Autumn

Chapter 9

A sigh. "I hadn't known the name of the town until you moved to the house on Magnus Hill..."

"Mom?" I shuddered. "You knew?"

"Yes, ok? I've known the whole damn time! I thought if I denied your- abilities I'd keep you from... from this."

"How did you know?"

"We're not so unalike, you know?" She sighed. Something that she'd never said in her whole life. I'd always loved my mom with my whole heart, but we'd always been complete opposites, even in likeness.

"You have the McLaren curse, Autumn." She began again, "It only comes to the women in our family. The spirit burdened us with this secret as the men would only use it to find the spring."

"What's so bad about finding the spring?" I frowned.

"Look where you are honey... I told you to put this whole thing to rest and to come home, but you didn't listen!"

"Why wouldn't you have just told me? Seems like that would have been a much better option!" I snapped. "I thought I was insane my entire life because you gas-lit me with every dream, every premonition, I convinced myself I needed to be medicated!"

"You wouldn't understand." She said flatly.

"Try me!" I retorted, on fire with a life-time worth of rage and betrayal.

"These abilities are..." She began, and I heard the bite in her words as she searched for the right things to say, "Tumultuous."

"Tumultuous." I repeated, patience waning.

"You don't know what it's like to wake up to dead people in your room every night asking you to help them move on, Autumn. I was 8 years old. This is a curse, not a gift!" The words came tumbling out in such a mess that it was as if they'd never been spoken before this moment.

"If you'd known, it only would have encouraged your abilities and robbed you of your childhood like I was robbed of mine. Do you know what it's like to go to a mental institution?"

I froze.

A bitter laugh. "Oh yes, I may have told you that you were imagining things, but my parents weren't as gentle."

"How did-"

"Oh, they cured me alright." A laugh without humor, "I'd convinced myself I was hallucinating. Got put on medication. I'd believed I'd made it all up for a good- oh, 15 years. That was until I had you." She said, voice breaking. 

My mom had never cried in front of me. 

Never. 

"You were so sweet, so small, and when you started having the dream of the shadow man- when you started talking about the spring in your sleep... I- I couldn't handle it. I couldn't let it happen to you too."

"How- how did you find out about your gifts being a family line? How did you know about the house? Everything? When did you find out where I'd moved to and why didn't you tell me?" The questions were bursting from me in a mess of verbal vomit. I had a million more questions, but they were pushed and shoved out of the way by one another, and my brain was short circuiting. 

Worse than any diagnosis I'd ever been pronounced with, I was haunted.

"I realized when you called me that first night where you'd found the basement with the painting." She began, slowly. "I- I didn't tell you because- well I thought, maybe I'd save the talk for when you found out. that way I wouldn't sound... crazy when I tried to explain." She pronounced the word with an edge that I knew stemmed from a past trauma. Mom was scared to tell me. She was scared she'd be put back into that asylum, I realized with pain.