Chapter Three

Erik

I had always wanted my mother's affection. Always. Every time that I caught a glimpse of her, every moment I listened with my ear pressed to the door, every time my father stomped down the stairs and I knew what he intended to do, I thought of her. I thought of her comforting me when I cried alone. I thought of her making me a meal and allowing me to sit on her lap. I thought of her loving me when I could not bear to love myself.

I had never hated my mother. I had been disappointed by her negligence, by her absence from my life, but I hadn't the heart to hate her.

I had never wanted to live apart from her, to not know the feel of her fingers in my hair or her lips pressing a kiss to my cheek. I saw children wrapped in blankets, held tightly by their gentle mothers and felt a great sense of jealousy that those moments were foreign to me.

As I stood barefoot on the wet grass, listening to her weep, to the sound of despair from the mother I did not know, I couldn't possibly leave her and I still could not hate her. No matter what, she was still my mother, even if I would never truly be her son.

"Mother," I said softly. It felt inappropriate to call her by her given name, so I called her by the title that I still wanted her to bear.

She startled at my greeting and looked over her shoulder at me, green eyes ringed in blood red from crying. Her hair was silver in color, not white like her mother Hilda, brittle, uneven, and uncombed. Most of her hair was pulled back from her face, but strands escaped, tangled in spots and flying in all directions.

Somehow, she looked as I would have expected: wild and enigmatic, a person I wanted to know more while at the same time apprehensive of being near her. After all the years that had passed, that simple truth remained the same.

"Erik," she said, her voice still tight with emotion. She made no attempt to dry her eyes or wipe her running nose.

"May I ask what you are doing out here?" I queried.

She looked away from me, studying the pile of rocks in her lap. The ground beneath her was still quite damp from the previous day's storm, her skirts visibly soaked. I couldn't imagine she was comfortable.

"Coming to sit with you," she said, looking at the broken base of the headstone. "With what I had left of you."

My heart filled with unimaginable sorrow. She consoled a pile of broken rock rather than her living, breathing, feeling son.

"Someone destroyed this. The lutin, I think. He is unkind to me, always stealing from me and destroying my belongings."

"This isn't me," I said, looking at the pile of rubble. "This was never me. I was never buried here and some …hobgoblin didn't destroy the stone."

She bowed her head, caressing the rock in her hand. "It was what I had of you. What a shame it has been destroyed. And of course it was a lutin. You cannot see them, but they are everywhere."

"I am here now," I said. "And I assure you that there is no lutin. They are make believe creatures meant to frighten children."

My mother did not lift her head to acknowledge me, preferring the ruined headstone to gazing upon my ruined, masked face.

I looked away from her, studying the array of bird houses and glass feeders all around the property, some hanging from trees, others on long poles high above the ground. There were dozens in different sizes, shapes and colors, none of which I had seen as I hadn't stepped foot on this side of the property. Personally I found them garish and unnecessary as there were probably more bird houses than birds in the vicinity and I doubted birds cared for wrap-around porches and towers.

"How did this happen?" my mother asked suddenly. "How did I miss your entire childhood? How did I not know you were kept from me?"

"Laudanum," I answered.

She glanced up at me. "What is laudanum?" she asked.

"It's a liquid sometimes used to cure various ailments," I answered, "but in high doses it can be detrimental. You always had a bottle by your rocking chair."

"My chair," she said fondly.

I nodded. "By the fireplace."

"Yes, that was a good chair. It protected me from the spirits. Does laudanum protect from spirits?"

"I do not believe so."

My mother reached into her skirt and pulled out a small green bottle with the image of an anchor on the label. "This?" she asked. "Is this what you speak of?"

I knew the jade green bottle with the light blue label well without taking a closer look: Steelman & Archer, the druggist whose product was manufactured in Philadelphia as well as London and readily available through physicians as well as catalog orders. There was always a bottle or two by her rocking chair, liquid sedation to cure her ailments.

"Yes, that is it."

She removed the lid and turned the bottle upside down. "There is nothing left. The bottle has been empty since last night and I cannot find more. The store inside of the town, they have hidden this from me."

I nodded.

"Do you think you would be able to provide more, my son? For your suffering mother?"

There was nothing I wanted more than to help my mother, but I was aware that the treatment she sought was not benefiting her. In fact I was quite sure that it made her worse.

"No, I do not," I answered.

"Why? Why can you not give me more?"

"Because I do not have any."

"But you can go to the store in town and ask them–"

"I do not have the funds to purchase the drug," I said.

"Then steal it."

"No, I will not steal on your behalf and it is rude of you to ask that of me."

My mother slowly nodded, a listlessness about her now that she had ceased crying and laudanum would not be provided.

"You do not understand why I need more."

"Tell me."

Her lips twitched. "This has always stopped the noise," she said, closing one eye as she held the bottle up to the other eye and looked inside. "The voices, the screaming…the boy inside of the floor. I would drink this and the voices would be silent."

"There was no boy inside of the floors," I gently reminded her. "You were sedated and unaware that I was being contained beneath the house. That is why you do not remember me."

The moment I spoke the words, I regretted it.

"This?" she asked, looking at the bottle. "This made me not know you?"

"Yes," I answered. "The laudanum made you unaware of your surroundings. There is a warning on the label."

Gyda's lips parted. "What does it say?" she asked, extending her hand out to me.

I took the bottle from her and examined the back of the bottle. The label was faded and peeling from the bottle, none of the small print readable. It made no difference as I knew what it said from reading it multiple times over the years as Madeline kept a bottle in the medicine cabinet.

"It says not for long-term use and may cause poisoning if dosing is over the recommended amount."

My mother appeared terrified. She placed her hand over her heart. "Have I been poisoned, Erik?" she asked, her voice low and trembling.

"I don't know," I answered.

Gyda looked away from me. "Are you really my son? I find it impossible to believe."

"Yes, I am your son," I answered.

"And the man who is with you, he is not Bjorn?"

"No, he is not Bjorn."

"He looks like Bjorn. Are you certain he is not a ghost?"

"He is Phelan, your eldest son and my brother and I assure you, he is not a ghost," I responded, feeling my patience wane. It felt as though we were spinning in circles, the conversation repeated over and over without end.

"I do not like him," my mother said through her teeth.

I turned my head and looked at the house, but Phelan was not peering out the window as I had expected. I hoped he hadn't heard the conversation as I couldn't imagine how devastated my brother would have been if he heard our mother speak of him in that manner.

"Why?" I asked, forcing calm into my voice. "Why do you dislike Phelan?"

"He is like Bjorn. He chased me through the house."

"Because we were not expecting anyone inside and heard dishes rattling. We thought you were a thief."

"He wanted to hurt me."

"No, that was not Lan's intention."

"He threw me on the floor. He hates me."

"He did no such thing and I can assure you that Phelan doesn't hate you," I said, growing more frustrated by her insinuations. "You were fighting to get away from him and he was attempting to keep you still. There was nothing nefarious about his actions or his intentions."

"He wants to harm me. I know he wants to harm me. You do not see it, because you are under his spell, but there is an evil spirit inside of him. I can feel it. I pray for the evil to leave this place. I pray day and night for protection."

"There is absolutely nothing evil about Phelan," I assured her.

My mother still seemed unconvinced. "What happened to Bjorn?" she asked as she began placing her collected rocks into a heap on the damp ground, arranging them in a row.

"He passed away many years ago," I answered.

"His spirit is still here," she said, risking a glance at the trees. I followed her gaze, finding nothing of interest aside from branches and the shade of leaves. "He is bound here in death, just as I am bound here in life, shackled to this land, unable to escape."

Her words made me shiver. I had felt as though I had been chained to Conforeit as well, unable to escape beyond the town and the seashore. I had fully expected Conforeit would be the place of my death at the hands of my father.

"Perhaps Bjorn is the one who kicked the door open and grabbed me, not Phelan. Bjorn has reached out through your brother, holding him captive. Through Bjorn, Phelan tried to kill me, Erik, he wants to harm me."

"No," I said. "That is not true."

"It is true. It is true and you will not help me because I did not help you. Is that it?"

"No, that is not it."

"Then why will you not help me? Why will you not help your mother?"

"Because I do not think I can help you. I think–"

I thought she was beyond help. But I couldn't bear to say those words to her.

My heart felt as though it twisted in my chest. The longer I spoke to my mother, the more certain I was that there was no solution to her ailments.

"Why not?" she demanded, distracted by the rocks she arranged.

"Because you will not listen to me," I said, feeling the control over my words slip from my grasp.

"I am listening to you now."

"No, you are not listening. Forgive me, mother, but you do not know what is true or false, nor do you wish to find clarity," I snapped.

She gaped at me briefly before she cast her gaze aside.

"Moments after I was born, I was wrapped in a blanket and set outside on the back steps. The midwife didn't bother to dry me off as I was not supposed to live." I swallowed. "Minutes old and left to parish, to freeze to death in winter. Do you want to know how I survived past birth? It was because of Phelan."

Her bottom lip trembled, but she didn't reply.

"My brother, whom you think is evil and cruel and possessed by the spirit of our father, he saved me. He brought me back inside and hid me when I was left for dead on the back steps. He dried me off, he managed to feed me, and he did what he could to keep me alive when no one else wanted me."

"No," she whispered. "No, they said you were not breathing."

"That was not true."

"They would not allow me to see you."

"Because I was born with a scar, not because I was dead," I answered.

Gyda looked up and blinked at me, her gaze drawn to the mask. A flash of realization passed through her gaze.

"The scar?" she whispered, holding her dirt-covered hand over the right side of her face. "The boy with the scar. I saw him. He was…he was taken away. I did not think he was real."

"I was real, and I was taken by my father, back to the cellar every time, as I have told you. Eventually my uncle took me for good. Phelan saved my life as an infant and my uncle saved me at the age of twelve. They are the reason I am here today, speaking with you."

Goose flesh covered my arms. I was absolutely certain that my sleep would be interrupted by nightmare after nightmare of being dragged through the house and down the stairs to my unimaginable fate.

"God help me. That was you? That was my son I saw?"

I nodded grimly, shaken to my core. "You have been consuming mass quantities of laudanum since I was a child, probably before I was ever born. You have been kept on this elixir for decades and you cannot appropriately decipher the world around you. You think your eldest son is possessed by your dead husband and that I was purposely living inside the floors to trick you. None of that is true. Perhaps you have been poisoning yourself and want to continue because you cannot accept the truth."

With unexpected speed, she snatched the bottle from me and began striking it against the ground. I stepped back, alarmed by her actions and the way she grunted through her teeth.

The glass shattered in her grasp and she held out the jagged edge of what remained, then stabbed it into the earth, into the center of the cross she had made out of the broken headstone.

For a heartbeat I saw Christine's wild eyes glaring at me, not my own mother. In the stillness of a held breath, I felt the chaos of attempting to love someone who was not well, who did not know me or herself. It was enough to make me draw back from where I stood, unable to entertain such madness again.

In the back of my mind, I wondered if I had been drawn to Christine because of her ailment, attempting to save her from the demons in her mind when I was unable to save my mother from hers. The thought left me reeling, my mind gauzy and knees weak.

"Poison," my mother said under her breath as she straightened the stones to her preference with trembling hands. She started to reach for the broken bottle, but left it impaling the earth. "My husband is dead, my children are strangers, and my veins are filled with poison. What am I to do? How do I regain what I have lost?"

I bowed my head, having no answers for her. For the first time since spring, I felt as though all hope had been lost.