It Must Be Midnight

     It must be midnight, Lily thought to herself, as her eyes focused on her surroundings. To her left, Lucy, her eldest sister, and to her right, Lydia, the middle of the Hawkins girls. In the center, she sat with no idea how she arrived here in this room with its rocking, rhythmic restlessness. But as soon as her eyes focused, they glazed over anew, and she dreamily looked around the carriage again. For that is where they sat, the three Hawkins girls, slight and pale beneath heaps of obsidian curls and heavy skirts that fell in pillows at their sides, each child holding a porcelain doll that looked exactly like its owner. The seconds echoed through the cabin, ticked off in slow motion by the ornate clock squatting on a table underneath a window of colored glass.

     It must be midnight, Lily thought to herself once more, as the slippery coherency returned to her for another moment while she glanced from left to right at her incredibly still sisters, both with glassy eyes and slightly parted lips, their curls swimming around them with each bump in the road. But what road, she didn't know, nor did she wonder before the unasked question slipped away like a ribbon in murky waters, gone along with her sight which slipped out of focus again as if on cue. The girls sank deeper into the plush cushions of burgundy, which cradled them safely as the carriage bounced, their doppelgänger dolls snuggled in their arms. The seconds went by. Tick. Tick. Tick. But as if the world were submerged under water, the sounds came from far away.

     “It must be midnight,” Lily said aloud, and her azure eyes widened as if she hadn’t meant to speak. To her left, Lucy turned her heart-shaped face to her sister and considered her without recognition. Lily turned to her right where Lydia’s eyes looked through her own as though she weren’t even there. 

     “Where is here?” she spoke again, and her eyebrows rose at the sound of her voice as if she’d never heard it before. The carriage bounced, and the beautiful woman draped in black silks with blood-red roses came into focus and smiled through a gash of red that looked as painted on and unnatural as the lips of the doll that rested in Lily’s lap. She sat across from the sisters without the slightest movement. Like the bumps in the road did not affect her. Like she wasn’t even there. 

     “Here is where we are,” the woman said with a voice heavy and solemn, neither deep nor high, neither loud nor soft, neither human nor not so human, something in between. Something like the buttered rum and honey their mother gave them when coughs irritated their tiny throats. Something that made her hooded lids fall slightly. Her curls brushed her cheeks with a whisper of a touch, and the cushions beneath her coaxed her to sink deeper like an ocean current that promised rest. The slow ticking of the clock lured Lily like a lullaby, back into oblivion, and she almost faded away again like before. A raven called from far away, and Lily’s eyes popped open as she gasped. Across from the siblings, the woman seemed to grow, all sharpness and angles, and gazed at Lily with open curiosity. 

      “What’s wrong, Poppet?” she purred, and Lily looked deep into her amber eyes. She could have sworn she saw movement inside them, images like in her imagination, and suddenly, she felt an icy fear snake its way from her stomach to her heart.

     Where are Mama and Papa? Lily wondered with her first truly clear thought. The woman in silks tilted her head to the side and watched her with unblinking eyes. She dropped her doll onto the carpeted floor several inches beneath her dangling feet when she reached to grab onto her sisters’ hands. Lily yanked on them, pulling them towards herself, becoming increasingly desperate and aggressive with each tug until their dolls fell out of sight like hers, and suddenly they sat up straight and sucked in the chilled air surrounding them. 

     “It must be midnight,” Lucy whispered, and she turned to look out the window where the trees stood tall and motionless, clothed not in leaves, only in moonlight. 

     “Where is here?” Lydia breathed, her voice hardly more than a hint of a sigh, and she turned to look out the window where the forest stood silent. Nothing moved but the carriage bumping along the road. Nothing broke the pressing silence but the fat clock and its tired arms.

     “Where are Mama and Papa?” Lily cried, and plump, salty tears dripped down her cheeks onto the black taffeta as dark as their tresses. The woman set her casual stare on them without interruption until all three sets of crystalline eyes turned to her, Lily crying softly, Lydia and Lucy still as death, watchful and waiting. 

     “You don’t remember?” the woman asked. The Hawkins girls shook their heads ever so slightly. “I see,” she said and her sharp features softened so quickly, the girls were unsure if she was even the same woman. “Look into my eyes. Here, lean in,” she murmured ever so quietly. “Don’t be afraid. What's done is done."

     The woman’s eyes seemed to grow as they moved closer to her, becoming larger and larger until all they could see were her glowing orbs. Then the images drifted to the forefront, as if out of a fog. The carriage disappeared, and the images swirled all around them. All three gasped in unison as they watched themselves running through the gardens behind their home. Lucy grabbed Lily up as she stumbled and kept running. 

     “Hurry, Lydia! Hurry!” Then they saw what they were running from. Their mother, her beauty completely distorted, her eyes wild and inhuman, her screams more animal than the wolves they heard in the night. They ran on, their bare feet slapping the cold paving stones, sending echoes through their bones and rattling their teeth. They only needed to round the pond and push through the garden gate, and they would be okay. They knew all the best hiding places among the dense thicket of trees beyond the border of their clearing.

     On the cushioned seat, all three sisters clung to each other as sobs wracked their bodies, and the memories washed over them like buckets of icy water, causing spasm after spasm to overtake their petite frames. The woman softened her edges even more, for she knew the ending.

     "But you didn't make it around the pond, did you?" she breathed over them. The children gulped in the air and shook their heads mournfully.

     "And you never made it to the garden gate," she stated sadly. Her charges didn't respond this time. They held each other as tightly as their eyelids closed against the memories.

     “You made it to the trees, though. Do you remember? Your mother placed you all gently beside each other and wrapped you in offerings in the hopes the fae would come and take you away from this world so you could live in theirs.”

Lucy moaned into her hand pressed tightly over her mouth in an attempt to swallow her tears back down. Maybe it was all a bad dream. Perhaps to silence it would be to undo it.

      The ghostly images enveloped them again in a macabre play they feared watching. They saw themselves laid out, side by side, wet ringlets sticking to their cheeks, pale and lifeless though still plump from a childhood they'd not yet finished. Their mother, eerily calm after the mania that had just gripped her mind, knelt beside them and sang a lullaby.

Sleep, my child, and peace attend thee,

All through the night.

 They felt the music move through the cabin and dance across their skin, and all three sets of eyes watched as their mother walked back to the garden for flowers and fruit. They heard her humming as she made crowns from petals and laid crisp apples and sweet pears around their wee and silent bodies. Then she smiled serenely as she lowered their eyelids, kissed them on their foreheads, and called out to the fae that they could come and take her angels away.

     Lily, Lucy, and Lydia sat back in their seat and stared at the forest they were driving through. Their eyes were full of tears, their bodies were still and small, and their burial gowns matched the curls that they inherited from their mother. The carriage held the same speed it always had, and the cushions pulled them deeper once more. The woman leaned over, picked up each doll, and handed them back one after another. 

     “There, there, girls,” she said as she kissed Lucy on the cheek and wrapped her arms around her toy. Lucy’s eyes glazed back over, and her face relaxed. 

     “You are safe now,” she sighed against Lydia’s pale cheek before settling the child's arms around the cold porcelain.

     “Forget, forget, Little Lily,” she half sang in a hushed tone to the girl in the middle. Then she sat back and watched the sisters, their ebony ringlets dancing around their shoulders, their skirts bleeding into each other, their dolls as passive and unseeing as the girls themselves.

The carriage rolled on into the endless night, rocking the sisters three in their perpetual slumber. Tick. Tick. Tick. The moon cast shadows across their faces, and they watched the pretty dreams their riding companion gave them with each kiss. Like before, Lily was the first to stir.

     It must be midnight, Lily thought to herself, and the woman faded into the night to watch and wait and guard until they slept no more.