13. Evan
13
Evan
I fell face-first onto the plush pink bedspread and let myself have a nice long cry. Nothing had gone right since I’d arrived. I should’ve refused to let Cary Beacroft pay for the room, but to be honest, I only had enough money to stay here two or three days at best. I wanted to go home, but I didn’t even have enough to buy a one-way train ticket.
Witches, ghosts, what sort of spooky bullshit had I fallen into? I reached up and rubbed my head where the knot still throbbed a bit from the fucking ghost having clobbered me yesterday.
I didn’t want to be here any longer. The manor, this town, the whole fucking state could all go to hell… or maybe I was already there. I didn’t want the curse of owning that damned manor. I knew I was feeling sorry for myself, but when would something in my life finally go right?
Before long, I fell asleep, which I probably needed more than anything else.
I was standing on the balcony of the manor again. I immediately felt afraid, searching for the entity who’d attacked me. But, instead of seeing him, I saw the little boy from my dream earlier.
He was grown, or mostly. If I had to guess, he was probably around seventeen. The woman, who I recognized as his nanny, was also there, sitting on one of the uncomfortable-looking fancy chairs along the balcony.
She was visibly pregnant and, from the look of things, not having a good time of it. The teenager went over to her, asking if she was okay.
The woman smiled and patted his hand. “I’m fine, Andre. Now run along and do your studies. I’ll be by later to check your work.”
As soon as the boy disappeared through the doorway, another woman emerged. “Inez, sweetheart, the doctor told you to stay off your feet.”
“Tell that to the sulking teenager in there,” she said, chuckling.
The woman sat beside her and, a few moments later, asked, “Have you heard from him?”
Inez shook her head. “No, not since… well, since this,” she said, gesturing toward her large stomach.
“The bastard should be put in prison.”
Inez laughed mirthlessly. “And who would believe an unwed pregnant woman over someone as influential as Mr. Leon Cordelia?”
The woman sighed and shook her head. “Inez, you’ve got to think about what you’re going to do with that baby. You can’t possibly raise him or her on your own, and we both know that one…” she said, pointing back toward the manor with her thumb, “…will never take responsibility.”
“I’m not giving up my baby, Elisa. What happened is not the baby’s fault. That… that man is the one at fault, no one else.”
The woman named Elisa, who’d also been in my earlier dream, put her hand over Inez’s and nodded. “I’ll help as much as I can. Maybe you can come live in the cottage with Jim and me.”
Inez looked at Elisa and laughed. “Yes, because every newly married man wants nothing more than another woman and newborn baby to live with him.”
Elisa smiled. “Jim wouldn’t care. He likes you, and what happened to you makes him sick.”
Inez nodded. “I’m a woman without family. He knew he could do what he wanted and get away with it. At least he disappeared. That at least gives me some time to figure this out before I’m homeless.”
“What about young Andre?” Elise asked.
Inez shook her head. “I shudder to think, but I’m not his mother and he’s too old for a nanny, even though I’m barely even that now considering the state I’m in.”
The two women sat silently, staring out toward the distant sea. I could feel Inez’s pain, her concern. Elisa, too, seemed distraught.
I assumed the baby belonged to the irate man I’d seen in my previous dream, the one who’d beaten his little boy.
That’s when it hit me harder than that ghost smacking me in the face. I woke and sat up in bed. The entity who’d attacked me. He was the father who’d beaten his son, and shit… he was also the father of Inez’s child. The child who would become my grandmother.
A sickening feeling overcame me with that realization, and I barely made it to the bathroom before throwing up.