up the windows in her old bedroom and locked the door. Locals claimed he shouted her name into storms and once threw all her photos into the sea—except one, which he kept in a locket, scratching at the glass as if trying to reach her face. His cruelty toward his daughter and grandson was methodical: he believed he was "fixing their blood," tainted, in his mind, by Fiona’s escape into death. Gary died when Matthew was four—falling off a cliff—but the hotel still carried the scent of his tobacco when the north wind blew.

Matthew was born at the Big Wave to a guest who’d had a brief affair with his mother. The man left when his vacation ended, and Miss Blackthorn stayed behind, pregnant.

Matthew’s mother—Lillian Blackthorn. Her name, like an echo of Victorian elegance, clashed with her hollow gaze and perpetually pressed lips. After the father of her child left, she remained at the Big Wave not out of love for the place, but out of fear—of judgment, of her father, and later, of her own reflection as a broken, unhappy woman. Lillian wore pastel dresses, always impeccably ironed, as if mending the holes in her soul with neat stitches. She spoke softly, almost in a whisper, and her smile resembled a grimace—too sad, too forced. At night, guests heard her scrubbing floors in empty rooms, muttering under her breath.

A slender, stooped woman with long, pale hair that seemed perpetually windswept, even indoors, Lillian was. Her dark eyes—deep and shadowed, like water under old ice—rarely met anyone’s gaze for long. She moved through the hotel like a ghost in her own home, shoulders hunched as if bracing against a weight only she could feel. Her hands, delicate but always slightly tense, fluttered over tabletops and doorframes, adjusting things that didn’t need adjusting.

The kind of woman who might’ve been called still beautiful. In her fourthies, her loveliness was the brittle sort—the kind that made people speak softer around her, out of courtesy.

Lillian was protective of her son, a proud mother. Their codependency was silent and warm — a true love bloomed in the stones and rocks and cliffs.

Matthew was devoted to her mother with everything he was. He saw her broken, saw her sorrowful, saw her silent and lost. One day he hoped to see her smile, a real one. And he would do everything for her. Matthew was a silent protector, a guardian, and everything for her.

Yet to guests and locals, Lillian seemed more pleasant—a still-young, weary woman they did their best to support. She was beautiful, like really beautiful, and locals still remembered her as a mischievous little girl who, despite all odds, was truly happy with the sea, the cottage, the fields and herself.