Ad eternum

Chapter 8 - danse macabre

There is a phrase often heard from those who fancy themselves wise: "The past no longer exists, and the future does not belong to us." Yet, there is something about youth in every era that makes one think the future is indeed theirs, that they can control it, that it's secured—foolish notions like that. 

Charlotte and Albert, like the vast majority, were those kinds of young people. Charlotte had the reddish-brown hair of her father, just like her brother Albert, though his hair grew perfectly straight.She would often explain to her brother that both their hair had a bit of the shine of fire, mixed with the warmth of the sun on a cloudless day. 

Albert seemed to understand but didn't much like talking about colors; it put him in a bad mood, and Charlotte knew when to keep quiet. She wasn't much of a talker herself, but next to Albert, she seemed chatty. She was a girl with thin features, perhaps too much so, although the pair of keen, suspicious green eyes with which she viewed the world compensated for any flaw. She wasn't very tall, at least not for her fifteen years, and people often thought she was younger.

They were on the second floor of their grandfather's house, a man they had seen only three or four times in their lives. He had died a week ago, and the whole place was full of his things. Old furniture, silverware, wooden crosses hanging on the walls with rosaries draped over them, and various religious images, all of which she regarded with curiosity in the sitting room. Additionally, there were watercolor landscape paintings, all signed by Thérèse Gauthier.

 Charlotte knew who that was; she was an aunt who had died long ago, so long that neither of them had been born during her time.This entire situation had an unreal taste, thought Charlotte, almost dreamlike. Her father spoke of that aunt of his almost more fondly than her mother, who, being her sister, should have been closer. Maybe it was the grief she felt, she told herself. Perhaps that was what blocked her. She couldn't imagine what it would be like to lose the good boy who clung to her elbow.

"How do you think Grandma was, Albert?"

"How should I know? Even Mom didn't know her, imagine us."

Charlotte kept walking with him, exploring. That house aroused in her an almost morbid curiosity. Suddenly, Albert stopped his walk.

"What is it?"

"Shhh. Listen, Mom's back."

"Back? But Albert, Mom hasn't even..."

Alouette, gentille alouette 

 Alouette, je te plumerai

 It was true, and when she realized she heard it too, Albert smiled smugly. Their mother was singing, a song Charlotte hated and Albert would ask her to sing over and over again. Charlotte would cry for the lark, and Albert would delight in their mother's singing.

Je te plumerai la tête, Je te plumerai...

The voice came from the stairs.

"Mom, stop acting like that. You scared us," protested the girl as she approached. Her mother was sitting on the stairs. She was dressed in red, in a flamenco dancer's dress with gloves like a lady from the fifties. 

"What bug bit you, Mom?"

"I'm so sorry, children. I'm so very sorry." The woman before them stood up.

"That's not Mom," Albert said.

"Of course it is, look at her... I mean... Don't give me that look, Bert. It's a figure of speech. And yes, it is Mom. It's her, it's exactly like her. She just went crazy and dressed up."

However, Charlotte wasn't very convinced of her own words. She watched the woman who wouldn't stop singing, and she did so with suspicion, with something strange moving inside her chest.

The woman looked at them with eyes brimming with tears. Charlotte felt fear, and clung tighter to her older brother's elbow. He seemed to want to confront her.

"Who are you?"

"I don't know, children. I know as much as you do in that regard. In part, Charlotte is right. I gave birth to you, at some point. In some life, I was your mother. I raised you, watched you grow; you have my blood and my whole life laid out here, in this place and this moment. What wouldn't I give, my dear children, to set things right. What wouldn't I give..."

"You're crazy," Charlotte's voice trembled. It seemed like a nightmare. Couldn't that be it, really? A nightmare, perhaps? 

The woman looked exactly like her mother, had her voice's timbre, but that woman couldn't be the one who had said she was going to buy vegetables forty minutes ago.

"I smell something strange," Albert said suddenly. Charlotte sniffed the air. Yes, she noticed it too.The fifteen-year-old looked around, at the woman in red who kept staring at them. There was something wet, a long stain running across the entire carpet of the stairs. It wasn't water. She wanted to ask what it was; she opened her mouth but closed it immediately. Next to them, on the floor, was an open, empty gas can.

The crazy woman in the red dress suddenly took out a box of matches. She opened it, while the two teenagers watched her—or Charlotte watched, Albert listened and waited, not seeming to fully grasp what was happening—with a mix of stupor and confusion.

"Let's sing, my darlings. For the world to begin, something has to end. We are the beginning of the world, you know? So, we have to end."

Alouette, gentille alouette
Alouette, je te plumerai

For some reason, as if they were subjected to a sway of events over which they no longer had any will or freedom of action, something like those nightmares where one wants to run, but cannot; both children's lips began to shape the lyrics of the song, slowly following along as the lady tossed lit matches onto what seemed to be gasoline. And they sang until the end.

Lark, my gentle lark
Lark, I will pluck you
I will pluck your eyes
I will pluck your eyes
The eyes, the eyes...

When Blanche arrived home that afternoon, nothing remained but ashes, two charred bodies, and a red dress, intact, that belonged to no one. Upon the dress lay a feather as white as the fields of Lorraine after Christmas.