by Jane E James
Rather than feel relief, this revelation puts me even more on edge. Why am I not afraid? I know my mother to be a killer, so what does that make me if I am not afraid? Mad—that’s what some people would say.
But that thing is not my mother, I remind myself bitterly, and now I know who, and what, she has become, I can separate myself from her; knowing my real mother died the night they took her from us, or as good as. What is left is a relic, a shadow of the past that wants putting out of its misery, like a wounded animal. Instantly, I am reminded of a baby rabbit I once saw captured by a large rook. The rabbit was unable to escape because the rook had it pinned down with its huge talon. I begged my father to save the rabbit, but he said it was “too far gone”, and ordered me not to interfere. I did not disobey, but I stayed and watched the rabbit die an agonising death, to make sure its suffering did eventually end.
Sensing a shadowy figure is lurking menacingly behind me, I experience the same feeling of dread and fascination I felt watching the poor rabbit being eaten alive. Spinning around, I expect to see my mother tearing towards me in a hate filled rage, but there is no one there. Nothing except perhaps for a waft of stale urine and body odour. Creeping into the hallway, I see that the front door is ajar. Moving quickly, I slam it shut and lock it, unable to keep at bay the flashing images of my father exiting it the night he was butchered. Did that only happen three nights ago? Sometimes, it feels as if he has been gone forever, other times I forget he is no longer with us. Whatever other grisly thoughts are about to pop into my head, they are forgotten about the moment I hear the baby crying.
‘Darkly!’ I exclaim in alarm, frightened that my mother may have done something to hurt her. Blaming myself for forgetting about her until now, I run towards the stairs.
Rocking the crying baby in my arms, I am aware that I am holding her more tightly than I should so I relax my hold and concentrate on the beautiful blue eyes staring up at me. I am relieved to find she is unharmed but I am still frightened for her. I cannot be certain that my mother knows she is here but her crying is a dead giveaway. Downstairs, I convinced myself that I am no longer afraid of my mother but I am afraid of what she might do to Darkly.
‘Shush, little one. It’s okay. I’m here…’ I cajole, in what is meant to be a reassuring tone, but my heart is pounding against my chest and my hands shake uncontrollably. ‘I am not going to let anyone hurt you.’
Jiggling her up and down, as she likes me to, I walk over to the window and tug the curtains together, leaving a small gap for me to peer out of. My old childhood bedroom is in darkness. If my mother is watching the house, she won’t be able to see me standing here.
The night is as it should be; hot, humid, and alive with wildlife. The distant bark of a dog fox is soon followed by the call of a bird of prey. The swoop of a bat circles the house and if I squint my eyes and look closely enough, I can just about make out the tip of a rat’s tail scurrying through the long grass. These are the things I grew up observing. Without my father’s knowledge, many of these outdoor creatures, the injured ones that is, found their way inside. I used to hide them under my bed and would let them go when they got better. If they got better. Snow White, I wasn’t, because I was a tortured child, especially after my mother died, hence the cutting, but I did the best I could, given the circumstances.
What isn’t natural, what doesn’t belong here—is the woman I can see moving furtively towards the whitewashed building. There is something awful about the jerking, snapping movements her bones make; as if she has suffered breaks and fractures that have never healed. As if she knows she is being watched, she turns to look back at the house and I feel my blood run cold. The creature, that I no longer think of as my mother, is wearing the red silk dress which I’ve long admired but never had the confidence to wear. Yet, even as I acknowledge this fact, I recall the feel of its cool silk fabric against my skin accompanied by a glow of candlelight on my face. Try as I might, I cannot remember anything else about the dress, except that it used to hang in my mother’s wardrobe and was a favourite of hers. What I do know is that tonight isn’t the first time she has been inside the house. During the last day or two, or even before that if I am honest, I’ve noticed that things have gone missing. Stupidly, I never thought anything of it at the time, except perhaps that I was mistaken. It wouldn’t be the first time.
Knowing she can come and go as she pleases, that tonight isn’t a one-off, makes her even more dangerous than I thought. It also means she must already be aware that Darkly is living with me. Glancing down at the baby, whose sobs have died away, I feel an overpowering urge to protect her. Thank God, she hasn’t harmed her, is all I can think. Yet.
When my eyes swing back to the whitewashed building, I see that the woman who used to be my mother is still there. Although she cannot possibly see me, I sense that her hate-filled eyes are all over my face and that her hands, dangling awkwardly by her sides, would claw me to death if they could—like the rook did the rabbit.
‘Too far gone,’ is what she is, I decide unforgivingly.
Even with the gun lying next to me on the bed and two chairs stacked against the door, I cannot sleep. I have been tossing and turning for hours, endlessly checking on Darkly, who is as restless as I am. Often, when I get up to look at her, I find her eyes are open too. Although her gaze follows me around the room, she does not make a sound, preferring to nibble on a plump toe instead. When I talk to her and tell her that she needn’t be afraid, that I am here to protect her, she frowns at me, as if to imply she doesn’t need looking after. This reminds me so much of Merry that I want to cry.
The window is wide open and a breeze, too warm to bring any comfort, trickles in. I would like to blame our unrest on the oppressive heat but it is fear of my mother returning that keeps me awake. Every noise I hear has me sitting bolt upright, on edge until I can identify where it came from—the creaking of a floorboard reacting to the heat, a woody stem of rosemary tapping on a downstairs window. Each time the crickets outside pause in their chirruping, I hold my breath too, in case they know something I don’t.
I look at the clock for the umpteenth time. It is almost 3am. Deep down, I know that it is not just fear of what my mother might do to Darkly that is keeping me awake. Soon I will have to make the dreaded trip into the village, to find out how I am to be received. Only then will I know what lies in store for me. Truthfully, I am surprised I have been left alone this long. Every day I expect a visit, but so far, no one has ventured out here. Before Jed left, he told me I should be thankful for this, because it means they are keeping their end of the bargain they made with my father, but I do not trust them. Thankful indeed.
Chapter 56
I must have fallen asleep after all, because a noise different to any I heard earlier rouses me. I am slow to react but when my eyes eventually flicker open, they are immediately drawn to the figure sitting on the edge of my bed. I want to scream. I want to move. But I do neither. Frozen with fear, my eyes swing down to the Moses basket where I can see Darkly. Thank God she is okay. Like mine, her eyes are following the hypnotic movement of the silver-plated hairbrush that is being pulled through my mother’s matted balding hair.
Wearing the same red dress as before, she has her back turned on me, exposing bruising and scarring worse than my own. As if she were still a beauty, she stares at her toothless reflection in the matching hand mirror and grins manically. She must already have been into her old room to reclaim the set from the dressing table where it is kept. Although she seems oblivious to my presence, I sense that the slightest movement from me could send her into one of her wild rages. I have first-hand experience of how fast she can move when that happens. But when Darkly holds up a chubby hand, as if demanding to hold the brush, I know I must distract her. Mother is close enough to hurt Darkly and I cannot let that happen.
‘What are you doing in here, Mother?’ I whisper.
Our matching eyes meet in the mirror, but fear of losing myself in those b
lack empty cavities means mine are the first to drop away. When I hear the creaking of bones, I know that she is on her feet. When I smell her stinking breath on my face, I know that she is standing over me. When her long greasy hair dangles down to touch my face, I whimper like a child and draw my knees right up to my chin, as if that will protect me.
‘My things. Mine!’ she screams, slamming the brush down on my head.
There is a dull throbbing in my head as I come to, and a distant memory that won’t form properly. Somebody was here, I remember with a start, sitting up too quickly. The room is in darkness and I can’t see anything, at least not yet. I listen out for the slightest noise, convinced something is wrong, but soon relax against my pillow again, certain I have woken from a bad dream, nothing more.
Bits of that dream slowly come back to me. They seem real, yet I know them to be false. I couldn’t possibly have fallen asleep in the rocking chair, staring in a trance-like state at the whitewashed building, could I? And it is crazy to think that I heard my mother’s favourite song being played in the darkened living room that still mourns for my poor father.
I know that all is well, because Darkly is asleep in the Moses basket by the side of my bed. I can make out the huddle of her body in the darkness. There is something hard and unbending next to me, and I stiffen against it—but then I remember that I took my father’s gun to bed. I feel safe, knowing it is still there. Feeling dehydrated, I decide to go down for a glass of water.
Switching on the nightlight next to my bed, I gasp in disbelief when I see that the two chairs stacked against the bedroom door have been pushed aside. Almost simultaneously, I realise that Darkly is missing from the Moses basket; that somebody has mimicked the shape of her small body using a bunched-up blanket.
In my desperation to find her, I swing my legs too quickly out of the bed and collapse in a useless heap on the floor, hit by a sudden wave of nausea that immobilises me. The room around me sways, as if I am on a boat, and then blurs. Everything, including my own delayed reactions, seems to occur in slow motion. When my hand comes away from my sticky scalp, I gasp in horror when I see congealed blood on my fingers.
I am not surprised to see a circle of candles and oil lamps lighting up the ground near the whitewashed building. I have sensed that the creature, the mad woman from the cellar, my mother, I have so many names for her, has been leading up to something like this for days. When the sickly smell of burning wax reaches my nostrils and the fumes from the lamps start to make my eyes smart, I lift my father’s rifle closer to my chest. Truthfully, I am not sure how to hold it, let alone use it, but when the baby’s indignant cries rise out of the smoke, I manage to cock it all by myself.
I do not see Darkly yet. She is hidden behind the wall of flames, but hearing her outraged cries fills me with hope. She cannot be hurt to cry like that. But I do see a pair of demonic red eyes lurking in the circle and it dawns on me then that Mother is expecting me. I suspect she has been waiting for this moment ever since I came back to Little Downey.
A few steps more and I can see the baby. She lies naked on the ground, her fat little legs kicking out angrily at the open air. I hold my breath. She is okay. But I dare not go to her. Not yet. Right then, she turns her head in my direction and I watch her brow furrow in confusion. As soon as she recognises me, she starts crying again, louder this time. I try to shush her, but this only makes her worse. Like her mother, she is not one to be put aside.
‘Oh my God, Darkly,’ I whisper tearfully, my eyes darting this way and that, travelling at speed in a circular motion, covering what ground they can, until they come to rest on the ravaged creature who finally steps out of the shadows to confront me.
I cannot take my eyes off the knife in her hand. It is from my father’s collection, taken from the butcher’s block in the whitewashed building. I now know there was always a good reason for my being afraid of that building and those tools.
Whenever she takes a slow deliberate step towards Darkly, I match her, step-by-step, until we are no more than a dozen feet apart, but she still remains closer to the baby than I am, giving her the upper hand. Her bloodshot eyes light up with something like triumph when she sees my fingers nervously hover over the trigger of the gun.
‘Is that really you, Natalie?’
Her voice is as I remember—fun and carefree, musical even. It does not suit the deranged person standing before me.
‘I won’t let you hurt her, Mother,’ I say in a voice far stronger than I feel.
At that, she laughs, a demonic crazy sound, yet I can still see traces of my mother on her ravaged face. Something in the eyes, the toss of her head, which remind me of the old photographs I kept of her—the ones I have treasured for most of my lifetime.
‘Mother, please put down the knife,’ I plead, risking a quick glance in the baby’s direction.
‘I gave up my life for you,’ Mother rages, making a slicing motion with the knife. A gesture that stops my heart and leaves my mouth dry.
‘I know. I’m sorry,’ I say, holding up a hand as if that will stop her—as if anything could.
I can’t help it. Up close, no matter what she has become, she is still my mother. Because I can no longer deny her existence, hot tears spill down my cheeks. I am a snotty-nosed child again, desperate for her love and approval. This response gets a better reaction. Lowering the knife, she takes a step closer, as if she would comfort me.
‘She’s nothing to us, Natalie. Nothing.’ She gestures to the baby with a flick of the knife.
‘She’s my sister.’
‘Half-sister. Gypsy blood at that,’ Mother sneers, resuming her guarding expression over Darkly.
‘You used to like the gypsy way of life.’ I stall for time, anything to take her mind off the baby. ‘Don’t you remember how you used to romanticise their nomadic lifestyle?’
It works. She forgets the baby and focuses her attention on me, her face taking on a childlike expression as she tries to work out if what I have told her is true. I am not lying, but I still feel as if I am betraying her. This makes it difficult for me to meet the intensity of her stare and when her eyes flicker with something like sanity, I feel myself weaken. Sensing this, she holds out her arms, as if she would wrap me in them.
‘You were such a beautiful baby,’ she croons, pulling a sad face. ‘It killed me giving you up. Did you ever think of me?’
I think my heart is close to breaking and I wonder what sort of daughter I am, to be stood here pointing a gun at my sick mother.
‘Every second. Every day,’ I admit, lowering the gun. The temptation to lie it down on the ground and step into my mother’s outstretched arms is overwhelming.
‘Don’t be afraid, child,’ she says, the knife disappearing behind her back. ‘I would never hurt you.’
I want to believe her. Of course, I do. But when I glance down at the dried blood on my hand, which matches the spattered blood on her chest and arms, I am reminded of how dangerous she is. This is not my mother, I tell myself angrily. This is an imposter.
I feel my face turn to concrete as I cock the gun once more and jut out my chin in a defiant Powers kind of way. Sensing the change in me, her eyes narrow, and a ferocious anger that was not there before burns in her eyes.
‘I would die for you, Natalie,’ she says, keeping up the pretence, but this time I am not fooled. Just in time, I see the flash of gleaming metal as she raises the blade above her head and lunges at me.
‘Prove it!’ I yell.
The gun goes off and a look of utter disbelief appears on her face as she falls to the ground, clawing at the blood spurting out of her stomach. It is over surprisingly quickly. Just a few drawn-out breaths, a trail of black blood spilling from her mouth, it opening and closing as if she wants to say something. Then, nothing. I find it strange that she should look more human in death than she did when she was alive.
Dropping the gun as if it were as diseased and rotten as my mother, I stumble without its reassu
ring weight. Looking up at the night sky, I howl like a baby, before falling to my knees on the ground. Pulling my mother’s stinking body into my lap, I sob unrestrainedly and rock her in my arms, as she once did me. She’s gone, I tell myself. It’s over. But I have no idea who pulled the trigger. It couldn’t have been me, could it? I am just a child who loves and misses her mother. I am not a killer. It couldn’t have been me.
It couldn’t have been me.
Drip. Splat. Drip.
The sky is grey and cloudy. The air eerily still. Rain bounces off the porch roof and disappears into the overgrown garden, either dissolving into patches of sand or settling on blades of grass that twinkle like a field of lost diamonds. Unlike most people, I have never liked the smell of rain. Its fresh earthy fragrance evokes memories of days spent alone in my bedroom at Thornhaugh, staring out of the long grey window and dreaming of home.
At some point during the early hours of this morning, I collapsed into the rocking chair on the porch with the baby in my arms. I haven’t stirred from it since. The sun came up an hour ago, arriving with the rain. My bare arms and legs are numb with cold and my skin is crawling with goosebumps. The heat from Darkly’s body is the only thing keeping me warm. Her little fist is wrapped in my tangled hair, and the thumb in her other hand is wedged tightly in her mouth. Although asleep, she continues to suck on it.
My nightdress is stained with mine and my mother’s blood but the smell lingering on my body is all her own—a terrible mix of death, stale urine and rotting flesh. In the future, whenever I think of her, I will always associate this smell with her. Gone forever is the memory of the delicate floral perfume she used to wear.