Thank you to everyone reading and commenting- I appreciate everyone's feedback on this. Alice has never been my favourite character so I wasn't sure how I'd go writing her- I'm actually enjoying her and getting to like the character a lot more as I go along.
I do kind of want to apologise for writing this incredibly traumatic and depressing life for Alice- it's not quite what I intended when I began to write it! I've taken the storyline from what Stephenie Meyer gave in the guide, and it didn't really seem this bad until I started elaborating on it. I'm cutting parts out of it now because I just don't want to keep writing this misery for her! I promise you that there's an end in sight to this much angst (although perhaps not drama) and if you hang in there Alice will definitely have some good things happen in her future.
Chapter 9- When I Understand.
The weak, pale moonlight is the only source of light in the room, and I'm glad for the shadows that hide my face. Beside me in the bed Cynthia is curled in a ball, burrowing into me as hard as she can, shaking with the force of the sobs she's trying to suppress. I hold her tightly, wrapping my arms around her gangly, little-girl body, but saying nothing. There is nothing to say that will make this okay.
We can hear the shouting. Papa has been drinking and is ugly in his drunken anger. I don't know what started this, Mama had put me to bed after I fainted on the porch and I have remained here all afternoon, cocooned in my quilt and pretending to sleep in an effort to shut out the world. I didn't even go to the table for dinner, unable to face my father with the purple, swollen lump on my temple still throbbing painfully in time with every beat of my heart. When Mama had helped me in to my nightgown I had caught a glimpse of my narrow back in the mirror, the bare skin marred by the livid red line of the whip lash.
"Oh please, make him stop!" Sissy's tears are making my nightgown wet. "I don't want him to hurt Mama!"
I kiss her hair fervently and hold her tighter. I want to tell her that it will all be okay, that Papa won't hurt Mama and that everything will be fine tomorrow, but I can't. The spectre with his skeletal hands walks behind my eyes and the laughing man of my dreams is now haunting my waking hours and I have no words.
I think Papa hits Mama in the end, because there's a crash and a cry before the shouting stops. Sissy moans in terror in to my shoulder and shakes so that I can barely hold her. I'm frightened too, so frightened that in the end I slip from the bed and tiptoe silently along the hall until I can steal a glimpse in to the sitting room. Papa is slumped in the armchair, eyes half closed as he stares at the newspaper in his hand but I look past him until I see Mama, sitting in her low chair by the fire, sewing. I think I can see the tracks of tears on her face, but I'm too far away to be sure and I don't want to draw attention to myself by slipping any closer. I bite my lip and turn back to my room.
Sissy is still trembling and hiccupping with tears and I know she'll take forever to fall asleep if I can't calm her down. I light the candle and cuddle up beside her on the bed, letting her rest her head in the crook of my arm while I read to her softly. We're sharing Anne of Green Gables, and I read until Sissy's eyes close and she falls asleep with a smile on her face. Even then I continue to read silently to myself, escaping from the threat of nightmares that sleep brings and finding solace in the simple beauties of Anne's fictional world.
"Alice, why are you still awake?" It's Mama, wearing her nightgown and with her hair brushed and braided down her back. She comes and sits on the bed beside Sissy, reaching across to brush my hair back from my face.
"You're still awake," I point out. I close the book, my finger marking my place.
Mama smiles sadly. "Papa is asleep now. I just wanted to make sure my girls were okay." She leans down and kisses Cynthia's sleeping face. "Goodnight, sweet baby girl," she whispers.
"She was frightened by the shouting," I say softly. "We both were. Did he hurt you Mama?"
Quickly Mama shakes her head. "Oh no, Alice, you mustn't worry about me." Her eyes on me are intent. "I'm going to try and work something out for you," she says suddenly, and her voice is pinched with anxiety. "I know that things here are not good for you. When he…hurt you today…oh, I'm so sorry my darling! I promise you I will try and work something out so that you can go away from here. Somewhere safe Alice…"
I let her take me in her arms, and I lay my head on her shoulder and breathe in the smell of her. Lavender and baking bread, scents that have always meant love and security to me, but now offer little comfort at all. Because I know that love is not going to be enough to keep us safe, not now that the monster is inside our home.
"Please be careful Mama" I whisper. "I feel that we're all in danger now." I can't tell her that I have seen the shadow looming over her, but I have to warn her somehow.
Mama kisses me, and Sissy sighs in her sleep and nestles a little closer. "I will," she promises me. "We'll both be careful Alice." She rises to her feet and moves towards the door. "I must go now, or your father may be wondering where I am. Sleep well darling."
I smile at her and extinguish the candle, but it's a long, long time before I am able to let sleep overtake me.
The house is silent when I wake. I dress quickly and tiptoe to the kitchen, but when I look at the clock I realise it's later than I thought. Papa will be at work and Sissy will be at school already, and since Mama's shopping basket is gone from its usual place she must have gone out too.
I peer at my face in the mirror. The bruise on my head is dark but the swelling has gone down and I can hide most of the damage with my hair. I'm pinning up my plaits in the back when I suddenly feel the floor falling out from beneath my feet and I'm plunging into the darkness of a nightmare.
I see the man in the hat, but rather than haunting the shadows he's standing in the sunlight at the side of a road in a place I recognise. His car is behind him and he's looking down the steep drop off at the side of the road, nodding in satisfaction. My stomach heaves as the perspective shifts. It's as though I'm standing beside him looking down, through the settling clouds of dust to see the splintered remains of a buggy far below, the piebald pony thrashing and screaming as she tries to escape the harness, blood staining her hind legs. More blood, dampening down the dust as it spills from a crumpled figure that has been thrown from the wreck. My ears are echoing with screams because it's all so sickeningly familiar…
"Mama!"
The vision shimmers and disappears. I'm down on my hands and knees in my own bedroom and I know I'm too late, but I run anyway. In bare feet and with my hair half done I run like I did the day of the stones when I was a child, heart pounding and breath sobbing, hearing the sound of the screaming pony and the laughter of the man in the hat. "Mama! Mama, I'm coming!"
It's there though, just as I saw it. The railing above the steep fall is broken and I fling myself through the gap, slipping and sliding on the gravel as I half climb and half fall down the slope. My hands and feet are bleeding but I don't care, don't care because there's Mama and oh, it was all true and I'm too late and once again I haven't been able to save the one I love.
I crouch beside where Mama is lying. She must have been thrown from the buggy and her neck is bent at an impossible angle, the ground around her head dark with blood. Oh Mama, I'm so sorry…I wanted to save you. I touch my finger to her cheek. She's still warm and I give a low, keening moan as I gently close her eyelids. I let myself sit beside her, taking her limp, still hand in my fingers and holding it gently. There is nothing I can do for her now.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.
I don't know how long it is before there's a shout from the railing, and then a man I recognise vaguely from church scrambles down the slope towards me, sending the rocks and gravel sliding ahead of him.
"What's happened? Dear God, is that Caroline Brandon?" He goes to push me aside but then he looks at Mama and knows, and shakes his head. "Are you hurt, girl? Mary Alice, is it?"
I stare at him dumbly and he shakes his head again and calls up to someone else on the road. There's an answering shout and then I hear the crack of a whip and the creak of wheels as whoever he was with heads for town.
The man goes to the pony, who has long since given up efforts to free herself, and cuts her free from the harness. But her hind legs are soaked in blood and as she struggles to stand I see the pale ends of bone poking through the skin. I feel sick and shut my eyes, so I don't see him take out his gun and hold it to her head. I hear the noise though, and to my terrified and overwrought mind it seems to toll the end of the world and I scream. One long, high pitched reverberating wail that echoes around the valley and then turns to sobs.
"There, there," the man mutters, and awkwardly pats my shoulder. His hands are rough and the fingernails dirty, but I'm so grateful for his kindness that it makes me cry more. Mama…please don't be gone. What's going to happen to me without you?
Time blurs. People come, the police and a doctor who looks at the lump on my head and seems to think I was in the buggy with Mama. I don't say otherwise. In fact I'm so frightened that I don't say anything much at all, just let the tears run as they cover up my mama and then take her away, and then bundle me up and push me up to the road. It looks like half the town is there. I hear them murmuring as they see me, but I look down and say nothing as I'm guided to a car and then someone drives me home.
Papa is there, and Auntie Lorna. Papa's eyes on me are calculating, and I feel icy fingers of fear on my spine. There is something more to this. I step away from him, trembling.
"Go to your room, Alice," he says quietly, and almost gratefully I turn and hurry away.
Cynthia finds me in our room, lying on the bed and staring at the ceiling, when she's brought home from school. She throws herself at me, and I do my best to comfort her, knowing that nothing will really help. I am so heartsick myself and I'm nearly a grown up…how much more difficult is it for my baby sister to lose her mama? I hold her tight while the two of us cry, and guilt floods my soul because I knew of the danger and still couldn't save her.
I can hear a lot of noise and bustle in the house as people come and go, but I stay quietly in our room with Sissy. It's not until the evening shadows lengthen and I hear her belly growling with hunger that the two of us venture out.
Papa is sitting with Auntie Lorna and Uncle Christopher in the front room, and when he sees the two of us he frowns. "Cynthia, I want you to go home with your aunt and uncle," he says. "I shall be busy sorting things out and you need to be out of the way."
Sissy grips my hand and presses close to my side. "Can't I stay here with Alice?"
Papa shakes his head impatiently. "No. Go and get your things, your aunt is ready to leave."
I feel like I'm watching from a great distance as Sissy goes and packs some clothes into the small leather suitcase. Despite these people, my family, close around me I feel all alone in a world of frightening shadows and ghostly spectres and visions of hell. Please, someone help me. I watch numbly as Uncle Christopher tosses the case into the cart and lifts my sobbing sister in after it, and as I stand on the porch and watch them leave I have the disconcerting feeling that I am saying goodbye to my baby sister for the last time.
I serve Papa some dinner, my hands shaking and my heart pounding with the fast, rhythmic beat of terror. I don't even know why I am so afraid. Not then.
After he has eaten I clean up, but I can't bring myself to eat anything. Instead I go to my room and sit silently by the window, staring out blindly into the gathering dark and waiting. Something is going to happen, and then I'll know. I listen to Papa, hearing the clank of glass as he drinks his way steadily through another bottle of whisky, and I wait. The moon rises and the clouds blow away, and still I wait. I don't know what I'm waiting for, but I know it is something important, something terrible. Tonight, everything is going to change.
It's probably close to midnight when I hear the car in the drive. It's an unfamiliar, dark Model T and I peer into the darkness when the driver climbs out. It's a tall man, but between the pale moonlight and the hat pulled low over his face I don't know if it's someone I know or not.
Papa seems to know him though. He steps out on to the porch and the two of them talk together in voices too low for me to hear. I watch as Papa reaches in to his pocket and hands something over to the man- I see him flick it in his hands and realise it's a bundle of money. The conversation continues in serious tones, and then they both nod and shake hands.
There's a noise on the roof. A squirrel maybe, or one of the barn cats chasing bats. It doesn't really matter what causes it, what matters is that it catches the men's attention. Both Papa and the stranger swing their heads around and our eyes meet across the porch as they see me watching them, and then my heart drops because I finally know.
He's not a stranger, not really. No, he's the terrifying man in the hat from my dreams, the man who forced my mama's buggy off the road and down the cutting, the man who stood high on the hill and watched her to make sure she was dead. And now he's here with my Papa…
"You," I breathe, reeling in the sudden horrifying clarity. You wanted her dead and that's why you're giving him money, because he killed her. And you know that I know you did it, and now it's my turn…