The One Mother 

By the third night of her marriage, Helen understood the house did not want her here. It vanished the slippers from her bedside when she woke. It only soured the milk she poured. On the wedding portrait above the staircase, damp spread across her face in the shape of a hand.

Daniel laughed when she pointed it out to him.

His mother did not. She fixed Helen with a smile, one laced with something Helen could not quite discern. A strange purgatorial emotion, she thought, born of resentment but tinged with fear. “The house is old,” Mrs Vale's voice shook when she spoke, “It… it does not like change.”

It was no secret that Mrs Vale had not welcomed the presence of Daniel's new bride. And Helen did not hope to receive any understanding from the old woman in turn. So, later that evening, Helen attemped to plead with Daniel. “My- my slippers!” she pointed to the empty space at her bedside, “They were right there. Danny you saw me put them there! How do you explain that?”

Daniel only scoffed, “Your slippers?” he held up a hand and walked out of the room. His footsteps receded down the stairs, and when he returned, he held what could not be between two fingers.

“But how-?”

“I found them this morning on the porch- they've been in the entrance hall this whole time.”

“The porch-?” stammered Helen, “How? I didn't wear them outside!”

“Well… you must've.”

“What- did I sleepwalk my way out there?”

Daniel shrugged, “It's possible.”

“When, in the seven years of us knowing each other, have I ever sleepwalked?”

“What about your night terrors?”

“That's hardly the same thing.”

“I'm just trying to find a logical explanation as to-,”

“There's something strange about this place, Danny… I-,” she pursed her lips, for this had been Daniel's one wish. The only thing he'd asked of her. And it had driven her to the brink of her own sanity. “I don't want to live here anymore.”

He sucked in his breath, “I told you Helen-,”

“That your mother was sick,” she finished, “Yes. She does not look sick! That woman is fine-!”

“You don't know what I know.”

“And what is that?”

“That she's-,” he floundered, “She's troubled, okay? I'm all she has. Especially since dad died last year… and she never got over Effie's death, you know." The little sister that passed when she was only two months old. Some sort of fever, Daniel had said. For all the fortune his family had poured into the estate- into its towering windows, carved banisters, and rooms to large to ever feel any warmth- it had cursed them with isolation. The manor stood buried deep in the forest, fifty miles from the nearest hospital. By the time the doctors reached Effie, there was no life left to save. Another reason to go, thought Helen, but she bit her tongue now.

“Okay,” she said, “Okay, fine. We'll stay, but one more creepy-,”

The lights flickered.

Helen went stiff, locking onto Daniel with a wide-eyed gaze.

He scoffed at her again, “It's an old house. The wiring is messed up. Unless that was the ghosts talking to you from the other side?”

“Don't do that. I am not crazy, Danny.”

He sighed, approaching gently and taking her into his arms. He kissed her forehead and said, “Helen… you know how many nights I sat here, at this very window growing up? The kids never liked me around here. All farm boys with little sense imbued with no virtue but cynicism- they saw that I had what they did not… and that made them angry, I guess. It left me very lonely,” he paused to sigh, “I used to pray every single night for someone to see me. Truly see me,” his grip grew firm on her shoulders, “You see me. You are the love of my life, Helen,” he kissed her lips, “Give it a month, okay? If you still hate it here, we'll go back to New York.”

Helen pressed her lips together, glancing at the slippers and then back at Danny.

“Please?"

She held her breath, and then sighed. “Alright, fine. One month." She held up her pinky.

Daniel chuckled and hooked his around hers. “One month.”

The next morning, Helen woke with a start. More night terrors- they had worsened since they moved here. She swung her feet off the bed and, as she had the four mornings prior, found nothing but cold tile underneath. Of course. “They are gone. They are gone again-!”

But she'd spoken too soon. They were right there, parked by the door.

Helen stared at them. She could not remember placing them there, thought the previous night had blurred in the hours since. Perhaps she'd moved them without thinking. Perhaps Daniel had. Perhaps…

She crossed the room as she pondered, and lifted one foot. The slipper pulled away before she could don it.

Helen froze, her toes suspended over the floor.

For several seconds, neither she nor the slipper moved. Impossible.

She tried once more- the slipper darted backward, its soft heel scraping against the tile.

A furious heat stirred inside her, “Oh, for God's sake-!”

She lunged for it this time with both hands. The slipper skittered sideways, narrowly avoiding her grasp and struck the leg of the writing desk. Helen seized it and hurled it against the wall where it landed crookedly against the baseboard. Before it could move again, she drove her heel down upon its toe, pinning it in place.

“A-ha!” she hissed, shoving her foot inside so violently that her toes curled against the fabric. For one wild moment she stood over it victorious, breathless and trembling. It was only as the rage dissipated that her stomach turned.

…What just happened?

That's when something clattered from the hallway.

Helen turned, “Danny?”

No response.

She glanced back at the bed. The sheets were cold and empty- she had not seen nor heard Danny rise, though that meant little. Since returning to the house, he had slipped increasingly into the habits of his childhood. Early mornings, as per his mother's insistence, were a routine discipline for any young man. He was often out of the house before she woke. But, if it wasn't him making the sounds…

“Mrs Vale?”

Another clatter shook the corridor. Wood struck wood at a strange, uneven pace. Scrape, pause, clatter. Scrape, pause, clatter.

Helen stepped into the hallway.

“Mrs Vale…?”

Her voice travelled down the upper gallery and dissolved within the cavernous entrance hall below. From her bedroom, the corridor opened into a carved balustrade overlooking the staircase. Directly beneath it, beside the front doors, stood a tall wooden coat stand burdened with scarves, jackets, and a heavy shawl belonging to Mrs Vale.

It was moving.

Helen gripped the railing.

It tilted onto one narrow leg and twisted before crashing back onto all four feet. It rocked once, steadied itself, and then rose again.

Scrape. Pause, as it turned. Then clatter.

Helen's mouth went dry.

Had it… come to life? No, thought Helen. There was an asymmetry to each spin that suggested some invisible body had seized it and was struggling beneath its weight.

Helen descended one step.

The coat stand stopped- so did she. A sleeve lifted from one of the hooks. There, it hung, suspended pointing toward the front door. Then, the stand lurched again.

Helen descended another step, then another, then another- the whole time, her hand remained fixed on the banister. She did not intend to draw close so much as she feared retreat. Where would she go? Back in her room, with only three walls to press herself against? Otherwise a window to throw herself from. Meanwhile some strange entity sought her out.

Here, she had somewhere to run. She glanced at the front doors. But the closer she drew, the more violently the stand began to rock itself. “Danny…” she called out.

No answer.

At some point the rack stopped spinning and instead keeled from side to side as if caught between two opposing forces.

“Daniel-!” she cried.

That's when her jacket slid from its hook, flinging itself through the air and crashing into her chest so hard it knocked her backwards. By the time she found her footing again the locks began turning on the front door. All at once, they opened with a single metallic crack. The doors swung open and a furious gust tore through the entrance hall. Helen cried out. Wind seized her hair and nightdress, driving her backward once more. Leaves spiralled across the polished floor. Beyond the threshold, the forest bowed beneath a grey morning sky, its branches reaching toward the house as though by summon.

Strange, it seemed- she had thought a great escape was due. That she would sneak past the demonic coat rack and throw herself through the doors at the very last moment… and here they were, thrown open before her like the jaws of shark.

Fear reduced her to instinct before reason could intervene.

She ran.

She did not know whether she meant to reach Daniel, the road, or simply any place beyond those doors. She only knew that something was coming for her, and every animal part of her body was overjoyed for a way out.

Helen had nearly reached the threshold when, all of a sudden, the doors slammed shut- she screamed and collided with the wood.

In an instant, every lock drove back into place. The jacket wrenched itself from her hands and Helen fell once more, this time hard enough to knock the breath from her lungs. She looked up to find the jacket had neatly positioned itself back on the hook from whence it came.

For one long moment, there was total silence.

Then, the floor groaned beneath her. Not the harmless protest of old wood beneath shifting weight, but instead something that called from deep within the foundations, climbing through the walls and amassing force as it rose. The chandeliers trembled, portrait frames knocked against the plaster- somewhere overhead, pipes shuddered within the walls. The house seemed to draw one enormous breath and its bones rattled as it went.

Helen staggered to her feet.

“No, no, no- this isn't happening. DANIEL-!”

Still clinging to hope of escape, she sought a second best option- there was an exit at the end of the westward corridor. She shrieked as she ran, clawing her way to her destination. Her hands found the handle when she reached the door… but when she fell through, it was not crisp spring air that she was met with.

She was in… the library.

She turned back- the doors slammed shut behind her.

Wait… no, She fumbled for the handle. it would not give.

No, no, no-, she turned in circles. No windows, no other doors, no way out. Only the collossal Vale collection towering over her from every direction. “Help!” she shrieked, “Daniel! Mrs Vale! Somebody help me-!”

Something thumped behind her. A book had fallen from the shelves, landing squarely in the center of the room. As Helen turned to face it, the house stopped howling outside. The silence gifted her a moment of scrutiny for the book- an enormous volume, wider than her chest and bound in black leather. Dust drifted around it.

A tarnished clasp had broken open upon impact.

Helen turned her head upwards, at the shelf from which it must have fallen. She assumed the house's fury had shaken it from its perch, and yet, every other book stood perfectly upright. There wasn't even an empty space for a book this massive to once occupy.

The volume opened, the pages turning on their own. They moved rapidly at first, hundreds of brittle sheets whispering in a frenzy. Flashes of dates, names, and inked portraits. The pages slowed as they neared the tome's start.

And then they stopped.

Across the top of the first page was written in a careful faded hand:

THE VALE FAMILY CHRONICLE: BIRTHS, MARRIAGES, AND DEATHS

Helen approached despite herself.

The first entry was dated nearly two centuries prior.

Edmund Vale, born 1812. Married Beatrice Harrow, 1836.

Beneath it:

Ann Vale, mother of Edmund, died 1836.

Helen frowned, and turned the page.

Thomas Vale, born 1841. Married Eleanor Crane, 1864.

Eleanor Vale, died 1864.

A second marriage followed a few years later.

Thomas Vale, married Clara Bell, 1870.

Agnes Vale, mother of Thomas, died 1870.

Later still.

Edmund I Vale, born 1872. Married Alice Rivers, 1899.

Alice Vale, died 1899.

Something twisted in Helen’s belly. She turned another page, then another. The names changed, the years advanced. The pattern did not. A son married- soon after, either the wife or the mother was dead. Often within the year.

Stranger still were the daughters. Helen flipped back and forth, reading faster now.

Mary Vale, born 1872. Died 1873.

Isobel Vale, born 1887. Died 1887.

Catherine Vale, born 1911. Died 1913.

There were fevers. Falls. Sudden illnesses. Blank spaces where causes should have been written.

The sons remained.

Helen’s breathing quickened. “But how…?”

The pages moved of their own volition again, propelling her almost a century into the future. Daniel’s father appeared first.

Richard Vale, born 1963. Married Eleanor March, 1988.

Helen thought of Mrs Vale upstairs, every movement as fearful in her own home as it was resentful of the new bride.

Margaret Vale, mother of Richard, died 1988.

The page turned.

Daniel Vale, born 1995.

Below his name appeared the entry for Effie.

Iphigenia Vale, born 1998. Died 1998.

Helen touched the name. She had been two months old.

The book moved again. Helen watched intently, expecting the next name to be that again of Daniel’s father. Richard Vale, died 2025, she thought… alas, that was not what she saw.

A marriage appeared beneath Daniel’s name.

Daniel Vale, married Lydia Price, 2017.

Helen stopped breathing.

Directly beneath it.

Lydia Vale, died 2017.

“What…?”

Another line.

Daniel Vale, married Margaret Adams, 2019.

Margaret Vale, died 2019.

Helen stumbled backwards- the edge of a desk struck her in the hip but the pain didn’t even register with the incredulousness of what she had just witnessed. Daniel had been married.

Twice.

Not only had she known naught of it, but both women had died within months of their pact.

The page turned.

There it was:

Richard Vale, died 2025.

And beneath it, the latest entry:

Daniel Vale married Helen Ward, 2026.

After it, nothing. Only a blank line. Helen stared at the empty space until the letters blurred. Then, before her eyes, a bead of black ink gathered at the end of her name. It swelled, beginning the first thin stroke of a letter-,

That’s when the library door flew open.

Helen went to scream, but was cut short by Mrs Vale’s hissed voice. “What is the meaning of-?” she went still, one hand still clasped around the collar of her nightgown. Her face had drained of color. She looked first at Helen, then at the book lying open between them. Something in her expression collapsed. “What have you done?”

Helen stared at her. “What have I done?”

Mrs Vale entered and shut the door behind her. She crossed the room urgently and attempted to seize the cover of the chronicle- Helen caught her wrist before she could take it away.

The sleeve of Mrs Vale’s nightgown slid back as Helen gripped her- that’s when Helen caught glimpse of the bruises encircling her forearm. Long, dark impressions pressed into the flesh almost like fingers. They disappeared beneath the fabric toward her elbow.

“What… happened to your arm?”

“I fell.”

“Doesn’t look like it was from a fall.”

Both women held each other in their own scrutiny.

“Did Danny do that?”

Mrs Vale scowled. “What did you just say?”

Helen looked from the bruises to her face. “Did Daniel do that to you?”

For a moment, the older woman seemed genuinely bewildered. Then offence hardened her features.

“My son has never raised a hand to me.” She tore her wrist from Helen’s grasp and pulled the sleeve down to her knuckles. “I told you. I fell.” She bent again to retrieve the chronicle but Helen positioned herself over top of it.

“Move,” instructed the older woman.

“No.”

“You have no right to this.”

“But I’m in it,” Helen hissed back. “Daniel had two wives before me. Did you know about this?”

She was met with silence.

“Of course you did… it’s in your family chronicle. Lydia Price and Margaret Adams- they both died the same years they married him.” The facts hardened as she spoke them aloud, “Your husband married you, and his mother died. Before that, his first wife died. Before that, another mother. The same pattern… going back nearly two hundred years.

Mrs Vale looked toward the door.

Helen followed her gaze. “Did Daniel have anything to do with it?”

“I will not discuss my son’s past with you.”

“His past is riddled with death, and seems to be marking me with the same fate-,” that unfinished bead of ink was still trembling upon its page.

Mrs Vale saw it and, whether she meant to or not, raised a hand to her mouth.

Helen stepped back from the book, “Am I going to die?”

“No. No, of course not.”

“Then-?”

“There have been urban legends about our family for years,” Mrs Vale said, “And this book- I’ve never seen before in my life. Likely forged by farm folk or else the commoners of the nearby town. That is why I dismiss you- so I can take it and have it destroyed.”

Helen clenched and unclenched her jaw.

“It is fake, child.”

Helen was unmoved.

“You think yourself very clever, don’t you?” said Mrs Vale.

“I think your son’s wives are dead.”

Before the older woman could retort, the library door opened. Danny stood in the frame. His gaze moved between them, “What happened?”

Helen laughed, breathless and without humor, “You tell me.”

Daniel looked at the book- as soon as he did, the color drained from his face.

Mrs Vale gathered it against herself, “She had no right to be here.”

“I was locked inside! For all I know, it was you that-!”

“Oh, please-,”

“Lydia Price and Margaret Adams,” announced Helen, fixating on Daniel, “Who were they?”

Daniel opened his mouth, but it seemed he could not get the words out.

Mrs Vale stepped toward him, “Listen, dear. It’s clear she’s worked herself into a state. Why don’t you two make your ways upstairs and-,”

“No,” said Daniel.

Mrs Vale looked taken aback. “Daniel-,”

“Leave us, mother.”

There was no force behind it, yet Mrs Vale obeyed. She passed him with the chronicle pressed against her chest, stopping only long enough to murmur something Helen could not hear.

Daniel’s expression tightened.

Then his mother disappeared into the corridor.

Helen moved immediately for the door.

Daniel stepped aside to let her pass.

That halted her more effectively than if he had tried to block the way.

“I’m leaving,” she told him.

“I know.”

“I mean now.”

“Alright.”

She watched him, searching for whatever trick lay beneath his agreement. “You’re not going to stop me?”

“No.”

“Then why are you still standing there?”

“Because… I owe you an explanation.”

“You owe me many explanations- most due before we were married.”

“Yes.”

The answer came so plainly that it robbed her of the next accusation. It was infuriating.

Daniel glanced into the library. “Let’s talk. Inside.”

Helen folded her arms. That library was a trap- she would not go back.

“Fine. Somewhere else, then. You choose where,” he said.

She chose their bedroom. It had one visible entrance, a lock she understood, and windows overlooking the front drive. Daniel followed her upstairs but remained several paced behind. Once inside, Helen left the door open.

She stood beside the window.

Daniel remained near the foot of the bed.

“Lydia was my first wife,” he said.

“I gathered that.”

“We married young. Too young, probably.”

“How did she die?”

His eyes lowered. “A car accident.”

Helen said nothing.

“It was raining. She was driving home from Albany. The police said she lost control on a bend.”

“And Margaret?”

Daniel sat on the edge of the bed, then seemed to think better of it and stood again.

“Margaret’s death was ruled a suicide.”

The words left a visible strain across his face.

Helen’s anger faltered, though her distrust did not. “Bullshit,” she said at first.

But when Daniel looked up the tears in his eyes were anything but.

Helen cleared her throat. “You never told me.”

“No.”

“In seven years.”

“No.”

“You let me marry you without knowing you had been married twice.”

“I know.”

“Stop saying that.”

His mouth closed.

Helen turned toward the window. Outside, the trees bent in the wind, though their branches made no sound against the glass.

“Why?” she asked.

Daniel took a moment before answering.

“Because there was never a way to say it that did not change the way people looked at me.”

“That isn’t good enough.”

“I know it isn’t.”

She shot him a warning look.

He nodded. “Sorry.”

Helen ground her knuckles into the window ledge.

“After Lydia died, everyone treated me as though I might come apart if they spoke too loudly. After Margaret, it was worse. People either pitied me or wondered what kind of man loses two wives before thirty.”

Helen looked back at him.

“Did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Wonder what kind of man loses two wives before thirty?”

Daniel’s eyes met hers. “Every day.”

There was nothing theatrical in the answer. No tremor placed carefully in his voice, no movement toward her in expectation of comfort.

Perhaps that made it more difficult to dismiss.

“I should have told you,” he continued. “I knew that. I kept telling myself I would do it when the time was right.”

“When was that meant to be?”

“I don’t know. Before the wedding. After the wedding. Whenever mentioning them stopped feeling like bringing them into the room with us,” he looked away, unable to meet her gaze.

Helen thought of the seven years behind them: the ordinary mornings, the train rides, the apartment in New York with its unreliable radiator. Daniel bringing her coffee when she worked late- with a sprinkle of cinnamon, always. Daniel that refused to speak for days after receiving news of his father’s illness… And the peculiar distance that sometimes overcame him near the anniversaries of events he had never named.

She had taken it for reserve at first. Grief, sometimes. Perhaps it had been both.

But the moving slippers remained real. So did the opening doors. The bruise around Mrs Vale’s arm, the names that repeated through generations in a book that had fallen from nowhere. “Even if I believe you,” said Helen, “That doesn’t explain what happened this morning.”

Daniel’s brows knit together, “What happened, exactly?”

“You’re telling me you heard none of it? With- with my slippers? Or- or the coat rack downstairs. It was-,” she didn’t know where to start, “It felt like the house wanted me to leave. The doors opened on their own, Danny. And I tried to leave- God, I was more than happy to go- but then the doors slammed in my face.”

“Helen, come on-,”

“I saw it!” she screamed, “And do not try to tell me I’m imagining things because I am NOT. CRAZY. DAMMIT!”

He fell silent.

“The house trapped me in that library. The book opened by itself. It showed me those names.” Her voice began to shake, and she hated it for betraying her. “There is a pattern- patterns- Danny. You cannot tell me there aren’t.”

“I’m not going to.”

Helen stared at him.

Daniel took one cautious step closer.

“I believe you.”

The simplicity of it broke something inside her.

“What?”

“I believe you.”

“Last night you laughed at me.”

“I know- and I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry,” he said. Helen searched his face for condescension and found none. “I’m sorry, okay?” he said again, this time taking her in his arms. Something broke inside her as he enveloped her and she began to sob, the hysteria of the day washing over her in waves that rattled her chest with each wail into his shoulder. “I want to leave.”

She frowned, looking up, “You do?”

“Yes. Yes- let’s do as you said. Leave this place behind and go back to New York.”

“But what about your mother?”

“She can come with us if she wants.”

“And if she doesn’t want to?”

“Then she stays. That’s her decision… meanwhile, my decision-,” he picked at the collar of her disheveled nightgown, “-Mine is the one I vowed five days ago. I choose you. Helen Vale.”

She studied him and found only sincerity. And yet, this was not the answer he gave her the night before. Last night his mother had been troubled, helpless, and in that she had become sacred. A burden he could not let down. Now, his eyes were on Helen and Helen alone. Although she supposed the events she'd endured today were such that they could not be ignored.

Helen found the tension in her shoulders had loosened by mere degrees. Not trust, yet. But the shape of it returning, along with the familiarity of having him. She crossed the room and pulled her suitcase from beneath the bed.

“Yes. You pack,” said Daniel, striding for the hallway, “I’m going to go call the driver.”

“Driver?” Helen looked over her shoulder, “Our car is in the garage.”

“The rear axle has been sticking. I don’t want it failing halfway through the forest.”

“How convenient.”

Daniel accepted the suspicion. “You can check it yourself if it makes you feel better, and you can listen while I make the call downstairs.”

Helen did.

He telephoned the driver from a landline in the entrance hall, gave the address of the estate, and asked that the car be brought immediately. Helen heard the faint voice on the other end confirm that he would arrive within the hour.

Daniel replaced the receiver.

“There.”

Helen looked toward their room, the suitcase within. Between them, Mrs Vale stood at the top of the balustrade. Her sleeve had slipped again. The bruises seemed darker now, rising past her elbow beneath the thin fabric. “Daniel,” she said.

He did not answer.

“I need to speak to you.”

Helen looked at him. She did not ask him to stay, refusing to plead for her own husband’s loyalty in front of his mother.

Luckily Daniel saw the request in her face. Finally- finally- after days of what felt like a war effort for his attention, he took her hand. “Finish packing,” he said, “We are leaving. Today.”

Mrs Vale’s expression shifted. “Daniel.”

He squeezed Helen’s fingers once before releasing them. “Don’t worry.”

Helen watched him climb the stairs.

Mrs Vale turned before he reached her and disappeared down the upper corridor. Daniel followed.

The moment they were gone, the house settled.

Helen stood beneath the staircase, listening.

No voices reached her. Only the measured retreat of their footsteps and, somewhere within the walls, a low scratching sound.

She returned to the bedroom and packed. Quickly, but not carelessly. She placed her passport and money into her handbag. She packed only what she could carry herself. Before closing the case, she took the small silver letter opener from Daniel's writing desk. She stared at it a moment before slipping it into the pocket of her coat.

By the time Daniel returned, her suitcase stood beside the bedroom door.

He paused upon seeing it.

For a moment, Helen noticed how his face had gone slack, emptied of the urgency with which he had promised they would leave. Something colder had entered his eyes. Not anger, precisely, but… distance. He looked at Helen as though from the far end of a corridor.

“What did she say?”

Daniel blinked.

The vacancy vanished.

He rubbed both hands over his face and gave a small, exhausted laugh. “The same things she always says.”

“Which are?”

“That I am abandoning her. That my father would be ashamed. That she has no one else.”

“And what did you say?”

“That I’m leaving with my wife.”

Helen watched him carefully.

Daniel smiled.

There he was again, or appeared to be. The man from New York. The man who warmed his feet against hers in winter and left cabinet doors open no matter how many times she complained.

He crossed the room and rested his hands gently upon her arms.

“I’m sorry.”

“For which part?”

“All of it.”

“That is broad.”

“It needs to be.”

Despite herself, Helen almost smiled.

A horn sounded faintly from somewhere beyond the trees.

“The driver?” she asked.

“Probably at the outer gate. It takes time to come up the drive.”

Daniel glanced through the window.

“Let’s go downstairs.”

Helen lifted her suitcase, but he took it from her.

She nearly resisted. Then she let him.

The house did not interfere as they descended.

The doors remained still. The portrait above the staircase no longer rattled. Even the damp across Helen’s painted face had receded until only a faint shadow remained.

At the bottom, Daniel set the case beside the entrance.

“The driver will be a few minutes,” he said.

“I’d rather wait outside.”

“Of course.”

He opened the front doors.

Cold air entered, carrying the scent of wet roses and turned earth.

Daniel looked toward the garden.

“Walk with me?”

Helen frowned. “Now?”

“Only until he reaches the house. I need air.”

Helen was hesitant, but something in his voice softened her resistance. He had spent the morning confessing grief he had buried for years. His mother had accused him of abandoning her. The home in which he had been raised had revealed itself as something monstrous.

A few minutes in the garden seemed a small request.

Helen touched the letter opener through her coat pocket.

“Not too far, okay?”

“Not far.”

The paths were still wet from the previous night. Roses bowed beneath the weight of rain, their darkened petals scattered over the stones. Daniel walked beside Helen without touching her.

For a while, neither spoke.

Then Helen said, “Your… mother’s arm.”

Daniel’s steps slowed.

“What about it?”

“You noticed the bruises, right?”

“Yes.”

“Well, she said she fell.”

“She has always bruised easily.”

“It looked like a hand print.”

Daniel frowned, “… Hand print?”

Helen nodded, “And she looked precisely terrified when she saw me with that book. Not surprised- just terrified. Not that I can blame her… but why would she be afraid if that chronicle was fake, like she claimed?”

The garden path narrowed between hedges taller than either of them. The house grew more and more distant behind them.

“Danny… can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“Do you think your mother had anything to do with Lydia or Margaret?”

Daniel stopped.

The question hung between them.

Helen did not apologize for it.

“No,” he said at last.

Helen raised an eyebrow.

“Look, I know my mother can be intense- but I know her. And I remain resolute in that.”

“You knew me for seven years and still thought I might have begun sleepwalking out of nowhere.”

Daniel resumed walking.

“That was different,” he insisted.

“How?”

“Because my mother is-,” he stopped himself.

“Your mother is what?”

“Difficult.”

Helen gave him a dry look, “That’s one word.”

“Possessive, then. Manipulative. She has never forgiven the world for taking Effie, and my father’s death hardened her further. She’s just… angry.”

“To make matters worse, her precious son went and got married. Again. Isn’t that it?”

Daniel looked away.

Helen pressed further, “I’m not trying to be rude, but… she resents me for marrying you, and yet, she doesn’t want us to leave.”

“Right.”

“How does that make sense? She should be jumping at the chance to get me out of here!”

They emerged into a circular clearing. At its centre stood an old stone well, half consumed by moss. Its wooden frame had rotted crookedly over the opening, and the rope hanging from it vanished into stony depths.

Daniel approached the rim.

Helen remained on the path. “Is this where you go in the mornings?” she wondered aloud.

He rested one hand against the stone, “Sometimes. I like to think here. It's quiet, you know?”

Helen looked back. The hedge behind them stirred though there was no wind. “Hey, should we head back?” she said, “The driver should have arrived by now, no?”

“No, he’s not here yet.”

“Well, we’ll be able to hear him better from the house.”

Daniel ran his thumb over the moss. Helen studied him. The strangeness she had noticed in the bedroom once more returned. Not visibly enough to name, especially as he was facing away from her, but she felt it in the stillness of his body. There was a tension that had taken hold, and it kept him from looking at her.

“What did your mother really say to you back there?” she asked.

“I told you.”

“No. You told me what she usually says.”

His hand stopped.

Helen came no closer.

“She… told me she was frightened.”

“Of what?”

“It sounds ridiculous, but… she thinks the house demands a choice.”

Helen felt the cold penetrate her coat. “What kind of choice?”

Daniel looked at her at last.

“Her or you.”

A branch cracked somewhere behind Helen.

She turned instinctively.

Nothing stood upon the path.

When she faced Daniel again, his expression had softened.

“My mother is strange,” he said. “She is intense. She has spent most of my life trying to keep me close enough that nothing else can take me from her.”

“That is not love.”

“No,” Daniel said. “Not always.”

Helen searched his face.

“But she is the only family I have left.”

“You have me.”

“I know.”

“… Do you?”

Daniel’s gaze moved over her slowly, almost tenderly. “Of course I do. Helen… you are all I’ve ever wished for. Since I was a boy.”

Helen heard the change then.

Not in what he said, but the calm with which he said it.

She took one step backward.

Daniel moved away from the well.

“My mother has done many things I cannot forgive,” he said. “But she is still my mother.”

“Danny-,”

“You only get one.”

The sentence should have sounded ordinary.

Helen had heard versions of it throughout their marriage, each offered whenever Mrs Vale demanded too much of him. She is my mother. She is all I have. I cannot abandon her.

But there, beside the open mouth of the well, the words acquired a chilling quality.

Helen’s hand entered her coat pocket.

Daniel saw the movement.

His face broke. “I’m sorry.”

“Danny, please-,”

Helen drew the letter opener.

He was faster.

Daniel seized her wrist and drove her backward into the stone rim. Pain struck across her spine. The letter opener fell into the grass.

“Daniel!”

She twisted, striking at his face with her free hand.

His cheek split beneath her ring.

He did not release her.

Helen looked into his eyes and found grief there. Despite everything, the grief was real. Undeniably real.

“Danny, please…”

For an instant his grip loosened. He let out a sob. A tear dripped from his chin onto her cheek.

She reached for him.

Daniel caught her hand, and then pushed.

The ground disappeared beneath her feet and the world twisted around her- suddenly, she could only look up, and all she saw was his face. It receded into a circle of grey light, and in her final moments, Helen could have sworn she heard him say her name.

***

Time did not pass cleanly within the house. It arrived in fragments. Mrs Vale’s hair silvered between one turn of the staircase and the next. Her footsteps grew slower; a cane appeared beside her chair. Then, one evening, Helen saw Daniel carrying her upstairs in his arms, the older woman’s head resting against his shoulder with the strange peace of someone who had finally received all she had demanded. After that, her bedroom remained shut. Sometimes another figure stood beside Helen in the corridor, rubbing the bruises from an arm that no longer bore them.

Daniel married again. Or perhaps Helen only dreamed that he did. A new laugh entered the halls, followed by children’s footsteps- first small and quick, then heavy with age. Helen watched a little boy grow tall enough to reach for the family chronicle. She watched a little girl vanish from the portraits before she could learn the child’s name. The house altered around them: wallpaper darkened, furniture disappeared, electric lights replaced candles and later failed beneath ceilings webbed with cracks. Yet the same slippers continued to move toward the front door whenever a new bride arrived.

Daniel aged most strangely of all. Some days Helen saw the young man who had wept above the well. On others, an old figure sat at the window, his face folded into his hands. He spoke to her once- or seemed to. She did not hear what he said, but she stood beside him, close enough to see that he still possessed their wedding ring. Before she could decide whether this was remorse or merely another way of mourning himself, his chair was empty.

The dead appeared only in glimpses. Lydia passing behind a mirror. Margaret standing at the end of a corridor that had been blocked off long ago. She heard the children, too. One liked to hum beneath the staircase. A baby often wailed in a far-off wing. Helen thought it frightening at first, but grew to notice a solemn understanding existed between the women of the house. Sometimes they would all gather as the house slept, generations made faint by forgetting. As the forgetting prevailed, their features blurred, disintegrated. Like the details of a dream slipping through fingers.

Years, perhaps decades, passed. The house began descending to ruin. Rain came through the roof. Roots split the floors. Moss snaked over the walls, claiming the house as it had the well where she rested. Helen remained. Soon she could no longer remember New York, nor the sound of traffic beyond her window, nor what Daniel’s hand had felt like before it let her go. Worse, she began to forget the color of her own eyes- the shape of her nose and the curve of her lips. When she passed by mirrors the reflection was of some distorted creature. Not long ago, the faces of far older spirits had looked this way, she thought.

Then, one night, headlights appeared among the trees.

A young couple stepped through the ruined gates, speaking excitedly of restoration, of marriage, of children, of making the old place theirs. The woman crossed the threshold first.

She had taken but one step inside when Helen seized her by the shoulders and drove her back out.

Helen attempted to follow the woman into the beyond, to shoo her all the way down the driveway and past the very gate to the property. As always, the house caught her before she could cross. The unseen force tightened about her waist and tore her back into the entrance hall. Her hands slipped through the woman’s coat and distance widened between them.

Helen watched the woman stumble onto the drive and turn from afar. Disbelief marked her face, but so did fear.

Good. Listen to it, willed Helen.

Go, child.

Go.

*Images are not mine. Most are stills from Haunting of Bly Manor, which was one stylistic source of inspiration for this story.