None of this makes any sense. I just don’t understand. I’m alone and I don’t have anyone anymore. Everyone is gone.
Madeline is dead.
It’s all my fault. She told me it was. I can’t breath. She CAN’T be gone! She just can’t. I don’t want to be all alone.
Madeline said I marked myself the night I looked at the parchment. She didn’t really explain, only that the night she and Pan were out and I snuck into her study and when I looked at that stupid piece of paper I marked myself.
I don’t even know what that means. How does me looking at a piece of paper mean that Madeline had to die? How is that fair? I just don’t get it. I asked her if it meant that the False Kings were after me now and she laughed. As the house sounded like it was being ripped apart and voices screamed all around us, she laughed. She said it wasn’t the False Kings. She practically rolled her eyes and shook her head saying that those men were like children. What was after me had no desires, no sense of greed. It was just pure evil. She actually said that word, ‘evil’.
How have I done this? I am no one. I am nothing. It doesn’t make any sense why anything would come after me. I practically don’t even exist. No one knows I’m alive, no one cares. My own mother didn’t want me. Madeline was all I had and I’ve killed her.
She was trying to keep me in the house to protect me. The night she had me make the wreath, she was hiding me in the house. It’s so stupid, if only I hadn’t broken the circle of horehound. I hadn’t meant to, I promise. I didn’t do it on purpose. I was trying so hard, for the first time in my life, to be what Madeline wanted me to be. I had only stepped out onto the porch to toss the dirty water I had been using to scrub the floor. I accidently kicked a glass Madeline must have left there and it went rolling. I remember just being relieved it didn’t break. I went after it without even thinking; should she have had to die for that?!
It rolled right over the line of horehound and stopped. All I did was reach for it but as soon as my fingers crossed the barrier the air around me seemed to inhale and then crack. The sun grew dim and watery. Madeline ran up from behind me and grabbed the back of my shirt pulling me into the house. The house started to moan, like something was slowly crushing it. That’s when Madeline told me I had marked myself, that she had been trying to keep me safe in the house. I could hear the roof groan and then be ripped off. Something was scraping at the walls from the outside and voices were screaming in pain all around us. I have never been so scared. I could taste it on the back of my throat as it tightened. We were both going to die.
Madeline ran over to the cabinet and pulled something out. When she came back she pressed a silver coin into my hand. She said if I kept it on me and never let go of it, that it would buy me some time. That what was hunting me would not know were I was for about 6 hours. So, I’d be safe as long as I kept moving. She closed my hand around it and then just walked straight out of the front door.
I heard her scream. I will never be able to get that sound out of my head. I will never be able to forget what so much pain sounds like. And then everything just stopped. The ripping, the crushing, the voices. Everything was silent. And I was alone.
I am alone. There is no one to help me. I don’t have anyone. And I have killed the only person who has ever cared for me.