The Raven Queen_Fairy Tales of Horror by Lena Mae Hill

Author:Lena Mae Hill [Hill, Lena Mae]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Speak Now
Published: 2019-06-20T16:00:00+00:00

Winter 1996

1

I wake up shivering. The fire has gone out, and the house is cold. I’m so cold. My legs are frozen, my bottom half drenched in cold sweat.

No. No no no no no.

I stifle a scream, clamp my hand over my mouth to hold it in. I reach for the lamp beside the bed, my icy fingers fumbling for the cold metal chain. Before I pull it, I hesitate. If I pull the chain, I’ll know. If I don’t, I can lie back down, tell myself it’s just a night sweat. If I lie back down, maybe it won’t be there in the morning. The sweat will dry, and I’ll be fine. Everything will be fine.

I reach out my other hand, moving it across the cold, rumpled sheets. Far, far across the bed, I find Owen’s back, turned towards me in sleep as always.

My fingers tremble as I touch his shoulder. If I wake him, he’ll want to know why. He’ll feel the wetness in the bed, demand to know what’s wrong. I scoot back down in the bed, lying in the wetness. Cold seeps into me, through my skin, into my blood, into my bones. I don’t dare touch my belly. If it’s flat, the baby already gone, I’ll know it’s the witch’s doing.

Ever since that fateful day last summer, Owen has barely spoken to me. But he doesn’t go out on the days he doesn’t work. He rarely stays out all night anymore.

I almost wish he would.

Instead, he stomps around the house, glowers at me when I’m resting, accuses me of laziness. He slams doors, slams pans on the stove, slams his shoes on the floor in the morning. He demands dinner, wordlessly shovels it into his mouth, stomps out onto the porch to smoke a cigarette, a habit he’s picked up from Ira in the past few months. When he finally goes over to Ira’s, or spends an evening tinkering in the shed with his tools, it’s a relief. I don’t know what happened to the person I married.

I’m sure he would say the same about me.

I’m sure the woman he married would not lie in a puddle all night, scared to touch her own body for fear of what she will find. The woman he married risked everything to run away from her father. She’d let his friends have a little fun with her if it meant she’d get to have a little fun with him, too. She wouldn’t lie in her own filth, not knowing if it’s urine or amniotic fluid or blood. She would not be so scared to find out that she’d risk bleeding to death.

But what does it matter? If I don’t give him this child, there will be no more chances. This was the only thing holding him to me. And when he leaves, I’m not even sure I’ll try to stop him. It’s beyond me to care about that now, when I’m lying here, my womb turning to stone again as my fingers stiffen with cold.

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