by R. A. Casey
“The child was ours,” Moira says. “Andy here may be hell-bent on revenge for different reasons. But that child was never yours. It was always Elana’s.”
“Your—your son raped me. Raped a teenage girl.”
“He did what the dear Lord above asked of him.”
I open my mouth to respond, but I can barely speak through the anger, through the frustration. “I… I… You’re insane. You’re actually insane.”
“No,” Andy says, stepping in. “You’re the one who is insane. And you’re going to face up to what you did. To everything you did.”
I hear those words, and it isn’t a road I want to go down.
It’s a road I want to run away from.
Far, far away from.
“You’re going to look me in the eyes, right this second, and you’re going to tell me what happened to Charlie.”
“No.”
A slap, right across the face.
Moira tuts. “Andy, dear.”
But Andy isn’t listening, and Moira’s protestations are half-hearted at best. “You’re going to tell me how it happened. Exactly how it happened. Right now.”
I look up at them both, and as desperate as I know I sound, as pathetic as I know I sound, I shake my head. “No.”
Andy swings another punch against my face.
I am dizzy. Disoriented. In pain.
But I wonder if maybe that’s the better way.
If perhaps that’s the easier way.
“The truth, Sarah. The truth about Charlie. Now.”
I look up into his eyes, and as much as I want to run from it, as much as I want to turn away from the locked door I’ve kept unopened inside my mind for so, so long, I can only stare at its contents.
“Confess,” he says. “Now. To me. And to yourself.”
I shake my head and try to run and hide and disappear.
But the door is open.
The lock is on the floor.
“No. Please, no. Please, please, no…”
But it’s already too late.
Because I am in the maize fields.
I am running.
And my baby is screaming in my arms.
I know now that I cannot hide anymore.
I cannot hide from what I did.
To Charlie.
To my son.
Chapter Fifty-Five
I am running through the maize fields with my son in my arms.
It’s hot. Blisteringly hot. I am sweating. I can barely breathe. The sun hides behind the clouds, and everything just feels so humid.
I am covered in blood.
My sister’s blood.
I look down at my son. His face is all scrunched up, like always, as he screams in my arms. And I need him to be quiet. I need him to stop crying. Because if he doesn’t stop crying, the Family is going to find me. They’re going to find me after they find Elana and they’re going to see I’m covered in blood and they’re going to know.
I need to get away.
I need to get to Gregg.
And I need to leave this life behind me.
I run through the tall maize fields near the Family home. I’ve run this way so many times in the past already. So much so that I know it like the back of my hand. I know it better than anyone. The maize is so tall, and it never gets cut. Only trimmed. Abandoned.
I know all the places to go.
All the places to hide.
But right now, I feel lost.
I run. I keep running for what feels like forever, but what I know is nowhere near as long. I know my life is going to change from this day on. For good. I’ve dreamed of living a life with Gregg for a while now. I’m sixteen. I’m old enough to start making my own choices.
Maybe this is the kick I need.
And maybe Gregg and I can start our own lives. A life away from this. From all of it.
I hear my son screaming in my arms.
I look down at my baby, and as much as I love him, instinctively, I wonder.
I wonder if maybe he’s better off without me.
Because how can I care for him?
How can I provide for him?
I barely even know how to live in the real world outside the confines of the Family.
How am I going to look after a baby?
Raise a child?
And if anything happens with Gregg and me… I’ll be all on my own.
I look over my shoulder. I swear I can hear footsteps. I swear I can hear the maize rustling as I race through them. I swear someone is following me. Chasing me.
And I think about Mum, then. Mum and Dad. I want to believe they’ll stand up for me. I want to believe they’ll support me. I want to believe they’ll understand why I did what I did, especially when I tell them about Andy, about Elana’s boyfriend, and what he did to me.
But deep down, I know I was an accident.
I heard them speaking about that once. How they never really wanted me. How Elana was their favourite, and I was just a disappointment. How I was too… curious.
I know they’ll never forgive me for what I’ve done.
I know I’m an outcast, whatever happens here.
So the best thing I can do is run.
The best thing I can do is…
The baby.
Crying in my arms.
Screaming.
The air is thick with heat now.
The clouds are thick, too.
And this screaming, in my head, ringing in my ears.
I look down at the baby, and as much as I love him, as much as he is mine, as much as I will always try to do what’s right for him… I know I will never be able to think of him as anyone other than Charlie.
Elana’s child.
Andy’s child.
I look down at the baby in my arms, my hands covered in blood. And I am in a haze now. I am in a haze because… my memory shifts. There’s a gap.
In the middle of the maize field.
Standing over him.
Then by a stream.
Then lowering him down as he cries and tears fall from my face towards the stream, closer to silence, closer to—
But no.
I didn’t do that.
I lifted him down and wrapped him up and left him in the middle of the maize fields, and then I ran.
And all the time, I couldn’t stop myself saying the words.
“I’m sorry, Charlie. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. But you’ll be better with them. You’ll be better with them.”
I remember running away.
I remember running and running as the clouds thicken, and the sky hurls rain down.
I remember reaching Gregg.
And I remember him holding me and telling me everything was going to be okay.
And then I remember nothing.
I open my eyes.
Andy stares at me.
Moira stares at me.
Both of them stand there above me, tied to this stool in a place I called home, and they look at me like they know I know now.
“So now you remember,” Andy says. “How you killed him. How you killed my Charlie. How you killed my son.”
Chapter Fifty-Six
“You killed my son, Sarah. You killed my girlfriend—your sister—and then you killed my son.”
I shake my head because that’s not how it happened. Because I wouldn’t have hurt Charlie. I wouldn’t have laid a finger on him. Harmed him in any way.
But my memory is blurry.
Fuzzy.
It’s like there’s another hidden door in my mind.
One I don’t want to open.
One I don’t have the keys to unlock.
“Say it!” Andy shouts. And suddenly, he’s inches from me again. His saliva is on my face. “Admit what you did. Every single bit of it. Admit it. To me. To my mother. And to yourself.”
I lower my head. I can barely speak. I just want to get out of this. I just want to get away.
Andy grabs my face. “Say it
. Admit it. Now!”
“I killed her,” I mumble.
“What was that?”
“I said—I said I killed her. I killed Elana. My sister. I killed her because she wanted to take my baby from me. She wanted to outcast me. I killed her because I was mad. Mad at what—at what she did to me. At what both of you did to me.”
I look around at Moira. And as much as I know she’s complicit in my capture, I hope she understands, on a human level, if anything.
“Your son raped me,” I shout. “He raped me, and he impregnated me at fifteen. And that’s something he and my sister planned. Planned so they could use me for the baby. Use me because she couldn’t get pregnant. Then take it away from me and outcast me so I wouldn’t be a problem. Can you imagine how that made me feel? Finding out my own sister did that to me?”
Moira stands there. Silent. I look into her eyes, and I see nothing. Just a void. An empty void.
“Don’t you see?” I shout.
“What I see,” Moira says, “is that you killed your sister, and then you went to the brook and you killed that poor child. You drowned him there. I found him, face down in there. That ring your boyfriend gave you, the one you always wore secretly. The one with the elephant on it. The one you thought none of us ever noticed. Right there beside him.”
The brook.
The cold water around my fingers.
But my ring?
No. I never lost my ring.
This isn’t right. It doesn’t make sense.
“I don’t… I don’t remember—”
A slap across the face. Andy again.
“What my mother is trying to say is she doesn’t give a fuck. Because that’s what everyone wanted. That was the plan, Sarah. Are you starting to get it now? Are you starting to see?”
I open my mouth to speak, but I can barely comprehend it.
“Every… Everyone knew?”
“Everyone knew. Mother knew. Your own mum and dad knew. It was a plan, Sarah. Elana was meant to inherit everything. Every last bit of it. And I was supposed to be by her side. But she couldn’t get pregnant. We needed to keep the bloodline pure and consistent. So we needed to find another way.”
My head spins. I am still here, in my attic, but I could be in any dark void right now.
They all knew.
The whole Family knew about what happened to me.
They pretended to care. Pretended to search for the man who did it to me.
But all along, they knew.
All along, they wanted Elana to have my son.
“We wanted you gone,” Moira says. “Because you were nothing but trouble. You mingled with the outside too much. And it seemed like the best, neatest way. You got the life you wanted. We got the life we wanted. But you just couldn’t accept it, could you?”
I shake my head. I feel sad. Broken. Defeated.
But more than anything, I feel angry.
“You’re evil. Both of you. All of you. You’re evil.”
Moira rolls her eyes. “You broke your poor parents, you know? Dad died of a broken heart two years later. Mum couldn’t hack it, so she took her own life. The Family fell apart not long after. The others, they might’ve been able to let this go. They might’ve been able to move on to their normal lives. But not us. Not me and my Andy. Because you broke everything, Sarah. We had the perfect life, and you broke it. The Family, we might not have been ordinary people, but we were good people. We acted within the realms of the law, mostly anyway. We never harmed anyone. Everyone was there by choice. And our leader. Our dear leader, Father. He knew there was no choice, not in the end. Because of the poison that you allowed to enter. Elana. She was supposed to be the princess. And my Andy was the prince. They were the future. You poisoned us. You cursed us all and destroyed everyone’s faith. And now you’re going to pay for it.”
I sit there. Breathing heavily.
I think about how I got the train that day I was supposed to be at the doctor’s. How I’d gone to head back there on the train, back to where I lived with The Family, all those years ago.
How I’d had a panic attack and got off the train and gone straight back home not long after.
I think about everything, and something haunts me.
Because something still doesn’t seem right.
I remember leaving my son.
I remember running away from him, through the fields.
Landing in Gregg’s arms.
But the stream.
The drowning.
I don’t remember that.
Or am I just hiding from the truth?
Am I just…
Andy and Moira grab me. They lift me to my feet, Moira with a strength I didn’t realise she had.
They pull me up, so I am standing on the stool.
Then Andy reaches up and wraps what I realise is a noose around my neck.
“So now is where it ends,” he says.
And I understand.
I see him staring at me with those cold, loveless eyes, and I understand.
“You broke down. You stopped taking your meds. And after so much concern, you go into the attic, and you take your life. It’s simple. You pay for what you took from me. You pay for what you took from all of us. It ends. All of it ends. Right now.”
Chapter Fifty-Seven
I think about my life in two segments.
The days before I left my son in the maize fields, the days before he went missing.
And the days after I left my son in the maize fields, the days after I ran away from the Family.
The beginning of my new life.
I stand on the stool with the noose around my neck in my own attic and stare through tear-drenched eyes at Andy and Moira. I see the way they stare up at me. I see the blankness behind my eyes, and I can almost feel the warmth of the summer air I always associate with the Family. I can almost hear them chanting as I stand around that dying rat.
Go on, go on, go on…
And I can hear the crack of my sister’s skull underneath the rock.
Feel the blood crusting on my hands.
The tension in my chest as I run away with a screaming baby in my arms, just wanting to get away, just wanting to escape, just wanting to…
Do I see myself by a stream?
Do I see myself holding my son’s head under the water?
I can envision it. I can picture it. I can feel the cold water against my knuckles. I can smell the freshness of the trees. And I can hear the little glugging sounds as I hold him down.
And I can hear Gregg, too.
I can hear him telling me it’s okay. That everything is going to be okay now. That we’re together now, and he has me, and he…
But the stream.
Holding the baby in the water.
Holding my son in the water.
That doesn’t feel real.
That feels like something my wayward mind has just produced.
That does not feel like a memory.
It feels like something that has been planted there.
And I’m not sure what that means. Not sure what to make of this sudden clarity.
But if I know one thing for sure from the last few months, it’s that I am not insane.
I have been able to differentiate reality from fakery.
I have been able to tell the difference. It’s been the people around me terrorising me. Lying to me.
I have been right.
So why am I so certain I did not kill my baby?
Why am I so certain the last time I saw him was when I left him, painfully, in the maize fields and ran away to be with Gregg?
And if that’s the case, why are Andy and Moira claiming they found the baby drowned by my hand?
Andy walks over to me. He stands right opposite the stool. “You’re going to do it yourself. Aren’t you?”
He looks up at me as I stand there crying, and I want to scream. I want to call for help.
But I know it’s no use. I am the madwoman. Th
e crazy lady. Nobody will hear my screams.
Andy smiles. And it’s as if he senses my thoughts and fears. I hardly recognise this monster before me. This spectre that has haunted me from the shadows my entire life. And like shadows, they are always closer than you think.
“You’re going to step off the stool. You’re going to drop. And you’re going to die, Sarah. Because that’s how it should be. That’s the right way it should be. The natural order of things.”
I stand there, and I shake my head. I want to fight. But I’m not sure what fight is left in me. I’m not sure how I can possibly fight anymore.
I am out of fight.
I don’t have anything left.
Only the anger.
The anger I felt for this man all those years ago.
The anger I felt for all of them, all those years ago.
“Any last words?” Andy says. “Before the end of the line?”
I close my eyes, swallow a lump in my throat, and I see my son. I feel my hand against his. Only that’s different now, too. The school field. I can feel a hand there, but it’s my own sweaty palm. The rest is something I added later. Something I invented.
Because Charlie wasn’t there that day, and I know it.
I snook off with Glynn and fucked him in the maize fields.
And it brought it back.
It brought it all back, and that’s what fucked me up, all three years ago.
My longing for my son.
A missing son.
But the thought of holding Charlie down in the water.
That isn’t real.
I left him behind because I thought somehow he might get a better life inside the Family.
I left him behind, and I ran because I wanted to give him a chance.
I left him because…
And then I remember something else.
“I have to go back, Gregg. I have to go back.”
It’s just a snippet. Just a fragment of a memory.
But it’s there. And it’s clear.
And I don’t understand where it fits into things.
Because as much as all this is happening and as much as it is all true, so too is my dissociative amnesia. So too, is my false memory syndrome. So too is my trauma.
I am a mess.
“You’re going to do it,” Moira says. “And it might be the most gutsy thing you’ve ever done.”