Hidden Quotes

“How can this tainted world contain us, how can it contain our dreams? At night, in the freedom of my mind, the shackles of this mortal realm fall away as I soar above the fields and the farms, over forests and hills. I have always dreamed of flying – dreams like this are where the spirit comes alive, where we create our own rules, our own reality. Why should we let other people tell us how to live, or what is right and what is wrong? Flex your wings and soar with me, my little ones. Do you see our land below us? Is it not beautiful? The lake and the fields, the river and the trees, the horses running free beneath the sun. This is our world, our home, our sanctuary, and within it we are safe. Is that a dream? No, it is our reality.”
― Casey Hill, Hidden

“Colin O’Dea was trying to figure out the fastest way to murder his wife.”
― Casey Hill, Hidden

“I dreamed of a haven, a place of infinite peace, of eternal beauty and everlasting happiness, and I found it – not in my dreams, but in reality.  It is a place of wind and earth, grass and water, horses and birds.  But what good is heaven when you are there alone? ”
― Casey Hill, Hidden

“She had everything here, but like Eve, honeyed words made her want more, want something beyond love and happiness. And so she left us. So now I must again head out into the wicked world to find another, guide them to our home, and welcome them to the bosom of our family.”
― Casey Hill, Hidden

“They gave the garda on duty all the details they could, showed them photos and old documents from her missing person case. And then the Dignams went home to continue doing the very thing they had spent the last two decades doing – wait.”
― Casey Hill, Hidden

“But they were realists, and had long stopped hoping for the dream conclusion to their nightmare. They longed now just to know what had happened to Megan, to have a final resting place to visit, a place to lay flowers – somewhere their beautiful daughter could rest in peace. Their lives had ended the day Megan disappeared and finding her was their only desire while they were still breathing. Like so many others who’d made contact since the public appeal about the tattooed girls, the Dignams were compelled to come here, to have somebody listen to their story and to maybe find some truth – even if that truth meant hearing the worst news any parent could ever hear.”
― Casey Hill, Hidden

“Stephen and Julia Dignam entered the police station the following morning. Both were in their early fifties but looked older, the sleepless nights and worry taking their toll. Julia linked her husband’s arm through her own and in her other hand she held a ringbinder close to her chest. Written on the spine in faded ink was one word: Megan. The Dignam’s daughter had vanished without a trace twenty years before and every new story of a missing child or unidentified body brought back a new flood of familiar emotions – fear, hope, the possibility of closure after so many years.”
― Casey Hill, Hidden

“But now I fear the walls may be breached, the shell cracked.  Our family is cracking, fear and anxiety haunt our dreams, unanswered questions hover on our lips.  How will we stay strong, stay together? I have been here before, suffered through this once already – and this is a suffering too much for one man to bear.  And so my failures haunt me. I can see their eyes at night, shining in the darkness, accusing me of my greatest failure, failure to protect those that I love.  What more damning accusation can there be?  How can I sleep not knowing where my darlings are, that they are gone because of me, that in their hour of need I was not there?  But now I must again head out into the wicked world to find another, guide them to our home, welcome them to the bosom of our family.”
― Casey Hill, Hidden

“Beyond the walls are cruelty and deceit, lies and pain, ageing and death.  As long as we are strong we can resist these things, but if we let our guard down, all manner of pestilence will enter.”
― Casey Hill, Hidden

“I feel the weight upon me, the weight of expectation, of fear.  I have failed once before, and now the specter of failure looms over me again.  I have sworn to protect them, to shield them from a toxic world, but the fear has crept into our own world – the fear of uncertainty. Our safety is everything, it is what defines us, what makes us who we are.  We are complete, one family, one being, but now I see that our world is fragile.  Like an egg, our shell is all too precious, and once it is broken it can never be repaired, things can never be the same.”
― Casey Hill, Hidden

“My dreams are restless, the past rising up to haunt me or delight me by turn. The dark dreams take me back to that place, that hole I was in, the pit of despair. I left that place behind, never to return, but even though my conscious will refuses to go back there, at night it returns to remind me of whence I came. I will not go back …”
― Casey Hill, Hidden

“The cruelty of this world casts a spell on the innocents, and together we will punish those who do not know the beauty that lies beneath their nostrils, and who don’t deserve the blessings that have been bestowed upon them. I will revoke those blessings and bring them to a place where they belong –  beside me in paradise.”
― Casey Hill, Hidden

“When first I saw it moving across the waves I readied myself, stood steadfast, armed for the battle ahead. But then as she stood before me, the past no longer mattered. I was entranced. Her beauty held me captive, banished the demons that tormented me. Her words gave me strength; I knew what I must do. We had to be together, together in a place free from the pain and misery that had surrounded me for so long. We must find our sanctuary, a place fit for eternal beauty, somewhere the pain and sorrow of this world had no place. A land where I will be king and we will protect the righteousness of youth.”
― Casey Hill, Hidden