I sigh and curl my legs underneath me as I sit on the floor, shifting so that my back is now to the window and I am facing the girl looking up at me.
I don’t want to do this again.
“When I was a little girl, your mother and I used to love it here.”
The girl looks skeptical, and I expect no less.
“Back then the house was blue. It’s tradition that every new family head paints La Baume a different color, did you know that? Father started to paint it blue the day he married Momma. He never was very good at finishing anything. When I was four and Pammy was still a little baby, Father got it into his head that those few bits of green paint showing through were bad luck. We spent a whole summer running around the house, filling in the gaps. When we were finished, the house looked like the sky.” I smile and wrap thin arms around myself. They were good days. Good memories. “The soil was rich and fertile.”
“What happened?”
“I did.” I choke back a sob. “I came. I grew up, Father died, then Mother, Anne… and then Pammy moved away with that awful, hard man.” The man who is your father. I don’t say it, but I know the girl heard it. “I could see the stone in him clear as day… but your mother has an airy nature and was too flighty to see. Soon you were there with them, too, a little pebble yourself, and my hopes of having her back were dashed upon the rocks.” I pause, my lungs fighting to find purchase in the air.
I feel spite deep inside me as I watch the almost-woman, Silla, who is my niece and to blame. It is a curling thing I can’t suppress. “The day you were born, I began to paint the manor red. The new color for my rule. Red was blood and rage and passion.” I smile wanly. “It seemed fitting at the time.”
“I’m sorry.”
I laugh, cackles bounding along the walls. The girl is sorry.
“Ten years. Waiting. And still I hoped that Pammy would come home. I bought so much yellow paint, hoping against hope that she would join me and we could remake this house again. A giant sunflower, full of light and joy…” Oh, it was such a glorious dream! Such grand ideas! Such wonder in the darkness! “And then Eleanor came. Little Nori, so precious. Precious enough to tie your mother to him for longer. Little Nori, full of water, fluid—an easy survivor. She couldn’t be tainted by your father the way—”
“Say it.”
I look away.
“The way I am,” Silla finishes. “The way I have been.”
I nod. You have stone in your heart. I look on Silla. “When you came, things went bad again.”
“You’re blaming this on me? The townspeople leaving, the land dying, the woods—you’re blaming me?”
I shake my head. No. But I mean YES.
“Who is he?”
Does the girl know? Has she seen him? She doesn’t look afraid.…
“When I was a girl, I had stone in my heart, too; it was my fault. Or maybe it was Pammy. So hard to remember. Pammy was like water back then, before she evaporated for your father. For Stan.” My lips curl around the name with distaste. “She was like Nori.” I swallow. No. That’s wrong. It was always Anne. But things are so muddy now, and I can’t quite remember, and there is nothing left.
Too many secrets. Too much danger. Nothing to hold on to.
“Catherine.” The girl is standing now, her hands clenched like the rocks they are. She is so very hard. Granite, through and through.
The hardness I see there resolves me. Absolves me. After all, why should I care?
“He’s watching you,” I say. “He comes from the woods, lives in them. He’s drawn here, and when he comes, the land dies. People sense it and leave. It’s happened before.” I suck in a shudder of a breath. “The Creeper Man. He’s not a protector at all.…”
The girl seems warmer. Like fire coals, burning inside. “What are you on about, you crazy old witch? That was just a story.”
“This place is cursed.”
I can tell that the girl already knows this.
“Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you let us stay?” The girl is yelling now. “Why not warn us or send us away!”
“Because I was alone!”
Silence rings loudly. Clarity. Air. Truth. Truthtruthtruthtruthtruth: something true at last.
“I was alone,” I whisper now. “I didn’t know what was real. I didn’t know if I was…” Crazy. “And then there you both were… so young. Nori looks so like Pamela, those little golden-red curls.” My voice hardens. “I couldn’t let her go.” A pause. “Besides. Once you came through, there was never any leaving.”
“So. What? We’re trapped here?” the girl spits, a speck of saliva landing on my lip. Water from fire buried under stone. “With you?”
At least with my father, the danger was out in the open. I knew what to expect. But Auntie Cath is a different kind of dark altogether.
The worst kind.
The kind made from love.
3
he’s already here
The Creeper Man is watching you
while you think you rest
he sows discord between the two
who love each other best.