Carnation

Carnation

Content Warning:

Contains mentions of abuse and child death, and mental health.

❄ ❄ ❄

“Mom! Mom, it’s snowing!”

Darla turned to smile at her daughter, whose messy bed-head cut a chaotic silhouette against the blinding white backdrop of the newly-snowy landscape of their new back yard. Her daughter had always been fond of winter - most especially the snow - and that had been one of the many reasons she’d decided to pack their things things and move them to an obscure town in Wisconsin that she doubted even her sister, the geography wiz, would know- if not for the fact that she’d been the one to help them move there.

“That’s awesome!” she cheered, moving to join Arlo as she wiped her sud-soaked hands on her pants. All of six years old and already calling her ‘Mom’ instead of 'Mama', the normally serious girl was pressing her palms, nose, and forehead against the glass of the back door as if trying to phase through it and right into the cloudy snowbanks on the porch, the yard, and the thicket of pine trees marking the boundary between her property and the Knowles national forest. If not for the woods, Darla would be more willing to let Arlo come and go as she liked. Looking at the uninhibited smile on her daughter’s face now, though, and noticing the oven clock blinking 12:01pm, Darla couldn’t help but soften and ask, “Would you like to go out to play?”

Arlo whipped her head around, eyes wide and sparkling in excitement.

“Really?” she shouted.

“Really,” Darla laughed. “Just bundle up, okay?”

“Okay!”

She tried to tell her to yell if she needed help, but Arlo was already off like a shot, bee-lining to the hallway and clambering the stairs with a speed Darla was sure even a track star might be impressed by. She laughed to herself again, warmth filling her head and pooling through body.

Darla moved to the hall and pulled on her own purple down-coat and scuffed boots, flinching as a door slammed upstairs. A few minutes later, a colorful ball of layered clothing appeared at the top of the stairs: baby-blue puffer, bright pink snowpants with rainbow-socked feet poking out the ends, and a bright canary hat shoved haphazardly on her head, pushing her brown curls out to the side. Her pink snow pants were scrunched awkwardly to her knees because she’d put them on backwards. Darla wouldn't forget that ever, she promised herself.

“Wow! Good job, baby. You look very bundled.”

“I am not a baby,” Arlo corrected, waddling down the stairs while holding onto the railing for balance. “But thank you, Mom. You look very blundled too.”

Darla laughed as Arlo moved towards her snow boots. Once they were squarely on, she raced towards the back door, taking the handle and pushing it open. Darla followed at a far more tranquil pace, watching with another laugh as Arlo leapt off the back deck and into the snow, sending explosive clouds of white into the air that cascaded back onto her in a thin shower. Then she stooped, scooping some into her mitted hands and squishing it together until she was satisfied. She looked over her shoulder at Darla with an entirely too mischievous glint in her eye.

Darla raised her hands in anticipation. “Arlo, don’t you da-!”

Cold smacked her in the face and scattered down her collar and knocked the breath out of her. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to ignore the red that flashed through them furious at the feeling of her thin pajamas soaked through. She breathed as evenly as she was more confident that she wouldn’t say something she’d regret, and opened her eyes. Arlo was staring at her with a horrified look twisting her bloodless face.

She wouldn't let the moment linger. Darla scooped snow into her palm from the railing and launched it at her daughter. She hadn’t even finished fully forming it, so it broke before it even hit her and it ended up scattering into harmless clumps of snow against Arlo’s jacket. That did the trick: Arlo burst into giggles, color filling her cheeks again as she ran away to find more ammunition.

Well, so much for observing, Darla thought with some annoyance, but she followed her daughter into the foot-deep snow with joking threats of ending her daughter’s snow empire for good.

They played like that for a few hours: running back-and-forth, dodging each other’s attacks and shouting dramatic dialogue about defeating the other’s kingdoms under the ever-increasing snow. Arlo was merciless, pelting her with tightly-packed ball after tightly-packed ball, while Darla for her part launched harmless half-formed clumps in retaliation.

By the time Arlo was tired enough to just plop down in the snow, she had been crowned the Ruling Monarch of Snow, and had named Darla her royal advisor in return for a ceasefire, citing that, “...too many soldiers laid down.” Yeah, Darla didn’t even want to know where she had learned that particular line, nor how she managed to misremember it so severely. She just laughed breathlessly, watching her daughter begin to try weak snow angels.

Darla looked up towards the dense layer of clouds hiding the sun. It had only grown darker, though with her phone inside she could only imagine what time it was. She was beginning to feel the chill set in, face burning with frost and hands beginning to numb in a way she wasn’t sure was normal.

“Okay Arlo,” she announced, rubbing them together to attempt to bring the feeling back. “Time to go in!”

“Noooooooo!” came the whine from a white blanket of snow.

“C’mon, kiddo. Let’s go inside! I promise we can do something cool like... like watch Bluey!”

“Noooooooooo!” she said again, dragging the words out in such a long, obnoxious way that Darla knew it was going to be a losing battle. Exhaustion and annoyance pulsed through her and into her head with dizzying force. She turned and cupped her face in her hand with a groan.

“Ugh... fine. Just. Fine.” she said and began to walk towards the house. Arlo would be fine, Darla reasoned. She was in the back yard. She’d be too tired to go into the woods. She’d follow her. Another sharp pickaxe of pain buried into her skull as Arlo called out, “Where are you going?”

Darla could imagine her sitting up from the snow, white salting the peak of that canary beanie.

“Inside!” she snapped, each syllable another stab to her head. “I don’t give a fuck what you do.” She’d apologize later, make it up to her with fresh cocoa and a hug. She marched determinedly forward until another heavy wave of pain eclipsed her, forcing her to pause as black spots danced in her vision.

Where’s Arlo? She thought. It wasn't a sensical thought, considering she knew where she left her, had just seen her. But still, she turned to double-check.

A flat plain of white snow interrupted only by her own footsteps greeted her. No smudge of blue, no bobbing ball of yellow. Just white. Darla’s headache was forgotten in an instant.

“Arlo?” she called, trying to calm her racing heart. She had just been there- she had just been there!

“Arlo!” she yelled louder, the sound echoing across the back yard. It wasn’t that big, there were no hidey-holes, no bushes or swings large enough to hide behind. They hadn’t been here long enough to have any of that. She turned towards the woods, heart pounding in her chest so hard she could hear it. She wouldn't have, would she?

“Hello! Arlo, are you there? Arlo!” her voice was edging on hysteria, but she didn’t care. She moved towards the treeline then hesitated at their border.

It was a dense thicket of cedars and oaks, tall and old and terrifying. Darla shuddered and wrapped her arms around herself. She wanted to search for her daughter, wanted her safe, wanted her in her arms- but she couldn’t go in there. Not alone, not again. She knew what she would find... she’d go inside, call Dee, change. Come out to look again. That would be the smart thing to do, right?

“Arlo!” she screamed again, just in case her little girl could hear her. She strained her ears for a response, but there was none. She swallowed, closed her eyes and whispered a sorry her daughter couldn't hear as she turned to race inside.

Her snow-slicked sole slipped on the smooth linoleum of the kitchen floor and she caught herself on the island. Her phone sat there, dark and waiting, and she swept it into her hands as soon as she was straight. It felt sweaty and slick against her ear, numb palm shaking and hardly able to press the contact image of her sister. She had to press her other hand to her wrist to steady it and not drop the phone.

She glanced at the microwave clock which glared green numbers of 8:05 at her, but that couldn’t be right, could it? She could've sworn it had just been light outside. Darla whirled around towards the still-open door. It was the pitch dark of night, interrupted only by the frantic flurry of snow. There were no more footsteps in the yard, just a smooth blanket of white. As if Arlo had never been there at all.

Before she could investigate, there was a click and a tired, tinny voice saying, “Hello?”

The relief of hearing her steady older sister turned her legs to jelly and she melted to the floor.

“Dee…” she choked. Hot tears burned her eyes and she closed them to ease the feeling away. “Dee… Dee… Oh, God, Dee... Arlo, she... I swear to God, I just turned around for a second. I swear to God, I swear, Dee... just for a second. And then she was... she...”

Silence reigned for several long, torturous minutes while Darla waited for a response to ease her racing heart and sweltering face. Then, “What did you do?”

An invisible claw gripped Darla’s skull and squeezed. Her eyes fluttered shut like it would block the feeling out, but it was inescapable, dizzying in its intensity. If she weren’t already sitting, she was sure she would’ve fallen over. Images flashed in her mind- Arlo’s face, grinning and flushed against the snow, then her face against the blank backdrop of white, pale and still. It punched the air right out of her lungs.

“Darla? Darla, are you still there? Hello?”

“...Yeah... yes, sorry, yes. I’m here. Sorry.” she felt disconnected from the words, like someone else was speaking them. “I... what did you say?”

“I said, ‘what are you gonna do?’”

Darla focused on breathing for as long as it took for her lungs to catch up with her heart. “I, uh. I don’t know. I need to... I need to call the station, and...”

But it was as if all of the motivation had left her body a heavy sack of sand. She didn’t know what to do. All she knew was that Arlo was gone, with a sense of finality that seemed out of place with the questions around her disappearance. She opened her eyes and glanced outside again, noticing that the treeline was almost completely obscured by the tempestuous snow storming outside. Only, as she peered through the chaotic swirling of white, her eyes caught onto an out-of-place object just outside of the thicket marking the edge of Knowles. It was a person.

Darla straightened, a balloon of hope rising in her heart before the arrow of realization struck through it. The figure’s head was brushing the top of the lowest branch of the cedar where he stood beneath it. It wasn’t Arlo, but a tall stranger, watching her watch the woods.

Sam? she thought before she could help herself. Terror rang through her, a chord so deep she looked away like a child hiding beneath the covers from her boogeyman. It couldn’t be him. It couldn't. Surely it was a hunter, or a ranger. In a raging snowstorm?

“...be there in an hour. See you soon,” Dee said, which dragged Darla out of her panic and straight into an onslaught of confusion. Had they been talking that whole time? She tried to remember what was said but was met with nothing but a disorienting wall of black. She glanced back outside.

“...Okay,” she replied hoarsely. “Thanks, Dee.”

She hung up, leaving her alone on the cold linoleum of the kitchen staring at the empty spot where she swore that figure had just been, her phone glaring up at her: 10:23pm.

❄ ❄ ❄

The clock on her phone said it was nearly midnight. Dee hadn’t arrived, called nor texted, and Darla didn’t want to distract her on the road. She’d migrated to the kitchen table, one of Arlo’s hoodies folded up in her arms, not daring to go outside again since seeing that figure despite feeling guilty for it. Any good mother would be looking for their daughter, right?

Knock knock knock.

Darla startled, head shooting up towards the back door where the noise had come from. There was Dee, staring at her through the large glass door, wearing only a thin T-shirt and Wranglers to combat against the cold winter storm. She didn’t seem to feel the violent flurry of snow smacking against her bare skin.

“Hello?” She called. She was staring into the kitchen like she could see Darla, but still asked, “Darla? Are you there? Hello?”

Darla stood to let her in, but then she wondered, why did she go around to the back door?

She froze in place.

Knock knock knock.

Dee’s hair was whipping around her in an uncharacteristic forgoing of an updo. She was rushing here. But then why did she go around to the back door?

Don’t be silly, Darla, she chided herself. She tried to force her legs to move, but now the feeling of something being inherently off was latched to her brain and refusing to let go.

“Darla? Darla, hello?” Dee called. “Hello? Darla, are you there? What did you do, Darla? Hello? What did you do?”

Ice filled her veins. She began to move, but this time away from her sister. Something was wrong with her. Darla wasn’t sure what, but every instinct in her body was screaming at her not to find out.

She walked backwards, feeling behind her for obstacles as she did, watching Dee's eyes track hers until her sister became obscured by the east wall of the hall. She paused against the staircase wall, placing a hand against her chest soothingly. It was still hammering against her palm when she heard it.

Knock knock knock.

Darla startled, whipping her head towards the front door. Then a muffled voice pushed through the wood.

“Darla? Darla! Are you there? DARLA!”

Ice filled her veins. She stumbled back and fell, barely even feeling the impact against her as she landed. It was him. It was Sam. How had he found them? How had he...? The knocking began again, and Darla forced herself to crawl backwards until her legs felt a little less like gelatin and she could gather them beneath.

“Darla!” Sam screamed again, every syllable sending violent panic into her system. “Darla! What did you do? What did you fucking do?”

She didn’t dare confirm her presence by responding. Instead, she forced her stiff legs up the stairs and away from him, and away from the strange version of Dee at her back door. The landing was dark and quiet, except for the now-muffled sound of Sam’s hammering against the front door intermingling with the muffled knocking on the back.

What was happening? How had he found them? Had Dee brought him here? Why? A sledgehammer of pain smashed into her and she groaned, stumbling back from the sheer intensity of the feeling. She grasped the handle of the closest door, and collapsed into Arlo’s room shortly after.

It looked just as it had this morning. Bed made immaculately. Clothes pressed and clean in the closet. Small desk perfectly tidy. It made her think of Arlo, of her cold-darkened cheeks and self-serious expressions, images of her daughter expertly recreating themselves and collaborating in nightmarish accuracy with imaginations of that same face still and cold and serious forever.

Darla pressed her hand to her mouth, which did nothing to muffle the animalistic, high-pitched keen which tore itself from her throat as agony and heartbreak and terror and self-hatred ran with rampant inconsideration through her nervous system, uncaring of the damage it did her.

Knock knock knock.

Her voice died in her throat, the raging inferno of emotion which she’d just been surviving turning to ash. She stared at the door in silence for several long, agonizing moments until, muffled by the thick wood, a voice pressed through.

“Mama? Mama? Hello? Are you there?”

Darla’s heart soared and she stood with it, moving towards the door before she could become fully conscious of it. She reached toward the bronze handle, and then she froze.

It couldn’t be Arlo. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be.

“Mama? Mama? Hello? Are you there?”

She knew why it couldn’t be. She knew it in her bones, her flesh, in her carnation-red stained fingertips. But she didn’t dare to say it out loud, didn’t dare even think it. That same exhaustion set in, turning her bones to iron, and she sat, a cloud of dust misting around her, like the way the snow had floated around her girl, that day. A foot away, the door trembled beneath the force of her knocks.

“Hello? Are you there? Mama, what did you do?”