Hallwood - Prologue
Elle Therrit and her mother are heading towards a life that is much more complicated than their own past - but they don't know that until its too late...
Prologue
Soft, chilling wind breezed through the open car window, streaking through my long un-brushed - as usual - brown hair. It was slightly uncomfortable on my face as I struggled to keep my eyes open and my mouth moist.
I had to admit though, it was a nice alternative to the stuffy non-air-conditioned box of rust I had had the detriment of riding in for the last fourteen hours. Where was I going? The middle of nowhere was the way I described it…my mother on the other hand felt differently.
"Out of town" she had said. Yeah! More like the furthest you can get from civilization. Don’t get me wrong, she is my mother after all, but who in their right mind would steal me away yet again from my life. Ah, keywords: right mind – that was definitely not how my mother’s mind was now. She had been overcome with some rekindled youth as it were and somewhere in that brain of hers she felt the need to shift our lives again.
I couldn’t say that this was the first time we had packed up and left our home – in fact this was the seventeenth time since I was six. My mom’s need for change had begun on one summer night in a Carolina hotel, in the middle of nowhere I might add. It was the night of my sister’s death and my father’s disappearance. I pained to think of that night, the night when it all changed. I remember seeing my sister’s limp body, lying helpless on the ground, my father’s shouts in the background. ‘Claire, Elle, run!’ he had shouted to my mother and I. My mother grabbed my hand and pulled me to the car, where she had already packed our things, and drove away, leaving my father and dead sister alone in the dark. The memory was somewhat faded but still there in bits and pieces. She never spoke of the event, as if it had never happened, but I remembered her tears late in the nights when we were alone…
"So" Mom said in a rather childish and excited voice, startling me from my thoughts, "Aren’t you really excited about our new house? I mean you saw the picture didn’t you? Isn’t it just the nicest little cottage you’ve ever seen?" she reached over to the glove box to grab a picture of a small white house, trellis on the side with an overgrown rose bush climbing to the roof. The back of the house backed onto what seemed to be damp forest and overhead dark clouds of rain smothered the blue sky.
"What do you think? Isn’t it great" she flashed a grin at my disgusted face.
"Mom, it’s uh…" I struggled for the right words, "great" I emphasized on the ‘great’ just so she’d catch my sarcastic tone.
"Really? I’m so happy you like, I did this for you after all you know…" she had obviously missed the sarcasm in my voice. And yeah, as if I believed she did this for me, pft!
She began to ramble on about our new home in Hallwood, my new school in Sweet Home, and my supposed new friends. Like I needed to make friends…I knew that as soon as I became close to anyone on our moves, it would just pain in the long run when we had to suddenly leave again and trudge onward to a new home.
Another four hours of driving and we would be there, in the very place that had haunted me from the moment we left. I shuddered to think of spending another six months or so friendless before we jetsetted off again into another mistake. The hours crept up fast as we came closer and closer to the small sullen town of Hallwood. I dreaded to think this place would be the last move of my life with mom, even though that went against everything I had ever thought in the past eight years, but we had always lived in cities and this town was the most rundown and rural place that existed in my mind. It was going to be my personal hell.
"We’re nearly there, honey, just fifteen or so minutes to go," my mother had settled immensely since the afternoon, "We’ll be there soon enough"
Maybe the prospect of the nearest mall being over an hour away was settling in, or maybe she was just tired. I took the latter as the reason; nothing could change my mother’s stubborn mind when she had it set on something. I could hope couldn’t I?
In the approaching darkness I could just make out a small termite ridden sign that read Hallwood and pointed right, down a small one way road and into the roadside forestry. It was hard to suppress a shiver as the luminous black wall of trees stood up against our car, as if forbidding us to enter the small and mysterious village it contained within its branches. I felt the car pull to the side of the road and turn as I stared at my mother’s face - which was now widened to an ear-to-ear smile, she was keen on adventures and always had been. I rolled my eyes and looked back at the road, now lit by the car’s headlights. The dark forest spread in every direction and as we drove into its depths I couldn't help but feel like we were going the wrong way.
Soft, chilling wind breezed through the open car window, streaking through my long un-brushed - as usual - brown hair. It was slightly uncomfortable on my face as I struggled to keep my eyes open and my mouth moist.
I had to admit though, it was a nice alternative to the stuffy non-air-conditioned box of rust I had had the detriment of riding in for the last fourteen hours. Where was I going? The middle of nowhere was the way I described it…my mother on the other hand felt differently.
"Out of town" she had said. Yeah! More like the furthest you can get from civilization. Don’t get me wrong, she is my mother after all, but who in their right mind would steal me away yet again from my life. Ah, keywords: right mind – that was definitely not how my mother’s mind was now. She had been overcome with some rekindled youth as it were and somewhere in that brain of hers she felt the need to shift our lives again.
I couldn’t say that this was the first time we had packed up and left our home – in fact this was the seventeenth time since I was six. My mom’s need for change had begun on one summer night in a Carolina hotel, in the middle of nowhere I might add. It was the night of my sister’s death and my father’s disappearance. I pained to think of that night, the night when it all changed. I remember seeing my sister’s limp body, lying helpless on the ground, my father’s shouts in the background. ‘Claire, Elle, run!’ he had shouted to my mother and I. My mother grabbed my hand and pulled me to the car, where she had already packed our things, and drove away, leaving my father and dead sister alone in the dark. The memory was somewhat faded but still there in bits and pieces. She never spoke of the event, as if it had never happened, but I remembered her tears late in the nights when we were alone…
"So" Mom said in a rather childish and excited voice, startling me from my thoughts, "Aren’t you really excited about our new house? I mean you saw the picture didn’t you? Isn’t it just the nicest little cottage you’ve ever seen?" she reached over to the glove box to grab a picture of a small white house, trellis on the side with an overgrown rose bush climbing to the roof. The back of the house backed onto what seemed to be damp forest and overhead dark clouds of rain smothered the blue sky.
"What do you think? Isn’t it great" she flashed a grin at my disgusted face.
"Mom, it’s uh…" I struggled for the right words, "great" I emphasized on the ‘great’ just so she’d catch my sarcastic tone.
"Really? I’m so happy you like, I did this for you after all you know…" she had obviously missed the sarcasm in my voice. And yeah, as if I believed she did this for me, pft!
She began to ramble on about our new home in Hallwood, my new school in Sweet Home, and my supposed new friends. Like I needed to make friends…I knew that as soon as I became close to anyone on our moves, it would just pain in the long run when we had to suddenly leave again and trudge onward to a new home.
Another four hours of driving and we would be there, in the very place that had haunted me from the moment we left. I shuddered to think of spending another six months or so friendless before we jetsetted off again into another mistake. The hours crept up fast as we came closer and closer to the small sullen town of Hallwood. I dreaded to think this place would be the last move of my life with mom, even though that went against everything I had ever thought in the past eight years, but we had always lived in cities and this town was the most rundown and rural place that existed in my mind. It was going to be my personal hell.
"We’re nearly there, honey, just fifteen or so minutes to go," my mother had settled immensely since the afternoon, "We’ll be there soon enough"
Maybe the prospect of the nearest mall being over an hour away was settling in, or maybe she was just tired. I took the latter as the reason; nothing could change my mother’s stubborn mind when she had it set on something. I could hope couldn’t I?
In the approaching darkness I could just make out a small termite ridden sign that read Hallwood and pointed right, down a small one way road and into the roadside forestry. It was hard to suppress a shiver as the luminous black wall of trees stood up against our car, as if forbidding us to enter the small and mysterious village it contained within its branches. I felt the car pull to the side of the road and turn as I stared at my mother’s face - which was now widened to an ear-to-ear smile, she was keen on adventures and always had been. I rolled my eyes and looked back at the road, now lit by the car’s headlights. The dark forest spread in every direction and as we drove into its depths I couldn't help but feel like we were going the wrong way.
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