Chapter 10-Seeing Red

~*Chapter 10 - Seeing Red*~



Constance stood in the parchment shop, directly across the street from the cobbler’s. Her mother had taken Jane into the cobbler’s to drop off several pairs of shoes to be mended. Constance had insisted on shopping for a new quill, parchment, and sealing wax, as she wished to write to Silas and had nothing to use for the task.

She had never written to her brother before, but within the last few days, she had gotten an odd feeling that Silas was having a rough go if it, and she wanted to check on him. So, she stood in the parchment shop and looked over the vast array of items.

She paced about, fingering quills and rubbing parchments between her fingers to test the thickness. Though the shop was deserted, save for another family and the owners, nobody looked Constance in the eyes. Everyone stayed quiet and kept their heads down, as if they suspected her of being a spy for the Union army. Or worse.

Constance couldn’t refute the obvious notion that the people in Atlanta all had their own suspicions about her; she clearly wasn’t normal by any stretch, and they weren’t dull enough to let that fact escape their notice. In fact, when it came to pinning abnormalities on others, they were almost geniuses. The only area in which they excelled further was that of gossip, the other half to the equation; for, what was a poor reputation worth if no one spread the word?

Constance had been a popular topic for discussion for years. Frankly, after seeing the way the common folk flitted about between fresh pieces of gossip like flies in a manure heap, Constance was surprised that they hadn’t gotten bored with her yet. Honestly, she wasn’t that interesting. She never did anything; it was, however, more what she didn’t do that caught their incessant attention. They were not interested in her because she continued to do things to draw the focus onto herself – she would have become boring far too quickly that way.

No, instead, they kept a wary eye on her because of the things she didn’t do. She didn’t speak with a rolling southern accent like the rest of them. She didn’t tan or burn in the sun. She didn’t come into town very often. She didn’t speak to people when she happened to be in town. She didn’t have friends. She didn’t make a noise when she breathed. She didn’t laugh. She didn’t even smile.

Constance hadn’t originally tried to attract attention; in fact she had tried to slip beneath their gazes entirely. But, her efforts had only made then keener. The more she sunk back and behaved more like a shadow than a woman, the more the words had flown.

That Rosehaven girl is quite a strange one.

She doesn’t act normal.

There’s certainly something odd about her, though I can’t lay a finger on it.

The more she listened to various accounts of her attributes and detriments, the more she realized that she couldn’t care less. People could talk all they liked; they could never change what she was. They were like small children; they needed to be kept busy. The best thing she could do was to give them something to talk about.

Over by the front window of the shop, Constance stood holding a bottle of blood red ink toward the blazing sun. She had always loved how the colour red caught the light; it practically glittered. So, as she turned it and tilted it to see the various shades of red within the glass bottle, it was only fitting that she almost didn’t notice the movement across the street.

Three Union soldiers had hauled two people out of the cobbler’s shop. There were two men holding the woman, and there was one dragging a young girl.

Though she only saw the commotion from the corner of her eye, a look of recognition flickered across Constance’s face as she noticed through the scuffle that the woman’s dark curls matched her own, and the little girl’s left hand was deformed; Abigail and Jane.

~*~

“Let go of me!” Abigail yelled at the man clad in a woolen blue uniform who was gripping her right arm roughly. “You let go of me this instant! Don’t you lay a hand on my daughter, you swine! You let us go! You have no right to . . .”

“Actually, ma’am,” the soldier sneered, treating Abigail to a sharp smack across her face, “I have every right.” He and his partner pushed Abigail down onto the ground, and the man holding Jane did the same.

Abigail reached for Jane’s hand and pulled the girl close to her dusty bodice. Jane was crying softly. Abigail took a moment to stroke her daughter’s hair and murmur soothing words into her ear, and then, once Jane’s crying had lessened, Abigail turned her head to the side and spat out a mouthful of blood:  the product of the soldier’s blow to her face. As she raised her eyes to glare up at the men, however, she was taken by surprise to see two bayonets shoved close to her face.

“It’s a funny thing, ma’am,” said the third soldier – the one whose stinging smack had left Abigail’s mouth full of blood – as he cocked the hammer back on his gun, not facing the woman just yet. “It truly is funny; holding life and death in one’s hand.” At this, he turned and stared into Abigail’s hateful face. “Especially when it’s not your own,” he added, shouldering his gun and taking aim directly between Abigail’s eyes.

“Oh, you’re going to kill me?” Abigail spat, voice oozing with contempt, blood seeping out the corner of her mouth, “You’re going to kill me because I refused to allow you to touch me? Because you tried to molest me, and I would not have it? Are you going to kill me to protect your precious ego?”

The soldier laughed, cocking the hammer on his gun and stared down its barrel at her. “Not at all, ma’am. I have other reasons as well.” And then, with a sigh, he said, “Oh, I am going to enjoy this.”

His finger tightened on the trigger. Abigail flinched a bit, shielding Jane’s eyes. “Darling, don’t look,” she said, her voice quivering slightly. The soldier suddenly shifted the barrel of his gun so that it was pointing at Jane.

“No! Please . . .”

There was a loud bang, after which Jane twitched once and then lay still. Blood began to flow freely from somewhere in the girl’s chest, soaking her dress and Abigail’s alike. Her blood spilt onto the ground, pooling into little puddles in the dust. Her face blanched slowly, frozen in premature death.

Abigail clutched the lifeless girl to her, shaking with her sobs. The dirt on her face streaked with tears as she muttered, “Jane! Jane, darling! Please. . . . Please, Jane!” When the girl failed to move, she glared up at the soldier who had sent the bullet straight through her heart without a second thought.

The man lowered his gun and backed away, saying, “Now you wish I had killed you. Protecting my ego? No. Just watching you squirm.” Then, he gestured to his men and told them, “Do with her as you will.”

“You bastard! You haven’t even got the decency to finish me off yourself!” Abigail was seething with blind fury as she held her dead daughter in her arms. The child’s blood was splattered all the way up to her elbows, and her long dark hair hung in her face. “Listen to me!” she cried, as the soldier continued walking away. Frustrated, Abigail shook her head as a shiver of hatred ran down her spine. “Then go to hell. The lot of you.”

“How about we meet you there?” one of the remaining soldiers hissed, pressing the barrel of his gun to Abigail’s forehead. Tears streamed down her face, but she stared straight between the two soldiers at the back of the man who had shot her daughter.

“Do it,” she taunted, staring at the vile man as he disappeared into the distance; the man who, to her, was no better than the devil himself. Without even so much as a second’s pause, the soldier yanked the trigger back, sending a round straight through the woman’s head.

~*~

Constance saw all of this.

She had watched as the soldiers pushed her mother and sister to the ground. She had watched as they murdered her younger sister. She had watched as her mother screamed profanities to their faces. She had watched as they ended her mother’s life without a thought. She had seen it all from the perfect vantage point, and she had had the time and ability to prevent their deaths – even if it meant taking a bullet – or all of them – herself. She would have hardly felt a thing. She could have saved their lives with no risk to her own.

But she hadn’t.

Constance had just stood by, complacent and only mildly interested as the street was flooded with pools of their blood. Her family’s blood. Her blood.

Carefully closing the bottle of red ink in her fist, she slid out of the shop and made her way across the street. A small crowd had formed around the lifeless bodies in the dust, but it was nothing huge; most people were too frightened to even watch from the windows in their homes. They knew they could be next.

As Constance wove her way through the people, trying to avoid touching them, a thought occurred to her. It should have been her who had been shot. In fact, had her circumstances been any different, she would have been there. Had she not had the oddities which condemned her to be shunned by them, she may have cared for her mother and sister. Had she cared for them, she gladly would have taken a bullet in defending them. Had she taken that bullet, she would be just as dead as they were.

It was a slightly disturbing thought.

When she was finally standing in front of the bodies, staring down into their open, glassy eyes, she turned around to the people gathered behind her. “Go on,” she said quietly, but clearly, “there’s nothing to see here.” As they all blindly obeyed the command, she turned back to her mother and sister. Looking them over, from head to foot. Her eyes traveled the length of her mother’s body, starting with her face, then to the hole drilled through her skull, then down to the mangled girl leaning against her, then to her bloody skirts, then to her pretty silken shoes. The entire image was laid against a background of bold, red blood.

Constance glanced down at her own feet. She was standing in it. Carefully lifting her feet, one at a time, she swirled the blood in slow circles with her shoes. For half an instant, she felt a compelling urge to remove her shoes and let the smooth liquid squish between her toes. She didn’t indulge it, though; she wasn’t sure why, but she didn’t.

Instead, she pulled out the bottle of red ink that she had palmed at the parchment shop. Twisting it around in the light as she had before, she marveled at its beauty. Then, she bent over and compared its color to the blood seeping slowly in a small trickle from the two corpses. It was a perfect match. Stunning.

Gliding over to her mother’s face, she knelt down in the blood-spotted dust and pulled the woman’s curls out of her face. “You’ve never looked better,” she murmured, running her fingers over the hole between Abigail’s eyes.

Twisting around slightly in the sand, she picked up her sister’s injured hand. “You were never good for anything anyway,” she said, delicately snapping each of the small fingers to match the original deformity. “You never tried.”

Once she had finished mutilating Jane’s left hand, she sighed deeply and rose. Her dress was covered red splotches, but she didn’t care.

She didn’t care. She didn’t even want to care. In fact, she was glad they were dead. After all, how could she mourn for the loss of a pair of thorns in her side? She had only grown to hate them more and more as time had passed, and she had loathed them more with each new day. She was quite relieved to have seen the end of them.

She was a heartless wretch; she knew she was. It shouldn’t matter what they had done to her; she should have at least felt something. But she felt nothing. Nothing at all in her heart of ice. No hurt, no grief, no anger . . . . Not even any elation.

She simply felt dead inside. Her heart was an empty void.

She didn’t care.

~*~

He had seen everything happen. He had stood there silently as the soldiers had dragged the woman and the girl from the shop, and he had watched up until the other girl – older, taller – left them lying there like rubbish in the middle of the town.

All the while, everything within his being had been screaming at the atrocity before him. He wanted to stop it, but he knew he couldn’t.

And he knew them. The men who had taken equal parts in the double murder, that is. He served with them. They were in the same regiment. The one who had been giving the woman the roughest time was named Reeves. The other two were Sykes and Harrison.

When Reeves walked away from the mess he had created, he had tried to stop him. He grabbed the arm of the older soldier and said, “There was no need for that, Reeves. They weren’t doing anything wrong.” Reeves pulled away and muttered something under his breath that the other would never forget before roughly pushing past him and moving along.

“Parker, your compassion will kill you one day.”

As Reeves stalked away from the young, red-haired soldier, he spat off to the side and then spouted off several varieties of choice words. Garrett Parker had just stood there, watching him have his adult temper tantrum, before turning his attention back to the scene at hand. Sykes and Harrison had gone, and about fifteen people had gathered to gape at the bodies. The sight made him ache inside.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a woman appear from the shop across the street. He figured it was just one more onlooker who was coming to stare at the unfortunate fate of two innocent souls. But when the newcomer started to work her way through the crowd to the spot where the bodies sat, he knew it was most likely a family member. His heart went out to whichever brave woman would go and claim the bodies that had been so defiled by his fellow servicemen. Suddenly, he felt immensely guilty and dirty in his blue uniform.

Finally, at a word from the young woman, the crowd – if it could even be called that – started to disperse. Now nothing was blocking his view of the girl and the two corpses. As he watched, however, he noticed something curious:  she wasn’t crying at all. In fact, she didn’t appear to be even remotely damaged from the loss. Maybe he had been wrong; maybe she wasn’t family.

It couldn’t be missed, however, that she bore a startling resemblance to the woman. She had the exact same hair, and she had a similar build. It was all so strange.

The more Garrett watched, the stranger it became. The girl took something that looked like a little bottle and held it down to the blood on the ground. Then, she knelt beside the woman and pushed the corpse’s hair back from her face. She gently caressed the dead little girl’s hand. Finally, she stood up and walked away, leaving the bodies there.

Surely she would come back. Possibly with a company of men to help move the bodies and deliver them to their final resting places. She had to come back.

Hours passed, and nothing happened.

The entire situation struck Garrett as odd. First, a young woman approaches her dead family without any trace of grief. Then, she pulls out a strange little bottle and compares it to the blood. Finally, she tenderly bids farewell to the corpses and leaves without returning. It was hardly how Garrett had seen the other families of the dead behave. In fact, it was almost the complete opposite.

Garrett checked back at that spot every now and again throughout the day, but he never saw the girl again. The dead woman and child were removed unceremoniously by the Union soldiers later that day; the girl never came back.

As night fell, Garrett set out to take over the role of sentry. It was his job to essentially wander the streets of Atlanta and make sure that no one was causing any trouble. As he started out on his route, he couldn’t help but think of the woman and the little girl. The expressions on their frozen faces were something he wished that he could forget, but he knew he never would.

The more the images of the two corpses showed up in his mind, the more he couldn’t shake the thought of the young woman who had come after the crowd had left. The memories of the three of them – one alive and two dead – flickered back and forth like a silent movie as he walked the streets of Atlanta, watching the sun set on the day, and also on the lives of the meek young girl and the woman who had remained strong up until the very end.

~*~

Constance sat outside of her family’s manor house on the brick stairs that lead up to the door. She had told her father what had happened in town that day – glossing over the fact that she was entirely able to help, yet she hadn’t so much as batted an eye – and he had panicked. Once he started to come out of the tailspin, he sunk past normalcy and into depression. He had closed himself up in his study, and Constance could even now hear him crying quietly.

She had removed herself from the situation, as offering sympathy was hardly her strong suit, and had come outside.

Constance loved being outside. She could see things from a mile away, and she could hear things as quiet as mice breathing as they rustled through the grass. When she was outside, she could appreciate everything so much more. The wind tickled her face and the sounds of nightfall graced her sharp ears. She closed her eyes as a breeze fluttered across her face and reveled in the cool, simple nature of it. When her eyes opened again, she focused them deep in the trees on the opposite side of the dirt road as her house. She watched as birds hopped about in trees, dancing to their perfect tunes. For the first time in a while, she felt true and complete peace.

Slowly, the bird’s song morphed into something else entirely. The sound was very far off, but Constance heard something that was decidedly human approaching down the road. The closer the sound came, the better she could pick it out above the melodies of the world around her. Someone was whistling. The song was nothing she had heard before, and it didn’t sound entirely composed – it was most likely being improvised on the spot by some carefree soul taking a moonlight stroll.

She turned and stared off in the direction from which the sound was traveling, and she saw a man approaching. Even in the dark of the night, she could see his navy blue uniform. As he came closer, she was able to pick out more and more features – he was long-legged and thin with an easy gait and a shock of red hair atop his head. He had his rifle carelessly slung over his shoulder and had his free hand resting in his pocket. When he was about a hundred feet off, she could see the planes of his face and the purse of his lips as he whistled.

She kept staring at him until he was mere feet away from her. As he passed, he inclined his head and touched his fingers to the brim of his cap in a respectful gesture. She nodded in return. He was not more than ten paces past her when his whistle stopped. He stood there for a brief moment, rooted in place, contemplating. Then, he turned on his heel and walked back toward her, neglecting to resume his tune.

He fixed her with a guarded gaze, questions in his eyes, as he stopped in front of her, looking down into her face. “Excuse me, ma’am,” he said. “Might I ask you something?”

Constance nodded silently, looking the young man up and down. He couldn’t be more than twenty years old. He was very tall and quite well-built, despite his gangly appearance. However, the more she stared at him, the more she noticed that there was something peculiar about him. She couldn’t name it, but it was quite obvious to her that he wasn’t like anyone she had ever met.

“Were you in town today?” he asked.

“Yes,” she replied coolly, completely disinclined to answer questions regarding her whereabouts. “Why?”

The soldier hesitated for a moment, knitting his brow a bit, before he said, “I think I may have seen you.”

“It’s possible. Quite a few people saw me.”

“You were with a woman and girl?” he asked.

She looked him dead in the eyes and said, “Yes.”

“And they were shot?” Garrett prompted gently, giving her a slightly pained look that she supposed was an expression of sympathy.

Constance stared at him for a moment before saying, “Yes.” Her voice was just as cold and disinterested as before, and she made sure her eyes reflected her inward bitterness toward the subject. Why should she talk to him? She didn’t even know who he was. She had never seen him before in her life. She had absolutely no reason to put up with his questions.

“If I may ask, ma’am,” he said, shifting his weight from one foot to the other uncomfortably, “who were they?”

“What does it matter to you?” she shot back, glaring at him a bit to convey her frustration. Why wouldn’t he just leave her alone?

The young man held up his hand defensively. “I was just wondering,” he said. Then, he stared at her, obviously still intent on receiving the answer to his question. She wondered for a moment if he didn’t know how to take a hint. She didn’t want to talk to him. She didn’t want to talk at all. But, the more her jaw locked up and she refused to speak, the more he focused his attention on her. For a long time they sat like this, Constance stubbornly refusing to say a word, the young soldier stubbornly refusing to let her off the hook.

Finally, Constance gave him a sidelong glance before she looked straight ahead stiffly and said, “My mother and sister.” When he made no response, she turned to him and saw that he looked genuinely confused. “What is it?” she asked, her tone a shade more accusatory than she had intended.

“You didn’t seem very upset,” he responded, swinging his rifle down from his shoulder and leaning on it. “Normally, when people lose a close relative like a mother or a sister, they tend to be a bit more . . . heartbroken.”

“You wouldn’t understand,” Constance spat, turning away again, anger flashing up inside of her. How could he presume such things? How could he even dare to suggest that she had a scrap of emotion to spare for the two human beings who hurt her so when they had lived – Abigail by ostracizing her and Jane by being the angel child Abigail had always wanted? Whether he thought she should have been devastated, livid, or ashamed, she had only felt numb. How could he possibly understand that?

“Try me.”

His response completely took her aback. All annoyance forgotten, she gawked up at him and said, “Excuse me?”

“Try me,” he repeated, fixing her with a long, intense stare that she knew she’d be a fool to refute. Constance Rosehaven was no fool, so she sighed heavily in exasperation and motioned for him to come join her on the stairs. If she was going to explain, he had better sit down; it was a long story.

He crossed over and sat down beside her, laying his rifle on the ground at his feet. Once he was situated, she began. “I never much cared for my mother and my sister. Of course, that’s not to say I’m glad they’ve been killed, but I don’t feel hurt at all.” She periodically glanced at him – waiting for him to stop giving her that stare that was intended to forcefully wrest information from her lips, though his face was gentle and kind. She was unwilling to go on, but the more he waited, one eyebrow cocked, eyes wide, attentive and ready to absorb her every word, the more she felt an obligation to keep talking to this strange man. She felt her resolve being stripped from her as she reluctantly continued, “To be perfectly honest, my mother never much cared for me either.

“I was the odd child – the one she wished she had never had. She viewed me as more of a curse than a blessing. No, Jane was her real daughter. My younger sister, Jane, was everything mother had wanted me to be. She was perfect. Of course, mother never did anything to harm me, but she certainly neglected to consider me her own. As far as she was concerned, I was not her child. Jane was her only daughter.”

Throughout this, the young man had sat and listened thoughtfully, nodding at all the right points to coax her on, and giving her that look that weakened her determination to shut him out. When she stopped, he said, “I understand more than you think, ma’am. You can take my word on that.” When Constance glanced over at him, unconvinced, he said, “You’re neither sad nor happy nor angry with the loss of your mother because she treated you like you were nothing. Because of this, she became nothing to you. And you resented your sister for being special.”

Constance shook her head. “Jane was never special.” She stared directly into the soldier’s bright green eyes and said, “Mother loved her because she was normal.”

“And you’re not?” he asked, his voice quiet and kind.

She merely scoffed bitterly at the notion.

He chuckled a bit at her reaction and said, “I take it that discussing the subject is entirely out of the question.”

“Naturally.”

He gave her a good-natured smirk and replied, “I thought so.”

After a second, Constance gave a long exhale. Then, she said, “I honestly have no idea as to why I just said all of that. I don’t know you in the least.”

“Sometimes I can have that effect on people,” he said with a small grin. “They tell me things they never intended to, but they never regret it.” Then, the young man rose from the step and stood facing her. “Garrett Parker, ma’am.” He bowed graciously, as was the custom, and held out his hand for hers. “If I may?”

She hesitantly placed her cold, white hand into his, saying, “Constance Rosehaven.”

With a smile, he raised her hand to his lips and gave it a soft kiss. “An honor,” he responde