Page 36 of A Heart So Haunted
“Oh my—what happened?” I breathed. I dropped to my knees a few feet from him. If I got too close, would he run? “Where did you—y-your mouth.”
The blood trickled so bright, like little rivers, down his chin. Tears threatened to spill over. He placed one hand on his flushed cheek, glancing around, ignoring me. “Momma?”
“I’m not your momma, honey,” I whispered. “But I can help you find her. Is she outside?” What kind of place was this, where a child would be lost, bloodied, and alone?
Was the door covered to keep him in?
Then, a sickening thought that I hadn’t considered,Was this even real?
“Momma?” he asked, louder this time.
I gave a soft smile in an attempt to placate. “I’m not—”
“Momma!” The word morphed into a cry. This time his chest heaved with the word, like a release, a cry building up behind those little ribs. “Momma, I want Momma, where’s Momma!” he screamed.
I glanced around, searching for anything, anyone to help. “It’s okay, everything is going to be—”
His chest lurched with hiccups. Then he lookedthroughme, searching while tears spilled down his round cheeks and muddied the blood on his chin to a watery pink.
I scooted closer, shoving away my growing sense of helplessness. I couldn’t leave him here, not like this. It made me wonder how long he’d been here, crying and waiting, alone.
He needed me.
“Hey, maybe I can go look?” I started to reach for him. The whisper of slippers stopped me. The boy’s moans, which had started to build to a wail, turned into hiccups.
A young woman rushed down the hallway by the stairwell. I couldn’t see the kitchen beyond, only shadowed walls that stretched for miles. A worn frock billowed around her ankles; a stained apron covered her lower half. She wrung a threadbare rag between her hands as if she’d been caught in the middle of something.
She tutted when she spotted the boy.
“Oh, Haddy,” she breathed. Her skin dewed with sweat, her dark hair tucked behind her ears. She wiped her hands on the rag and stuffed it into the waist of her apron band. The ties were frayed, stained, but edged with a faded plaid pattern. The beige in the plaid matched Haddy’s waistcoat, which hung crooked with one missing button at the top.
A knot formed in my throat. I knew exactly where I’d seen a waistcoat like that before: a history project Ivan had copied from me. I remembered it specifically because it was the first time he’d touched my elbow. I’d researched interior design for different eras throughout history, and that waistcoat looked almost identical to one I’d seen another child wearing in a textbook photo.
“Momma,” he said. His tears were almost dried now.
I sat back on my haunches. The woman didn’t appear to be his mother, but the way he gaped at her, how his arms reached up, up, the desperation in his curling fingers, sent a bolt through my chest.
I watched as she bent for the boy. She reached, just as needy as he did. As soon as her hands scooped under his arms to hoist him to her hip—her silhouette broke away. Little by little, she dissolved, like smoke dissipating in a gust of wind. She floated away like ash.
Just … gone.
I stared, mouth open.
The little boy’s eyes widened.
Then hewailed.
“Momma!” he screamed. His neck turned purple, face twisted in anger. Blood teemed like an open spigot from his mouth now; the louder he screamed, the faster it poured.
I looked around, frantic, trying to ignore the itching under my skin, the realization that I’d just watched a woman vanish into thin air.
“Wait, wait. Haddy.” I tried to inch forward in case he tried to bolt down the hall. “I can help you, Haddy. Just please, talk to me. Actually, I think you can help me. I need to get home, and you know this place, right?” Only a foot separated us now. If I touched him, what would happen? I couldn’t vanish.Iwas real.
Still, he screamed.
“Haddy,” I choked. I reached for his shoulder.
Just as my fingers brushed—actuallybrushed—the child’s shirt sleeve, all sound vacuumed out of the foyer. My ears popped as if I were in a car, barreling up a mountainside, the silence beyond it humming like a rattlesnake.
