Dearest

by Jacquie Walters

The world roared. Loud, so loud, just like it did on the nights she couldn’t sleep, those late hours when the Night Hag came.

Flora has just fallen asleep when a crushing, deafening noise fills her ears. Like metal gears screeching and clashing. She tries to stand and investigate, but she cannot move. And then it hits her. it’s happening again Her body is deadweight. Her legs, arms, torso, head—all of them frozen in place, stiff like rigor mortis. Only her eyeballs can dart around in their sockets. Sleep paralysis. She hasn’t experienced this since she was a child. She figured she had outgrown it long ago. But as the familiar feeling sinks in, fear snakes itself around her limbs like living ropes. Flora tries to use her rational, adult brain to will away the terror. this is just a nightmare just your brain playing tricks But the fear lives in her body, which is now rigid with memory as the paralysis attack follows the same pattern it always did when she was little. Her arms are tight against her sides, as if she is wrapped in a cocoon, her chest tightening. She feels the warm trickle of a tear down her cheek. And then comes the peak: a heavy weight she has long thought of as the Night Hag, who sits on her chest and stomach, crushing her organs until she knows the insides of her body will soon be on the outside.

She runs her fingers over the cover of a slim, worn book titled The Yellow Wallpaper. The picture on the front is a beautiful textured floral pattern in yellow with a woman standing in a dress of the same material. Beside the book is a thin pair of black reading glasses. Flora picks them up and rubs the lenses with her soft pajamas, disappearing a few smudges before replacing them on the table.

And then Flora sees something familiar: the worn copy of The Yellow Wallpaper. The same book she saw on the nightstand when her mother was here. And underneath the book is the small baby hat made of soft pink yarn. She has seen these items before, touched them with her own hands in her very own house, but how is that possible if they were in these boxes with her father hundreds of miles away? Flora knows she is close to something, on the edge of discovery, but not yet seeing the whole picture. It is jumbled within the recesses of her own mind. Like her entire life is a dream that she has just forgotten. It’s right there but slipping away with every deliberate effort to reach it.

It wasn’t until decades later, when Jodi died, and Michael was cleaning out her condo, that he discovered the dresses that his wife had so lovingly handcrafted over the years in remembrance of their baby. And the sadness crept back in, not so much for him losing a daughter, but for the fact that losing a daughter had meant losing his wife, too. All those years together, but each of them was suffering alone. All those years together, and, by the end, they barely knew each other at all.

A perfect moment.

Belinda looks to them both, sad. “I know on some level it probably feels like a betrayal. But this thing is clearly not your mother. It is only the worst parts of her. It’s like this broken part of Jodi was awakened when you had a baby, and that broken part of her—that’s the part that wants to hurt Iris.” “She couldn’t have her daughter, so she doesn’t want me to have mine,” Flora says, realizing the truth of the words as she says them. Belinda nods. “I think so. The worst parts of her want you to suffer as badly as she did. But again: that thing is not her. It’s not Jodi.” Her dad agrees from the back seat. “You’re right. Jodi wouldn’t want this. Never.” Flora’s eyes remain fixed on the road but glaze over in a glassy stare as she thinks. The spirit of her mother is hurting, and it only knows how to exist by hurting others the same way. It’s a childish motivation: something a toddler would do. Flora thinks of all the times she had to parent her own mother in life. Perhaps she should not be shocked that she will need to parent her mother in death, too.

“Just to be clear,” Connor says, “you’re talking about your dead mother. You’re saying that your dead mother is trying to hurt Iris.” Flora barrels on. “Belinda has done this before. She talked to her son—he died and she talked to him—and now we are going to reach out to my mom, to find out what she wants so that she will leave us alone—” “Oh my God,” Connor says. “You’ve lost it. You’ve totally lost it.” Belinda ignores him and asks Flora, “Do you have something of your mother’s we can use? We should get something of Zephie’s, too.” “Who is Zephie?” Connor asks. But just as Flora opens her mouth to respond, he stops her. “Actually, I don’t want to know. This is insane. I’m leaving.” Flora’s dad speaks up from the living room, leveling his gaze with Connor’s. “You’re not leaving,” he says. “Flora is in trouble. Your daughter is in danger. And Belinda is here to help. So we are going to do what she tells us.” “The fuck I am,” Connor says, unstrapping Iris from the bouncer. “Where are you going?” Flora asks, panicked. “Where are you taking her?” “Back home, like I told you.” He hoists the baby into his arms and grabs the diaper bag. “I’m not staying under the same roof as this bullshit.” He looks again toward the living room, where Belinda has surrounded the coffee table with chairs. As he opens the door, Iris begins to protest. “She doesn’t want to leave me,” Flora says. “See? She’s crying. Please. She needs her mother, Connor.” “She doesn’t need this version of her mother.”

Asshole. Not listening

“You should stay, Connor,” he says. Connor looks up at him, about to protest, when he sees Michael staring intently into the flame of the black candle on the low table. “Don’t make the mistake I made. Don’t walk away.” He looks up at Connor, his eyes determined but also kind and understanding. “You see it. I know you see it. Your wife slipping away little by little. Every day there is less and less of her left. And you don’t know why. It scares you, so you push her away. You push it all away because you don’t have the answers. And you don’t know what that means about who you are if this is something you can’t solve.” He looks at his own hands, inspecting the lines and wrinkles as if searching for some hidden message. “But if you walk out that door… then you will know who you really are. And you will struggle to live with that man for the rest of your life.” He looks up again. “Trust me. I struggle every day.”

Flora knows now that the very first time she was here—the first time she was ever suffocated under the weight of her mother—she was a six-week-old baby. She was wrapped tight in her swaddle, unable to move, when her mother approached the crib with a blanket. And when her mother thought the deed was done, Flora heard the rush of running water from the nearby bathroom. She sensed the empty space beside her where Zephie had been. Flora’s tiny little body knew that her sister was in trouble. And there was nothing she could do.