Chapter 6-Sisters and Sixteen

~*Chapter 6- Sisters and Sixteen *~

         Abigail’s heart was racing. She couldn’t tell if it was from fear or from excitement, but she knew that it was beating un-naturally fast. And she knew exactly what was making her feel this strange combination of ecstasy and dread:  she was going to have another baby.

         There was a reason that Abigail Rosehaven had chosen to wait eight years after the birth of her last child before having another. That reason was skipping down the hall, her pale purple dress swinging around her ankles, her nose buried in a book. Constance was unlike any other child on the face of the earth. She was more intelligent than the most scholarly adult, stronger than the most muscular man, and more vindictive than the most evil of human beings. Constance was, in a word, frightening. Abigail hadn’t slept well since Constance had turned a year old. There was something about this little girl that just chilled her to the bone. It could, of course, be related to the fact that Constance attacked her when the girl was two. But, strangely, Abigail hadn’t feared any physical violence from the girl since that incident. What Abigail feared most was the child’s mind.

         Constance could concoct the cleverest schemes that Abigail had ever seen. She could figure out ways around most of the rules set in place for her. Not just one way, but multiple ways. She was smarter than her parents, and both parties knew it. That was what made Constance particularly dangerous; she knew how brilliant she was, and she was not afraid to use that power to achieve her own nefarious means. She always got her way in the end. Always.

         Her older brother, Silas, however, was perfectly normal. He had never exhibited any of the symptoms of Constance’s undiagnosed condition. That was the one thing that gave Abigail hope. She would sooner give up her own life than be cursed with another child like Constance. But then there was Silas. Perfectly ordinary. The child she had always wanted. Was Constance just a fluke? A mistake? That was entirely possible. But it was also possible that Silas had been the error, and that the rest of Abigail’s children would be like Constance. For that reason, Abigail was anxious.

         When she had told her husband, Charles, of the news, he had behaved in a very strange manner. He had tried to smile and be happy, but it was not very convincing. He had refused to admit to being horrified and slightly frightened until Abigail had told him how she was feeling. Only then did he succumb to the innermost pulls of dread within him, sitting in a chair and placing his head in his hands as soon as Abigail had left the room. How was he going to be able to raise another child like Constance? She was a monster. She had attacked his wife.

         It was one of the toughest situations that Charles had ever been in. He loved his daughter very much; she was his own flesh and blood. But she had hurt the woman that he had chosen. Out of all the women in the world, he had selected her – Abigail – to spend the rest of his life with. In a word, he adored her. Every last bit of her was equivalent to a treasure to him; something to be protected and cherished. So when his daughter had tarnished his golden wife, he had had a hard time forgiving her.

         He wasn’t even sure if he had forgiven her at all.

         As the man of the house, it fell upon him to keep everyone within the property boundaries safe. But having to protect them from his own daughter was something he had never imagined. Not once had he ever even dreamt of such a horrible creature ever calling itself his offspring. And he had to be the buffer between Constance and the rest of the world. After all, he was the man.

         But he had failed once before, hadn’t he? She had gone and torn his wife to pieces when his back was turned. Was he really that oblivious? He loved his family, and he wanted to shield them from any terrible things that Constance might have planned for them. Even if it meant literally throwing himself in front of the rampaging child.

         He loved his daughter too, though, and as many know, a father’s love for his daughter transcends all understanding. It hurt him to be in a position like this. Literally, he had been feeling sick since he had realized how dangerous the little girl was. He had been running a slight fever and had been feeling generally under the weather for six years now. The stress was almost too much to bear.

         And now, his wife was pregnant.

         He had no idea what he was going to do. Obviously, he would find a way to get through this new challenge. But he did not know if he would actually ever live to see this new child grow up at all. If the baby was as dangerous as Constance, then he would surely die before his number was up. It was only a matter of time before Constance killed him, and he knew it. With two potential killers after him, his life span was as good as halved.

~*~

         Jane was her name. She was born in the spring of 1856. She had a lovely set of brown eyes and, after a few weeks, had grown a tuft of sandy blonde hair that was almost an exact blend of her mother’s deep chocolate and her father’s white blonde. Her skin was like ivory, and she was delicately built.

         Best of all, she was normal.

         Her father and her mother could not have been more relieved with her attributes – and lack thereof, as a matter of fact. They both doted upon her, constantly buying her things like toys and little dresses for her to wear.

         Their apprehension was not eradicated, though, for they still sat in wait of Constance’s ultimate verdict about the child.

         The elder of the daughters was eight years old now, and she practically ran the entire plantation. She had her parents, along with the help, held snuggly under her thumb, and she intended to keep them there indefinitely. She was practically drunk on the power she wielded around Atlanta, and she didn’t intend to give it up any time soon. She would sooner die than let someone less intelligent command such an unknowing population.

         But now there was this child to contend with.

         The child was a complete nuisance. She couldn’t do anything of interest; all she did all day was lay around on her back and make odd noises that sounded rather like she was choking on her own saliva, while a dribble of it ran down her chin. And her parents thought it was the greatest thing they had ever seen. Constance didn’t understand it. Whenever her mum and dad looked at this miniature human who looked like an overgrown sausage with fuzzy mold growing on top, any sense of their intelligence seemed to completely disappear. They instantly became babbling idiots – just add a child, and the results were truly impressive.

         Constance showed off for her parents on a daily basis, saying and doing things that would have stunned them at any other time. But it seemed that lately, their attention was fully focused on Jane. And why that was, Constance could not comprehend. The child had absolutely nothing going for her; she couldn’t do anything, she couldn’t say anything, and she wasn’t even that good looking. But for some reason, she still got all of the attention. Even Silas was spending more and more time huddled around the cradle, staring intently down at the obscure little bundle lying amongst the blankets, kicking around like she was trying to pick a fight.

         Usually, Constance knew how to handle anything new that was thrown in her path. But this was something completely foreign to her; she had no idea whether this tiny girl was friend or foe, and whether she would need to eliminate her or not. It was an unfamiliar situation for Constance, who was accustomed to knowing everything – literally. Being uncertain was not in her nature.

         She walked purposefully over to the cradle and pushed the crowd out of the way. She sighed. The girl still looked like she was made of water balloons. Her parents kept telling her that the baby would grow up and start looking more and more like her, but nothing had happened yet. The child had been in her house for over two weeks now, and she still looked exactly the same as she did when she had first arrived. How long was it going to take for her to actually grow? When would she be able to do something worthwhile? She just laid there, wrapped up in blankets (which Constance also didn’t quite follow, since it was starting to get into the summer heat during the day), her arms and legs twitching in some absurd dance that had absolutely no rhyme or reason to it at all.

         Suddenly, Constance saw a pudgy hand grab her around her finger.

         The very air seemed to freeze in that one moment. Abigail and Charles wore expressions of fearfulness, and Silas was starting to unconsciously mimic his parents. They all were waiting to see how Constance would handle this. Would the little Jane still have a hand after this? They all knew that Constance could and would rip the baby’s arm clean from her body, like Beowulf did Grendle’s. They stood, anticipating the sound of bones popping while flesh was being cleaved from flesh, the spatter of blood that would undoubtedly rain down upon all of them as the baby’s entire arm would dangle from Constance’s finger.

         But for some reason, Constance did nothing. She just stood there, staring confusedly at the child who was holding onto her, her pudgy face smiling stupidly. As much as she resented the ugly creature, she still stood, immobile. She didn’t know why she didn’t simply rend the fleshy hand from the girl’s body. It wasn’t because of some sentimental something rooted in the child’s gaze; that was sappy and sentimental, and Constance was neither of those things.

         Constance pulled her finger roughly from the girl’s grasp and heard the satisfying snap of a finger bone breaking in two. As Jane started to cry, Constance walked off toward her room, an odd little smirk on her face.

~*~

         Years into the future, Jane still could not properly straighten the index finger of her left hand. It was bent at a strange angle all the time, whether she was trying to move it or not. She knew the bone had reset wrong, and she knew she would probably never be able to use that hand for a whole lot because of it.  She had already started learning to write with her right hand; she had naturally tried to use her left for a long while, but it had become impossible to hold a pen straight as she had grown older. As unfamiliar as writing right-handed was to her, she knew she had to force herself to overcome her propensity to use the left.

         So, she sat – eight years old – at a writing desk with her arms folded on top and her chin resting on her arms. She casually flicked a finger and sent her fountain pen rolling across the desk; because of the slant of the desk, it came rolling back to her soon enough, and when it reached her fingers, she flicked it away again. She had been at this game since ten o’clock in the morning. Hours had passed, and the clock was now chiming two o’clock. Jane didn’t even glance up as its booming bells echoed throughout the house.

         She heard a hiss of pain as the clock rang in the hour. This didn’t bother her either; it was routine to hear her older sister react to the volume of the clock. It always hurt her ears. Jane merely sighed, and flicked the pen up the desk again.

         Her parchment was nearly blank, except for some rather deformed scribbles that supposedly resembled her name. She had attempted it about three and a half times, and then had given up. Writing with her weaker hand, she had discovered, was hard. It required all of her concentration to make her hand form the letters; at this point, neatness was not a part of the equation. She sat up, grabbed her pen as it rolled down the desk, and gave it one more try. She got the “J” of “Jane” all right – except it was slanting dangerously as if it might fall. The “a” looked more like a “9”, but the “n” was decent-looking. The “e” was always the worst. It tended to shape-shift between forms, occasionally looking like an “o”, then looking like a swirl, then looking like a spiral. She pressed the pen to the paper and formed an “e” that appeared to be running down the page, like a tear when people cried. “Jane” stared at her from the paper. Only it wasn’t “Jane” at all. It looked more like “J9np” than anything else.

         With an exasperated groan, she resumed her game of flicking the pen up the desk. There was no way this was ever going to work. If only she hadn’t been born left-handed. If only her left index finger wasn’t broken. If only the bone had been properly set so it could grow back the right way. Then maybe she wouldn’t be having such a hard time with just about everything.

         “Jane?”

         She lifted her chin and looked toward the door. Her sister, Constance was standing there.

“Yes?” Jane asked.

“I am here to see how much work you have actually completed. Your parchment, please.”

The request was made without a smile, and the “please” was simply a formality that Constance had adopted due to her upbringing. Jane handed over the page with the scribbles on it without ever taking her eyes from her sister. If her sister was anything, it was intimidating.

Constance took one critical glance at the paper, and said, “I asked for all of your work, Jane.”

Jane took this moment to avert her eyes from Constance’s icy stare. Her eyes were almost painful to look into at times. Right now, they were cold and calloused, staring down her nose, eyeing Jane like she was something nasty that had recently been fished out of a rubbish bin. Her lip curled slightly into a small sneer as she saw Jane look down.

“That is all of my work,” Jane muttered to her shoes.

Constance clicked her tongue three times; the sharp sound of it made Jane want to crawl into a hole to escape the massive wave of shame inflicted by that one simple action. “Now Jane,” Constance began, “you haven’t been neglecting your tasks, have you? We all know how your finger is . . . unfortunately beyond repair, but you must be able to function in society. Penmanship like this,” Constance held the sheet of misshapen letters up as if on display for Jane to see. “Penmanship like this, Jane, will not get you anywhere in society. Talk will fly. Poor dear cannot even manage to write her own name.” Constance turned the sheet back around to look at it, and said, “Hmm.”

She was turning to leave the room when Jane said, “I can’t do it.”

There was silence as Constance stopped walking. “I beg your pardon?” she asked, without moving an inch.

“I can’t do it. It’s too hard!” Jane replied.

Constance didn’t even seem to breathe as she said, “You mean to say that you are not trying.”

“No!” Jane said, “I am trying!”

“Then you are not trying hard enough!” Constance said, the words leaving her mouth with the intent to sting.

“I am! I am trying!”

“No, Jane, you are not. If you were, you would have made significant progress by now.”

“I think I am doing rather well for being a girl who cannot even write with her right hand,” Jane said, indignant. “Besides, what does it matter what you think? I only care about what mum and dad have to say.”

Constance turned around, and silently stared Jane directly in the eyes. “I speak for them now,” she hissed, “and I say that you are not trying hard enough. There are consequences for apathy, Jane, but I feel that you will learn that soon enough.” With that, she left the room, her shoes tapping against the floor as she walked.

Constance did not even bother to knock at the door of her father’s study, but instead pushed open the door and eyed her parents with a heavy stare. Once they both stopped what they were doing and looked up to meet her eyes, she pursed her lips and held out Jane’s paper. Abigail took it and looked over it, Charles glancing at it from over her shoulder.

“As you can see,” Constance said snidely as they pored over the parchment, “Jane is not putting forth enough effort, and if you do not believe me, her disgraceful work is in your hands. If she thinks that being lackadaisical in regards to any aspect of life is acceptable, she will soon figure out how wrong she is. One must learn to perform every act as if one were being judged upon it. One must be meticulous and accurate. Anything less will not get one very far. How would you recommend that I punish her?”

Abigail looked up at Constance. “Punish her?” she asked. “Why would we wish to punish her?”

Constance fought the urge to roll her eyes at the tedium of it all. She had honestly expected her parents to be astute enough to follow her train of thought. “Were you not listening, mother?” she asked. “Jane is not trying. She will never learn to write properly if she never forces herself to do so. At the moment, she seems to be lacking the necessary . . . motivation. I was merely suggesting that we give her a reason to make progress in her lessons.”

“But she’s trying,” Abigail said. “That’s all that matters.”

Constance took a deep breath in her mouth, and then let the air hiss out her nose, her lips pressed together in frustration. “She is not trying,” she said. “That is precisely what I have been attempting to make clear to you since I walked through that door. You cannot honestly tell me that you see any aspect of exertion in those childish scribbles that you see before you. She has been ‘trying’ for over a year now. If she was actually putting forth any true effort, we should have seen a result by now.”

Charles stood up and went over to Constance, who stood like a statue, immobile and just as cold. “Constance,” he said, “Do not worry about her so much. I will go have a word with her, and, if necessary, she will be punished. However, the punishment will be to my standards, not to yours. Am I clear?”

Constance stared haughtily at her father, eyeing him like a snake. “Explicitly. . . . Sir.”

Of course, while Constance may have understood her father perfectly well, she did not put much stock in what he said. She was determined to do exactly what she wanted to do, and she knew she was right in doing so. As she walked across the hall to the large sunroom with the piano and the writing desk in it, she pondered what she should do to teach Jane a lesson. When the doors opened, her pale face was washed over with sunlight, warming it. Jane was still at the desk. She was practicing writing her name again and again, as if she could somehow make up for the hours of work lost that morning.

Constance said, “Jane, father would like a word in his office.” And with that, Jane dropped her pen, stood up, and left the room without casting so much as a glance in Constance’s direction. Constance could not have been more satisfied with her reaction.

With a slight bit of a leer on her face, she sat down at the piano, chuckling and shaking her head. Charles and Abigail were not the sort of parents that Jane needed; Constance was sure of that much.

         ~*~

While Charles spoke with Jane, Abigail left the room and went into the sunroom where Constance was playing piano.  “You’re very good at that,” she said to her daughter, watching her fingers fly across the keys, barely touching them.

“I should be, mother,” Constance replied. “I have been practicing since I was three.”

“I like this song too,” Abigail said. “What is it?”

“I wrote it. I have not titled it as of yet, but I intend to soon enough.”

“It’s beautiful.”

For a few moments, Abigail sat and listened to the music her daughter made, and her daughter sat and played. Peaceful moments between the two women were few and far between on the whole, so this one time was just that much more precious. The song was slowing down; it must have been ending. But it didn’t sound like the end of the piece to Abigail. She looked over at Constance, and found her face to be contorted in concentration as she tried to force her fingers to keep moving. But it appeared that they were freezing, the movement getting harder and harder for Constance with each passing second.

Suddenly, the music stopped altogether. Constance didn’t even look at her mother, but instead doubled over, squealing in pain. The noise was high pitched and extremely frightening.

“Constance?” Abigail said, getting up from the piano bench and trying to angle herself to be able to see her daughter’s eyes. “Honey? Are you all right?”

Within seconds, Constance slumped off the piano bench, falling on the floor. Her pale face was scrunched up in pain, and she was twitching a bit here and there. The twitches became more and more pronounced, until she was having full convulsions in the middle of the room. With Constance flopping around like a fish, Abigail did not know what to do except scream.

Her scream brought Charles and Jane from the office across the hall, and they couldn’t even bring themselves to get anywhere near Constance. The convulsions were coming more frequently now, and her eyes were rolling back into her head so that only the whites were showing. Every part of her body seemed to be seizing up with agony as she tried to breathe and found that she couldn’t.

Abigail had never seen anything like this before in her entire life. Seeing her daughter in so much inescapable pain made her feel dangerously close to passing out herself. She could not believe how awful it was to see the very girl who had attacked her fourteen years ago nearly dying in front of her. She knelt down and took Constance’s hand in her own, wishing that holding it could make the pain lessen so her daughter could breathe.

Something very strange caused Abigail to almost immediately drop Constance’s hand from her grasp; Constance’s hand had turned cold beneath her touch. She put a palm to Constance’s face, but drew it away just as quickly; it felt like ice water was flowing freely beneath Constance’s skin, making her feel colder than death itself.

As Constance’s writhing became un-naturally violent, Abigail jumped up from the floor and ran across the room to where her husband was standing with Jane. All were simply standing there, as if they were spectators at some sick sporting event. Not one of them made a move to help Constance, and not one of them spoke. The only sound to be heard was the shrill, piercing shrieks emanating from Constance’s lips as she tried unsuccessfully to rid herself of the extreme agony inside her.

Suddenly, she laid flat on her back, and had one great seizure, as if she was being shocked with a ridiculously high voltage of electricity. The shock seemed to touch every part of her body, lifting her off the floor for a fraction of a second. If her family had thought that her previous screams were bad, those were nothing when compared with the other-worldly, apocalyptical wail now drenching the room with its sound. Constance’s body had become stiff as a board, hovering about six inches from the floor, her cry of pain being the only indication that she was alive at all.

And then, without any warning at all, the shrieking ceased, and Constance fell to the ground in a heap.

She did not move for the next twenty-four hours.

By the time she woke up, her sixteenth birthday had come and gone.