“Is this your cousin’s idea of a prank, Francesca?” I scoff, shoving my hands into my pockets as I search for the origin of the song. It’s all a little too neat, catching her sneaking out and suddenly needing a chauffeur. “You’ve both made your point. Ghost stories, ancestral letters, gravesites, threatening notes, and now eerie music—what’s next, a projector?”
The lyrics curl in like fog. She finally looks over, and it floors me. Her pupils are massive, swallowing the green until almost nothing remains. She won’t speak. I know she wants to. I can fucking feel it. But no words come, save for the barest whisper of my name. That’s not the face of somebody playing a joke. She looks like a girl remembering her own funeral.
Pretty little baby
I square my shoulders and try to count my breaths. The tune creeps through the brush like scavengers on the hunt for carcasses, and the moonlight feels as though it shines onto us, stage lights guiding the path for whatever awaits in the darkness. Francesca sidles up to me until her arm is pressed against mine, her body making the decision her mind can’t.Safety. She wants safety. Just yesterday she would’ve teased me for being afraid of shadows, but now I can hear her throat clicking as she tries to swallow.
“If it’s those boys, I’ll wring their fucking necks,” I mutter, eyes sifting the darkness for the prank I still want to believe in.
Twigs crunch as I take the first step forward, but Francesca’s fingers close around my wrist. “Eric,no. Please, stay.”
I look down. Tears cling to her lashes, and she’s shaking hard now. A chasm opens up between the woman I first met almost three weeks ago and this version pleading with me. This isn’t Lady Sheffolk the Younger; this is the girl from the lake.
Meet me at the car hop or at the pop shop
Meet me in the moonlight or in the daylight
I force composure that I don’t feel, not when she’s like this. “Someone’s hiding a speaker out here. There’s a perfectly rational?—”
“Sheffolkeatslogic,” she hisses, shaking her head in horror.
A tear, bright as mercury, trails down her cheek. Followed by another. Then one more until they flow steadily. I curse, wrapping both arms around her—one sealing her shoulders to me and the other curving around her ribs.
Pretty little baby, I’m so in love with you
Ooh-ooh-ooh
Her tears soak through my shirt like acid as each note rises from the soil itself. “I’m going to check it out,” I tell her, using the voice my mother always did when Henrik was frightened during thunderstorms. “Nothing will happen to you. I’ll take a few steps, identify the speaker, and smash it. End of mystery, alright?”
She trembles violently, throwing her head back to peer up at me. Each word cracks as they leave her mouth, and she shakes her head again. “Eric, this is the song that was playing the day the boat sank. On repeat. Over and over.”
The temperature drops ten fucking degrees inside my gut.
She whimpers. “I can still hear Mum screaming over Connie Francis as Papa gets crushed.” The confession slices me open as I picture it: water swallowing an entire family as this lullaby croons about devotion.
Pretty little baby
I said pretty little baby
“Francesca—”
“Take me home,” she gasps, clutching my lapels. “Please, I want to leave.”
Oh, now, pretty little baby
The melody stops. No fading the way it did inside the car, but an abrupt end, the woods biting off its own tongue. The hush that returns feels monstrous, and Francesca exhales a heavy, broken sob. She’s still begging me as I gaze out into the darkness, so I cup the back of her skull and begin steering us towards the car. We only manage to take two steps before her knees just switch off.
“Whoa, hey—fuck.” I haul her against me before she can hit the ground, and a strange sound leaves her as she goes frighteningly limp. “Francesca? Tell me, what is it?”
Her forehead hits my shoulder, mouth parted and panting like she can’t catch enough air. “I can’t—Eric, I can’t; my legs—I can’t feel them.”
I do a rerun of the last few minutes, and despite digging through shit, there was zero opportunity for head trauma. Doubt she inhaled anything bad either. Psychosymptomatic, then, but still equally as terrifying because her whole lower body is dead weight in my arms right now.
“Hey. Eyes on me, darling.” She looks at me like she has no choice but to obey, trapped inside her own body and unable to do anything about it.
“I can’t feel my legs.” Horror ghosts over her expression, and I read the question before she has a chance to voice it.
“They’re still there; you’re fine. You’re fine.” And her legsarestill there, covered in mud, knees knocking like they forgot how to work. “Listen, I’m gonna lift you, alright?” She nods once, fast.
