The Sullivan Cottage
November 15, 2020
A faceless moon hung in the sky.
It was nothing more than a faint silver ring facing a different world, out of reach, comforting arms elsewhere, wherever it needed to be. Though I’d seen the moon like this many times, on this night it somehow, like a door, flung open my heart, breathed across my bones, and haunted my soul.
While it had its back to me, the new moon was guarded by stars. Some dimming and dying—a midnight graveyard. Others bright and alive—a work of smashed art.
I couldn’t tear my eyes away.
“Adora,” Ivy called. “Close the window.”
I flinched, breaking free from my stupor, and closed the window, locking out the wind that felt like an icy eternity. It was time.
Even though Ivy was angry with me, she began to sing to me while I lay wedged between her and Fable on the attic floor. Like Mom, her voice was a balm to my restless mind, and each night she’d sing it kept me from sleepwalking in the middle of the night.
The sage we’d burned drifted in the air, black candles flickered on the antique furniture, and black salt circled the pile of pillows and blankets. We’d done this ritual each night since the Shadows came, knowing it couldn’t keep us safe. The Shadows were unconquerable, but we found a sort of comfort in our new nightly routine. It gave us hope.
After Ivy and Fable fell asleep, fear never allowed me to close my eyes. But even with my eyes open, the nighttime could still take on sardonic faces; scornful smiles, sneering eyes, and sharp fangs gleaming from the dark corners of the attic. I clutched my silver chain against my chest and rubbed the metal prong with my splintered finger, my gaze latching on to Dad.
He was sitting at a table by the window with a giant magnifying glass, constructing a topsail schooner ship to fit inside a glass liquor bottle. Each time a scream penetrated the window, it aways caused Dad’s fingers to flinch. I wanted to squeeze my eyes closed but never could. Every cry hit me in the chest.
There was nothing we could do to save them.
A sort of selfishness consumed me, silently thanking the Shadows for not choosing my family. So far, they’ve been kept safe, and I didn’t know how long that would continue.
And for the first time, I wished the Shadows would take me to grant me freedom from this marriage. That way, I could die knowing Ivy still loved me in the way a sister should. Since my plan was falling apart, it seemed to be the easiest way out. “The Shadows took her,” Dad would tell the neighbors.
“Just before her wedding? What a shame,” they would say.
My poor sister, Ivy would think. She died young and refused to marry Cyrus until her dying breath. Why couldn’t I see that until now?
A smile coasted along my lips just before a gut-wrenching shatter pulled me from the mattress. I sat up fully in bed. It was the kind of ringing shatter that, as soon as you heard it, you knew was a sound that could never be forgotten. One that would haunt the silence.
Dad and I exchanged panicked glances.
It sounded as if it had come from next door. “What was that?”
“I’m not sure,” he whispered, but I didn’t trust his tone. It was sad. Knowing.
Then another clamor came.
It was from next door.
I got to my knees, my heart racing in my chest. “It’s Mrs. Madder.” An image of Mrs. Madder standing on her porch steps—the place I’d left her—entered my mind. “We have to help her, Dad. She’s all alone.”
The look on Dad’s face stopped me. His jaw was fastened tight, and he flexed it with wide eyes that said don’t move. Then he slowly shook his head.
Another scream pierced the attic walls and ripped past us.
I jumped to my feet and beelined for the attic door.
I didn’t know if the scream was because of people from the westside or the Shadows. I didn’t know, but I had to get to her. If it were desperate and dangerous people from the west side, and she died because I’d been rude and said horrible things only hours earlier, it would all be my fault.
Before my hand could touch the doorknob, Ivy’s arms came around me and pulled me back. Dad, like a shield, slid in front of me to block the door, arms stretched out and his tall, slender frame as solid as a steel pole.
“Let me go!” I clawed at Ivy’s arms, trying to kick her away from me.
I imagined Mrs. Madder locked inside her dream. In my mind, the sound I’d first heard was her bedside lamp crashing to the floor after her body fell out of the bed, bumping into the nightstand. I imagined five tall, black ghosts surrounding her unconscious silhouette.
Mrs. Madder’s scream ricocheted. I’d imagined them having her in an invisible chokehold and forcing her to see the fears she had buried in her soul. Maybe it was a fear of birds, their black inky wings flapping, the sound of wind slapping against her ears. Or maybe it was the fear of someone breaking into her home, like the westside coming in with bats and knives and tying her to a wobbly wooden chair. Then I imagined them beating her senseless. Leave no witnesses behind, one of them would say. Dead people can’t talk. And with the last blow, I pictured one leg of the wooden chair snapping in half, sending Mrs. Madder to the ground. They kicked and used their bats repeatedly until she could never talk again.
The thought of it all threw my body forward at Dad, but Ivy yanked me back. “There’s nothing you can do, Adora, stop!” Ivy screamed with her body pinned to mine. Tears flowed like desperate rain on my shoulders as she cried.
Mrs. Madder’s terrifying screams thrashed in our ears and mixed with the chaos.
Fable was crouching in the corner of the room with her hands over her ears and her eyes squeezed shut.
I tried to unlatch Ivy’s hands, but she was much stronger.
“Let me get to her!”
“No, I can’t let you do that.” Her voice was weak, and she squeezed me tighter against her chest. I kicked backward, my heel colliding with her knee, but Ivy didn’t buckle. “I know, Adora. I know you want to save her, but there’s nothing we can do.”
Dad didn’t move from the door. He didn’t drop his hands.
Fable’s eyes didn’t open.
Ivy didn’t let me go. She wouldn’t.
I shouted and fought, and she would not let me go.
The four of us did all these things, and it carried on like this until Mrs. Madder stopped screaming.
And when all was quiet, I turned quiet too.
But anger roared inside me, pulling tears until I found myself clenching my fists to keep them at bay. My fingernails sliced open the scabs, and blood was wet inside my palms, but I kept squeezing. My tears clung to my lashes. They never fell. They just hung there like jeweled ghosts.
“I’m so sorry, girls,” Dad chanted, coming from behind and stroking the back of my head. “I’m sorry it has to be like this. The Heathens should have never broken that damn curse.”