Merrylad barked in excitement as the stone cottage became visible through the trees. How perfect and unchangeable it always was—with its gray, round stones and small chimney and thatch roof covered in greenery.
Breathing fast and grinning, she climbed off her horse and motioned Merrylad not to make a sound. She would catch Captain unaware, while he was stirring at his black cauldron or reading from his Bible.
Then she’d laugh.
He would pause, whirl around, and blink away tears at his little girl returned. How wonderful it would be when he grabbed her into his arms, squeezed her, and turned her in circles as he’d done a hundred times over.
She tried the knob on the door and eased it open without a creak.
A smell hit her like a blow. Something pungent and rotting and sickening. No fire glowed in the hearth, no smoking cauldron, no drying herbs on the table or flowers in the pottery vase.
She gagged and covered her mouth with her elbow.Captain?
Merrylad trotted to the doorway of the only other room in the cottage. The door was ajar, waiting for her. How many times had she bounded through that threshold? The little bed was in there, where Captain always tucked her in and read her stories. She knew every inch of it, every stone in the walls, every plank and crack in the old wooden floor.
She didn’t want to enter now. Nausea churned her stomach as she edged closer and the smell grew worse.Savior, help me.
She pushed at the door, but it thudded against something. Merrylad squeezed inside. She leaned her head through.
A body. Captain’s body. Red on the floor planks, red on the clothes, red on his face.
She stumbled backward and covered her eyes, but the sight stayed with her. His caving, rotting features. The discolored skin. The dried slash across his neck and the hole at the base of his throat.No, God, no.
Bile surged through her and emptied onto the floor. He wasn’t dead. No, he couldn’t be dead because all this time he’d been waiting for her. He was supposed to be sitting at the hearth. She was supposed to laugh. He was supposed to spin her.
No, no, no.She raked in air, the repulsive air, and vomited again as she bumped into a wooden chair. Merrylad whined and darted from the cottage. On legs that had no feeling, with eyes a blur, she chased after him and escaped the stone walls that used to shelter her.
Now there was no shelter. No hope. No home.
Captain was dead.
Someone had killed him. Someone was going to kill her too. The forest wasn’t hidden anymore, and the trees couldn’t protect her, and nothing would ever be the same.
She was alone.
Bereft.
God, please. Please help me.She ran for the stream, splashed through the shockingly cold water, and climbed atop one of the mossy rocks. Her body wracked. She squeezed her knees to her chest and listened to the water rush away, rush away, rush away.
I’m going to die.She needed Captain. She needed him more than anything. She needed him to keep on living—because without Captain, she had nothing left. No one left.
Please.
All she wanted to do was die.
Darkness fell over her like a shroud. No moon lit the sky or glistened in the stream, not in the way she’d always loved before.
If only the blackness could stay. If only it could hide her. If only her eyes would never see and morning would never come. What was morning?
She didn’t understand. She hated morning. She hated the early sun and the pink sky and the rising fog. She hated new things. Everything new.
All she wanted was the old. The lost. The father who had raised her; the cottage that could no longer be home; and the stories long asleep, never to be whispered to her again.
Without tears, she eased back and forth on the rock.Please, I need Thee.
Because she couldn’t think. She was cold. Cold like his body on the floor. Cold like the blood, dry and red. Why was there always red?
She hated red too. She hated it more than anything.
