Little Hidden Darknesses
Nineteen:

“Was a murderer, to be precise,” Branka said from where she leaned against the fireplace mantel – a dangerous spot for someone with such a short temper. The outside of her arm grazed a vase of roses, next to which balanced a bottle with a boat inside of it, and three crystal balls.

Freya turned her head and hissed, “Branka!”

“What, sis? Piper’s dead, isn’t she? I merely think we ought to be grammatically correct.”

“Grammatically correct?” Freya shut her eyes and pinched the bridge of her long, pointy nose. “You know what, Branka. You’re the most arrogant, self-centred person on this island.”

“Oh?” Branka spat in return, and the vase of roses dangerously wobbled. “I’m the self-centred one?”

I watched as the two of them bickered on, my mum’s name ringing off their tongues as if it was nothing. As if she was nothing. But she probably wasn’t. Not to them, anyway. She ought to have left the island before Freya could even walk. To them, she was but a name.

A face in a picture that used to be on their wall.

“Stop it,” I muttered.

No response.

“Please, stop talking.”

Still nothing.

“I said stop it, damnit!” The words left my mouth as an echo, a distant sound at the back of my head. My ears rang and my heart thrummed in my throat, Lilith’s words playing over and over in my mind. She murdered my husband, Leonardo. Your mother is a murderer.

No. She wasn’t.

Not the Piper Vinsant I knew.

“Shut the fuck up!”

Freya and Branka at once silenced. They first turned to Lilith and Genevieve – both of whom still stared at me as though I was an animal at a zoo – then to Aillard, who had traded his post at the door for a view of the forest through a screen in the thick, velvet curtains.

“Well then,” said Branka when no one else did. Her ebony eyes glittered in the firelight, two sizzling coals. She upturned her mouth. “Look who decided to unleash her inner fire.”

“I don’t believe you,” I went on, ignoring her comment. “You’re making this up to hurt me.”

“Ha!” Branka scoffed. “Talk about amateur hour. Do you honestly expect so little from us?”

“Branka Alexandra Vinsant, that was the last of it. If you can’t contain yourself, you’re welcome to leave.” Lilith motioned to the door, and I couldn’t help but glance toward it. My freedom. But when Branka merely crossed her arms again, Lilith tilted her chin, pursed her lips and took a short, calculated step toward me. “Eira, I know this is painful –”

“You’re all lying!” My eyes burned in their sockets, yet no tears emerged. I rubbed them, only to realise they were itching, throbbing, scratching. Forcing me to blink rapidly.

What the heck?

I reversed across the carpet to the door. Aillard attempted to block me, but Lilith showed her hand at him – “Leave her.” – and he fell back to the windows again, his jaw tensed.

“Why should I believe you, when you’ve been so horrible to me?” My eyes darted from Aillard, to Lilith, to Genevieve, to Freya, to Branka. I searched for any sign of deceit across their faces, any weakness in their façade. When I couldn’t replace any, my lips started to quiver.

No. There was no way.

I had seen murderers on the news before. I had looked into their eyes, seen their empty souls.

My mum was nothing like them. She just wasn’t ...

“Dearest Eira,” Lilith went on, her voice having regained its melodiousness, “on behalf of the family, I sincerely apologise. Not just for how we treated you, but for not believing in you.”

Branka’s mouth snapped open to contest, however her mum raised a single finger and she shut up. Something of a growl escaped her lips, both of which were screwed into a knot.

As much as I hated admitting it, I understood how she felt. Lilith’s apology meant nothing to me. She had just accused my mum – my hero – of murder. And this after having pretended not to know her. After having manipulated the entire town into forgetting she existed. How, I had no idea. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to know. Not with two boys already missing.

Dead, most likely.

“We thought you knew about it all,” said Lilith. “We thought you had come here under the influence of lies. Confusion. We thought you had come to seek revenge on the family.”

A pause.

“To finish what your mother had started.”

The audacity. I was sickened by it, absolutely revolted. Did she really think I would believe her? That just because she apologised and explained their actions, everything was alright?

I reversed a couple more steps toward the door, just in case she was setting up a trap – in case all five of them charged at me. Attacked me. Slit my throat in order to shut me up.

“But,” Genevieve added, “now that we know about your innocence, we can be a family.”

This was it. The final red flag.

“What?” I spat. “You’ve got to be joking, right?”

Genevieve wasn’t. I thought I saw a single tear roll down her pale and wrinkly cheek, however I couldn’t be sure within the fire’s hazy glow. “Oh Piper – I mean Eira, please –”

“The answer’s no.”

“No?” her voice broke and she brought her hand to her mouth. Lilith pulled her closer, embracing her. Doing this – compressing her body – made her resemble a sack of bones, all wrapped up in a sheet of frilly satin, and brought together by what barely passed for skin.

In fact, she reminded me of the skull on Mrs. Perez’s reception desk. Except I liked the fake skull more.

“I came here in search of my family,” I said. “I wanted a place to call home, people to fall in love with. But none of you are people. I could never love you. And we could never be family.”

This proved enough to cause Genevieve to collapse. Lilith escorted her to the sofa, after which Freya and Branka laid her down, neither particularly happy about what I did to her.

But I didn’t do anything. And she was likely faking it. Trying to persuade me of how they had changed for the better. How, instead of kicking me out, they were inviting me in.

“You’re the killers, not my mum.”

“Eira, stop it,” Lilith warned. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’ve got no idea.”

“Oh, I think I do.”

Before Lilith had a chance to respond, our attention turned to Aillard – “Mother, have a look at this.” – who yanked open the curtains and took a step back. Sunlight cast into the drawing room, all the way across the floorboards and onto the concealed painting on the wall behind us. I didn’t understand what was happening at first, but knew by his smug expression it couldn’t be good. And it wasn’t good at all. Not the slightest bit.

It started out as a thin, smoky wisp, then grew into a cloud, a mass of dense, grey-white smog.

I watched with horror as the fog wafted through the open window into the drawing room. Every tendril, carefully crawling down the side of the wall and onto the floor, stalking me.

Even though I knew it couldn’t kill me, I bounded back, right against the door. It rattled in the threshold from the impact, the wood pressing surprisingly cold against my back.

“Stop that,” I commanded when the fog just kept coming.

Branka merely giggled. “Oh, honey,” she said, licking hungrily across her front teeth, “we’re not the ones doing this.”

Aillard was the first to make contact. He let the fog spill around his ankles and rise up to his hands, setting every inch of his bare skin alight. Even the veins under his clothes shone through, molten fire coursing through his body, all the way into his now golden eyes.

“W – What do you mean you’re not doing it?” I asked. “You have to. It has to be one of you!”

Lilith outstretched her hand, her long, bony fingers. The tip of her longest nail touched the fog, and it sailed toward her, across her. She lit up like Aillard, although her glow wasn’t as bright. Neither was Genevieve’s. In fact, hers looked but a mere spark under her skin. An oil lamp at the break of dawn. Freya and Branka followed next, both by Lilith’s side now.

They were all like me. Or was I like all of them? Aillard, Lilith, Genevieve, Freya and Branka. The Vinsants. They stared at me with their fiery eyes, trying to infiltrate my soul.

Intimidate me, maybe.

But I had had enough of this. “Whatever this is, whatever freaks you are, I’m not like you.”

“Oh, but you are.” Upon these words, Lilith extended her hands above her head and each of the Vinsants followed. She cocked her head at me and added, “Branka was right. You’re the one doing this.” A pause. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t contribute.”

Just as I was about to contest some more, all of their arms snapped down, sending the entire mass of fog directly at me. I screamed, yet the need to do so left my body the moment my skin began to glow. I couldn’t see anything in the room, save for their luminescent outlines.

“Do you feel us?” Lilith asked, her voice echoing from both everywhere and nowhere.

“Because we feel you,” Branka added.

And I did feel them. Each and every pulse of their hearts. Their feelings, emotions, power.

“We can teach you everything about our world. About who we are, who you are, and that we have to do,” Lilith offered. “But only if you just agree to become a part of our family.”

“To fill your mother’s place,” Freya explained.

But she shouldn’t have said that. The moment she did, it was as though I jerked awake.

“No,” I managed to say, despite my entire body thinking otherwise. And as the word left my mouth, the fog around me began to fade, retreating across the drawing room. Whatever peace I had just experienced, whatever strength and hope and energy, also faded.

Lilith narrowed her eyes at me. “Eira?”

“I don’t want to be like you. Like any of you.” I searched behind my back for the door handle, my fingers struggling to grasp the slippery crystal. “I don’t want to be a monster!” And with this, I yanked open the door and set off down the corridor. I struggled to see, as the sun no longer shone through the glass ceiling, and not a light flickered elsewhere in the mansion. Only when I entered the foyer did my eyes adjust to the dark.

I made a line for the front door and tested the handle. Yes. Unlocked. I opened it on a screen, just as a voice stared up behind me. It didn’t startle me, no. It scared me out of my mind. So much so, I couldn’t bring myself to turn, to face the woman whose husband my mum supposedly murdered. Unfortunately, though, I couldn’t bring myself to move either.

Her voice froze me in place, the sound of her boots keeping me grounded, trapped within myself.

Click. Click. Click. Stop.

“You don’t have to run,” Lilith tried to ease me. “We weren’t planning on chasing after you.”

And I was supposed to believe that? Please. Maybe I portrayed myself a bigger fool than I thought.

“Eira.”

I gulped without answering. Maybe I couldn’t. Maybe I just didn’t want to. Oddly enough, I struggled to distinguish the difference. It didn’t matter, anyway, as I had nothing to say.

“You’ll come around,” she went on, chirping a little. “You simply have to give in to the power.”