The Town Whispers: Season 1

Chapter 19: The Cruel Cost of Motherhood

Tom was off again - off in the fields or the woods, perhaps he was down by the river or up on Heaven Hill.

He used to love playing in old man Alfie's fields - used to love to squash the pumpkins under foot - never until November 1st though - that was the unspoken rule. Before November 1st old man Alfie would be out in his field - pitchfork in hand, and he'd even wave it about in his earlier years before the arthritis had set into his joints - his hip, his shoulders, even scratching his nose made his fingers go numb and tingle and his bulbous and swollen joints ache like a rotten tooth.

It was well past the first front - there were no pumpkins laying waiting to rot in those fields - they'd long since turned to stinking jelly beat into the earth by the elements - the rain, the snow, the wind, the insects.

All those fields held were mud and in the earliest hours of morning - frost. No reason to play - not out that far - not when there were so many places to run and jump and hide that were much closer.

The Fort - quiet, muddy, stinking terrible little place that it was - it could be a great place to grow up especially with friends to get into trouble with.

And Tom had met a new friend. She wasn't sure how or where, she didn't know the boy's name either - she hadn't asked, she didn't want to know - she'd only seen his red hair bobbing up the road leading up the LaPonte family home - obscured behind the trees and bush - the Tom's nimble feet padded down the staircase - he thought she couldn't hear him, that he could fool her, and go unseen-unheard, and she had always been happy to let that be his reality - to let him have that little win - to let him bound off smiling.

He hadn't smiled in so long. But as Tom shut the front door behind him, she could hear him outside, laughing - unable to stop herself she stole a peak at her boy through the drawn stained yellowed curtains - it was the first time in a long time that Mildred had seen him happy.

She didn't want to see him being happy.

To see him happy caused her such gut wrenching pain - it reached down to the root of her soul and tugged at it - shaking the dry fallow soil loose before whacking it against her insides.

To see him happy made the clouds darker, the world colder, the night darker - to see him happy dimmed the sun, and polluted the waters. To see him happy made everything to come so much worse - so much worse that it brought tears to her eyes in a conflicting whirlpool of emotion that knotted her throat, and clenched her jaw.

Peggy had taken to following Tom out and about as he did was boys do and embarked on adventures as long as the day was bright - mimicking the way he used to move about, thinking he was unheard and unseen - following his brother ben, or her husband - and Tom's father Mark - he just wanted to be included but didn't always feel comfortable inviting himself along.

And now Peggy, who not so long ago, was mute and shy, and unwilling to step beyond the shadow of her mother - Now she was watching Peggy braver than the boys - running and jumping through the woods, ducking and diving between trees, and crawling through ditches covered in mud.

Mildred sitting in her chair half shrouded in the dim shadows of the living room with its thick drawn curtains - watch Peggy, less practiced than Tom, but lighter and more agile, slink down the staircase and out in pursuit of her older brother's trail.

Mildred chuckled - the rust in her cheeks rubbed against the bones in her face and they ached as she forgot herself for a moment.

She relaxed her lips and forced them back down into their usual dour angles.

She didn't want Peggy to be brave - she wanted her to be afraid - to feel an ever present chill up her spin, to feel the staring shadow, the overwhelming call of the void.

The fact she'd grown brave made everything worse - Peggy becoming brave and bold felt like a file on the edge of her teeth, Peggy becoming brave made Mildred feel like her nails were being pulled, made her eyes sting with tears, made her want to rip her hair out - Peggy growing up, and facing her fears made everything to come so much worse.

Being a mother was hard - Mildred thought to herself.

Protect them, feed them, nurture them, watch them grow, watch them learn, watch them go, see them age, see them love, see them thrive, witness their hate, witness their despair, witness their death.

But she wasn't really a mother was she?

She could have been a mother - seen her face in her little ones - heard her voice in her little ones - known what it truly was to give birth, and give life, and foster that life. She could have had it all - and it should have been simple.

She and Mark - in love - married - they should have had children, raised them, fought for them, fought over them, made up, and made more tiny Mildred's and Mark's - their small toes running along the floorboards of their home, their sticky honey and dirt covered hands smearing the walls in the summer - buttoned them up in the fall - heated their socks by the fire in the winter and cleaned the grass stains from the their clothes in the spring.

She should have had that - it should have been hers - she should have had the joy of true motherhood.

They weren't her children. She feared what they were, what they could do, what they would become, and who they would hurt.

But in all those little moments of resentment, of unwanted responsibility, of the burdens named Ben, Peggy, Tom, and now William. She'd found a faint glimmer of.... Of novelty at first.

Yes- novelty, amusement in the way their tiny tones crinkled as babies at the taste of sour things, amusement when those children fell as they grew and were unfamiliar with the length of their bones. It was so cute when they jumped up embarrassed - cheeks flushed. She even entertained their little games.

Peggy's whispers.

Tom's perpetual game of Hide and Seek.

Ben... well, she didn't want to think about Ben.

William had no games yet, but he would.

In the space between those moments of giggles and hidden smiles, she'd begun to like her children's quarks - and by that point yes, she'd grown to accept them as her children.

Not children made from her, but her children.

When Mildred learnt to appreciate the quarks and nuances of her charges, she found love in that acceptance. And by loving them.

She soon came to resent them once more. Because Ben, Peggy, Tom, and William - would all die.

She sat there - relishing for a moment in the quiet - thinking about what could have, and should have been - thinking about what she deserved and all the bad turns life had thrown her way.

Mildred closed her eyes and leaned forward putting her elbows on her knees and running her fingers through her oily unkempt hair.

Mildred rose up out of the chair - she wore pants, and a rough worn in cotton button up shirt.

Mark's old work shirt.

Her bones creaked under the bends and folds of her clothing - her tendons strained, brittle, and unforgiving.

It wouldn't be long - she knew that - it wouldn't be long now..... The hairs on her arm stood on end at the thought of the coming of what had been promised to her in her youth.

That had seemed so far away at the time - but life had passed by in a blink, it had moved swiftly beneath her, behind her - it moved quick and ending - darting all around Mildred as she waited for it to happen.

And as she waited Life had seemingly passed her by.

She walked through the kitchen and stood at the back window, staring out into the fields.

She could still see Tom, and his new red headed friend making their way in chaotic lines running at one and bouncing off one another with make believe stick swords in hand as they ran and skipped further from home.

And 50 yards behind them was Peggy, running and ducking - dropping low in the tall dead grass overly cautious. Tom wouldn't look behind him and if Peggy didn't catch up she might lose them near the creek that ran through the woods that bordered their property, and drained into the river a couple kilometers away.

If she didn't follow more closely she might not see where the boys crossed, or she might forget where the thick stones that stuck out of the water lay half hidden in head leaves and broken branches floating and building flimsy dams in the creek.

[whack whack whack]

Spastically Mildred slammed the palm of her hand into the side of her head.

You don't care - you can't care - not for Tom, not for Peggy. Worry about yourself - worry about William.

But she did care about Tom and Peggy - she longed to be the mother they knew.

And she was afraid of William although he was just a baby.

She should have been feeding him then, instead of longingly staring at her children drifting away through a see of dead fields.

[baby crying]

On cue - William began to cry, demanding his mother Mildred - his caretaker. His wails rattled the floorboards from his nest in the floor of the pantry - nestled in the dirt - kept company and warm by the swarm of spiders, his small baby hands, with their paper thin nails, conducted musically and with innate knowledge.

She walked with unease in her shoulders towards the pantry.

Her hand rose to pull open the pantry door, resting on the handle.

It was cool in her hand, and smooth - there was that tricky sharp bit where the metal had been nicked at some point in it's life. It had been free off an old discarded door, and after learning that lesson once or twice no one in the house ever nicked themselves.

She didn't want to open the door. The walls of the home watched as she stood motionless just holding the door handle - eyes closed - head raised - defeated, working up the courage to give in.

All the while William continued to wail.

Tom and Peggy were still on her mind - they were different than William, they were happy, and good. They barely cried, and cooed softly throughout the day, content and pleasant.

William screamed and bit - he chomped and demanded. She didn't feel like his caretaker or protector, she was a resource to William.

He was a baby but his eyes held an old soul - she'd seen it the first time she held him. Far out, past the official boundaries of The Fort, in the old Wych Elm Grove - where her mother would go to convene with nature, where her sisters and her had planted their sanctuary.

It was where the other children had been as well. Seemingly left there for her by fate - or some old unknown thing. But it was only Mother Cyprian - it had been part of their arrangement. Why the Witch Elm grove? It cleansed the children. Pulled those black bits from their heart, dulled their teeth, and straightened their backs.

Mildred didn't know how long those children lay on their back staring up at the gnarled branches above them before she would get her summons from Mother Cyprian. She didn't care - she couldn't have children, she'd given that up, she'd made a choice and paid the price but this was her way to be a mother.

it was odd, it was uncomfortable. Mildred didn't know where the children came from, she didn't know who would be missing them. She just knew Mother Cyprian lay them there for her, that they were sick, and That grove of trees was special - it would feed on those dark parts of the children, and that she would love the children and by loving them make their souls, their meat, their limbs and teeth, salted soil for dark seeds to grow. That's what mother Cyprian had told her, and mother Cyprian had always been kind and pleasant and caring towards Mildred.

William was different though. Rotten. Malformed. Impossibly beautiful, he looked like a small angel - that was his bait, it dangled in his web. When Mildred held him, she couldn't see any dark, or twisted parts, William was the dark and twisted parts - as if all those sooty flecks of shattered beasts leached from Ben, and Tom, and Peggy - had soaked into the earth.

And from those coagulating shattered bits - had come William.

She didn't know how any of that all worked though - she'd avoided it her entire life - ignored her mother's lessons, and words of wisdom, laughed when Mother Cyprian had tried to take her in and under her wing. When her shadow pulled at her heels only to smile when she turned to greet it - Mildred pretended she couldn't see. When Albit had offered her advice - she'd called him jealous and perverted spitting in his face.

She had avoided it her whole life - what IT was - evil, the void, pure nothing, the culmination of all the negative spaces in the world where there was absolute absence of life.

She'd avoided it all, and now - as she pressed her finger hard into the sharp metal bit that jutted from the underside of the handle..... Tearing open the pad of her index finger - and finally opening the door to feed William....

She wished she hadn't.

...

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