Hilltop House

Maeve, Nine

By the time Maeve got home, she was sure she'd been too late to thwart any trouble her daughter may have gotten into, and seeing a strange car parked in front of the house only exacerbated her worries. She'd told Cora he couldn't stay! So what was his car doing there? Because of course it was that boy's car--or . . . was it? The closer Maeve drew to the end of her street, the deeper her stomach sank. What was that car? It was black, something like a mustang, but an old one, maybe from the 80s . . . no. No. It wasn't. The vehicle was definitely newer than that, just beat up, which had aged it. It just looked similar to a familiar car, one she hoped to never see again.

When she pulled into the driveway, Maeve couldn't look back at the boy's car (Cora hadn't even told her mother his name). She went straight to the front door and went inside. Everything was dim and quiet, draped in shadow, the very faint ticking of a clock the only thing she heard. So if he were inside, they'd surely gone to sleep. Maeve's throat went dry. The thought of her daughter--with some likely degenerate--not in her house! Not thinking rationally, Maeve turned on the lights in the kitchen and living room, quickly found that there was no one there, then steeled herself to go into her daughter's room. Hesitating for a brief moment outside the door, not only because she was scared of what she'd see inside (Cora couldn't be as foolish as she had been, right? Not after all their conversations!) but also because, well, she always shivered a little walking past that door, she gathered her courage and pushed through.

Maeve's immediate impression was that, somehow, she'd dipped underwater. Cora's room was bathed in ethereal lighter-than-dark-but-darker-than-light ripples, which moved across her walls and ceiling in a sort of soft undulating motion. And the air itself was perfect in temperature, even somewhat moist, like a sea breeze. At first disconcerted, Maeve looked to her daughter's bureau and found that music box she'd gifted her, open and turning. No music came from it, but the light show . . . apparently the trinket also created light. Stepping toward it, Maeve put out a trembling hand and snapped the crystal box shut, which put an end to the strange luminescence.

The woman remembered why she'd come into the room and looked to her daughter's bed. In the glow of a nightlight, she saw Cora lying on top of her covers, that thrifted nightgown she'd been weirdly proud to find when they'd gone shopping several weeks back. The girl looked like the corpse of Snow White, skin as pale as her white bedding, hair pitch black in the darkness. Her daughter really was quite beautiful, in a deceptively fragile way, Maeve reflected. She looked like her father--

Maeve put a hand to her lips, closed her eyes, caught a flutter in her breath. Her chin began to quiver.

Whatever her daughter looked like, there was no one else in the room. She even pushed herself to glance beneath the bed and in the closet, maybe mostly to divert her thoughts, before she left, closing the door gently behind her.

Cora was alone. Thank God for that. But then why was the car outside? The basement. Of course. Cora had probably told him to sleep downstairs. That was preferable to him being anywhere near her daughter, but it still angered Maeve. They'd had a lot of time to be together without her (which was largely her fault), and a lot could happen in just a few hours. Waking him didn't bother her. Her brief panic attack had subsided and been replaced with a rush of adrenaline. So she flipped on the lights and descended the stairs indifferent to the creaks and groans of the boards. The basement wasn't by any means nice, but it was habitable, full of a lot of boxed junk she'd probably never unpack. But the minute Maeve reached the bottom of the stairs, she easily saw, even as poorly-lit as the basement was, that there wasn't anyone down there. At least, no one where she thought he'd be--asleep on a couch. The woman just stood, moving her eyes slowly across the space, unwilling to go too far into the shadows, and she was about to go back up satisfied when she felt a noticeable breath of cool air across her neck and face.

Lifting a hand to her cheek, Maeve turned back toward the depths of the basement, disconcerted. Nervous but curious, she retraced her steps and passed the safe middle of the basement, went farther into the back where the furnace was, and the water heater, behemoths with their grimy pipes and dials. There was also a drain somewhere; Maeve heard moisture dripping into it. Truthfully, she'd never quite examined the depths of the basement, which ran the length of the house. It wasn't all that big, but it smelled weird, and dead bugs were surely crusting in the gray corners. Something told her to go up and get a flashlight so she could peer into the very back, but before she could do so, Maeve caught sight of one of the hopper windows. There were four total--two on either long side of the house, and the one toward the back left corner was, unsettlingly, open.

They pulled inward, the windows. They were wide enough for a lean person to fit through, probably . . . but why was one open? She'd have wondered about a raccoon, or a strong wind, or some weird quirk of her potentially shifting house, but one thing Maeve knew for certain was that on the day they'd moved in, she'd gone through and made sure all potential modes of entry were secured.

Apprehensive, Maeve managed to reach up and shut the window, her body shaking the whole while. Just as she re-locked the latch, a dark form brushed against the glass, sending her stumbling backward with a gasp.

Not a person, not a person, she reassured herself, seeing the shape was small and skittery. Just a raccoon or possum.

Still, she felt compelled to be sure. Back up she went, turning off the basement light. Pulling her phone from her pocket, Maeve turned on its flashlight and stepped cautiously out the back door. She'd just been outside, in the front, and nothing had looked scary. She knew her thoughts were racing because of all the memories and suspicions she was constantly attempting to shove aside, but if he had found her, she needed to know; her responsibility was to Cora, no matter how fearful she was for herself.

The patch of grass and weeds they'd been sold as a "quaint backyard" was hovering in a strange hue, effect of a distant sunrise whose color had been filtered into a murky aqua. A cursory shine of her light told Maeve no immediate threat was in the vicinity. The brush at the edge of the yard, which pushed into a copse that went back farther than she'd explored, had lost its foliage and was easy to see through for quite a distance. Nothing moved within it that she could tell. But when the woman turned her phone toward the back of the house, toward the hopper window that'd been open, she saw something--more than one somethings--moving there. Animals. Small enough that they didn't particularly worry her . . . but how many were there? And what were they doing there?

Maeve tried to shine her light on them, but her hand was so unsteady that she dropped her phone. The sound caused some movement and hissing amongst the animals, and as she crouched down and frantically searched for her device, her heart beat wildly between her ears. Were they coming toward her?

But no, she found her device and shone it directly toward the window where she could clearly make out two things: first, a quickly scattering troupe of orb-eyed, bony cats, and second, a body, face-down on the ground.