I strain my ears in the silence, but all I hear is the shriek of the wind through the frozen, barren twigs outside. My bare toes curl with cold against the wooden floor, my trembling fingers like crooked icicles forming around the barrel of the gun. With a deep, shivery breath, I shoulder it and step out the door into the hall.
He can’t move so silently, so stealthily, can he?
There is nothing. No sound in the bathroom, where I heard him last. The emptiness of the house around me is infinite, swallowing me like a gnat in its great gaping maw, the eternal blackness as cold as death.
I step forward, my eyes aching with the effort of seeing in the dark hallway. A faint glow comes from the girls’ door, standing open. I closed that when I went to bed.
Didn’t I?
My finger drops onto the safety. The house falls silent between gusts of wind, and in the stillness, I can hear him breathing again. Or is it my imagination? The click of the safety lock disengaging echoes through the hall, like one pellet of freezing rain bouncing through the window and dropping to the hard floor.
I closed that door. I didn’t want them to wake my father when they cried in the night. I step forward with more confidence now, my finger curling around the trigger like an old friend. When I was a child, my father took me out hunting, taught me to sit still and be silent. A habit he instilled in me as both hunter and prey.
This time, I am the hunter.
4
My father’s back is still broad, but his shoulders are now slumped, his spine slightly bent. His shape seems grotesque as it looms over my babies, the slope-shouldered hunchback shape of a monster. A beast standing over my innocent angels, who lie sleeping in their beds, oblivious to his perverse intent.
Suddenly, I’m back in my parents’ house, but I’m not seventeen now. I’m much younger, lying awake in my bed with my father breathing heavily over me, the first time I woke and asked what he was doing. Back when he was satisfied to touch only himself and not me. That came later.
And I’m older, pretending to sleep while he takes my hand out from under the blanket and uses it like an old rag. I’m older still, again pretending to sleep while he lies beside me, pressing against my hip. I’m crying into the hollow of his hand while he finally does the deed that I’ve always known was coming, on some level, since the first time I woke to find him looming over me.
Now, as he looms over them, the white-burn flash of hatred that charges through me makes me gasp in pain at its pure, obliterating power, as if I’m being electrocuted by the current of it. Held rigid in its grasp, I level the gun at my father as he turns to face me.
“Doralice,” he says, an edge of panic in his voice. “Baby, please. I was just looking. You have to believe me.”
No. I don’t. Because it’s not just looking. It’s waiting, it’s stalking, it’s the beginning of everything in my life, starting over.
I remember Owen telling me that if he ever hurt our babies, I had better kill him.
I loved my mother. Maybe I still do. And I never blamed her for what happened, despite all Owen’s attempts to convince me otherwise. But this cycle ends here. I am not my mother.
I pull the trigger.
5
If the shot echoes, I am deaf to the sound reverberating through the house. Dimly, as if down a long tunnel, I hear the babies begin to cry. I drop the barrel of the rifle and stumble to the bed, where they are both wailing. My ears are stuffed with hot cotton.
“It’s okay,” I whisper, kissing one damp forehead and then the other, though I doubt they can hear me, either. “It’s okay. I’m here, and I’m never leaving you again. Don’t cry.” I hold them in my arms, cradling their warm bodies against my frozen one until they fall asleep again, sometime in the night. As the light begins to rise in the sky outside the window, I can make out the shape on the floor. A tear slips down my cheek, and I kiss the soft, downy heads of my girls. I will have to get rid of the body. I can only be thankful that the babies are too young to know what happened, too young to remember the night they heard a gunshot in their bedroom.
When the sun comes up, I will get up and begin the grisly task. I know just what to do with a body. I already have the white, waxy paper I’ll need to package him.
And I know I have to leave this house. Even though the neighbors probably didn’t hear the shot over the howling wind, they could have. If they woke in the night or were kept up by the eerie shrieking through the trees, they might have heard. Even if they didn’t, this is Owen’s house. It was never really mine, not even when we lived here together. It was always his house, where he took me in out of generosity or duty or love.
My father is not a local. He’s a traveling man, one who might disappear for months or years at a time. If he’d never come back to my mother, no one would have been surprised, if they even noticed. Now that she’s gone, there is no reason for him to return. People expect him to be gone one day and never return. I might just get away with this. Excitement grows inside me like hysteria.
I’ll return home to my mother’s trailer, foreign after all these years absent, but still somehow home. And Owen, when he comes home from wherever he is, will live in his own house. No one will be surprised to see me move back home. Like he said, no one will blame him for getting rid of me. If I can sneak into the trailer without being seen, I could live there for years without anyone seeing the babies. Owen will never know I have them.
He’ll come home with his new bride and make more. They will probably have the dozen he once said he wanted. They don’t need the twins like I do, won’t appreciate them the way I will. To me, they are everything. To them, they would just be two of many. To save them from that fate, I will take them away, will sign the papers and leave the house for Owen.
I’m not waiting any longer. For years, I waited for him. In high school, I waited for him to notice me. Then, I waited for him to marry me, then to become the king. I waited for him to step up and lead his people and stop straying every time a pretty girl caught his eye. I waited for him to fall back in love with me, to come back to me. But most of all, I waited for him to give me a baby.
At last he has, and I’m not about to give them back. When he gets home, I’ll be long gone. I’ll even leave him a little extra meat in the freezer.
6
It takes the better part of a week to get rid of the body and the evidence, and then to pack up our things. Every morning, I still wake with a start, sure that someone has turned into the driveway. I lie awake, straining to hear the sound of a car’s motor. Each morning, there is only silence.
But I know they are coming. Maybe it will be Owen, maybe the police, maybe a neighbor. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that life is never this easy. Sometimes, I let my guard down and think it is, only to learn my mistake when it’s too late. I get the boy I’ve always loved with seemingly no effort whatsoever, only to have it fall apart before my eyes while I’m helpless to stop it. I know better than to think I get a happy ending.
Every blessing turns out to be a curse in the end, as if I were cursed to a life of unhappiness and pain from the moment of conception. Maybe I was. But that only makes me more determined to savor each precious moment with these babies, who are now my whole heart.
When they are ready to go to our new home, I kiss their soft cheeks and lay them on the bed. I can’t imagine my life without them. Without them, it wouldn’t be life at all, but a slow death.
I’m about to put them in the carrier when a knock sounds at the front door. I freeze, listening for it to come again. Who could be knocking at my door? No car has arrived. I listen for it unceasingly, never letting my guard down. I will not be caught unaware this time. Owen wouldn’t knock on his own door, even if he’s abandoned his truck somewhere. He wouldn’t try to sneak up on me. I realize as the knock comes again that Owen doesn’t even know I have the children. Only one person knows that, and he has too much at stake to betray me.
Which means it’s someone else, perhaps th
e midwife or a nosy neighbor come to see why she heard crying. In case I need to escape quickly, I lift a baby into the basket she arrived in, now lined with a blanket in preparation for the journey. I lay the other baby beside her sister, then close the door. Maybe they will fall asleep, as they like to do in the basket while I do chores around the house.
Not only does Owen not know I have his children, he might never know. He’ll never find out who took them. I’ll disappear with them, and no one will come after me. They’ll think I’m hiding out in my old house, brokenhearted and alone. Owen’s new wife will tell him a man took them, so I will be beyond suspicion.
I have waited for and longed for these children all my life. Now that they’re mine, I’ll never let them go. I would die before I’d give them up. As I pick up the rifle and prop it beside the door within easy reach, though, I think of simple, smiling Galon. Galon will never be able to keep my secret. Not from Owen, his best friend. I should have thought of that. I should have stocked Ira’s freezer, too.
I pull open the door, ready to tell Owen I need a little time to say goodbye, so that I can slip out the window and disappear into the forest. But it’s not Owen.
Standing on the porch are two women I would recognize anywhere. Stunned, I take a step back, my fingers grasping for the rifle. And that’s when the baby starts to cry.
7
Everything happens so fast. The witch laughs, and the birth mother says, “Where are they? Where are my babies?”
She tries to push past me, but I grab the rifle before she can.
“What are you doing?” she shrieks, ducking back when I lift the muzzle and aim it at her chest.
“They’re my babies now,” I say calmly. “Where were you the past month while I’ve been taking care of them? While I was walking them, and feeding them, and washing their clothes?”
She stares at me like I’ve lost my mind. “They’re my babies,” she says.
“I’m just leaving,” I say. “I was getting them ready to go right now.”
“What are you talking about?” she asks. “You don’t take someone else’s babies!”
“Then maybe you should have taken care of them.”
The witch is standing there looking a little bored. “Where’s Owen?” she asks.
“He’s on his way,” I say. “So, I have to get out of here. You can have the house. You can have my husband. But I’m taking the babies.”
“I don’t think so,” the golden-haired woman says, grabbing the barrel of the rifle. She shoves it down like it’s nothing, a toy gun in a child’s hand, and pushes past me. Like I’m nothing, like I’m furniture. Like she didn’t hear what I said at all.
My whole life has been this moment, replayed over and over. My father, ignoring my protests. My mother, pretending it was nothing. Owen and his friends, never asking if I wanted to do what they did. Owen, refusing to listen when I said I didn’t blame my mother, that I forgave her and wanted her in my life. The midwife, telling me it happened to everyone, I had nothing to worry about. Owen, telling me that my grief was too much, that I needed to move on. Galon, refusing to take my side even after he saw how Owen treated me, after he knew what Owen was doing with this woman, after I told him Owen invaded my body and let a witch join him in whatever twisted scheme they’d cooked up.
I’m tired of being ignored. I’m tired of being told I don’t matter. I’m tired of people not taking me seriously. They’ll take me seriously now.
As she strides towards the bedroom where the babies cry, I lift the rifle, and I shoot her in the back.
8
Before I can chamber the next slug, Owen bursts through the door, naked and out of breath.
A car door slams.
A gunshot sounds outside.
I raise the rifle, ready to finish her off. If she’s gone, Owen and I can raise the babies together. I’ll have my babies and my husband. I’ll be the queen, and he’ll be the king. Without her, everything will be as it should.
But I should know better than to hope.
Another explosion sounds, and a dagger of fire pierces my body. I look down, uncomprehending. There’s a hole in my shirt. A searing pain rips through me when I try to inhale. I cough, and the fabric of my lungs tears apart. My mouth tastes bitter and sharp, as if I’ve been hiding pennies under my tongue.
And then something happens. Something is pressing down on me, suffocating me, like in my dream. I yank the rifle barrel up. If I’m going to die, she’s going with me.
Before my finger can find the trigger, an invisible force slaps the gun from my hand. It clatters to the floor even as I search the empty space around me for a sign. But whatever force made me drop the gun, it isn’t there. It’s like the witch’s voice, when it comes from inside me. This suffocation, this pain… It’s inside me.
It wrenches at some hidden part of me. I scream in shock and fury and pain. It’s as if a foreign entity is invading me, eating my soul from within.
And I’m sure then that the witch has planted something in me, something that is not a baby. Whatever she did to me back then, whatever dark seed she left inside me, it has sprouted. Like a fungus, it has grown there, poisoning me. And now it’s grown strong enough to eat its host from the inside out, to take over my body.
I scream again, trying to tear it away, to tear it loose, to get it out of me. But I don’t know how to battle an enemy that’s taken up residence inside my body. Hands close around my neck, but they’re somehow inside my throat, closing it so I can’t breathe. I scratch at them, but I can’t pry them loose, because they aren’t there, not in the physical sense. All I want is to breathe again, to draw that one life-giving breath. But I can’t.
I’m suffocating, dying, and a panic I’ve never known charges through me like an electric current. Every muscle in my body goes rigid as I scratch at my throat, shredding skin, clawing for breath. I have to get it out.
Not it. Him. It’s not a witch child inside me. It’s Owen.
It hits me like a blow to the skull. A cold clarity settles over me. I’m going to die.
After all this time, after all we’ve been through, it’s Owen. I can feel him pressing me down, slowly forcing me to the furthest corners of my mind. I know Owen. I know this feeling as surely as I’d know the touch of his body in the dark. This is Owen’s doing, Owen’s soul crushing mine. It’s Owen killing me.
I try to hold on, but he’s too strong. He’s always been stronger than me, so much stronger in every way. I’m weak, just a timid raven, no match for a mountain lion. White spots bloom and recede before the red behind my eyes, pulsing with each beat of my heart, like frost crystals forming on the clearest glass. I can’t breathe. He’s actually going to kill me this time. Now, he’s not going to. He is. He is killing me.
Something wrenches free as he wrestles for my body, crushing me out with slow but relentless force, the pressure growing with every passing moment until I can’t bear it. Somewhere inside I am screaming, but I can’t hear it.
The whiteness begins to grow, snowflakes overlapping, at first just the edges, and then… Building faster and faster, they obscure everything. The world, his hold, mine, even the pain. I can’t see. My eyes are open, but they are frozen, frost crystals covering the delicate wet surface. I’m not struggling anymore. And then I feel it, the moment I let go, the moment I sink into the snow and accept death.
They are wrong about it. Death is not blackness. It’s the purest white. Not like freshly fallen snow, when there is stillness and beauty and something else to compare it to. But white like a snowstorm that blots out all else from existence. A snowstorm that is sucking me in, tossing me relentlessly. There’s no peace and stillness in this death. It’s strife, and agony, and most of all, terror. Blind terror as I’m tossed about like a ship in a raging storm. I reach for something to hold onto, but there is nothing.
My body releases its last hold on me, and I tumble away into the void. I am the raven queen, a soul as black as the feathers of my wing
s, lost in a storm of everlasting, frozen white.
The End.
This concludes the story of Doralice. If you enjoyed it, please consider leaving an honest review.
If you haven’t read the other books in the Three Valleys world, I recommend starting with Girl Among Wolves complete trilogy and reading on from there. You might even catch a glimpse of Doralice’s ghost if you look closely!
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Excerpt from
Unlikely Magic, Girl Among Wolves 1
(A Dark Cinderella Retelling).
About Unlikely Magic
Devastated by her father’s sudden death, Stella barely protests being shipped off to live in a secluded forest encampment with the mother she never knew. Upon arrival, things go from bad to downright creepy. Everyone in the cultish community stares at her like she’s a mutant, including the two sisters her father failed to mention in her fourteen years, and her mother promptly locks her in the attic. Her only companions are a mouse and fantasies of befriending her own sisters.
Desperately lonely, Stella watches from the window as her family leaves for a night each month to attend mysterious “lunar meetings.” While they are gone to one of these meetings, Stella escapes the attic, only to discover why her mother has kept her locked up since her arrival—the entire community is made up of werewolves. Intensely protective of their privacy, they would do anything to keep their secret from outsiders…outsiders like Stella. Once she knows their secret, she must fight for her freedom...and her life.
The Raven Queen: Fairy Tales of Horror (Villain Stories Book 1) Page 11
