STEADY SILENCE || KLAUS MIKAELSON ¹

1 • hate to love you.

Even on the brightest of days the darkness can seep in, the sun can be shining but all that fills your mind will be the darkness. This was something that Nell Crain learned from a very early age, this was a lesson that she could have happily done without but had learned none the less.

Her life started as a series of happy events, a large happy family, filled with light and love and laughter. But then Hill House happened. Her family had moved into that house in the summer of 1992 when she was just six years old, moving into a new house was not unusual for her family but this one was different to the rest. She had never lived in such a grand house before, a house like a maze where she could hide for hours in a game of hide and seek without being found. To begin with she and her siblings had loved the house, they had moved into that house with nothing but excitement in their hearts. But then the darkness began to seep in.

It began with creeks in the walls and whispers through the halls at nighttime, small things that could be shrugged off as it being an old house. It wasn't until the third night in that house that the real nightmare had began for Nell. That night as the alarm clock shone 2.03am she had jolted awake, for the life of her she couldn't remember why she had woken but when she did as she lay there in the dark silence of the bedroom she shared with her twin brother Luke she felt it. She felt the hot air blow across the nape of her neck, she felt the whisper of a finger trailing across the bare skin of her arm. That night she shut her eyes hard and tight, her muscles stiff as she dared not move an inch.

Things only began to get worse from there, the next night it wasn't just the feel of hot air on her neck and the whisper of a finger, she could hear them too. She could hear the crackles of bones and low grunts almost as though somebody were in pain. The night after that a shadow could be seen looming over her bed, the figure of a woman with her neck bent at an angle that looked painful, as though the bone had been snapped. Nell would clench her eyes shut so tight that it began to hurt and her muscles would cease up in a way that made it impossible for her to move a muscle. The nights that followed she would wake and she would scream until her lungs burned and her voice gave out, sweat would pool over her body and her hands would shake and tears would fall from her ocean eyes.

Her father would call it her imagination, her mother would call her sensitive, some later in life would call her crazy. But Nell wasn't the only one affected by that house, that evil house, her mothers mind began to wonder, her twin began to wake at night screaming just as she did, her older sister began to talk in her sleep, her other sister would begin to hear things. Even her father would begin to see that the house was not a kind one. The only one left seemingly unaffected was her eldest brother, Steven.

Things were supposed to get better after they left that house, after the night that her mother had died and they had run from that house cloaked by the darkness of night things were supposed to get better. The ghosts were supposed to disappear, their family was supposed to be happy again, fixed again. But of course you can never truly leave your past behind.

These traumas inflicted upon them all by the house would carry through to their adult lives. Her eldest brother would forever carry his disbelief, her eldest sister would forever carry her unease, her other sister would forever carry her need to distance, her twin would forever carry his fear and her father would forever carry his guilt. Her siblings would look at her and see a sweet girl, a kind girl, a girl unscathed by the traumas of the house. She would be seen as the rock of the family, the one holding them all together by a thread.

What they didn't see was the nights spent in terror. The therapist after therapist, the drug after drug, the doctor after doctor. The nights where her mind would wake but her body would be locked, where her eyes would open and there she would be, the bent neck lady, standing over her bed as she could do nothing more than look on in fear and moan in terror. As tears would pool in her eyes and her body lay still and she could do nothing more but watch as the bent neck lady loomed over her. They didn't see as days were lost to her and her mind was shrouded in darkness. Of course they didn't because as soon as she was needed to once again hold her family together she pulled herself out of it, she would gather all of her fragile strength and do what was needed.