Team: Holyhead Harpies
Position: Keeper
Prompt: The Orphanage
Word Count: 1192
The Countryside House
The mother held the hand of her dying child tightly within her grasp. They should never have come to this place. She had told her husband as much when he had sent them away to the country house in the middle of the countryside.
"It'll keep you safe from the war," her husband had said on the eve of their departure. The very same man who would soon be entering the front line and placing himself in mortal danger when the fresh recruits departed for France a few days later.
The truth was, even here her child was not safe from the illness. There was a reason why the house in the countryside had been abandoned by their family generations ago, and it had nothing to do with the cost of the upkeep. Her family had more than wealthy enough to afford it.
No, if the old bedtime stories she had been told were to be believed, the house had been cursed to take the firstborn child of all who dwelled within it. It made for a spooky story growing up, and as a teenager she had grown to disbelieve it—there's no such thing as curses—but as an adult, in the midst of a war torn country, about to be sent away to the very place her family had left, she found herself full of doubt and wondering if there was any truth to the stories.
After arriving at the house and settling in there, the mother had slowly pushed the doubt to the back of her mind. Nothing bad had happened. They were only stories, she told herself as she finally allowed herself and her son to adjust to and enjoy country life, away from the threat of the bombs falling on the capital.
The third floor of the country house was out of use, as it had been since the latter years of her family's residence there. Supposedly, it was unsafe but the old stories of childhood said something very different—it was said in a fit of grief for her firstborn and then the grandchild she lost within days of each other, the former lady of the country house had convinced herself that demons walked the halls and were causing the deaths of the firstborn children—convinced herself that they roamed around on the third floor and she could hear them moving around. She had ordered the whole floor to be sealed off to trap the demons there. When her second child's firstborn died of the illness, she had thrown herself out of the second story window, and her widow had relocated the family to London by the end of the month.
All stories. All lies. Nothing more than a desperate attempt by her ancestors to get their children to behave.
And then, two weeks after their arrival, her son had been struck down by a mystery illness. No one, not even the best doctors for miles around, could diagnose or treat him. All anyone could tell her was an illness such as this hadn't been seen in living memory, and the only recorded cases were children who had inhabited this house—and not one survived. The mother was told to prepare for the worst, and it would not be long until his passing.
"My precious boy," she whispered, kissing his cold hand.
His breathing was getting slower. The mother knew his end was getting near now. Still, she held onto a small glimmer of hope so long as she could hear his breathing.
On a cold night, three weeks after the illness had taken hold of him, his breathing stopped. The mother shook him, trying to wake him hoping that he was sleeping, but nothing worked. She clung to her son and cried. She didn't want to be apart from him. As his life ended, so should hers. If the mother could not care for her son in life, she would care for him in the afterlife.
She kissed him gently on the forehead, her blue eyes glistening with tears. "We'll be together again soon, my sweet boy."
The mother straightened up and walked to the window. She flung it open, imagining if this was how her great-great-great-grandmother must have felt. She stepped up onto the ledge and grasped hold of the sides, before allowing herself to fall.
~o~o~o~
"Mother!" the four-year old boy cried from the foot of his bed as the tall blonde fell from the window.
"She's gone," a voice behind him said. "Like so many before her, she has given into her grief. My own mother did the same years ago."
Draco turned around. There he saw a tall opaque figure floating and smiling at him kindly. His bottom lip began to tremble and his grey eyes welled with tears. He wanted his mother back.
"Y—you—ghost," he whispered.
"All the children who die here are," she explained. "Even you."
The ghostly figure moved towards the mirror and a gust of wind from the window blew the white sheet covering it off, as Draco stammered his denials. She held out her hand and beckoned him to join her.
"Come, Draco," she said softly when he did not move. "We are kin. I would not hurt someone of my own blood."
She floated back towards Draco, took his hand and guided him towards the mirror. Draco squeezed his eyes shut. He didn't want to look in the mirror at his pasty reflection. His mother had covered up all the mirrors so he didn't have to look and he wouldn't look now that some ghost was trying to make him.
"Open your eyes, Draco," she whispered, stroking his hair. Her touch was so strange and foreign to him that Draco shrank away from it.
Draco shivered. "No! You can't make me."
"I struggled too when it was my time," the ghost said. "It was weeks before I could look in the mirror. It's not as bad as you think once you get used to it."
Draco opened his eyes a little and peered out through the narrow slit at his reflection. His bottom lip started to tremble more, if that was possible.
"Why?" he asked, looking up at the older ghost.
"No one knows," she replied sadly. "The stories say a curse, but stories only hold so much truth."
"What will happen to me?" Draco asked. "Will Mummy come back?"
The ghost shook her head and crouched down to Draco's height. "I'm sorry. But I'll look after to you—as will all the other children."
"Other children?" Draco repeated, giving the ghost a confused look.
The ghost nodded as the room began to fill up with other ghosts, some of age with Draco, others a little younger and some older. "We play games. Do you like games?"
Draco nodded his head. "I love games."
"Good," the ghost said as sirens began to sound in the distance. "Come with us and we'll show you where we play our games."
Draco took one last look at the window his mother had fallen from before turning and following the other ghost from the room.