And a voice, as large as thunder, came out of the dark, ripping Chloe from her dream and back into the light. “Elling?” the voice said. “He’s my brother.”
Chloe was in the backseat of Ethan’s car, wrapped in heavy furs. Her head lay on the lap of a large woman similar in features to the woman Chloe had seen at the cottage, but with a broader and more masculine face.
“Are you ready to listen now?” the woman asked irritably. “I have something you need to hear, and we haven’t got the time for me to keep repeating things.”
***
Chloe sat up too quickly. She ached from the fall, and she felt the forming knot on the back of her head. She closed her eyes to keep from spinning.
“You took quite a fall,” the husky woman said. “When you get out of here, you should see a doctor about that head of yours.”
Chloe put two and two together. The woman, the heavy dark furs. This is what—or who—had been watching her from behind the pine and who had frightened her so badly. She wanted to be angry but came up with only exhaustion.
“Who are you?” she finally asked in as irritated a voice as she could muster. “And what are you doing out in this weather, for God’s sake?”
“My name is Sybil.”
Chloe’s head cleared. “Sybil? The sister?”
“Yes. Michael and Elling were my brothers.”
“Elling and…
Michael
?”
She could not be more stunned. Her mouth hung open and her glassy eyes grew wide. “Michael? Lana’s Michael?”
“Yes.” The woman was frustrated with Chloe’s lack of knowledge regarding the situation.
“But why were you stalking about in the creek? And where the hell did you come from?”
“I have a cabin just down the creek. Just that way.” She gestured stiffly. “I bought it after Michael disappeared. I wanted to keep an eye on things. I never trusted that actress, and I wanted to see what she really did with—
to
—my brother. I was certain she had killed him.”
“But she didn’t. He fell down the well.”
“I know that now. I’ve been keeping an eye on you all. But that doesn’t excuse what a lousy person she is and always has been. She shoots at me, you know. Whenever I tried to talk to her in the years after Michael’s disappearance and Rebecca’s fall, that bitch shot at me from her perch. Lord, she thinks she’s mighty, up in the air like that!” She grumbled and looked out the window for a moment. “Michael was always my favorite brother. Between him and Elling, it wasn’t a hard choice to make. Where is Michael buried? Do you know? After he was taken out of the well, where did she put him?”
Chloe felt sorrow for the woman. Lana had succeeded in keeping her away from her only family, even after death. What kind of person would do that?
“He’s… in the back garden. Next to Rebecca.”
Sybil thought on this and eventually decided it was good. “That’s a decent burial. At least he’s no longer at the cottage.” She peered at Chloe harshly. “You got to get away from the cottage.”
“It’s Elling, isn’t it? He’s still there.”
“Oh yes. He’s still there. Truthfully, I never believed in that spooky mumbo-jumbo garbage. Not until years after I first left the cottage myself. But one night I snuck up there. This was a few years before the actress bought the place or even knew it existed. I just needed to see it again. I just needed to. I don’t know why. No one had lived in the place for ages. But that cottage… it speaks. It creaks in a language of its own.”
“The kitchen is the loudest.”
“I saw him briefly then, my brother Elling. He was standing in a corner, watching me. I rubbed my eyes to make sure my head wasn’t playing tricks of memory.” She shuddered. The woman was so large it resembled a quake. “Those eyes of his always unnerved me, even as a kid. He frightened me so. He frightened all of us. He would do things…” She swallowed and looked down at her hands, gloved in thick wool. “Michael was my defense against Elling. He always said he’d get us away from Elling. From Momma.”
“And did he?”
“In time… In time, yes. He did in a manner of speaking. When he ran, that gave me the courage I needed to run away myself. But I’m getting ahead of my story, missy. Let me tell it my way.”
“Sorry.”
“You see, Elling was not a good boy. He might have turned out okay under other circumstances, but… I’m not even sure about that. He had a wretchedness about him right from birth, my momma used to say. He was a violent boy and I believe Momma regretted bringing him into the world. She once said God should have taken him the moment he spilled out of her.” Sybil straightened her back, as if readying herself to tell a heavy truth. “I’ll just say it. He was evil. We couldn’t keep an animal around the cottage. He killed every pet we had, either by throwing it down that damn well or by some other more gruesome means. When we didn’t get any more real pets, he went after every little critter he could snare in the woods. I buried them there behind the cottage when I found their carcasses, the ones I could get to. Every creature deserves a proper burial.”
“That was good of you. I stumbled across them. Their graves, I mean.”
“Elling once even tried to kill Michael. Tried to drown him in this very creek, but Momma was nearby. She loved us. She wasn’t a bad momma, you see. Just a crazy one. Her love was crazy too. There were only two things Elling was ever scared of: Momma and the big house.”
“Why the big house?”
“That had something to do with Momma too. Elling disappeared once for nearly an entire week. Momma was sick with worry. Not only for him, but for any unfortunate thing to cross his path. That’s one of the reasons we never went into town. There was no telling what Elling would do or who he would do it to. He frightened the townsfolk more than he frightened us. He was a Halloween mask on a pretty spring day.
“One day Momma found out that Elling was up at the big house. He had snuck in one night and was staying at the top, in the cupola, where no one ever went. He’d sneak down when he could—giggling, no doubt—and scavenge for food. It was only by chance that one of the servants at the big house finally went up to the cupola. I imagine they got quite a fright when they saw Elling grinning and staring back at them from behind the door. Momma beat the hell out of Elling for it, too, with a stripped tree limb. How he yelped! It was the only time I ever felt bad for him. All through that beating she taught him etiquette.
You don’t enter a person’s home unless asked
, she’d say.
You’ve got to be invited in. Maybe they don’t want you there.
“I always wondered why Momma truly beat him so roughly. Was it really because she wanted to teach him to respect the property of others, or was it because she was afraid he’d leave her? This was after Daddy had died, after all, and Momma was always afraid us kids was going to leave her just like Daddy had. Boy, she kept an eye on us.
“Things weren’t always so bad at the cottage, though. I can even remember some good times. Daddy playing his fiddle after dinner. Michael, Elling, and me having snowball fights. Helping Momma cook. That was nice.
“And from what I know, Elling himself didn’t start out too bad. He’d almost died at birth, Momma said, and she and Daddy were so relieved when he finally pulled through. But then he started acting up. He bit the head off of a mouse at the age of two. And then Daddy died from some strange flu. Momma said she seen it coming. She said he was saying some crazy things. She went into town and got him some special medication. She’d stir it into his soup every day, but it didn’t help. He died just the same. And then Momma snapped as clear and loud as a twig.
“When Momma saw that she couldn’t beat the devil out of Elling, she decided to starve it out of him. She tied him up in the barn like a dog, and boy, did he ever howl. Me, Michael, and Momma would be sitting at dinner and have to hear that howling and crying. Elling cussed till the barn blushed red. It turned my stomach, but it didn’t seem to bother Momma. Nothing ever did once she got it in her head that her way of thinking was the right course of action. Elling stayed tied up in the barn for a while with nothing to eat or drink but water and scraps of bread.”
“That’s what led to his death, right?”
“How did you know about that?” Sybil eyed Chloe suspiciously.
“I-I did some research on the place after we moved in and strange things began happening.”
That seemed a reasonable explanation for Sybil. “The crazy fool. Started gnawing off his own hand. Momma felt bad, I guess, and untied him. He saw that as his chance and he ran. Ran right out the barn and down the well. I remember Momma screaming for days.
“Michael ran away soon after that. I think he sensed something was…
wrong
before the rest of us. He never said a word to me about his going. He was just gone one morning. Momma did not react well, as you can imagine. Now I was all she had and she watched me harder than ever. I half expected her to tie me up like she’d done Elling and I was on my guard for it.”
“If things were so terrible, why did Michael ever come back? Why did you?”
“The same reason: family. To make amends. Elling was an evil boy, but he was our brother and we let him down.” Her eyes were heavy with the grief and guilt. “And Momma. She was a lost soul. She still is, I believe.”
“Did Lana ever know Michael had lived on Bad Luck Hill before?”
“No. I wouldn’t think so. Michael talked to me once—one of the few times he could—when they were just getting ready to buy the place. I thought he was crazy at the time. But now I get it. We all have to head home at some point. We all have to face the horrible things that make us who we are. We have to try and get over the falls that take us down.”
“Why? Why do we have to do that?”
“It’s the only way to move on. Otherwise, a person will just keep falling.”
“I suppose.” Chloe curled up in the fur. “And you? How did you finally get away from the cottage?”
“Loudly. It was soon after Michael left. The nightmares had started for me and Momma. We’d either wake to our own screaming or that of each other. Those were awful, nasty dreams, and I won’t go into them here.” She looked at Chloe. “You don’t look like you could handle them. I barely could and look at me. I’m three times your size.”
“You’d be surprised what I can handle.”
“Maybe. Still, I’d rather not think on them. Momma had them worse than me. But after a while she seemed to get used to them. Once I heard her talking to herself in the middle of the night. That cottage gets pitch black at night, as you know. You can’t see for nothing and the silence is threatening. So when you hear a whisper through that dark and silence… well, it’s terrifying. I slept in the front room of the house, as me and my brothers had done since we were kids, but I could hear Momma’s whispering like she was two feet away.
“Truth be told, I knew Momma wasn’t talking to herself. Not really. Like I said, I didn’t believe in ghosts and the like until much later. At least, not admittedly. But deep inside somewhere, I knew that was Elling with her. Her voice shook and pleaded, though I could never really hear what she said. I didn’t want to know, and I was too scared to get up and tiptoe to her bedroom door to listen. I was a big girl, and that noisy house had become unforgiving toward me. I curled up in my bed and heard fleeting words like
taste
and
sorry
. Every so often a sharp, foul word too, which was the most unsettling because Momma never cursed. I wonder if that was truly Momma at all who said those words.
“It was around that time I started to notice the scratches on her arm. Her eyes would often glass over when she looked at me, and she took to standing over the well and staring into it.”
Chloe felt her stomach tying and knotting as Sybil spoke. “Did she get sick?”
“Very ill. Sometimes she was out cold for days. Sometimes she’d shake so violently I thought she was going to explode. Sometimes she’d fight in her sleep.
“One night after supper, I was taking the scraps out to dump them. Momma had been feeling better that day. It was actually not a bad day, as days went.
“Momma nibbled on some bread, then she went out to stare into the well. It was dusk. I felt her eyes on me as I passed her with the scraps. She was making me wildly uncomfortable. Wickedly so. Like how I used to feel around Elling. I tried to hurry past, to get to the woods where we dumped the leftovers—the least we could do for the forest critters after the way Elling had terrorized them. I had been thinking of running away for days, but honestly, I hadn’t planned to do it on that particular night. But that was the night it would have to be.
“I heard Momma behind me as I entered the woods. I walked quicker. So did she. Before I knew what was happening, I was running. I threw the scraps to the ground and hightailed it. But Momma was quick. In no time, she’d caught up with me. The trees and the darkness had made it difficult for me to get away. Momma tackled me, laughing. Laughing just like Elling. That high-pitched noise that always sounded like a mad coyote to me.
“I felt a pain in my calf and then felt the blood. Momma had stabbed me with a small kitchen knife. She was meaning to unheel me so I’d never be able to get away. Looking back, I’m not sure if I was fighting Momma or Elling. It was probably a combination of them both. Like alternating souls running the same body, with nearly identical purposes.