The cold spring air leaked in through the open front door. The rain which had poured down last night had ceased now and yet there was still a dampness in the air. The smell of damp grass and soil mixed in with another smell. A sickly almost putrid smell that could only have been coming from the house itself. The house had been still for several days, few had emerged. The windows were almost blackened with smoke and grime but despite that you could still see her face, through all the darkness and despair in the house you could still see a baby blue ray of hope.

Those eyes belonged to Mary, the eldest of the five….no four children. She was a beautiful young girl, not a mean bone in her. She would stand, always. Mary never sat down, oh no. Far too much work to be done. Despite the redness of her tiny, almost doll like hands and the exhaustion in her still blue eyes she continued to cut the bread for breakfast.

She looked around the room in dismay. The house was a state, clothes piled up, dishes too. Daniel had started bringing in big flat stones for them to eat off. It wasn’t for laziness that the house was a mess, oh no. Father wouldn’t allow anything to be touched or changed. “The children need to be fed” he’d say in that cold voice “that’s all”. That voice was all Mary heard now. Father had changed so much, the kindness that used to appear in his eyes when he smiled had turned to hardness. The compassion he’d shown them for so many years had been over taken by bitter resentment.  

With a weary sigh Mary gazed around the room. First at baby Annabelle crawling on the floor. Mary saw the dust and dirt under Annabelle’s hands and wanted to cry. She longed to pick Annabelle up, hold her close but she knew father would be angry. “She needs to learn” he’d say. Mary wiped an angry tear from her eye as she looked over to the corner to where three year old Joshua and two year old Maggie were engaged in playing with sticks. As Mary watched them she felt her heart would break. She loved them so dearly. They, these three were the only things that held her here, they were her life line.

 Mary looked down at her . hands. Her red, raw, hurting hands. She hated them so, they had changed so much since…She didn’t want to think about it, not now. Slowly as though with every movement she was struck by an immense pain she looked up towards the bed.

There sat father, bent over the bed. Its where he’d been for the past week. He only moved to take a bottle of drink when Mary brought it over. Mary dreaded those moments because it was the time she had to see Mathew. Father would make her look at him, hold her face hard, top and bottom and make her look at what seemed like an eternity. Mary could hardly bare it. Standing there looking into the cold dead eyes of her brother. It was worse now, his face was starting to change, shade with age. Becoming almost disfigured but it was the smell that drove Mary the worst. That awful smell of rot and filth. It made her want to wretch, but she held it back.

It’d been nearly a month since the illness had taken Mathew. They’d all known it was coming, even father and when it finally happened, that windy afternoon it seemed almost anti-climactic though Mary cursed herself for thinking so. No one in the village knew, when it happened. Mary wondered if they knew at all. Father had her forbidden from speaking of it to anyone when she went to town.

When she would go to get food people would stop and smile and ask “How’s young Mathew these days?” and every time she wanted to scream “he’s dead and my father is keeping him trapped with us” but she never said anything. She remembered one day running into the minister and he said to her that when the day came I would mourn for my brother and move on. She knew the minister was a wise man but what he said couldn’t be right. She didn’t mourn for Mathew, she hadn’t ever. She hated him. She hated him for always being her father’s favourite, for always being the centre of attention and even now he was dead she was still not rid of him.

 Mary looked over at her father as he clinged desperately to Mathew’s memory and she thought, maybe this is my punishment, maybe this is my eternal damnation for hating my brother so. Father would never let go and she would be forever haunted by the ghost of her brother.