ALL CHARACTERS, SETTINGS AND ANY RECOGNIZABLE REFERENCES ARE OWNED BY THEIR RESPECTFUL OWNERS- NO COPY WRITE IS INTENDED AND THIS STORY IS SIMPLY FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY.
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Hello lovelies! I'm back again for the next chapter of Scars and it the first of chapters inside Edward's head. Enjoy!
Chapter 25: To Walk the Halls of Memories
Previously...
' ... I felt Bella use her newly acquired gift from Aro. In our minds I saw flashes of my life speeding behind my closed eyes becoming faster and faster until it was just a swirl of colour flashing behind our eyes. I could faintly hear Bella speak softly to me telling me to relax and focus on the swirl images when suddenly there was complete darkness and not even a thought could be heard I was alone for what felt like hours. Then the darkness began to shape and form colour and I found myself in a room...'
I knew this room. Somewhere in the foggy memories of my human life this room was my own, but unlike those foggy memories, everything was crystal clear now. I turned and looked around, brushing my hand along the smooth varnished mahogany wood of the foot-board of my old bed when I was a human adolescent. I slid my hand over the wood to meet the clean fabric of the white sheets. My hand slowly moved over all the different objects in the room, simply feeling each of the item's texture and amazed at how real it felt.
I came to the window and looked out and saw the old style houses of the early 1900s that lined the foot path with their nicely trimmed hedges and rosebushes. Suddenly I heard a cry and a woman's voice cooing. "Hush baby, don't you cry..."
I knew that voice too from my foggy human past. I turned and the room had change. In the place of the bed was a baby's crib and over in the far corner was a rocking chair in which a beautiful young woman with bronze hair and bright green eyes sat cradling the tiny child, softly singing a lullaby. The baby's cries softened to a whimper then soon ceased all together. I walked closer to the pear and saw the child's green eye's gazing up at the woman: my mother, Elizabeth Mason.
There was a soft knock of the door behind me and I heard my father's voice as he walked over to my mother kissing her head.
"Hello, love. How's my charming little Edward Junior been today?"
My mother smiled up at him. "Oh, he' been just fine. He just woke up actually. How was work?"
"Oh, the usually. I'm just glad to be home," he said smiling down at the both of them.
They became quiet as the baby slipped back into slumber as they talked. I turned to move out of the room when I heard Bella's quiet voice echo through the hallway.
"Edward? Where are you?"
I opened the door into a hallway fully and called out to her. I continued down the hall way and then found Bella walking in my direction. As she noticed me, she sighed in relief.
"There you are," she said, taking hold of my hand as I smiled down at her.
"I saw my mother and my father. Mother was singing to me and my father had just gotten home from work."
"Are they just how you remembered?"
"Better," I said, smiling happily.
We moved down the hallway and saw a door slightly opened. I moved to open it fully and we walked inside. This room portrayed the living room of my childhood. In this memory, I was a little older then the mere newborn that I had been in the last memory- my father was helping my tiny form stand and my mother was a few feet away crouching with her arms wide open.
"Go to mama, son."
My memory's small form stepped clumsily out of my father's hands, but then started to fall. Before the small child touched the ground, my father had picked him up and set him back on his feet once more. The boy tried once more slowly moving across the floor with my father close behind. The child reached out to my mother as he came closer to her then ungracefully fell in to her waiting arms. The two parents smiled with pride for their young son while the boy happily smiled and played with his mother's hair.
I felt Bella move closer to me, molding herself into my side and laying her head on my shoulder. "You were a beautiful baby, my love," she said, smiling up at me as I kissed the top of her head.
We stood there watching the small happy family for a while until we moved on back into the long hallway. As we continued down the hall, we started to hear a piano. The sound was a simple C major scale but it was clumsy and choppy, as if the one playing was unsure of what came after each note. When we reached the door the sound was coming from, I open it and we both stepped inside.
Seated on the piano bench where the two bronze headed forms of my mother and me. This memory was of one of my first piano lessons and my mother was teaching me my scales and how I should position my hands. She spoke softly but firmly to try again whenever I stumbled and got the scale wrong. Her patience was one of her best qualities along with her ever-present love and compassion.
I watched on as my young form slumped his shoulders when he got stuck on the E minor scale.
"Mama, I cannot get it right," my young voice quivered as the boy's shoulders slumped even more.
"Oh, come now, Edward. You have only tried it not even five times; you just need a bit of patience. You will get it in time. Let me help you." She placed her long slim hand over my small one and helped me press each correct note on the scale a few times then she let the boy try again on his own. He smiled triumphantly when he got the scale right.
I felt Bella chuckle when she saw my younger self's antics. "Always the perfectionist," she said, looking up at me smiling.
"Well I found that it was very important to get it right," I said, smiling innocently.
"But when you didn't you pouted," she said as she mirrored the pout that was on the boy not only moments before.
I laughed at her expression and kissed her pouting lips. "How about we see what other memories are within the doors, hmm?"
She smiled brightly and nodded, following me out. We walked down the hall once more and then we came to a door with my younger self curled up in a tight ball with his arms wrapped tightly around his knees and head bowed low-I would have been around the age of seven at the time- the boy looked at the closed door next to him then got up and opened it walking inside timidly. We followed the boy inside and Bella looked up at me with concern as her chocolate eyes moved between the boy and me. We walked into the room and found it was a bedroom set up for a baby. In the corner holding a bundle of pink cloth was my mother but something was wrong. She was not smiling and happy with the new birth of her child. Her face held nothing but emptiness. Tears silently fell down her pale, drawn and sunken face as she stared off into the distance with the sound of a haunting and cheerless lullaby coming from her chapped lips. Her body shook as she clung onto the small bundle in her arms.
The boy moved closer to his mother and hesitantly placed his small hand on her arm, "Mamma?"
She did not react to his touch or his words and the boy looked down at the small baby clutched in his grieving mother's arms. He stared confused at the pale unmoving baby in her arms. "Is she sleeping mamma?" asked the bronze headed boy.
At the boy's question, mother looked down smiling sadly at him. "Yes baby, yes she is," she said tearfully.
"Why are you crying mama? When is she going to wake up?" the boy asked wiping away his mother's tears.
Mother's lips trembled as she tried to stay as strong as she could for her son. "She's not going to wake up baby and that's why I'm crying." Her tears fell faster as a sob court in her throat.
The boy frowned. "Why won't she wake up?" he asked confused
"Because her spirit left and she's gone to be in heaven with God, baby. That's why she won't wake up."
The boy looked up at his mother and crawled onto his mother's lap hugging his mother as tightly as he could. "I won't leave you mama. I promise," the boy declared.
His mother whipped the tear that had just started to slide down his cheek and whispered brokenly, "I know baby, I know."
As I stared at the scene before us, I began to remember what had happened. My mother gave birth to the stillborn baby at home with the help of our maid who told me to go call the doctor. I could hear my mother's screams and cry's as I called the doctor on our telephone. Usually my mother or father would be with me when I used the phone- mostly my mother when I persuaded her to let me use it for her when she had to call her friends.
The doctor came soon after I had hung up and then he told me I should go out and play but I couldn't. I ended up sitting at the bottom of the steps in the foyer in front of the door. I heard a commotion up stairs and I remember following the yelling up to the second floor. When I had gotten to the hallway I heard my mother yelling at the doctor and our maid to leave her alone as she slammed the door to the new baby's room. The doctor had a few words with the maid then left, and the maid went down stairs to call my father.
I didn't know what to do so I had sat down next to the door until I had gotten up the courage to enter the room. I found out later that my mother would not let go of the lifeless newborn and she demanded everyone to leave her be. When my father had come home, he found us in the baby's room and he somehow managed to persuade my mother let go of the baby so that the child could be made ready for the burial.
The months following were one of the saddest moments of my human life. For weeks, my mother would sit in what would have been the baby's room staring blankly at the walls for hours until the maid or I could get her down for dinner were she would only pick at her food then go back up the baby's room until my father came home from work which was late at night-all he ended up doing was working, sleeping and eating but manly working.
When we packed up the baby's room there were many tears for a life never had. The weeks before mother had given birth, my parents had decided to call the baby Lillian Louise Mason and that was the name inscribe on her tomb stone with 'In heaven's loving hands thy tiny child rest for now and forever'. As time progressed, life got back into some form of normalcy, though at times even in the later years of my human life I would see my mother or father go in to the room that would have been Lillian's and simply stand in there silently.
"Oh Edward I'm so sorry."
At Bella's voice I was pulled from my reverie.
"It must have been trying times for your family."
"It was, especially for my mother. Even years after her baby's death, my mother blamed herself for what happened."
"It's not her fault. No one knows how long we're going to live," Bella said, shaking her head.
"Everyone else knew that but trying to convince her was another thing especially when they tried again and she lost the baby to whooping cough three months after little David was born."
Bella was silent for a moment as she thought of the emotional trauma that my mother had because not one but two of her children died her care. "You're a lot like her you know. Not just with your hair or your eyes, but how you take the world onto your shoulders and every bad thing that goes on around you. You think that the blame is on you even when it's not. Some people have a problem with not taking responsibility for their actions." She looked up at me. "But, you have the problem of taking responsibility for everybody else's"
I leaned down towards her and whispered in her ear, "I'm not the only one with that problem my sweet angel." I said as I kissed her temple.
I turned to gaze of at my weeping mother one last time- wishing that I could take her pain away- and we solemnly return back down the hall.
There's Edward's memories form his childhood- what did you think?
what do you think of Edward birth mum?
There's plenty more of Edwards memory's to go- what more shall we find...
Next chapter is-
Chapter 26: The Enigma that was Helen
Info:
The National Institute of Health estimates that of the 4 million births a year in the U.S there are 26,000 stillbirths. But between 1915 and 1997 there was about a 90% decline in infant mortality.
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