"A mother's love for her child is like nothing else in the world. It knows no law, no pity. It dares all things and crushes down remorselessly all that stands in its path."
~ The Last Seance (from The Hound of Death and Other Stories)
Looking back, life seemed forever divided into before and afterwards, and before always had that warm glow of golden sunlight on coloured leaves.
Sara O'Neill liked her life. It didn't matter that it wasn't perfect, that there was room for improvement. That merely gave her something to strive for. Of course Jack could be home more often or at least do less dangerous work. Of course Charlie could be getting better marks. Of couse she could have a more exciting (or at least less boring) job.
But beyond all this, her life was as perfect as it had ever been. She loved her son, even more because she knew that she would never have another child. She loved her husband, and even after more than a decade of marriage the romance hadn't worn off.
The day had been perfect and would only get better. Jack had taken her to the exhibition of the artist whose pictures she loved and whose ridiculously complicated name she always forgot (Jack, she would joke, was the only male whose name she needed to know, and Jack would laugh and kiss her and then say facetiously that she had better remember Charlie's as well), and then they had eaten at her favourite restaurant.
Sneaking kisses when nobody was looking and even holding hands like a pair of teenagers, he'd made her laugh and giggle, and if she had ever thought that she was at the wrong side of forty and not getting any younger, she couldn't remember doing so.
So, when they got out of the car and walked up the drive, the shot didn't even register as anything but a loud noise.
Jack breaking into a run utterly baffled her. She was still at the door with a puzzled face and a quizzical "Jack?" at the tip of her tongue when she heard him shout "Charlie!" and then "Call 911!" in a voice that she'd never heard from him before.
She had her mobile out and dialled before she knew what she was doing.
While the connection was building, it hit her.
Quietly gasping "Charlie!" she ran towards Jack's voice. Down the hall, at the very back was Jack's office/work room, the door half open.
With trembling fingers she pulled it open completely and stepped into her worst nightmare.
The moment stretched into eternity, the horrifying details jumping out at her with burning clarity.
The puddle of blood around Jack's knees, his stained hands pressing Charlie's front and back, the pearls of sweat on Charlie's white face.
His utterly, terribly still face.
She stood there, incapable of moving, only disjointed fragments of thoughts bouncing around in her head.
If she hadn't heard the dialling tone next to her ear, followed by the click of someone taking the call, she might have remained like this for the rest of eternity.
"911, what's you emergency?"
With a flinch she tried to rally the thoughts that were skittering around and evading capture.
"This is Sara O'Neill, I call because –"
Words failed her then. Some tiny part of her brain tried to tell her that she had to give relevant information: who, where, what, how many.
But the rest of her insisted that actually saying it would make it real, because this was a nightmare, and if she could only avoid saying it aloud, she could concentrate on waking up and everything would be alright and –
"Miss? Where are you, and what happened?"
"Sara! Hold the phone to my ear!"
The two voices hit her at the same time, slapping her, giving the nightmare the possibility of reality.
She fell to her knees next to her husband and held the mobile next to his head.
Vaguely aware that Jack was talking, relaying information with a clipped voice, her eyes were glued to Charlie's closed ones. That was good, right? Didn't – her mind shied away from the word 'dead' – not living people have their eyes open? That was why they always closed the eyes of the fallen in the films, wasn't it?
Right?
Afterwards, though, she was uncompromising and relentless like the Sahara sun.