Henry

“Rebecca,” they said. They only ever called her Rebecca on those black anniversaries, and she often thought there was some mercy in that. They meant to comfort her with familiarity, but she could hardly stand it at all. Every time they spoke her name, her nerves curled against it.

“Rebecca,” they said. “May we offer our sincerest condolences. We could never imagine…” In this regard, they were right. What had happened was unimaginable, and what she had done—what she had really done—surpassed it tenfold, but they did not know that, because they could not imagine it.

It was not the first time they had offered her those words, as if they were some great sacrifice meant to appease the God of her suffering. Her husband had died in 1862, by an accident in the construction of their home (which Rebecca still lived in, because she could not bear to be away from him). She had heard it then, with its intention to end her mourning. Of course, it could not. After all, there is only a certain amount of sorrow afforded to the wives of dead men, and if she were to abandon it too early, there would have been talk.

And so she bore her sadness beneath her corset, and let no one else see it. This was her condition.

Two months after the death of her husband, Rebecca delivered his son, who she called Henry. Henry, she discovered, was the absolute remedy for despair. To Rebecca he glowed ever so softly a glimmering gold, and left a little of it wherever he touched. He consumed the entirety of her heart, and she fed it to him without hesitation. And finally, she found happiness again. Who could not, with Henry by their side?

March third of eighteen sixty-six, Henry found his mother exiting the room which he was never allowed to enter: his father’s study. He saw her hide the key away under a vase in the hall, and once she was far enough away he climbed up and retrieved it. He was only just four, and not quite dexterous enough to fit the key into the lock on any ordinary occasion, but still the lock clicked, and the door creaked open.

March fifth of eighteen sixty-six, a maid in the house fell suddenly ill, and vomited crimson over the hardwood of the foyer. She was rushed away to a physician down the road, but it was too late, and she passed in the arms of her sister, Marguerite. For the first time in her life, Rebecca scrubbed her own floors clean.

When the sister of the maid returned, Rebecca made her a cup of tea and sat with her in the parlor. She did not offer her condolences. Instead, she said, “In my home, you may feel whatever sorrow you like. There is no one in the world that can lord over your heart, and I will certainly never make any effort to.” She paused, and took the sister’s hand in her own. “I warn you not to look for reason. It is a madman’s task. There is never any sense in the death of a loved one.”

And Marguerite let loose the dam and sobbed into Rebecca’s shoulder, and they kept like that through the night. After that the two shared a closeness, each having knowledge of the other which could only be attained through mutual suffering. It was the worst of bonds, but they were grateful for it, and every night would steal away to feed it.

Then Henry was five, growing stronger each day, and Rebecca found herself in a great state of fear; for now instead of gold at his fingertips, Henry left behind little bits of wet scarlet. She kept this terror in the same way she kept her sorrow, and tucked it away beneath her ribs.

It was her greatest heartache. She poured his tea for him and stroked his hair as he fell to sleep at her side. In her arms, her truest love lay to rest, and she wept over his small form.

No one—except the investigators—could find the courage to ask what happened, but it takes little bravery to speculate, and so they did. It started in small whispers that he had fallen ill suddenly or taken a tumble down the stairway. Some thought that the maid might have done it, that she might be a bloodthirsty murderess, who killed not only her sister, but her employer’s son as well. Whatever they wondered, they all agreed that Rebecca bore a disease which consumed the lives of those she loved.

And that was all that was required to condemn her.

Rebecca was not as she ever was again. She took to sitting before the fire for hours, stopping only to eat and sleep. She watched the flames swallow the logs. Were it not for Marguerite (who was the only being who could stand to be in her presence for long), she might have withered away and reduced herself to the very same rot which devoured her husband and son.

It began on a day when Marguerite had left early. She had not wanted to leave Rebecca, but it was Christmas, and her own family could not remember the lines of her fine dark face. She thought for a moment of inviting Rebecca, and decided against it. She told herself it had nothing to do with what the townspeople had been saying, but that was a lie. And so she wasn’t there for the events which followed in those empty halls.

It began gently. Movement from the corners of Rebecca’s eyes, her tea being spilt without her knowing. Little things that could be explained away here and there. She hardly took notice of them, until it was suddenly quite the opposite, and her husband, Robert, sat across from her in his own chair.

“My dearest love, my Rebecca. What ails you this evening that you should be so melancholic?” He knelt beside her so quickly that she saw no movement between it. He was simply there. He kissed her knee over her skirt, and Rebecca watched him mournfully. “Tell me your troubles, and I will shake the roots of the earth until I loose them from the skies, and you are happy once more.”

She turned again to face the fire. “I am come to madness.” She placed a hand over her aching heart and he followed. He shook his head slowly. “But, I must be.” She said.

He leaned toward her cautiously, and kissed her softly over her cheeks and eyes. “Why must you be?”

“Because only a madwoman would do as I have done. Surely you hold more knowledge of madness than I, my love, but I’ve enough to spot it.” She met his eyes. “Haven’t I?”

“Come to me,” he said. “And find absolution.”

So Rebecca rose, and crossed through the halls with her husband to his study. When she went to recover the key, she could not find it. When she turned to Robert he held it between his fingers and offered it to her.

“Come to me,” He said, and she took it and pushed it forward into the lock.

There was a moment, though none of us could have ever perceived it, in which Rebecca hesitated. Robert took her hand in his and turned the key into the lock, and the decision was made.

The study was the only room in the house that had never been visited by any of the help. This was for the better, because if anyone had seen the state of it they would’ve surely found their way to the town gossip mill. The room was fixed in the way that Robert would’ve liked it, had he been alive to dress it. The walls were covered from base to ceiling in his work. Pages of his sheet music littered the floor, and in the center of the room stood his piano, his prized possession. The ink in the well had dried, and the flowers on the window sill had been long dead, but otherwise all was as if he had passed only yesterday.

There, at the pianoforte, sat Henry. He was smashing his hands against the keys, but no sound was coming of it. When Rebecca gasped, though she hardly heard it, he turned in his seat.

“Mama!” He shouted. He leapt off the bench and ran toward her. He reached his hands out toward her and she fell to her knees to receive him, but when her fingers connected with him he vanished. As suddenly as he had appeared he had gone, and Rebecca wept.

She cried there, on her knees, for what seemed like hours. When her eyes finally ran dry she stood, and held the key in her hands. She thought, for a moment, to keep it with her, in case he came back, but she knew, in her heart of hearts, that this was wrong. “Nothing good can come of this,” she told herself.

She raced through the halls and over the threshold of the servant’s door into the garden. She fell to her hands and knees and tore at the ground behind the wall. She stopped. She ran her fingers over the brass key and thought, for an instant, about the state of things. Maybe she was cursed, or maybe she was mad, and none of this was real at all, or maybe it was something else altogether, something which spoiled things and turned them rotten, the way Henry’s touch of gold had been turned to poison.

She kept in the soil for a moment and wondered. And then she threw the key in and covered it, and rested a stone over it to keep it from coming back.

But of course it didn’t. There was something very sinister at work, that pedaled the halls of the house at night, and really, Rebecca had no control over it. And so the key returned to its place beneath the vase, and something moved about the study, and left little things here and there to remind her of its presence, and she walked the house setting things right. This was her routine, which she managed as best she could.

Then, on the third day, she thought she heard someone cry out from the kitchen. It was impossible, but she could not, in the current state of things, ignore it. She followed the whimper to the pantry, and when she opened it, she almost didn’t see him at all, huddled in fear behind the potatoes.

“Henry!” She whispered. He looked up at her with large, bleary eyes.

“Mama,” he cried. “Where did you go?”

Rebecca sank to her knees and offered him her hand. He stayed in his hiding spot. “Henry,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

He paused. “I forgive you, Mama. I know you didn’t mean it. But please don’t make me go away again.”

She felt her cheeks wet with tears. “I… I love you, Henry.”

“I love you too, Mama.” He stood up suddenly and outstretched his arms as wide as he could. “I love you this much!” He leapt into her arms then, and Rebecca held him closely, vowing to never let him go again. She kissed his soft locks.

He pulled away from her. “Do you want to play trains? I missed my trains. C’mon, I’ll let you be the conductor, and I’ll be the train robber!” He jumped up and pointed out his finger like a gun. “Bang! Bang-bang!”

Suddenly a vase shattered and fell to the ground. Henry bolted behind his mother’s skirts. “I’m sorry, Mama! I didn’t mean to! I swear it!”

Rebecca pet his hair. “It’s alright, darling. Come, let’s play trains.” She took his hand and let him guide her through the house to his room. Things were as he left it, and he ran to his big yellow engine. He smiled and began pushing it over the tracks. Rebecca sat in a chair by the window and watched her boy play, and let herself imagine that all the bad things hadn’t happened, and that they never would, and that it would be like this forever.

At night he curled up beside her, and sang to her until she slept.

She woke to great horror—in her arms was Henry’s corpse, dug up freshly from his small grave. Her right hand tangled in a clump of hair and scalp while her left rested deep inside his rotted ribcage. She screamed and vomited to the side of the bed. When she had finished her sobbing and retching, she crawled off of the bed.

As she faced herself in the mirror, suddenly, Rebecca had a very clear idea of what she had to do. It wasn’t by any means a good idea, but it was the best that could be expected from her under the present circumstances—from anybody, really.

She was waiting in the parlor on Marguerite’s return. She had set out tea, and poured it for the both of them.

“Tell me, my sweet sister,” She smiled. “You see, I’ve come to think of you as my kin.” She passed the cup to Marguerite and beckoned her to sit. “Tell me, what do you suppose death is like?”

Marguerite frowned. “You ought not think of such things, Rebecca, lest you call them to you.”

“It is already come. I can tell you, all the same. Death must be some terrible confusion. It must twist people away from who they once were, and force them through a sieve so that all that can be left are the dark and ugly parts of a person.” She sipped her tea. “We speak of Heaven and Hell in absolutes. But I know Hell— I know what is really scrawled above the gates. It lives in this house, bound to me.” She reached to her side and produced a small satchel which held her jewelry, and what cash she kept in her home. “I love you, dear Marguerite. You are my only love left in this world, and I cannot bear to see you wither away. Take this, and spare yourself and your children.”

Marguerite began to protest, but Rebecca would not receive it. She ushered her away and out of the house and in parting said only, “Do not return.”

Rebecca tucked herself neatly into the corners of her home, and made room for the spirits there. There was a whisper now and again, but the town folk soon forgot her, except for Marguerite, who would tell of the woman who devoured all she loved, and stole away from that love to protect the world around her.