[1864] A Mother's Love

Here is a link to my critique [2010]

Here is my story:

Something watches me at night.

When my dad gets up to meet the day’s work, light traces the frame of my closed door. I was sleeping alone, apart from my parents, for the first time. The light is a comforting reminder that they are still here, even if they’re not next to me. Some days the door was cracked open, and the light flooded in further. That was the first time I noticed it.

It started slowly, the tiniest movement in the corner of my eye, where there was a painting of a woman. She had small beady eyes, and a sharp pointed nose. Her chin was boxed, the sides of her face angled. Every night, her eyes would search the room hungrily, until they fell on me, and she would smile.

By the time the sun rose, she would limp out of frame, with janky jagged movements. The sun had not yet risen, and so she watched me still.

The intensity of her stare, those hollowed pits, made me want to wake my mum, in the room across, but I knew what she would say. She would insist I had found my way into my father’s study, read one of his books on some decrepit subject, and insist he lock it every night. The library was in the farthest corner of our home and my father made sure I knew I wasn’t allowed in. Though I didn’t see why I should walk all the way to the library when we had a perfectly good one at home.

Especially since we were usually the new family in town. Every couple years we moved to another city, in another province. My dad made it sound exciting; it was a compromise. Instead of travelling to those overcrowded tourist hotspots, we toured the Canadian landscape at a fraction of the cost. Eventually, it came to mean less exciting things, new faces, new teachers, new bullies. At some point you just stop trying to make friends.

My teachers seemed to pick up on that, maybe desperately latching onto something they could mention in report cards, but to no avail. The inky ‘A’s and ‘Excellent’s left no room for uncomfortable observations about my antisocial tendencies. The only person who ever visited me was a strange older woman after school. She told me she had a son in my year, but when the lunch lady saw her, she left in a hurry. This news spread to my homeroom teacher, who was very concerned. Of course she was…

Notes turned to letters, to emails, to phone calls – which finally could count on being answered.

“Harry?” My mother’s voice cut through the early Sunday morning air. I listened half asleep. “Would you come in here a moment?”

Through my door, I saw him leave his study, irate and on edge. The door was wide open behind him.

Suddenly, I wasn’t so tired.

What was in there that I wasn’t supposed to see? I was turning twelve, and I was sure whatever it was, had to be tamer than half of the horror flicks I’d seen without them knowing.

I was already on my feet, creeping across the hallway, peeking to see if they had seen me. No, they craned in on each other, speaking into an open receiver. I slipped in through the door,

I still heard snippets of their conversation.

“You’re being stupid,” Mum sounded angry, she must have hung up,

“We need to find another place, somewhere else,”

“It’s because we move so often that he has no friends,”

So many books, all of them obscure. I couldn’t pronounce half of the titles, but they had pictures of pentagrams and mirrors with disturbing reflections. There was a large empty canvas hung on the wall, and underneath it a table and candles.

Footsteps. Argument was over. I scurried away from the peculiar titles, moments after he walked by the entrance. I slipped into my room and hoped he hadn’t seen me. Sometime later, Mum noticed the study door ajar, another argument ensued this time in forced whispers.

I knew the talk would come eventually. My teachers had brought the woman up several times, warning me not to speak to her again.

It took longer than I expected though. For what it was worth, my father was growing more and more unwell. Was it because he didn’t know what to say? Did he feel responsible for alienating his only daughter, and having her grow up friendless and alone? He was spending more time in his study. When we saw him next, he had been there for days.

“I live,” he said in mock surprise. I laughed, breaking the tension somewhat. My mother’s lips thinned,

“You don’t smell like it,” she said, but seized the opportunity to feed him after his recluse. “Do you plan on showering this week?”

“I do,” he said seriously, his eyes didn’t linger on the food. That brief attempt to lighten the mood was gone. He looked at me, “Let me drop you off at school today, your mom could use a break,”

The rest of the meal went by in friendly conversation. Light prodding banter was undermined by an air of a thousand questions that could not be asked while I was in the room.

Once we were in the car, there was silence. He checked every mirror twice as we backed out. Mum watched us through the window.

“How has school been?”

“It’s been alright,”

“Any friends?”

There it was. I didn’t say anything. He sighed,

“We have to talk about the woman you met at school,” he said,

“I haven’t seen her since that day,” that was the truth,

“You will. Whether you want to or not. She’s the reason we keep moving.” There was a definite hesitation before he continued, “She has followed us across four provinces. Please promise me, you will not approach or speak to her,”

I felt thrill web out from my heart. I had not expected that. She had seemed so sweet, and so caring. It felt like we genuinely got along and talking to her had really made me feel just the tiniest bit less alone.

“I promise,” I said, and he sighed with relief,

He wasn’t the only one. Honestly, after what I’d seen in his study, and the strange way he’d been acting lately, I was worried he was going insane. But no, he was just scared, and for good measure too. I was glad he told me, I felt united with him against this new threat.

“Can’t we just call the police?” I asked as I got out of his car,

“They can’t help,” he said, the manic look in his eye again. My heart sunk just a little, “You and me are the only ones who can see her,”

I spent most of that day wondering if the woman was a real threat or if my dad was crazy. The ride back home was in silence, my answers to my dad’s questions were curt. I went straight to bed and felt my erratic breathing break into heavy sobs.

I cried myself to sleep but during those last wakeful moments, I realized I wasn’t the only one crying.

My father drove me to school every day now. My mother always watching from the window, increasingly worried.

I hadn’t seen the woman again though. The teachers had all been alerted about the strange woman frequenting the school yard and attracting minors. She was not a parent of any of the children who attended the school. We had an assembly that day, warning us about enticing strangers.

That was the day I saw her again. She was dressed differently, and not on school property, but I had wandered a little bit away from the yard while I waited for my dad to arrive.

“Hello,” she smiled broadly. I jumped, but she reached out to grab me. Tears worked into my eyes, I screamed –

“Please stop – My name is Ann with the Sudbury Star,” I squirmed to escape her grasp.

“I don’t believe you – “

“You don’t have to – but there are families spanning over four provinces and eight cities looking for their children and –“

“Let me go!”

“ – Do you know anything about the whereabouts of – “

I wrenched free of her arm and ran, she shouted after me –

“Beth & Ellie Haverford! Susan Collins! Lucy –“

My father pulled in and I jumped into his car, slamming the door behind me. My father looked alarmed,

“Drive,” I shouted,

He drove, but swivelled his head to frown at the woman screaming after me.

“Who was that?”

I stared at my dad, and stammered out a lie that he believed…He didn’t recognize her.

He grew more isolated over the next few days, while I wondered if what the woman had told me was true. The names….they were familiar. I was sure they had belonged to at least a couple of the neighbourhoods we had moved to.

Me and mum ate dinner alone,

“Your father isn’t well,” she all but whispered,

“I know,” I said,

She looked through me– as if I wasn’t even there. “Go check on him, will you?”

I rose from the table, and towards the study. It was unlocked.

“What? What is it?” he snapped, the second he saw me,

The canvass on the wall was no longer empty. It was adorned with the gaunt figure of the lady from the painting, the one who watched me sleep.

But surrounding it…surrounding it was far worse.

“Mum just wanted me to – tell you she loves you,” I amended,

His eyes softened only slightly, but then widened in something like fury –

“What are you doing in my study,” he looked back at the painting of the woman, who was suddenly smiling. She was surrounded by portraits of disfigured children.

My father began to scream, that I shouldn’t be here, that I would be seen, but I couldn’t take my eyes off of the girl chained to his desk. She had my hair, it was cut almost exactly to resemble it. Her eyes were the same color, her clothes taken from my wardrobe, and her face was screwed in horrible, utmost fear as her body was raked with silent sobs.

My voice was very small, fragile, “Dad…what did you do?”

I backed away, staring past the foul abuses he slung at me. He called me ungrateful, unworthy of his protection, he swore and screamed. I backed into the door, but it was shut. I tried to turn the knob, but it would not turn.

“I’m sorry sweetie,” Mum whispered from the other side, “But we can’t live like this anymore,”

The lady in the painting, reached outside the borders of her canvas. Her smile tore open her skin, from ear to ear. I watched her tear the veins and intestines out from the girl chained to her altar, before she made towards me. I pulled on the doorknob, begging my mother to let me in as she was sobbing on the other side, right up until the very last moment when I felt its breath on my neck.