Fiction: “This Sinister Inheritance: Chapter 6”
I stand at the edge of my bed. My husband lies sleeping, and I wonder if I would have enough strength to kill him. Him. The father of my children. The love of my life. There’s another lie. I don’t love him, I mean. I used to. Maybe that’s how the last victim of Lord Ashter felt. Maybe she thought he loved her too, but for Lord Ashter, women were merely vessels to carry his heirs and were murdered if they produced anything less. That’s how my husband is with me. If I have another daughter, then I am signing my death warrant right there in the sonogram room. I can’t escape from this. Maybe she had nowhere else to go. I have a mother in an institution for schizophrenia, so there’s no way I would be able to stay there. All other relatives were figments of her imagination that still run free.
I have maintained regular contact with her. She lives in her own world, and she thinks SpongeBob is real.
Due to this pregnancy, I have a lot of time on my hands. I am placed on bed rest due to the doctor's orders. There's a knock at the door.
I open it, and Lillith is standing there.
“Hi, Maura!”
“Oh Lillith!” I blurt out of shock.
“I heard the news. Congratulations!”
“Oh, thanks, just a moment!”
I shut the door immediately. Yes, I feel bad, but I did not expect to see her.
I open the door again.
“I’m sorry… come in”
She smiles.
“Sorry, I haven't seen much of you.”
I say, closing the door behind us.
“No, no, I've been isolating. Some of the kids came down with croup. We had a problem with the ventilation; it seems like the house is trying to kill us.”
She hysterically laughs. I don’t laugh at first - it’s the sinister truth - but I join in for fear of the awkward silence.
I honestly don’t know why I even opened the door back up again. I suppose it’s the nice thing to do Every time I interact with Mackays now, it feels as though I’m being sliced into miniscule pieces. Even having her in my home makes me feel uneasy. Yet, this isn’t really a home. It’s just another house. The strange looks, the whispering, and sometimes even the strange, peculiar silence. The silence piercing each of us, the final blow landing on the most innocent, my unborn baby. The baby who never asked to be in this futile situation. The baby who was never meant to be.
I don’t just hear the woman’s cries echoing in my head at night, but those of her newborn. I only recently found in my library books that they were both children. The autopsy states that she was between thirteen to fifteen years old. She was just a child herself. Was she Clarence and Robert’s mother? DNA was unheard of back then, and no samples have remained. I cry for the child she was. Maybe I am going crazy; maybe this never existed. This curse will be the death of me, by my own hand. I had my first child at fourteen - it lines up suspiciously well. I stared into the mirror- yet I saw nothing there. No bump, and no baby. No evidence that I was ever pregnant. That can’t be true.
It hits me as I stare at the house I’m in.
“Why am I at Lillith’s house?”.
Yet I know that they must be dead by now. The gas must’ve got to them by now.
I stare at my surroundings.
Fine linens - a chamber pot. God, what era am I in?
I realise it is my old house after all, I remember everything now.
I was that girl in the basement with Lord Ashter. My children and their disfigured fingers and faces
“Where’s my babies?!”
I screech like a banshee.
“She is gone, Ada, and soon you will be too!”
He begins the process of slicing me.
The End.
