Home Is Where Your Heart Is

Twenty-thousand dollars.

It seemed like so much. An absurd amount.

And yet, at the same time... it was so little.

For the longest time Jonni stared at the paperwork in her hands, thumbs slowly gliding back and forth over the soft paper, absentmindedly wondering how much pressure she would have to apply to smudge the ink. She didn't want to stare at the house, instead, despite being keenly aware her new neighbors were staring at her through their curtains.

Jonni breathed out a heavy sigh, shoulders deflating. She forced her gaze up, held her head high, and strode up the front walk. The cement was cracked, sprigs of grass and weeds fighting their way through, and the lawn on either side was unseemly high. Granted, it looked better than the exterior of the house - what had once been paint more closely resembled splattered grime and mold, although Jonni had been reassured the house was perfectly habitable, despite sitting empty and ignored for so many years. Jonni tucked her folder of papers under her arm and fished out the key, fearful of breaking it as she jiggled it into the lock and struggled with it, leaning half of her weight against the door. It engaged suddenly, turning the whole doorknob with it, and the door swung open. She stumbled sideways into the foyer.

Nostrils instantly assaulted by a very damp smell.

Jonni knew very little about the upkeep of houses, but even she could guess such a damp, cloying smell couldn't possibly mean anything good.

Closing the door behind her she crossed the creaky hardwood floor to the kitchen. The most prominent feature in the front room was the staircase to the second floor. The hallway with its fraying wallpaper beneath them gave way to an entryway for the kitchen. On the left side of the foot of the staircase was the doorway to the sitting room. Jonni preferred the kitchen, where the dust seemed less cloying.

She sat gingerly at the dining table, caking dust on her palm as she wiped as much as she could off her chair and cleared a space in front of her on the table. Opened her folder. Hands trembling faintly. It only contained the deed to the house and a copy of her mother's will. The lawyer she'd met with a little over a week ago had spoken to her as if she was a child, failing to take into consideration that her slowness to process the majority of what he told her was because of shock, not stupidity.

Her mother was dead. Unexpectedly. Too soon.

After her grandmother died too young, and now her mother, Jonni wondered if it was a family trait. It wasn't in her family history to be prone to heart attacks, and yet that - a myocardial infarction, its medical term - was what ripped her mother from her. Jonni had always thought her mother was a very healthy, strong woman. Why had she had a heart attack completely out of nowhere?

Jonni shuddered, glancing up at the ceiling and blinking back the sharp sting of tears gathering behind her eyes.

The will stated Jonni's inheritance as all her mother's savings, a nearly even twenty-thousand dollars, and this house. It wasn't even the house she grew up in - she'd been raised in a small apartment, one that barely fit herself and her mother. She was an only child, at least, and her father had been out of the picture since before she was born. All her life, Jonni had nothing but her mother. Her selfless, caring mother. Jonni aspired to be just like her, to take care of people. She wasn't sure if either of them had been surprised, then, when she decided she wanted to go to medical school and become a nurse.

Propping her elbows up on the edge of the table, she held her face in her hands, breathing through the urge to cry.

Why this house? It had been in her mother's family for generations. Her grandmother grew up here. She had raised Jonni's mother in a smaller, newer house in the town where Jonni had been raised as well, but still owned the house, and Jonni's mother had inherited it. Now it was Jonni's. And what on earth was she meant to do with it? She couldn't live here. Her school was an hour away, that daily commute wasn't going to do her any favors. How was she going to maintain both school and dealing with this house? She worked too, of course, though only part-time to ensure plenty of study time. She believed school was her most important priority.

Perhaps that was where the guilt was coming from. Where had she been when her mother suffered a fatal heart attack? Why, she had been holed up in the school library, pouring over textbooks. She had been reading while a buildup of plaque in her mother's arteries had ruptured, creating a blood clot that blocked the flow of oxygen to at least one, area of her heart's muscle. She had been studying while her mother collapsed, alone in her apartment, and was unable to get to a phone to call 911 in time. She had probably been on her way to the library, walking through campus, when her mother first started feeling the symptoms and, knowing her, probably just bullied herself through them with her usual "mind over body" method of dealing with the majority of bodily afflictions.

Jonni's mind rattled off symptoms in a mocking fashion. Severe, painful pressure in her chest. Pain likely spread to her shoulders, jaw, neck, and arms. Rapid or irregular pulse. Weakness, fatigue, nausea, dizziness... And she would have just ignored it all. "Tough it out, you'll be fine" - she said that any time I was sick, and even when Todd and Spencer Wells who lived across the hall broke my arm when I was nine, because they realized they had never seen me cry before, and that didn't seem right, since I'm a girl and girls are supposed to cry a lot.

Closing her eyes tight and shaking her head, she took a few measured deep breaths. Regardless of her feelings of guilt, she owned this house now, and she had plenty of decisions to make that would likely affect the rest of her life. She just knew, deep down - there was something about this house giving her an off feeling, and she didn't think it was simply an unwillingness or lack of energy to deal with it at this time.

She didn't have the energy for anything right now.

Standing, legs trembling, she closed the folder protecting her new papers and left it, for now, on the dining table. In the foyer, against the front door, she fetched a sleeping bag she'd brought. She didn't quite dare sleep in any of the beds in the three bedrooms, and not just because she assumed them to be quite filthy after ongoing neglect. She locked the front door, including the deadbolt, and entered the sitting room with the bag held tight to her chest. Arms wrapped around it like she had embraced her mother's corpse in the morgue.

An involuntary, pathetic groan trickled past her lips. Her skin crawled. The pervasively wet smell throughout the house reminded her of formaldehyde.

She pulled the sheet off the biggest couch, beneath a large window wrapping around the side of the house, and shook it out. Scrunching her nose against the plume of dust she disturbed into the air. She reset the sheet and opened her sleeping bag. Settled down, legs curled close to her body. Closing her eyes tight, she buried the lower half of her face inside the warming cocoon she'd made for herself. Prayed the all-encompassing exhaustion she'd felt for the past couple days would allow her to sleep straight through to morning, despite the well of grief in her chest.

She was lucky. Within minutes she was asleep, breathing through slightly parted lips.

She is a pretty young woman. Poor thing, she's experiencing such loss.

I know how she's feeling. I was the one who lost a child, but I know how she's feeling.

I would give anything to have another. To be a mother again. To end this existence of nothing but loneliness... I would give anything at all.

Oh, poor child, I would give you my heart. If ever you ask for it, it shall be yours.

Her cheeks are so soft...

Sweet thing. I will be waiting for you. I promise.

Jonni awoke in the morning feeling surprisingly refreshed, considering how groggy she had been every day after her mother's death. She tossed the sleeping bag off her body and rubbed the lingering hints of sleep from her eyes, lightly touching her cheek.

She had dreamt. She remembered opening her eyes, just barely, and seeing the shadowy shape of a woman perched on the edge of the couch beside her, tucked in close near her stomach. The woman had been stroking the backs of her fingers lovingly over her cheek. She liked to think it had been her mother, perhaps visiting her in some fashion to help reassure her. It might have worked - for the first time in weeks the consuming pressure of guilt was easing up on Jonni's chest, less of a constant reminder of what her mother had felt as the muscles of her heart weakened.

Shooting to her feet, Jonni shook her hands out. "It's a brand new day," she murmured out loud to herself. In all honesty, the constant silence was starting to bother her.

She had a plan. She was going to take a closer look through the house, to decide how she felt about it. Her unwillingness to look closely when the realtor showed her around had given her a sense of defeat on top of her grief and guilt. How was she going to restore the house if she barely even wanted to go inside?

Was that what she wanted? To restore the house?

Can I see myself living here the rest of my life? she wondered, moving through the sitting room, surveying the sparse contents of bookcases and a liquor cabinet. Perhaps it was the impersonal feeling she was getting that drew her deeper into the house; she forewent the rest of the first floor and ascended the creaky staircase to inspect the bedrooms.

She entered the master first, raising her eyebrows, impressed, at the sight of the immaculate frame for the king-sized bed. Jonni went through the drawers of the nightstands on either side, through the dresser and wardrobe against the wall, and peeked into the closet. Unsurprisingly, any genuinely personal affects had been taken. Jonni moved on, trying not to let the emptiness get to her. Holding on, with quite a bit of desperation, to the surprisingly nice mood she woke up with. After feeling so numb for days on end she really wanted it to last as long as possible before the guilt and grief fully settled back in.

The next room was clearly a child's bedroom. The walls were painted a sea foam green that must have looked considerably better about twenty years ago, now resembling the color of slime. A chest sat at the foot of the bed. Jonni knelt and opened it, pleasantly surprised by the discovery of a pretty doll with a China face, only faintly cracked near the corner of its mouth, its dress covered in cobwebs. Though it looked sweet, Jonni didn't touch it. She felt a smile tug at her lips. The only doll she had ever owned had been a flimsy teddy bear; she realized she had absolutely no idea where it was now, couldn't remember seeing it in any of her mother's things.

As she started to close the lid to the chest she noticed a second object, tucked into the bottom right corner. A small notebook. Its cover was black, blending in almost perfectly with the bottom of the chest. Curiosity got the better of her - she picked it up, shut the lid, and sat on the floor with her back to it and her legs drawn towards her chest. She opened the notebook to the first page and recognized her grandmother's neat cursive, her name scrawled on the inside of the front cover.

An excited grin momentarily pulled the corners of her mouth up, and she bit down on her lower lip. Settling in, she began reading. The first entry was dated back to 1930, when Nana would have been thirteen-years-old, and was given this notebook as a birthday gift. For a year there were entries for every single day. They spoke to a carefree, happy little life.

After Nana turned fourteen, though, the entries suddenly took on a completely different tone. Jonni scowled, reading the entry on the day after her birthday.

"'Last night I had a very strange dream,'" she read out loud to herself, practically whispering. Still, her voice sounded like it was violently shattering the otherwise quiet in the house. She cleared her throat semi-successfully, tongue darting out to wet her suddenly dry lips. "'I dreamt I was in my own bed, and I opened my eyes for a moment. Someone was sitting on the edge of my bed, a woman. I could barely see her - the room was so dark. I think she was staring at me, as she stroked my cheek. I woke up feeling very soothed, but still, how bizarre!'"

Jonni's voice cracked at the end. She stared at the page, at the cursive written in black ink. A cold chill tickled at the back of her neck.

No. There was no way. She just read it incorrectly. Statistically, the odds she and her grandmother had had the same dream, forty-six years apart... No. It was impossible.

Jonni skimmed the next few entries. They weren't daily anymore. After a couple weeks Nana wrote again about having that same, strange dream, except this time the woman softly hummed a lullaby to her as well. The entry after that, Nana found the doll - the one inside the chest - placed by her head that morning when she woke up, having dreamt about the woman leaving it there. Almost every infrequent entry mentioned dreams of this woman.

Skipping pretty far ahead, shaking her head to herself, Jonni let out a small, nervous laugh. It came out breathlessly.

She stopped at an entry after Nana's sixteenth birthday. "'Today is pouring rain, and worse than that, Jenny Robacher cancelled on me! Now I'm stuck inside, and alone. Mother is visiting Mrs. Woolf again. She's been spending a lot of time with her lately while Daddy is away at work. I wish I could have gone with her. I'm bored - there's nothing to do here.'"

The entry seemed to stop there, but continued after skipping a line.

Jonni swallowed, the dryness reaching back to her tongue, turning the interior of her mouth chalky. "'I was reading on my bed just now, and a woman walked right past my open door - not Mother, not anyone I know. It was the woman from my dream! I know it was her. Before she appeared, I heard footsteps coming down the hall from Mother and Daddy's room, and a faint, familiar humming. It stopped for a moment, then she walked past - I swear it was her! I sprang up from my bed and threw my door shut. I fear there's something deeply wrong with me, I just don't understand - I thought they were nothing but harmless dreams, why-'"

Jonni abruptly stopped reading, entire body stilling and tensing. Did I just hear something? Her heart started to pound, blood rushing in her eardrums. She glanced up at the open bedroom door directly across from where she sat. Strained her senses.

A creak from one of the floorboards echoed down the hall from the direction of the master bedroom. Jonni squeaked, grip tightening on the notebook. Trembles erupted throughout her body. Another creak, and another - the gentle padding of bare feet over smoothly polished hardwood. Jonni willed herself to move, to get up and close the door.

Her body wouldn't obey.

Breathing shallow, she simply sat, frozen, and listened to the approaching footsteps. After a few seconds she realized there was no humming. Surely, then, I'm just frightening myself over nothing. It could be the realtor, or - I don't know, a neighbor perhaps. I was so engrossed with Nana's journal I didn't hear them come in. That's all it is.

"Hello?" she called, voice cracking. She leaned forward and cleared her throat. "Hello? Who's there? ...It was quite rude of you to let yourself in like that!"

Silence responded to her. Silence, and the light, slow footsteps, the floorboards creaking under their weight.

"I thought I locked the door," Jonni grumbled to herself. Shifting to stand, she only got to her knees. The thought fully registered and she paused sharply, eyebrows furrowing into a thick scowl. I know I locked the door... with the deadbolt, too...

The footsteps paused. She could feel someone right outside the door.

Throat bobbing with a terse swallow, she hardly dared to breathe.

The whole house went still. Holding its breath with her.

I'm losing my mind, she thought, carefully rising all the way to her feet. She took a single step towards the door and heard a soft, pining sigh. The breath wafted past her ear, very gently disturbing her hair. Squeaking in alarm, she whipped around.

Nothing behind her.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw a hand. It was paper-white pale, fingernails rimmed with black tendrils where nerve endings resided. Reaching towards her face. She jerked back, turning, and stumbled a pace in the opposite direction. Her foot snagged on the oval rug in the middle of the room and she crashed to the floor, landing uncomfortably hard on her hip and elbow. Somehow managing to keep her white-knuckle grip on Nana's notebook.

"Ow," she whimpered. Rolling onto her back, she cradled the offended elbow against her stomach and scowled up at the ceiling. Her best explanation right now was that she was simply overtired and wrought with grief. Of course her mind was going to come up with ridiculous things. She knew she had locked the front door. Unless someone broke in, or used a spare key, she was alone.

She got back to her feet. Held the notebook close to her chest, peeked around the corner of the doorframe before stepping foot in the hall. There was no one there. The sense someone was nearby had vanished, further proof she just wasn't in her right mind at the moment. It was going to take some time for her to return to a normal life routine. For now, though, she was switching her main concern to finding something to eat. A full stomach would help her brain work properly. Obviously there was nothing in the house, she was going to have to leave. As she hurried back downstairs she decided it would be good to get some fresh air, anyway. The dust felt like it was sinking into her skin.

She tossed the notebook on her makeshift bed and snatched up her keys and wallet. Nearly tripped on her way to the front door. Yes, it was still locked, deadbolt and all. She scoffed to herself, undoing them with some effort thanks to the tremor in her hands. It's the grief. And hunger. I'll get out of this place for a bit and by the time I come back I'll be much better - I won't play any more tricks on myself.

Unlocking her car door, she aimlessly glanced up in the direction of the kitchen window. Paused. Glanced back up. Laughed faintly at herself. What she thought had been a woman in a white dress standing in the kitchen window, watching her, was merely a thin white curtain. She shook her head to herself, got in her car, and nearly ran over the curb in her haste to get out of the driveway. Holding back tears all the while, she whispered to herself over and over.

"It's just a notebook. It doesn't mean anything. It's just a notebook. It doesn't mean anything. It doesn't..."

Oh, darling, my heart aches for you... I feel your grief. I feel your confusion.

I'd like to make you feel better. Please, won't you let me?

...She's special. I want her more than any of the others who came before her... But she's scared. I hate to see her that way.

I'll make it better, my darling. I'll take all the pain away.

Come home soon. I'll be waiting for you.

Jonni returned to the house later than intended.

She had spent as much time outside as possible, trying to clear her head. Now she dreaded going back inside the house, even as she unlocked the door and stepped in to the dim twilight lighting seeping in from the outside.

She got a glass of water from the kitchen - warily glancing at the window, at the flimsy curtain hanging over it - and turned on the lights leading to the downstairs bathroom before settling down in the sitting room. Pulled her sleeping bag over her legs, set her glass on the floor, and opened Nana's notebook again. It wasn't quite late enough yet for her to want to go to bed, and besides, she wasn't tired. Her curiosity had been gnawing at her all day. What did it mean if Nana really did dream about some unknown woman, and then saw her one day she was alone in the house, and Jonni had quite possibly dreamt about the same woman?

There had to be some explanation.

She flipped back to the last entry she'd read, skimming the ending to be certain she didn't miss any details.

Jonni read out loud to herself, still hating the house's silence. "'Mother often talks about eye strain these days - all those late nights reading with very little light, surely that's starting to play tricks on my eyes, now.' I do hope you're right, Nana..." She went ahead. The entries became even less frequent than before, only three before Nana wrote for her seventeenth birthday. "'I've been afraid to write in my journal, admittedly since the day I saw that woman in the hallway. I thought the more I wrote about these strange occurrences, the more I was giving her... power. It feels odd to write it that way, but that is the feeling I get... Now, I know I need to write this all down. Maybe if I can get it out of my head it will stop bothering me so.

"'I thought she was close before. Sitting on the edge of my bed, stroking my cheeks and softly humming. But that was at night. In the daytime, I've started noticing her... but she keeps her distance. In the morning when I go to school, I'll look up at the kitchen window and see her standing there. Other than the that she only seems to prefer the hallway between my room and my parents'. I can only see her when the lighting is right - enough shadows eclipsing a certain area - but I know she's watching me. I can feel her. Steadily getting closer and closer to my bedroom door.

"'I'm not sure what is making it so difficult for her to enter my room. She does it plenty at night. There hasn't been a single night since my sixteenth birthday that I do not dream about her. I'm not sure what I'm meant to do. I know Mother and Daddy don't see her. Why can I see her? Who is she - what is she - and what does she want with me?'"

Jonni paused, swallowing around a tight lump in her throat. She blindly reached over the side of the couch to retrieve her glass of water and sipped from it carefully. Set it back down, turned to the next page.

A stone dropped in the pit of her stomach.

This... wasn't Nana's handwriting anymore. It was shaky, as if the writer wasn't used to putting a pen to paper, but still fairly neat cursive. The hand was heavier - the ink smudged and blotted deep into the page. Parts of it were either too wobbly or too smudged to read. Even still, enough was legible for Jonni to get a perfectly fine idea of what it said.

"'I want you,'" she read out loud in a whisper. "'I want you, I want you... I would give you my heart. If ever you ask for it, it shall be yours. Please.'"

Reaching up, Jonni rubbed her eyes until she saw fuzzy splotches over the backs of her eyelids. She kept them shut for a moment longer, turning to the next page. Nana's handwriting again - she wrote she had left her notebook outside the chest at the foot of her bed when she went to school, and that other writing was open and waiting for her when she got home. She wrote she was going to conduct an experiment. See if she could figure out what exactly the woman wanted by leaving the notebook out for her to communicate with.

Every entry after was written in that frightening, shaky, heavy scrawl. Until the very last page in the notebook. Even the back cover was covered in it.

Jonni didn't read it closely, but she could feel the writer's increasing desperation.

She shut the notebook in a snap and threw it to the floor - it landed with a jarringly loud smack. Covering her face with her hands, she groaned. "No wonder Nana didn't want to raise Mom here," she muttered. "I don't know if I want to be here any longer, either..."

She'd heard ghost stories before. There had been a particular phase in high school where it seemed like everyone in her grade was talking about them, making them hard to avoid although she ignored them as best she could. Was she scared? Well, yes, but it hadn't felt very important to her schoolwork, either.

"School, school, school - maybe school isn't as important as you think it is," she snapped. "If you hadn't been so engrossed in school you might have been able to help Mom, but you didn't, and now she's gone and you're all alone. Selfish, selfish little-"

The sound of leather sliding over hardwood interrupted her, and she jumped, head whipping around. She stared wide-eyed at the notebook gliding back across the room to the side of the couch, opening and turning its pages on its own. It settled. She leaned over, squinting a little.

"'Let me make it all better,'" she read out loud.

She frowned, startled by the effect those words had on her. It didn't matter how refreshed she woke up, the grief was a constantly weighing down her chest. She missed her mother. Desperately. She was consumed by guilt every second she thought of her, all alone in the final moments of her life, which could have been saved if only Jonni hadn't been so selfish.

Mom, I'm sorry, I can't make it to dinner tonight. I know it's our usual night together, but there are some textbooks I need to get to the library for, and you know it closes earlier on Fridays. I'll come by in the morning. Love you.

A voicemail. She had left her mother a voicemail and hadn't bothered to call back to make sure she was okay with her cancelling their weekly dinner.

The police officer Jonni had spoken to had told her her mother had collapsed near the phone. Her message had been the last thing her mother heard. The last thing her mother heard was her daughter saying sorry, school is more important to me than the time I spend with you.

Jonni blinked frantically, dislodging the tears waiting for any excuse to fall. One or two dripped onto the open notebook. She sniffled, chest shuddering.

"Make it all better," she scoffed, dragging the heel of her hand over her cheek. "And how are you going to do that? I miss my mom. I want to fix my mistake. Can you do that for me? Can you bring her back?"

Curling into the back of the couch she wrapped her arms around herself and cried quietly, lacking the energy for full-body sobs. She simply closed her eyes and let the tears flow. Paying special attention to the ache in her chest - her punishment. If only she had been a better daughter. If only she hadn't been so selfish. If only, if only, if only.

Past her quiet whimpering and sniffling she heard a low, faint humming. Slapping a hand over her mouth she opened her eyes to look about the sitting room. She was alone... the humming was certainly coming from the direction of the staircase, but she felt like she could hear it right beside her ear. A surprisingly soothing caress. Her heart began to pound, yet she didn't feel frightened this time. She stared in the direction of the entryway towards the stairs, not daring to blink, holding her breath.

Pale fingers with snaking black nerve endings curled around the frame. They were attached to a pale hand, and a pale wrist covered by the sleeve of a white dress. Jonni leaned forward instinctively. Tentatively hopeful.

The hand whisked away. Jonni heard the creaking of footsteps on the stairs, and she knew precisely where they were headed. She tossed her sleeping bag off her legs, nearly tripping herself up in it, and sprang to her feet. No longer just curious. If there was any way this unknown woman could make good on her unspoken promise...

Let me make it all better.

Jonni scurried across the room and took the stairs two at a time, slowing in the hall and smoothing her hands down her shirt. Her breath was a bit shallow. Hands trembling. She paused just outside the door to Nana's old bedroom, where she knew the woman was - the resuming of her soft humming confirmed the conviction going as deep as her bones - and frantically wiped the tear-tracks off her cheeks.

She took a hitching, deep breath and exhaled it slowly. Unsure why she was so nervous. She stepped into the doorway and her heart skipped a beat, stomach filling unusually with butterflies.

The woman stopped humming. She glanced up from her hands, neatly folded on her lap, and the first thought Jonni had was one of confusion. She was so... beautiful. Her eyes were a captivating, intense stone blue. Her smile was so genuine, crinkling around the edges, looking like it dimpled although Jonni couldn't be sure it wasn't just her hollow cheeks creating that effect. The lack of natural light coming in through the bedroom window threw shadows over her. Still, Jonni could clearly see the details in her white dress. It was an old style. It looked silky, dipping low at the neckline, tied around her waist - a nightgown.

She was sitting on the edge of the bed. An expectant air about her.

Jonni lingered in the doorway, anxiously shifting her weight from one foot to the other.

The woman's smile grew. "Poor thing," she tutted softly. Her voice was deep, raspy, almost rumbling in her chest. But it also sounded... strange. Jonni couldn't quite put her finger on why. It drew her in, enticing her to take a single, slow step into the room... and yet, at the same time, very nearly repulsed her.

"What exactly do you want with me?" she asked, tone a bit harsher than she meant.

The woman quirked an eyebrow. "I want to help," she murmured. "I understand the loss you're experiencing. A long time ago, I lost a child..." Her stone blue eyes became alarmingly glossy. Jonni took in more of her features, feeling less distracted now; she was grayish in her paleness, lips holding a blue tinge. She looked truly gaunt. She blinked, focusing back on Jonni, who felt strange for staring. "You are special, darling girl," the woman sighed. "I can't just let you leave me."

Jonni's confusion spiked. "Leave you-?" she began.

"Here," the woman cooed, shifting towards the foot of the bed and patting the space beside her. "Come lay your weary head, child. Let me take your pain away."

Confusion morphed to bitterness. "That's a lofty promise."

The woman's bright smile returned. "Please." She patted the dusty blankets again.

Huffing a short sigh, Jonni gave in. Why not? What was so scary about a woman who sat by her as she slept, hummed, and made sweet-sounding promises? Ghost or not, Jonni had seen much worse recently.

As she sat on the bed beside the woman she thought she saw a flash of strangely relieved hunger in those stone blue eyes. It was gone too quick for her to be sure.

"How do you think you're going to take my pain away?" she asked.

The woman dipped her head. Still smiling. "Lie down," she purred.

Jonni opened her mouth to argue, but - again... why not? Shifting, she laid down, curling her legs up a bit for a feeling of security. She felt oddly like a child again. The woman situated herself in the curve of her body, leaning over her. Holding herself up with one hand pressed into the mattress. Getting awfully close.

She smelled like stagnant water.

Jonni wrinkled her nose. It was a very powerful stench, overwhelming, enveloping her senses intimately. She recoiled, but couldn't escape it.

The woman leaned in even closer. "You are just divine," she sighed.

"I'm not-" Jonni stammered.

"Shh," the woman hushed, other hand rising from her lap. She pressed her finger to Jonni's lips. Dragged her fingertip over the lower one, replacing it with her thumb. Gripped Jonni's chin and lifted her head slightly. "Would you like my help, darling one?"

Again, Jonni hesitated. Stared into stone blue eyes.

"I will give you everything," the woman gasped. "Don't be scared. I'll take care of you." She very gently touched Jonni's hair, brushing it away from the side of her face. "I give you my heart. It's yours. Please."

"I just..." Jonni paused, swallowing back a resurgence of tears. "I want my mom back."

Excitement danced in stone blue eyes, turning them dark. The woman nodded. "I know. I can give you what you want."

"You can give me my mom back?"

"Dear," the woman sighed, briefly averting her gaze, "death is permanent. I can give you... a replacement. I think you'll like that. Won't you?"

Jonni jerked upright, forcing the woman to lean back some. "You mean you want to replace my mother, don't you?" she snapped. "What's wrong with you? You're just preying on my grief and guilt. I don't even think you're real, why are you-"

"I can give you everything you want," the woman interrupted. There was the desperation again, wavering through her voice. "Everything you're wanting. I promise. Please."

"What do you think I want?" Jonni scoffed. It came out weaker than she meant it to.

Again, the woman smiled. It was bright, but didn't quite reach her eyes. The darkness in them remained. "Me," she whispered.

"Why would I-"

Cold hands suddenly wrapped around her neck. Jonni spluttered, body thrashing. The woman followed her movements, pushing her into the mattress on her back, upper body leaning over her and trapping her in place. The woman's expression didn't change - although the corner of her mouth started to curl up, exposing some of her teeth in a wolfish smirk. Jonni's hands snapped up to wrap around her wrists, tugging uselessly. Her grip was strong. Stubborn. Her thumbs pressed into Jonni's throat, cutting off her airway. In a matter of seconds Jonni felt the lack of oxygen to her brain, vision blurring.

And yet she didn't even try to move.

"I could be the mother you need," the woman whispered, voice shaking with excitement now. A thick strand of drool ran off her lower lip, dripping over Jonni's nose. "I could be the mother you truly want. I'll show you, darling one. Can't you see? The pain is going away. I'm taking it from you. Isn't that what you want? To be free of your pain and guilt? I will never let you feel anything like it again. As long as you're with me, you will be happy. You will be loved. You will be doted on. I promise. You already have my heart. Please, just give me yours..."

Jonni shook her head as best she could in the tight grip, eyes watering, tiny choked cries managing to push themselves past her lips.

The woman's stone blue eyes momentarily hardened. "Please," she repeated in a croak. "Please, can't you see how badly I want you? I want my child back. You want your mother back. They're both gone... but you and I, we're here together. Don't you see? This will give us both what we want."

She was crying now, tears dripping off her eyelashes to scatter over Jonni's face. Jonni thrashed her entire body in an attempt at dislodging her.

"No," the woman snarled. She actually eased up on her grip - Jonni sucked in imperfect, barely helpful, desperate inhales. The woman let out a low-toned whine. "You have to give me your heart. You have to. Please."

"Convince - me-" Jonni choked out. What? No, why-

It was useless. She couldn't ignore the feeling, deep in her soul, that this woman was somehow right. This was what she needed, and wanted. Why was she fighting it? The woman's body felt warm, and there was such a nurturing glow to her incredibly captivating stone blue eyes... her grip felt safe despite currently trying to strangle the life out of her.

But, underneath it all, there was still that wretched stench of stagnant, filthy water...

The woman sort of smiled, a flash of relief. "I will take care of you," she gushed. "I'll make you happy. I will always be there for you. We'll be together forever, never to know loneliness again. I will love you - I already love you, darling one. Please." She abruptly leaned in much closer, nose almost brushing against Jonni's. "All I need is your heart."

Jonni wanted to protest, to shake her head; to push the woman off her, run out of the house, and never come back. All rationality told her this was a very stupid, very awful idea, to so much as entertain the thought of giving in and giving up her heart. What did that even mean? Didn't matter - she was in danger. Shove her off. Run away. She's trying to kill you!

Her body wasn't listening. In fact, her body was trying to move her closer to the woman, her hips rising off the bed in a desperate attempt at bringing every inch of herself in contact with her body. She realized one of her hands had fisted in the front of the woman's nightgown. The other was trying to hold one of her hands over her throat.

She couldn't look away from stone blue eyes.

What do I really have to live for, anyway?

She started to shake her head, tried to disagree with her own thoughts. Instead she nodded, feeling like she could just melt at the way the woman's eyes brightened so much.

The pressure on her throat eased enough for her to talk coherently. "I give you my heart," she whispered. "I do. It's yours."

In an instant the woman's eyes darkened again, her pupils quivering. Her lips pulled back into a grin. One of her hands, the one Jonni wasn't clutching in a vice grip, left her throat. Jonni couldn't look away from stone blue eyes.

There was a sudden, burning pain in the side of her neck.

She instantly choked. Hot, thick blood surged up her throat and bubbled out of the corners of her mouth. The majority of it spilled from the wound in her carotid artery - she could feel the foreign object severing it. Her eyes widened.

She knew it wouldn't even take a full minute for her to bleed out.

The woman sighed, her fetid-smelling breath wafting into Jonni's face, although the rank, metallic scent and flavor of blood was beginning to overwhelm her senses. Leaning in, the woman released her throat entirely, yanking the knife out. Blood soaked Jonni's clothes and splattered the floor in an arc. She laid over Jonni's chest, pressing her face into the underside of her jaw. Jonni's blood devoured her white nightgown.

"I'm so happy," the woman murmured. "You're all mine... finally..."

Jonni coughed wetly through the welling blood, unable to speak. Already lacking the strength to move.

"I know I haven't known you for long... but the second I saw you, I could tell how special you are. I grew impatient. Forgive me. This will be fast, and painless... after all, I can't have your heart if it's still full of blood... and I will be right here. There's no need to be scared. I'm here."

Jonni's vision tunneled. She could no longer feel her extremities. Couldn't summon the energy to think. And she knew there was no use resisting - there was no hope for her. Nothing left to do but let go. Her body sank into the soaked mattress, hands dropping limply over her stomach and chest. Somehow, the woman's presence remained a constant even as she slipped into a state of vast nothingness.

"Now... let me make it all better, darling one."