Hilltop House

Maeve, Twelve

Well, there'd been no way Maeve could let her daughter stay. Maeve had been heartbroken and furious to know her mother had been in communication with the man who'd hurt her for so many years, who still probably wanted to hurt her. The man by whom she was held hostage because of what they'd done together in those woods that one day . . .

Of course, Luce couldn't have known about that, and the old woman had, at least, sworn to Maeve that she hadn't told Cora about her father. She'd only wanted the girl to have a real family, Luce had tried to tell Maeve. A child should have the right to know her parentage! Whatever the man did, forgive him and make a family of each other! She hadn't told him about Cora, yet; it'd only been a conversation or two; she'd just begun trying to figure out where he was in life! Oh, Luce had spouted all manner of nonsense, tried to justify reaching out to Paul by claiming she'd only been doing what was morally right. Maeve had realized, at that point, how tenuous Cora's safety was. Luce had begun to lose her mind; she could no longer be trusted. And the very moment Maeve understood that, she'd taken Cora and run.

From there, she'd kept running. The two of them had been all right for a little while, moved twice in the first couple of years but then stayed put while Cora advanced through high school. During those years, Maeve had learned of her mother's death, the house fire, and though it'd saddened her that she'd broken off contact with her mother, she'd never once regretted choosing her daughter.

But by now, Paul surely knew about Cora, even if Luce hadn't been the one to tell him, and maybe the old woman had told him, after Maeve had up and run with her daughter. Even if she hadn't, though, the fact that Maeve's old friend Alyssa was presumably with Paul (or, at least, had been when Maeve had run into Nettie at Luce's funeral) . . . well, her old friend from high school had surely figured it all out. Maeve's parents had tried to hide her pregnancy and birth by sending her away for over a year, but gossip had a way of spreading, and there must have been many questions when Luce was suddenly seen raising a dark-haired little girl and Maeve had disappeared from sight. If Paul and Alyssa didn't know by now about the existence of Cora, they were both far blinder than Maeve thought, and in that case, she had no reason to worry they'd find her again.

She held no illusions that that was the case, though. Paul had found her just months ago, made an appearance at the eldercare home where she'd worked. Maeve hadn't been there at the time, thank God, but when her manager had described the man who'd come to ask about her, she'd known immediately who it was, and she'd not returned but instead packed up, bounced around a few motels with Cora, and then found their current house. Her goal had been to go far away, hours, days away. She'd have left the country had they been able. But Cora had needed a school, and she'd needed a job, and the house had been the right price . . .

If only it weren't so weird. Maeve hadn't wanted a creepy house on top of her other problems. Then again, Cora was happy, content at least. And she wasn't wearing all that harsh stuff as much, or listening to that dark music. The girl didn't seem to have the same issues with the house as she did. Whereas Maeve could hardly sleep, Cora slept like a baby, and the horrible dreams Maeve had been having hadn't touched Cora at all. But perhaps the insomnia and nightmares Maeve had were due to her past and paranoia rather than some present threat within the house.

Oh, there was just too much. The woman wished she could stick a tube into her skull and drain the clutter within. She didn't know how to think properly about anything anymore.

The cold was beginning to get to her, finally. With a sigh, Maeve stood and unlocked the door, headed inside, where a light in the kitchen, the only light Cora usually left on, cast a soft glow around the living room. The shadowy couch looked quite inviting. Maeve plopped her purse on the kitchen table, sat down and removed her shoes, then, without even bothering with pajamas or brushing her teeth or showering, she walked into the living room and practically fell onto the couch.

The silence of the house, the lack of her own movement, settled around her, and for a moment, as her heart calmed and her thoughts about her mother and daughter and about everything else began to lose their sharp edges, Maeve believed she just might be able to drift off to sleep.

Sweet, heavy blanket of relief, falling across her consciousness . . . and somewhere in the back of it all, in some distant, curtained room, the muffled cry of a baby, barely born, a faint whimper at first, and then more clear, more urgent, until it wasn't something that could be ignored. Where was it? The darkness was full of meandering hallways, connecting and dividing, and windows that offered no light but only looked out onto more windows. Where was the baby? It was desperate, frantic! It needed someone, anyone, to pick it up, cradle it, soothe it, but where was it? The baby's cries, in all their intensity, suddenly sounded different, as if someone or something was attempting to stifle the sound, as if a blanket or fingers or . . . or handfuls of dirt were covering its face . . . and she had to find it! She had to help it! The thing couldn't breathe, for God's sake! Somebody help the poor baby! But the hallways and the misshapen doors and the black-glass windows--the farther she went, the more lost she became! Then, against all reason, light bloomed in the space before her--it was a pale, sickly light, and yet light against the obscuring gloom all the same. And there, naked and twitching on the hard, cold floor, was a baby, pink and small, before it'd been alive long enough to grow plump. Though her entire body trembled with apprehension, Maeve took a step toward it, then another, but the moment her foot entered the circle of dim light, the thing froze, turned its small head, and widened its amber eyes at her.

No!

Maeve fell to her knees, and she was shaken from her dream to find herself on the hardwood floor of her dark bedroom, the only sound her own pounding heart. She stared at her splayed fingers against the floorboards and just breathed, in and out, in attempt to regain her stamina (she wasn't sure her legs would support her if she tried to stand). As she calmed, she saw something small and black cross her white pinky, then another cross her ghostly thumb, until four or five others finally caught her attention, and she lifted her hands in panic to shake off the ants.

Her vision having adjusted, Maeve stared at the insects as they moved across the floor. There wasn't an inordinate amount, but there were just enough to follow with her eyes as they disappeared beneath the floorboards, where she'd dreamt lay the thing at the root of her crumbling mind, the memory at the epicenter of her brokenness.

Maybe Cora didn't deserve any knowledge of that brokenness, after all.