But really, Vi believed she’d saved Iris in some way. Now Iris didn’t need to know the terrible things that had been done to her; the terrible things she might have done to others.
Iris leaned her head back against the tree, looked up at the sky through the canopy of leaves. Vi looked too. There were no stars. Only darkness. The occasional bright flash of lightning.
Vi turned to see a shadow moving quickly toward them across the wide expanse of lawn, running, past the lost-looking patients, past the night staff trying to maintain control.
It was Eric, his wild curls flying out, his pajamas pale and soaked, his feet bare.
“What happened?” he asked, panting to catch his breath. He looked at Vi. “Where’s Gran?”
“Eric—I—” she stammered, unsure what to say, where to even begin. The power and confidence of the monster was fading. She looked at the building in flames behind Eric and knew she had done it. She remembered setting the fire, yet somehow it felt like it had been someone else. Like it was a movie: a monster on a rampage.
She wasn’t sure who she was now, a monster or a girl or some combination of the two.
Miss Ev—in her robe, her wig crooked—was standing next to the building, staring at the flames, shouting, “Dr. Hildreth!” She rushed toward the east side door, like she was going to go right in, but Sal grabbed her, pulled her back, which proved to be more of an effort than he’d expected. They tussled, and Miss Ev nearly got away, but Sal got behind her, wrapped her tightly in his arms, and walked her back away from the building.
“You’re not gonna do anyone any good going in there, Miss Ev,” he said. “We need you out here. The patients need you.”
“Dr. Hildreth!” Miss Ev sobbed.
Eric looked from Vi to the Inn, his face lit orange from the glow of the flames. “What did you do to Gran?” he demanded.
Vi pitied the little boy she’d believed was her brother. She wanted to shelter him from the truth. But she knew the truth would come out. And it was best that he hear it from her.
“Gran,” she began, voice unsure, “Gran isn’t who you think she is. And I’m not who you think I am.”
He stared at her, his mouth opening a little. His eyes narrowed in anger. “I know who you are. I know all about you.”
“Eric,” Iris said, “I think—”
“You’re not my sister,” he said. “You’re a stray”—he spat out the word—“like Iris.”
Vi felt something collapse inside of her.
She forced the words out through her too-tight throat: “How long have you known?”
“Since Gran brought you home.”
No. Vi shook her head.
“She gave me a special job,” Eric said. “To keep an eye on you. Give her reports.”
“Reports,” Vi repeated. The rain was so loud, so cold. She was shivering, shaking all over.
It shouldn’t have surprised her. Not after everything she’d learned tonight. But still, it did. He’d been giving Gran reports on Vi just as Vi was giving Gran reports on Iris. If they’d waited long enough, surely Iris would have been giving reports on some new kid.
Eric nodded. “Gran said to treat you like a sister. That I had to go along with whatever you said, whatever crazy beliefs you had. I shouldn’t ever tell you your ideas weren’t real. She said… she said you could be dangerous.”
Vi felt the rage roaring up again, the monster taking hold. “You knew! You knew and you never said anything?” Her tattletale brother had kept the biggest secret of all. “How could you?”
“I promised Gran,” he said. “I promised her I’d be the best brother ever. And I’d never tell you the truth. No matter what.” He was crying now, looking at Vi. “And you know what? I actually kind of forgot. That you weren’t really my sister.” He rubbed at his eyes, looked back to the burning building. “But Gran was right. She said one day you might do something bad. Something awful.”
Sirens were coming up the hill—they could hear them in the distance, faint at first, but getting louder. Soon the whole yard would be overrun with men in uniforms and fire coats, men wearing masks and air tanks on their backs. Men asking questions.
“I’m going to tell them,” Eric said, rubbing his nose with the back of his hand. “I’m going to tell them what you’ve done. I’m going to tell them all about you.” He looked so brave just then. So angry and defiant. Vi believed that whatever happened to him, wherever he went from there, he was going to be okay.
“Go tell them. Tell them the truth,” Vi said. “Look under my bed. There’s a file there. Show that to them. It proves what I am. What I’ve done.” Eric turned and ran toward the police cars and fire trucks that were coming up the road, red lights flashing in the rain. He was waving his arms frantically, yelling to them.
“Eric, wait!” Iris called, getting to her feet to chase after him.
“Let him go,” Vi said, watching him disappear around the corner of the building, thinking that was it—the last time she’d ever see her brother. And even though he wasn’t really her brother, even though he’d lied to her, her chest cracked open to see him go.
“They’ll come for you,” Iris said.
“Yes,” Vi replied, watching the first fire truck pull up in front of the Inn, followed by a police car. Then an ambulance and another fire truck.
“They’ll lock you up!” Iris said.
Vi smiled. “They’ll have to catch me first.”
“But—”
“Come with me,” she said.
Iris shook her head, looked away from Vi. Her eyes were full of tears. “There’s no way. We’d never make it. We’re just kids! Where are we supposed to go? What are we supposed to do?”
You’re my clever girl, Gran had always told her.
She was clever. But she was so much more than that.
A thirteen-year-old girl might not be able to get by in the world on her own.
But a monster could.
“Trust me,” Vi said. She looked down at the road. Eric was there, talking to a policeman. “Please. We have to go now.”
Vi touched Iris’s chest, just above her heart, running her fingers over the scar, the scar that she’d once longed so badly to touch. The scar that made them twins, bound them together.
“We belong together,” she said. “Don’t you see?”
Two broken girls who together made a whole.
Iris flinched, stepped backward, shaking her head. She looked at Vi as if she didn’t know her at all, her eyes frantic and full of fear.
And Vi understood then.
She truly was a monster.
And like any monster, she’d always be alone.
She pulled her hand away, then turned, took off running into the woods.
The Helping Hand of God: The True Story of the Hillside Inn Julia Tetreault, Dark Passages Press, 1980
THE AFTERMATH
Dr. Thad Hutchins took his own life with an overdose of barbiturates one week after the fire at the Hillside Inn. Many dark secrets no doubt died with him. He was able to tell the police a few things in his first interviews.
According to Dr. Hutchins, the boy who had been raised as Dr. Hildreth’s grandson, Eric, had been born at the Inn in the fall of 1969. He was the child of an eighteen-year-old young woman with a mood disorder and a drug addiction—a long-term patient at the Inn. The child’s father is unknown. The young woman went into labor early. Dr. Hildreth delivered the child and told the mother her baby was stillborn—as her own twin girls had been so many years before. Dr. Hildreth believed she could give this child a better life than his mother could. He was, according to Dr. Hutchins, an experiment in nature versus nurture. The boy was raised to believe he was Dr. Hildreth’s grandson, that his parents had died. At this writing, he is in foster care and doing well with his new family and new identity. Any record of his biological mother’s identity was destroyed in the fire.