Going back to where the killing had taken place, he soon found the prints of two men carrying a heavy weight off into the woods. They had not carried it far. His stomach roiled at the smell and the sound of creatures dining on the dead. Fortunately they scattered when he appeared. There was not much left but enough for him to know it was the one called Mac. The man had certainly been no saint but it was a hard way to end. Shaking his head, he started to make his way back to his camp. Seeing no more recent signs of the enemy nor sensing them in any way, he felt it was safe to rest now.
He stepped into the clearing where they camped and, at first, was annoyed that Primrose barely noticed him, thinking she had been keeping a very poor watch for troubles. Then he saw that she was trembling. As he crouched in front of her, he realized she was crying. The blank look on her face worried him and he grasped her by the shoulders to give her a little shake. She stared at him and slowly her eyes sharpened. Then she hurled herself into his arms, clinging to him in a way that left every inch of him hardening with interest. Shifting to sit more comfortably, he rubbed her back and sternly reminded himself that now was not the time for lusting. She was deeply upset.
“Are you that afraid of being alone in the dark?” he asked.
“Not anymore. I think I will be better soon.” Primrose took a few deep breaths and let them out slowly as she pushed away the last dregs of the childhood fear and grief that had grabbed her so tightly. “I know where the fear comes from now.”
He brushed her hair back from her face and looked down at her. “What do you mean?”
“I always wondered why I had never really grown out of that childhood fear of the dark. I had no thoughts of things under the bed or anything such as that. It was a blind fear. So I got to thinking of something that happened when I was small, just after my mother died, and the more I thought on it, the more I remembered, especially when I did not allow the fear and sorrow thinking about that time always brings to force me to leave it alone, shake it from my mind.”
“What did you recall, Rose?”
She smiled faintly as she rested her cheek on his broad chest and soaked up the pure strength of him. He was calming her as he always did although how he could do so with no words, she was not sure. If it was some gift he had it was a good one. It helped conquer the last of the fear and grief she had been crippled by.
“I was five, nearing six when my mother died. It was hard for she had been a very loving mother. I thought to find some of that when my aunt and uncle came but soon realized there was none of that warmth or softness there. Anyway, one night I woke and ached for my mother as only a child can. I understood death as much as a child that age can but I still wanted to visit my mother. I went looking for Papa but he was lost in his own grief somewhere and I found my aunt in his office. Now I can see her sitting at the desk with his ledgers open in front of her but at the time something like that meant nothing to me.”
“What did she do?”
“When I said I wanted to see my mother she smiled. She said she would take me to see her and she did. She walked me through the woods to the graveyard, stood me in front of my mother’s grave, and said there was my mother. That she was in the ground and feast for the worms now. Then telling me that we all end up there, some sooner than others, she walked away. No hug for a crying child, which is what I think I had been really looking for.”
“She left you in a graveyard at night?”
“Yes, but once I realized I was alone I tried to get back home. I knew the woods but had not realized how different they looked at night. I ended up horribly lost and was crying and yelling for people until my voice died. Then I guess, from what was said, I went away into my head. They found me lying on the ground. I could not speak and when they tried to put me to bed that night I made the only noise I could actually make for months afterward. I screamed. Poor Papa had to sleep in a well-lit room for quite a while before I could be left alone in my own bed. Sometime during those months I completely forgot how I had ended up in the woods at night and anytime I tried to recall I was pushed back by my own fear and grief for my lost mother.”
“And so your father could not know just what sort of evil he had let into his house and let it stay,” he said as he held her close and rested his chin on her head.
“I know. I think there may be other things. That childhood adventure did, I think, leave me susceptible to burying all sorts of things deep inside and not looking at them again. I am going to start digging them back out. There may be some answers there.”
She sat back a little and smiled at him. “Now that I have calmed, it is a relief to know the truth. It always troubled me that I was so childish I had never gotten rid of that fear of the dark, the kind that children have. As I said, I know there are no monsters under the bed or nasty things in the closet or any of that. I should not have been as disturbed by being alone in the dark as I have always been.”
“You caught her looking at your father’s ledgers. If you had ever mentioned it, I fear you would have had some accident.”