A Soul to Lure

Chapter Three: Living Nightmares

My mom had sacrificed herself for my stupidity.
For my damn curiosity.
I hated myself. Hated that I'd been so foolish.
I was home, but without my mom there it might as well have been a cave for all the comfort it brought to me now. My dad, who was usually quick to smile, could barely look at me without crying. Every adult in town knew what was in that forest and he'd known as soon as he saw me that night a week ago what had happened. He hadn't yelled like I knew he'd wanted to, but he hadn't embraced me either. Most likely caught between wanting to kill me and knowing I was already punishing myself enough. So he did nothing at all.

My brother, sixteen to my fourteen, was completely confused. He kept asking us where mom was. Why I was crying and dirty. Where had I been for two days. Oh yea, apparently while in that forest two days had gone by. Two. It hadn't even felt like hours.
I laid on the couch after that, just crying. Tears pooling on the pillow I'd propped under my head while I curled my dirty feet up behind me, only moving to pee or blow my nose. Snotty tissues continued to pile up on the table beside me right next to the untouched water my brother said I should drink. Even though he was probably going through his own emotions about our missing mother Luise was trying his best to take care of me, bringing me water and food, sometimes even coming to sit next to me, rubbing my leg while I cried. But I couldn't be soothed, I didn't want to be taken care of, I didn't deserve it. I deserved to be blamed, to be yelled at, thrown out on my ass and sent back into that forest to retrieve what we all had lost, who we all had lost.

Late, on my fifth night home, is when I had the nightmare. Not that I'd slept very well at all since being back, I kept dreaming of that face, the one that had entranced me. But this night was different, I dreamt of my mom. She was laying on the forest floor half dazed, her wrist slightly slit open and her blood dripping into a pond of red. "Get to the trees, Kita." She mumbled over and over until I finally screamed myself awake.

"Kita, Kita, you're home! It's okay!" My brother had his hands on my shoulders as if he'd been trying to hold me down. "Kita, I'm here, it's okay."

I blinked back tears as I took in deep breaths to calm my erratic breathing, looking around to make sure my brother was telling the truth, that I wasn't back in that forest watching my mom slowly bleed to death. Mom, my hopes raised for just a second, maybe it all had been a dream. Just some terrible nightmare I could tell my family about and we could all laugh uncomfortably about it after  "Mommy?" I asked, hope bubbling up so much I could feel it in my throat.

Luise simply shook his head, sadness taking over his boyish features.

I looked into those sad brown eyes and burst into tears, my body racking with yet another wave of sobs. "It's all my fault. It's all my fault!" I cried out.

Without a word Luise pulled me into his arms rocking me as I cried. Part of me knew I didn't deserve this consoling but the other part of me needed it so very much and so I wrapped my own arms around him as tight as I could and I gave in to his kindness. The same kindness my father had not awarded me.
Once my sobs had transformed into sniffles my brother pulled back and bore his brown eyes right into mine. "Kita, you have to tell me what happened. I want to be...sensitive  to whatever it is you went through but I can't go another day without knowing why mom is gone." He sighed, " Dad knows, but he won't tell me anything. He's barely spoken since you got home. I don't know what to do or or think. I need to know, Kita. Please tell me."

On the verge of sobbing again, I swallowed hard. Telling this to my brother would probably mean losing his kindness, having him be furious with me like my father was. But the truth was he needed to know and I wasn't going to be the one to keep it from him. "I-I went past the trees."