Mother #2 (freewrite fiction)

Disclaimer: This is a really long story, which I have split up into three posts, for convenience. You may read them one after the other in one sitting, or come back to them, as you feel. It is based around @mariannewest's 3 freewrite prompts. Read part one here.

_{Photo by Aron Visuals on Unsplash}

Katherine was always fascinated by the afterlife. However, after living with Steve for three years, she wasn't sure whether she should mention it or keep her mouth shut. She stared at the little baby attached to her breast and smiled and the baby seemed to smile back up at her. Her little soul, the only one who she could share this loneliness with and make it somewhat less lonely. Katherine had decided from early on that her little girl would never feel weird, never out of place in an empty room. She decided that the little one would grow up knowing that those on the other side were her friends, always, and that it was people on this one she should be careful with.
The little girl was too young yet to notice the slight discoloration under her mother's left eye, although to Katherine it seemed immense and simply impossible to hide. Not that she had anyone to hide it from. Most of her days were spent inside or in their garden, with the baby and Steve. The ghosts never minded, because they knew about discoloration. They'd had some run-ins in their own lives, so they never bothered to ask.
And so, she never had to explain how Steve didn't quite appreciate her talking about them, how his face flushed red whenever he saw her beads strung up around the house or the weird patterns she drew on the window when it was foggy. She didn't have to tell anyone how she'd fallen in love with a man who didn't quite understand and who was made very angry indeed by not understanding. The bruises always faded, in the end and not once did Katherine give the impression of a battered woman, particularly not to her child. To Pam, she was like this wonderful fairy woman you met in some forest, who told you exciting stories and took you on amazing adventures, if only in your mind.
'That's where the best adventures happen, my love,' she'd tell the little girl with a soft smile. 'It's all that's left of us when we become gone.'

The first thing baby Pam learned was that ghosts were real and there was one watching them right now. The second thing Pam learned was that her father could never ever hear about the ghosts. It was to be their secret, ever since Pam started putting words together and creating phrases. Steve could never know about any of their adventures, or he would grow really angry. There was Pam, a daughter, Katherine, a mother, and Steve, a father. And that would be it, as far as Steve was concerned.

As the years went by, Katherine stopped mentioning “the occult” (as Steve called it, among several less pleasant sounding epithets) altogether. She was strong, but not strong enough to hide the bruises and she did not want her little girl to remember her as a bruised woman. It's not how one wishes to remember one's mother.
But she took each chance she could get, whenever Steve was out of the house, to tell little Pam about rituals, about spirits coming back to greet their loved ones once more, about prayers sometimes answered in the dead of night. And about flowers. Katherine always had great faith in healing flowers, something Steve was willing to overlook, since it meant she wouldn't be spending his hard-earned money at the chemist, at least.
She taught the little one to crush flowers, though not without loving them, to take their power, apologizing in her heart all the way because she needed it more than them just now. Nature was to be cherished, not abused, Katherine always told her. And Pam knew to ask forgiveness first of each chamomile and each nettle before plucking them and ending their life forever.

'No,' Katherine shook her head vigorously when the child came to her with tears in her little gray eyes for the dying flowers. 'They do not die, my love. You're not ending their life, just their existence here, but they're not going away. Nothing ever goes away, not completely.'

And that much must be true, the girl thought, because how else do you explain the tall man on the staircase or the old lady who sometimes picked ghost flowers in their garden?

_{Photo by Aron Visuals on Unsplash}

It had once been her garden, the old lady told her when asked, though she refused to tell her her name or where exactly she'd lived upon these grounds. The subject always seemed to be a rather sad one for the old woman, so Pam tried to keep from mentioning it. She never wanted to hurt anyone, because everything was alive and it seemed awful to Pam, that someone would have to spend their whole eternity remembering how someone else hurt them. She would've liked to ask the ghosts how they'd died, but it always sounded so hurtful to her. What if it had been something terrible or full of pain? Why should she be the one to make them remember it if they chose not to?
So, she kept really quiet sometimes. It was something she knew how to do, something she did well. She was always quiet around her father, though not too quiet, because he might get suspicious. Then, he'd look over at his wife with that look he had – the evil eye, as Pam thought of it, despite her mother's reassuring.

'What have you been telling that girl?' he'd rasp and Katherine would flinch.
'Nothing, love,' she'd say and the girl would be quick to repeat it, always so desperate for her father not to get mad. Because it always felt like the end of the world when her father got mad.
'I was thinking about a book I read,' and she'd talk so very fast, telling him about the book, fighting hard to sweep his mind away, to show him how clever she could be. Because clever children can't possibly believe in ghosts and silly things like that, can they?
And her father would be mollified, forgetting about the “occult” if only for a while and he'd smile at what a smart little girl he had. Steve was a man who worked hard, as opposed to his wife, who – raised by a couple of lunatics – had spent all her life wandering about chatting to imaginary friends and plants and would've likely gotten nowhere if he hadn't come along and made an honest woman out of her. He, on the other hand, had worked to survive each day of his life. He knew who he wanted his daughter to resemble.

Although there had been a certain charm to Katherine's...lightheadedness. Head in the clouds, they called it, but that would only result in accidents, it seemed to Steve. He'd liked her little craziness, but then he realized she wouldn't grow out of it, that she planned on being a fully grown woman who talked about ghosts and he couldn't have that. Not for his wife, definitely.
Thankfully, he'd managed to correct her ways. Not how he'd wanted, he didn't really enjoy being a violent man, but sometimes, you had to do was what was needed rather than what was pleasant. She never talked about silly things now and whenever he saw her, she seemed to have her feet – and her head – firmly on the ground.

Until one day.

_{Photo by Aron Visuals on Unsplash}

He'd found Pam at the foot of the staircase, crying and twisting her leg in a funny way.
'Stop doing that to your leg,' he said, as soon as he saw her.

And it took him a second to realize that Pam – usually such a good, dutiful child – wasn't doing it on purpose or to anger him. She'd fallen down the stairs, she must have, though that never happened because she knew better than to muck about on the stairs.
Steve kissed her forehead and attempted to scoop her up into his arms, but the child only cried out harder when he moved her leg, so he was content to sit down beside her.
'What happened, love? Where's your mother?'

Pam shook her head. 'I don't know.'

'What happened here?' her father asked, voice just a little bit stern, and not enough to ward off the girl.

She shook her head again. 'I fell,' she told him, looking down.
'Yes, but how did you fall, Pam?' he pushed, keeping a hand on her shoulder. 'It's okay, I won't be mad, I promise.'
And that was all it took for the little girl, because her mother wasn't there and she was hurt and didn't know what was happening, or that the worst was yet to come. She broke the rule, the only red line that her mother had set her.
'The tall man was chasing me and I know I shouldn't run on the stairs, and I'm sorry, daddy, and I slipped and I fell, but it wasn't his fault, I swear. He didn't mean for me to hurt and he tried to help me, but, you know, he couldn't and –'
'What man?' her father interrupted, taking his hand off the girl's shoulder, his face turned suddenly ashen.
'The man on the staircase,' the little girl whispered, realizing too late what she'd just said.
And Steve nodded, because he knew all about the tall man on the staircase. He'd been waiting for them when they first arrived at the house, top hat in hand, if Katherine was to be believed, and it seemed he'd never really gone away. Though it would've been so much easier for all of them if he had.
'It's okay, sweetheart,' he whispered into his daughter's hair.
'I'm sorry, daddy,' she said again and this time, they both knew she didn't mean the fall.

Katherine had been picking herbs in the outback, lost in her own thoughts it seemed and hadn't heard the child's cries. As she walked back, she saw the bright lights of the ambulance and knew it was too late. She ran towards the house as fast as she could and the old woman watched her with sad eyes, because ghosts know about these things, better than most of us.
That night, after he'd put little Pam to bed, careful not to disturb her leg as he kissed her goodnight, Steve walked down to the kitchen, where his wife sat pale-faced, looking so sorrowful.
'I told you,' he spoke slowly, because the words pained him greatly. 'I told you that if you ever spoke to my daughter like that, I would kill you.'
'It's not how you think, Steven,' Katherine spoke quietly, shaking her head. 'They're not harming her.'
'No?' he bellowed and she watched his face turning red. 'She broke her goddamn leg because of your fucking nonsense. Not harming her...what do you want, Katherine, for her to be killed before you understand?'
'Of course not–'
'I told you, why didn't you listen when I told you? I truly thought you could be made better, Kathy.'

Read part three here.