Midnight

It was not late enough to hear the weird sounds the old house tended to make. But there was a sound; one that didn’t belong in the wide hallway. Something felt off. Something was definitely off. And as every hair rose on the back of Lillian’s neck, she knew that she would need her Swiss army knife. It was the only weapon she could discreetly keep in her bedroom. She used to keep an old cricket bat in there but two boyfriends ago, Ted, the perennially drunk one, had smashed it against her shins. He had nothing against her shapely legs; he was trying to beat the baby out of her belly because he was not ready to be a father. It was the way she had screamed in pain that finally opened the door for him to run out of her life. Drunk on too much whiskey, he feared she might die and he was not about to take responsibility for her injuries. She simply never saw him again. But now there was a sound in the hallway and the part of her that had been battered into becoming a victim told her that she was in danger.

After Ted came Mike. He was a charmer who found a nice, warm spot in the centre of her insecurities. What started out as all-encompassing love quickly turned into suffocating obsession. It had taken a terse warning from her friends in the police to ward him off once and for all. She touched the heavily embroidered curtains that fell from the ceiling – her grandmother’s opulence and fine taste showing decades after she had died. It was impossible to fault her on taste, and because of their close bond growing up, Lillian knew she would always keep as much of her alive as she could. It had driven Thomas insane and made her home an almost no-go zone for him because his more modern tastes died at the altar of Lillian’s attachment to her grandmother. She heard the sound again. It was near the bathroom. Perhaps even in the guest room and this time it was followed by a shuffle. Nobody should have been in the house at that time. It was midnight.

Then came the inaudible hushed whispers.

She caught traces of the words ‘safe’ and ‘start’ and took notice of the strange way in which her heart pounded. She heard a mumble first and then nothing else. Her trembling hands pulled apart the knife to reveal a sharp blade. The cold breeze that carried with it air heavy with petrichor showed her which one of her east-facing windows had allowed her intruders in. She pushed the creaking door slowly and saw the intruders cuddled up on the floor. It was her grandmother rocking her bloodied daughter to sleep. “Dee?” Sylvia whispered, dropping to her knees, unsure why she was surprised to see her daughter die. “I told you to sleep. I told you…” her lip trembled and her voice trailed off.