Family Research

Helen had returned to the old family home for her father’s funeral, and had stayed to sort through the house’s contents. She’d been more than glad to accept the family solicitor’s offer to arrange the funeral, and to handle the legal and financial side of things, but she felt bound to check through the property herself to make sure nothing of personal value would be lost when the house was cleared and it was put on the market. She had grown up in the place; she was already thoroughly familiar with what lay in it, and was confident that there was nothing of particular intrinsic value among the more substantial household items such as furniture, but the paperwork was a different matter. Her father hadn’t been one to throw things away, even after they’d long ceased to be of importance, and bills, receipts and bank statements alone filled a couple of filing cabinets. Letters, both business and personal, were stored in boxes in the attic; she had been rather dismayed when a superficial glance showed that they went back more than fifty years. Given that her father had been in his eighties it shouldn’t have been a surprise, but it was still something of a shock to see the sheer volume of material. It would take her a long time to go through them all, and she was strongly tempted to burn the lot. With both her parents dead, and having no children of her own, what would it matter? However a vague sense of duty had compelled her to make at least a cursory check before discarding anything.

But it would take a while, and she would have to stay at least a night; probably two or more. She hadn’t visited her father often since leaving for university and later getting a job and a home of her own, but he had made sure that her bedroom was kept in its original state for her occasional visits, and it would be here she would be sleeping.

Her room was more like that of a child than that of a adolescent. Her mother had died when she was eleven, and her death had cast a pall over the subsequent years. Her father, who had never been greatly affectionate, had become even more remote. He had done his duty as a father, and she had been the model of obedience, doing all he had asked of her, but their relationship had not been a close one. It was a little disconcerting to realise how little of the ensuing years with her father she could remember, what with her own initial grief, her social isolation, and the emotion-numbing effects of the antidepressants she’d been prescribed after her mother’s death – and which she’d continued to take, probably quite unnecessarily, until she’d left home. She had never gone through a phase of rebellion, or of covering her bedroom walls with posters, or accumulating the typical paraphernalia of a teenage girl. But it was a room with a bed, and she felt uneasy at the idea of sleeping in her parents’ room, in her father’s bed, so it was here that she’d put her things on her arrival for the funeral: she’d brought enough to see her through a few days contained in a small suitcase.

The funeral had been a simple affair, only attended by her; by Mr Fenton, the family solicitor; and by Mrs Harris, the woman who’d done the housework for her father since Helen had been a child. She’d known from her own life with her father that he had become a solitary, reclusive man after her mother’s death, but the stark emptiness of the crematorium had made her realise just how isolated his existence must have been after she’d left home. And back at the house, alone in her old room, she’d felt it all the more. She hoped that going through all his papers would show her something more of him that she’d been unaware of as a child, and that she would discover what had occupied him since her mother’s death, and which would explain his remoteness from her, his only daughter.

There was only one way of finding out: she prepared to search through the stacks of boxes in the attic.

She had thought of starting with the business correspondence, but quickly dismissed the idea – there was too much of it, and it was, as far as she could tell, entirely mundane. She had no intention of going through decades of bills, receipts and invoices for things like deliveries of heating oil or coal; or of water, gas and electricity demands. She moved on to the personal letters, starting with the earliest – fortunately for her the boxes were arranged, for the most part, in chronological order, with the dates written on the outsides. Even this was not without its problems; she realised that it would also have been handy if they’d been sorted by correspondent, but she felt that she’d be able to keep the thread well enough once she became familiar with the names.

Several hours later she had developed a far better picture of her father than she’d ever learned in her years of living with him. It made sense, in a way; as with most children, she’d not enquired much about either of her parents’ pasts. Even though she was now in her early fifties herself she still found it a little difficult to think of them as ever having been young.

At the age of thirty he’d risen to minor fame when he’d published a book in the field of the so-called Earth mysteries; it was the time when pseudo-scientific ideas such as ley lines and crop circles were starting to gain popular interest, along with a revival of neo-pagan beliefs such as Wicca. Were stone circles Neolithic observatories, used to predict astronomical events such as eclipses? Were the ancient people of Britain capable of harnessing supernatural forces that allowed them to construct sites like Stonehenge, enabling them to transport the huge bluestones from the Preseli Mountains in south Wales to Salisbury Plain? Could there be any truth in the legend of the Green Children of Woolpit, human in every aspect other than their slightly greenish skin, who had mysteriously appeared in the 12th century, and whose origins had never been explained? That kind of thing. The result was that he’d become something of a cult figure, and many of the letters were what amounted to fan mail. And it was through this popularity that her mother had come to know him. She’d been eighteen at the time the book was published, and had soon become the literary equivalent of a groupie: she’d attended book-signings and talks he’d given, had started writing to him, and, a couple of years later, had visited him at his newly purchased home – the house where Helen now was. It was obvious from the letters that despite the twelve-year age gap she’d had a serious crush on him, and that one thing had led to another – the most obvious being Helen’s conception. She’d been a beautiful woman – Helen wryly recalled being told as a child that she’d inherited her looks – and this was, after all, the 1960s. They’d got married the following year in order to save Helen the ignominy of being born out of wedlock.

The fan mail continued after his marriage; the ones from adoring young women tailed off, but he had by now built up more of a following of dedicated believers who wrote to tell him of their own theories and beliefs.

Helen suffered from the disadvantage of only being able to read the incoming letters, for her father evidently hadn’t made carbon copies of the ones he had sent in reply, but she was able to deduce that during the following years – the years of her early childhood – he was developing new ideas with the intention of writing a second book. These new ideas seemed to centre on such folk-figures and woodland spirits as Hob Hurst, Robin Goodfellow, Jack in the Green, and the Green Man; the latter generally taken to be some sort of fertility symbol that had survived the Christianisation of Britain, and carvings of which, despite their pagan nature, could be found in English churches. Some of the letters were obviously in reply to his own enquiries about these subjects, presumably because he was gathering material for his proposed new book. References to various pagan or neo-pagan religions grew more frequent. Some of the more outré claimed encounters with nature spirits like the Green Man that were akin to the sightings of Bigfoot in America, or of alien abduction; some even included dubious-looking photographs to bear these out.

Then there was a rash of letters in a short space of time, mainly from his regular correspondents, expressing sympathy over the death of his wife. After that the letters tailed off in such an abrupt fashion Helen guessed that her father had either been making discouraging replies, or making no replies at all. Only a few of his closest friends and supporters continued to write. She was beginning to skim, for the subject matter had by now become rather repetitive, at least to her. She was on the point of stopping reading them altogether, when one brought her attention back again.

The letter only caught her eye because of its brevity, which was emphasised by the fact that the only other content was a date, and a signature which was obviously a pseudonym. It was more like a personal note than a formal letter. Curious, she pulled it out and read it.

Thank you for the photographs of the subject of your research; you’re right in assuming that I’d be greatly interested in your experiment. I appreciate your taking me into your confidence in this matter. Don’t worry, I’ll be discreet. No one else will see them. They are of excellent quality and I look forward to your sending more as she grows older. — Ajax.

She felt her skin prickle. This was getting a bit disturbing. Ajax was not talking about an abstract matter of academic research, but a living thing. And unless Ajax was the sort of eccentric who referred to new plant hybrids as ‘she’, the subject of the experiment had to be either an animal or a person. Indeed it was difficult to avoid the thought that she might be the subject referred to. But no. That was nonsense. She could hardly have been unaware of her father conducting an experiment on her, or at least not one that involved taking photographs of her. She would have remembered. In fact she couldn’t recall his having taken any of her at all other than a few pictures for the family album when her mother was still alive, and none since her death. But who or what could the subject have been? Some kind of animal? One that qualified to be referred to as ‘she’, evidently. But what was the nature of the experiment?

The date was about six months after her mother’s death. What experiment had her father been conducting back then? She couldn’t recall anything, but there again she would have been only twelve years old at the time, and the use of a pseudonym had obviously been arranged by her father to assure secrecy, so he wouldn’t have told her about it anyway.

She sat back on her heels, easing the crick out of her back. It would make more sense to take a look at the contents of her father’s study, or perhaps the cellar, which was the only place in the house she could think of where her father might have carried out any biological experiments. She remembered having been told not to go down there, which would make sense if he were conducting delicate work there. In fact she couldn’t even recall exactly what lay down there, at least not offhand. She pondered for a moment. While she was unlikely to learn anything after all this time, she should take a look. The keys must be around somewhere. She exited the attic and headed downstairs.

But she was out of luck. Both the study and the cellar were locked, and she could not find the keys. She’d have to wait until Mrs Harris came in tomorrow. Mrs Harris, she thought reflectively. She would be in her sixties now, but she’d simply been ‘Victoria’ to her as a child. She was a girl from the nearby village who’d come to work for the family when Helen’s mother was still alive. She must have still been in her late teens then. Helen hadn’t seen much of her, as she came to do a bit of cleaning work on weekdays, during the day, while Helen had been at school; she’d only encountered her during the school holidays. She’d liked her; Victoria had been very friendly with her. And after her mother’s death she’d taken on a good deal more work for her father, effectively replacing her mother in her domestic duties, and Helen had got to see more of her. She must have been… what, 21 by then? Yes, she was exactly ten years older than Helen. She’d been pretty and smiling; she remembered how, as a child, she’d wondered if her father would remarry, and how she’d liked the idea of Victoria as her step-mother. But of course Victoria had been more than twenty years younger than her father, and attractive though she may have been, her father seemed to have shown no romantic or sexual interest in her – at least nothing that was visible to Helen at the time – and he had not married again.

Helen sighed. There was little point in becoming frustrated at a delay of a few hours, considering this mystery had taken place nearly forty years ago. She decided she may as well make herself a meal, then go to bed; she’d talk to Victoria – Mrs Harris, rather – in the morning.

Once in bed she found she couldn’t settle easily. The contents of the letter had unsettled her. I look forward to your sending more as she grows older. What – or whom – could it have been referring to? Could it have been her? And if so, what was the nature of her father’s experiment? Her memory of that period was patchy, and she knew that the various drugs she’d been taking to help her sleep, and to help her overcome her trauma, had affected her memory, but surely not to that degree… or… she thought hard. Her father had paid for her to see some sort of psychiatrist or psychoanalyst, evidently afraid of what effect her mother’s death would have on her, though he hadn’t seemed to make much difference. Or had he? She remembered having been terribly upset, obviously, and had remained sad for some time, but no more than one would normally expect a child to be. But perhaps that was a tribute to the success of the man her father had employed. Perhaps she had been traumatised at the time. But a corollary of this was that if his therapy had been so effective, it was possible that other areas of her memory could have been lost. After all, he had been paid to make her forget. What if the treatment had, accidentally or otherwise, also made her forget the events cryptically referred to in the letter?

Then, as she lay there in bed in the dark, her eyes closed, with shocking suddenness she found herself in another room she didn’t recognise. Her father was there, looking at her reprovingly, saying something to her, telling her to… Then it was gone. She was back in her own bed. Her eyes flew open and she jolted upright, gasping for breath. Jesus Christ! What the fuck was that? Disoriented, she groped for the nightstand and managed to turn on the bedside light. She had fallen asleep and had a nightmare, that was all. A pretty bloody bad nightmare, but that was all. It was already receding. Her father’s words were already forgotten. And the room… she could no longer visualise it, thankfully, for the association had been one of deep dread. She breathed slowly and steadily for the next few minutes, then sank back onto the pillow. But she left the light on.

By the following morning her terror had vanished. She’d had a bad dream in which she’d seen her father in a room she didn’t recognise. It had been shocking, but dreams were strange things. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d dreamt of her father, and it was hardly surprising she should have done so last night, under the circumstances. It was reading that damned letter that had done it. She almost wished she’d decided to simply burn all her father’s old correspondence.

She went down to make breakfast, and by the time she’d finished eating, Mrs Harris had arrived. She’d spoken to her at the funeral, but the crematorium hadn’t seemed to be the right place for a discussion, much less an interrogation. She felt no such qualms now.

‘Mrs Harris,’ she began, ‘Do you know anything about the research my father was working on at around the time of my mother’s death, especially in the year after she died?’ She hesitated, and almost felt too embarrassed to ask, ‘And if so, do you know if he ever used me in his…’ she could hardly bring herself to say the word ‘…experiments?’

Mrs Harris looked at her, surprised, no doubt wondering what had brought this on, but she paused, considering. ‘Well, I wouldn’t know about any experiments. He was doing research all the time, but that would have been reading – books, magazines, newspaper cuttings and so on – not people, other than to ask questions. He used to ask me about local legends, for example. He was particularly interested in the stories about Hob Hurst’s House – you know, that place down by the river. But not anything you’d call an experiment. As to him using you, you’d be the one to know that. When you were about that age you used to keep asking him if he’d let you help him, but I don’t know if you ever did. Don’t you remember?’

‘That’s just it,’ admitted Helen. ‘I don’t remember much from then.’ Now she spoke about it, it did seem odd. She remembered that her father had told her not to go into the cellar without his permission, so there must have been something special in there. But surely she’d been down there in his company. It would have been normal enough. She’d have been eleven or twelve by then, not a small child who couldn’t be trusted not to damage equipment. But the fact remained that she couldn’t seem to recall what was in the cellar. And even if she’d never been down there, why couldn’t she remember other details of her father’s research work that he might have performed there? She must have had at least some idea of what he used the cellar for, even if it was something as mundane as home brewing or wine-making. Natural inquisitiveness would have made her ask. She hesitated again, not quite sure how to proceed, and again recalled the letter. ‘Did he take photographs? For his research, I mean?’

Again the thoughtful pause. ‘He worked in his study most of the time, using his typewriter, but he’d sometimes disappear into the cellar for a while; I suppose if he did any experiments he could have done them down there. As for photographs, he had a darkroom back then, didn’t he? It’s been gone for years; it’s just a storage room for my cleaning things now. But I remember buying stuff from the chemist sometimes – they sold photographic materials in those days; films, developer, printing paper and such. So he must have taken photographs, though like I say, he never told me anything about what he was doing, so I don’t know what they would have been of, or where he took them. I wasn’t allowed down there – he didn’t want me messing anything up with my cleaning. Maybe he took you down there sometimes though, when I wasn’t there. You’re sure you can’t remember?’

Helen frowned, and massaged her forehead. ‘All right. We’ll have to leave it at that then. How about the keys to his study, and to the cellar? I couldn’t find them last night. Do you know where they are?’

Mrs Harris smiled. ‘Now there I can help you,’ she replied, fishing into her bag, and pulling out a set of keys. ‘All the keys to the house. The main reason I came up here this morning, other than to make sure you were doing all right. I won’t have any use for them anymore, will I? As soon as you’ve finished going through the place it’ll all be emptied by the house clearance company anyway – study, cellar, the lot. No more cleaning work for me.’

Helen smiled back in thanks as she took them. ‘But you’ll be okay, won’t you? Dad must have left you something in his will, surely?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Mrs Harris replied. ‘Very well provided for. Mr Fenton already told me what I’d be getting when probate has been passed. Very good of your father.’ She stood up. ‘Is there anything else you want? Because if there isn’t, I may as well be on my way.’

Helen thought for a moment. There were quite a lot of things she wanted to ask Mrs Harris, but following her failure to give any satisfactory answer to her enquiries about the mysterious experiment her father had been conducting, nothing else occurred to her at that moment. Besides, she could always contact her at her own home. ‘No, thank you, Mrs Harris. You’ve been a great help. You can leave me to get on with it now.’

Once Mrs Harris had departed Helen made her way to the door to the cellar, picked out the relevant key, and unlocked it. She opened the door and stepped inside, finding herself at the top of a flight of steps. Then, after a moment’s fumbling around for a switch, she flicked on the lights.

One thing that was immediately clear was that no one had been there for some time. The floor was covered in dry, gritty dust; the sort from wall plaster and mortar, and there were cobwebs everywhere. She walked down the steps, forcing herself to overcome a deeply ingrained feeling that she was doing something wrong. But she went on, and once at the bottom found herself in a room that she guessed occupied the full width of the house; she could see the small glazed slits at ceiling level that would have admitted light from outside had they not become so overgrown. The room contained some bits and pieces of old furniture and other detritus, but nothing unusual. It wasn’t this that occupied her attention however. The opposite wall was unplastered brick, and obviously newer than the external walls. In its centre was a door. For some reason she couldn’t define she felt drawn to it; she felt she recognised it. She hesitated, for her feeling of unease was growing, but she advanced with a determined step towards it. There was no lock; just a simple bolt. She slid it back and took hold of the handle. Then she did stop, for a sudden feeling of dread swept over her. She felt she knew what lay beyond the door. It was the room she’d seen in her nightmare. It had a bed on the right, a small desk and chair on the left; and a washbasin, a toilet and a shower cubicle beyond a half-height screen at the far end. She could see it with utter clarity. She had been here before, she was certain.

She let go of the handle abruptly. How could she have been here before? She had never been into the cellar. She knew she hadn’t. It had always been locked. Her father had forbidden her to go down there unless he took her, and he never had. Swallowing, she forced herself to calm down. There was nothing to harm her here other than her memories. She took hold of the handle again and opened the door.

It was just as she’d visualised it, except that, like the steps and the corridor, it was covered with dust and cobwebs. She let out a breath. All right. So she had been here before. And something had happened to her. Something that either her own mind had blanked out, or that the therapy had erased all memory of. But somehow or other she was going to find out what.

Feeling calmer now, she checked the main room more thoroughly, but there was no more to it than her initial glance had suggested. There were some old chairs, a desk, a table, and some cupboards that proved to be empty. Like the room beyond the door, everything was covered in dust, and it had obviously remained unused for years. There was nothing more to be found here; she returned up the stairs.

Now what? Now it was the turn of her father’s business correspondence, which had become a good deal more important. She wanted to find what those therapists had to say for themselves, or rather about her.

Back in the attic she dug through the boxes of business letters, intending to start at the date of her mother’s death, and look for any letterhead with anything relating to psychiatry or psychotherapy on it. But this proved to be unnecessary: there was a single box with ‘Helen’ written on it. With the knowledge of the approximate date it didn’t take her long to flip past such things as correspondence from school to a series of letters from a Dr Wilson, a psychotherapist with an address in London’s Harley Street, no less, along with her father’s side of the exchange: this time at least he had included carbon copies of his own letters. And while it was obvious that much of the exchange must have been by telephone, of which naturally no record remained, Helen was able to form a reasonably good idea of how Dr Wilson had become involved.

The first thing to stand out was that her father hadn’t sought help for her until seven months after her mother’s death – something that contradicted her assumption that she had received bereavement counselling or therapy immediately after. And while her mother’s death had been referred to, it soon became apparent that this wasn’t the chief cause for her father’s concern: rather it had been some later traumatic event, something that had caused her great emotional distress, leading to nightmares, and perhaps even to paranoid delusions – though her father hadn’t specified what form these delusions took. Evidently Dr Wilson had felt up to the task, and an appointment had been arranged. The actual details must have been resolved verbally, as there was nothing more among the letters until Dr Wilson had sent an invoice for his services several months later. The invoice had contained only a brief summary of the treatment, and made no mention of what Helen herself had told Dr Wilson of the mysterious traumatic event – though she supposed he would be bound to secrecy by his code of professional ethics anyway. The lack of detail was frustrating, but what did emerge was that she had undergone sessions of hypnotherapy; Dr Wilson had noted that she had been particularly receptive to this, and that the delusions – or false memories, as Dr Wilson had called them – that she had suffered from had now been eradicated, and that she would have no memory of them.

Helen stood, easing her back. She would have dearly loved to speak to Dr Wilson, but even if he were still alive he would no longer be in practice, and would be unlikely to have preserved any records. But it didn’t take much imagination to fill in the picture a bit more. The ‘false memory’ in question was what had happened to her in that room in the cellar. The problem was that she didn’t know what had happened to her. Her flashback – for now there could be no doubt that was what it had been – had been incomplete. She had been in the room with her father, and he had been telling her to do something… but what? And how did it relate to that damnably cryptic letter?

All right. It was time to search her father’s study, and hope that she would find something there, though the secretive nature of the letter didn’t fill her with much hope. She withdrew the key ring from her pocket, selected the one marked ‘Study’, and headed downstairs again.

Once there she realised she was in for a lengthy job. She’d thought that the letters were bad enough, but her father’s study was nothing like as well organised. There were loose papers and bound notebooks everywhere. But she had to start somewhere and she set to work.

It took much of the day before she found what she was looking for. She’d opened an unlabeled wooden box containing ring binders filled with handwritten notes, and had started reading them. They seemed to be part of his proposed – but never completed – second book. The relevant part described how he’d been following up a piece of folklore about a nearby spot that was associated with some sort of fertility rite – the Hob Hurst’s House that Mrs Harris had just been referring to. She could even vaguely remember having heard about it herself when she was at school; it was the sort of thing that caused children a good deal of amusement. Recently-married young women were supposed to spend the night there in the hope of increasing their chances of conceiving a child. Hob Hurst was the name of a nature spirit that could be found in various parts of the country, and Hob Hurst’s House was a jumbled mass of stones that could either have been natural or artificial; no one knew for sure. Time had garbled the details, meaning there was more than one version, but the simple one was that as a reward for the girl’s belief in the legend, Hob Hurst would ensure her marriage was blessed with many children. The one that caused most ribaldry was that if Hob Hurst was sufficiently taken by the girl in question, he would impregnate her himself. Needless to say the spot had become the venue for groups of drunken teenagers from the nearby village, though what conceptions had resulted from their activities had not been recorded.

But her father had been interested enough to investigate it. Having determined by the use of maps that it was at a crossing point of at least two ley lines, and gone over it with dowsing rods and a crystal pendant, he had decided it was a spot with a significant concentration of Earth energy. There, Helen suspected, the study may have ended, but it had been decided – by her mother, she was sure – to take things a step further, and she had put the folk-belief to the test by spending the night there, sleeping among the stones of Hob Hurst’s House. Her father’s notes were a little coy about the details, but Helen assumed that her parents had practised sexual abstinence for long enough beforehand for the test to have meaning, so when her mother had announced she was pregnant, her father had not surprisingly wondered if she was pulling his leg. But in due course she did indeed turn out to be pregnant.

If Helen had been in her father’s position, her first assumption would have been that one of his wife’s male friends had been responsible, but apparently her father – no doubt after a great deal of initial scepticism – had accepted that it was the result of that night spent at Hob Hurst’s House, and in his notes he speculated at some length how this could have happened, and, of course, what clues the resulting child might give him about its paternity.

Here the notes ended, and Helen knew why. There had been no child; her mother had died during that pregnancy, before it could be born. That was something she had no difficulty in remembering. What had started as a light-hearted experiment had ended in tragedy.

But then she paused, because she had remembered the letter. The reference to her father’s experiment, and the line I look forward to your sending more as she grows older.

She frowned as she tried to remember what she could of her mother’s death, but the memory of an eleven-year-old was not the most reliable of sources at the best of times, quite apart from the therapy she’d received. And it was over forty years ago now. She’d arrived home from school to be greeted by her father with the news. He himself had only just returned from the hospital, and was understandably not in the best state of mind to explain the situation to her. But the details had eventually emerged. Her mother had, as Helen had been aware, been pregnant. She had suffered a miscarriage. She had lost a lot of blood. It had taken some time for the ambulance to arrive. She had died on the way to the hospital. That had been all she had been told, and all she had needed to know; at that age she had only a vague idea of what a miscarriage was, and the only thing of importance was that her mother was dead.

But now she wondered. She knew enough now to know that a miscarriage before 24 weeks did not require a death certificate unless the baby was alive at the time, however briefly it lived. There would be no requirement to produce any foetus, as would be the case with a stillborn child – which was to say one born after 24 weeks. No medical examination to establish the cause of death would be required, no coroner’s report would have to be made. But what if the baby had been born extremely prematurely, and had survived? Who would know the truth if the miscarriage had occurred at home, with no one else present other than the parents? And of course in this case her mother had not lived; only her father would know. What if he had kept the prematurely born, but still-living child, and it had survived? No one would even consider questioning him. It was so unthinkable that a child born so prematurely could survive without medical assistance that it would never occur to anyone. But if it had lived…

With renewed energy she dug down into the wooden chest, pulling out the ring binders, depositing them on the floor and riffling through the pages. If he had sent those photographs to his anonymous friend then he surely must have kept notes himself, and unless he had destroyed them then they must be here somewhere. This time it didn’t take her as long, though now the account took the form of personal notes rather than any intended for publication.

Even when she was born she was unnaturally well-developed, already more like a diminutive child of about six or seven than a baby. Unlike any normal child she was utterly precocial; not only did she have no need to suckle, she could walk almost immediately. Yet she completely resembled a human girl in every respect other than the colour of her skin, which had a slight greenish hue, though it is barely noticeable in poor lighting. The horror of my wife’s death was mitigated by the birth of her extraordinary daughter. But I cannot possibly let the authorities know of her existence. So I must hide her, keeping her secret from everyone.

Helen let out her breath. She didn’t need to be told where her father had kept her half-sister. The pieces had suddenly fallen into place. She leafed forward a few pages.

At six months she has grown considerably. Her height now approximates that of a human of her apparent age, which is to say a girl of around eleven or twelve years, bordering on adolescence.

It was then that her newly acquired knowledge caught up with her. She was hit by the second flashback with the same suddenness as the first.

She was standing in the room in the cellar, facing a girl who looked just like her, and who was wearing one of her dresses. The girl was sitting on the bed, staring blankly at her. She felt the terror sweeping through her. What was happening? Was she going mad? Then her father was there, coming between them, talking to her, urging her out of the room.

Then it was over. She was shaking, and felt sweat standing out on her skin. But now she knew. She understood the contents of the letter. She knew why her father had asked the therapist to erase the memory of the event that had filled her with horror. An event so incredible that it would quite naturally have been accepted by the therapist as having been a product of her own imagination.

She took a few more deep breaths, waiting until her heart had stopped hammering, and dipped into what few of her father’s notes remained.

Nothing can be achieved by keeping her here for longer, and besides, I cannot depend on her remaining undetected. Helen can no longer remember meeting her, but if anyone else were to see her I would not be able to maintain the pretence. She has been here for only just over a year now, and already seems like a girl in her late teens; an adult. It the old myths are true she will not age any further. I must release her and hope she will find her own way, perhaps her true father, and others of her kin. It will break my heart, but there is no other way.

There was one last thing. In emptying the wooden box, Helen had uncovered a sheet of cardboard across the base; lifting it revealed the photographs that her father had sent copies of to the writer of the letter. The girl did indeed look just as she had done at the age of twelve. Other than the faint greenish tinge to her skin.