Charlotte After Dark

Chapter 24: Grow Where You Are Planted

"You grow where you are planted," he said, placing dirt at the base of a flower.

"Is Mommy like us?" I asked.

"No, Chuck, your mother is not like us," he responded. "Her family was like us once, but not anymore."

"Is that why I have to keep it a secret?"

"Yes," he said, tugging on one of my braids with an unsoiled hand and looked at me with a loving smile. "It's our secret."

"She's scared," I said.

He seemed surprised by what I said. "What makes you say that?"

"I heard her," was my reply as I busied myself with one of the toys on the ground, placing them all in a circle.

"How did you hear her?" He asked, taking the toy from my hand, prompting me to look at him. He looked at me sternly with amber eyes, the same as mine, that urged me to answer him.

"She said it to Opa," I answered, looking down and taking the toy from his hand to join the others in a circle.

He seemed relieved with my answer.

With the final toy added, they all began to move on their own as I clapped in joy. My father smiled at me, wider than I had ever seen before.

"Now, who taught you that? Has Uncle Paddy been tutoring you again?" He asked, with a laugh.

"No, I learned this on my own," I replied.

My father uttered words of encouragement, but as a group came up the winding walkway his mood quickly changed. In an instant, he removed one of the toys and they all stopped.

I looked up at him in disappointment, but he wasn't looking back at me. Instead, he was looking at the three figures that walked towards us, whose faces I couldn't make out. My father quickly picked up the toys and handed them to me, piling them in to my arms.

"Go inside, Charlotte," he told me.

"But I wasn't--" I began.

"Now," he said, the sternness that was in his voice now was foreign to me.

Obediently, I headed up the steps of the porch, towards the front door. I took one glance back to my father, who was now diverting to the back of the house with the three figures. I caught my foot on one of the wooden planks of the porch, and tumbled down. Instead of making contact with the porch floor, instead I feel into darkness just like I had when I had the first memory of my father those many nights again.

Images came to me in rapid fire, but I could barely make them out. I saw the long face of a man with deep green eyes that sent an icy chill through my entire body and made me feel like any good thought in my mind was suddenly ripped away. A sinister smile played on him lips as I heard what sounded like thousands of tortured screams so far away that many of them echoed like a long-ago memory. The final scream I heard sounded too familiar, I felt my hands instinctively fly to my ears to block it out.

It was the deafening scream of my mother.

"Charlotte!" Another voice screamed.

I seemed so much closer than the other voices. I felt my body shaking as I tried to wake myself from the horrible feeling of all the screams. They still echoed in my eyes as my eyes shot open.

Cormac had his hands on my arms, shaking me awake.

"The screams," was all I said, my hands now flying up to my ears like I could still hear them in the room. The deafening screams made my ears feel like they had spent the night next to a loudspeaker on full volume.