CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

1800s |Town of Oakwood

 

Sophia arrived home just in time for Ophelia to start to walk. She had become so enraged that the doctors decided to admit her for a longer stay and evaluation. According to them, she was cured and perfectly capable of caring for her family once again. They called what she had been afflicted with, pregnancy psychosis.

Not long after her return home, Sophia and Abel were expecting another child. Ophelia was thriving, and all seemed well. The months flew by, the pregnancy going smoothly, the townspeople visiting on occasion, but for the most part people still believed her to be a witch. The latest gossip was that Sophia would slowly drain the children in her house of their youth, in order for herself to stay young and beautiful. Abel of course dispelled the gossip as fast as it sprung up, but women in town still liked to talk.

Once little Oliver was born, Abel was overjoyed. He had a son, a beautiful wife, and wonderfully curious little girl; nothing could go wrong in his world. Sophia once again free from the restraints of pregnancy, began cooking and caring for the family as she always had. She woke early to prepare soups, and pastries for the children and she would send Abel to his office with fruit filled pies. Abel, lacking a sweet tooth, would often give the sweet treats to his workers.

Sophia, being paranoid that things would go wrong if she let her children out of her site, began to keep them with her at all times. She had begun to see Olivette around the property. Knowing it was just a hallucination, she would promptly drink a small glass of whiskey and go about her duties. She had seen Olivette while she was in the hospital as well. The doctors would shock her brain in order to hold the visions at bay. They were back. Sophia was sure this was Olivette’s promise to her years ago to make her pay.

It took a while, but Abel soon realized that he was losing more and more workers to a plague that seemed to have taken up home in the village. People were sick, and dying, but only those that worked in the Mayor’s office. Abel was worried. He sent everyone home and locked down the village, no one in or out until the sickness was gone. One by one, his staff members died, all with the same symptoms as Olivette and Timothy had when they died. The townspeople, knowing what the deaths of the children looked like, as the priest had told them in many sermons, began to blame Sophia for the sickness.

Abel attempted to dispel those rumors as well, but no one else had fallen ill since the village shut down, the only new illness was little Ophelia. She was beginning to look pale, and weakness had taken over her small body. Abel tore through the house, looking for any clue as to what afflicted his small girl, hoping it would leave his son alone. He decided then to spy on his wife, to see if the rumors might be true. Was he in fact married to a witch?

Abel waited until the town was safe to open, and then he told Sophia that he was needed out of town on important business. He retreated to the darkness of the basement to wait. Sophia woke, as normal and began to make food for the day, while the children played outside. Abel watched from the basement stairs; the door slightly cracked as his wife prepared the food.

Sophia made soup and stews over the fire, as she did every day though as she was finishing the vegetables, Abel watched as she threw a small handful of beans into the pots. As she ventured out to check on the children, Abel went to examine the beans. They were ordinary beans. There were however some mixed into the bag that were strange looking to him.

Was she poisoning their family with a weird looking bean? Abel waited as Sophia prepared the tarts for the day. The children, especially Ophelia, loved the berry tarts. The same ones Abel often took to work, and gave his men, who in turn took them home to share with their families. Sophia pulled a stalk of berries from a basket on the counter, they were blackberries. Mixed in were some red berries as well, and Abel recognized them. As a child he was taught what things to eat and what things to stay away from while traveling through the wilderness, and those red berries were poisonous.

Abel threw himself through the door, smashing into a startled Sophia. He ripped the berries from her hands and demanded to know where she had gotten them. Sophia, shaking pointed to the woods.

“Olivette showed them to me years ago, she said they were her father’s favorite but they were bitter so they should be mixed with blackberries to sweeten them up.” Sophia stuttered as she spoke, shaking from fear.

Abel then reached into his wife’s apron pocket and pulled out a small pile of small beans. He inspected them closely. He had learned of them from the natives that lived throughout the wilderness. These beans, while he had never seen them in person, were so poisonous that just three to four beans could kill an adult in minutes. Sophia had been adding one or two of them to the soups for taste at the request of Olivette for years, as well. So, the effects had been diluted.

Abel was livid. He shook Sophia, accusing her of killing all the children, and the townspeople. He accused her of murdering her brother, and his niece.

“How dare you blame my niece!” he growled. “She is dead if you haven’t noticed. You, however, are as healthy as a fat mare.” Abel was enraged.

Sophia, fearing for her life, fell to the floor and slid away from her husband. She ran down the steps of the basement, dropping cooking utensils from her apron into the dirt as she went. Abel followed. He caught Sophia as she attempted to access the staircase to the attic, which had long since been completely sealed off.

Sophia screamed, telling Abel that she had no intention of killing anyone, that she simply wanted to boost their bodies natural defenses by cooking for them herself. She argued that Olivette had in fact given her the items first. She simply left them with small notes of kindness on the counter after her nightly ventures. Olivette wanted them in her food as well. Sophia asked Abel to forgive her.

“Olivette would never poison herself,” Abel yelled.

Abel was sickened. He dragged his wife up the steps, through the house and up to the room that he knew she coveted. The room with the cabinet of dolls and the telescope. He threw her inside and locked the door, deciding to deal with her when he calmed himself.

Abel went to the kitchen, took a long swig of whiskey, and went to find his children. His beautiful daughter Ophelia lay on a blanket in the grass, her little brother playing gently with her hair, she looked to be asleep.

As he got closer, Abel saw the berries that he had taken from his wife in the kitchen. Ophelia must have wandered into the kitchen after hearing them yelling and grabbed the berries. Her lips were red, her fingers blue, and she had tears of blood falling down her sweet little cheeks. Oliver sat, playing with his dead sisters’ hair.

Abel vomited at the sight of his daughter, dead. He picked up her small body and carried her to the woods, where he laid her with her other relatives, all murdered by Sophia, the woman that was supposed to care for them. No one need know, he thought.

His sadness quickly turned to vengeance for his brother, niece and now his baby girl. He set little Oliver in his bassinet, and proceeded to the locked room, to deal with Sophia. He entered the room only to find her swinging from the light, her face blue and her neck broken. She had hung herself with the strings of her apron.

Abel took a deep breath, and walked to the telescope, through it he saw the blanket where Ophelia had been with little Oliver. He knew then that Sophia had watched from the window as their daughter died.

Abel took Sophia’s body and threw her into the pond, rocks attached to her legs and watched as she sake to the bottom. In his eyes, she did not deserve to be buried by the children she had murdered.

Going back to the house, he burned whatever he could find of Sophia’s, erasing her from existence. Abel then destroyed all the evidence of his family. He went room to room taking anything that was personal, leaving only furniture and small traces that anyone had ever lived there. When he came to the Library, his office, Abel was torn. Books should never be burned. He instead searched from book spine to book spine looking for anything tied to his family. Albums, journals, or newspapers.

Once he was sure that there was nothing else to destroy, Abel Oakley took his son and disappeared into the night. The townspeople knew nothing about the deaths of Sophia, or Ophelia. They simply knew that the family that resided in Oakley house was forever gone without a trace.