Chapter Text
The copper-haired woman rests her hand on Verna’s shoulder, and makes a face like she’s going to say something but doesn’t. Verna responds accordingly, reassuring her with one gentle hand gesture but no words, and the woman walks away with a quick, hard-eyed glance that the kids.
And then they’re alone.
Still, Stella stares. She doesn’t know what to say. She doesn’t know what she should say. What’s there to say to a woman who everyone said was dead but isn’t? What’s there to say to a woman who evidently hasn’t aged?
Verna is the one to break the silence, looking over them passively with cloudy eyes. “You’re here about Sarah.” Her voice is low and hoarse, tapering off into a whisper, as though she can’t bear to speak the name.
Stella nods.
Verna responds likewise, then turns and leads them into the living room. She sits down on the couch, and waits patiently for them to join her.
The trio sits down on the soft carpet. Stella crosses her legs, slipping her back off her shoulder but keeping it close to her side. The book feels warm under her hand.
Verna closes her eyes a moment, takes a breath, and opens them. “I haven’t…” She swallows thickly. “I haven’t heard the Bellows name in…a very long time.” She takes another breath. “Verna Russell,” is all she says, as though managing any more is too difficult.
Verna Russell. Because Verna Bellows was never truly a Bellows. Her last name is Russell.
“Um…” Stella shuffles awkwardly where she sits. “I’m Stella. This is Ramon, Chuck.” She motions to each boy in turn. Verna simply nods.
“You’re alive.” The words spill out before Stella can stop them. Chuck punches her in the arm.
“Yes.” Verna doesn’t elaborate. Underneath the dull glaze in her eyes something shines, something that doesn’t feel entirely human, but Stella can’t place what it is.
She chews at her bottom lip. “Did Sarah—”
“I was alive before Sarah was born,” Verna says evenly. Unspoken is the obvious—she’s alive now, long after Sarah has been dead.
Stella pulls her sleeves down over her hands. She doesn’t look at Verna.
A moment passes before anyone says anything. When they do, it’s Verna.
“You want to know about my niece.”
This time Stella looks up at her. The woman’s face is unreadable, even, while her eyes are cloudy and on the verge of brewing with tears. She gives a tiny nod. “Everyone says you’re dead. You left one night and never came back.”
Verna leans forward, resting her forearms on her legs, sucking at her bottom lip. “I couldn’t,” she whispers, shaking her head. “After Sarah, I…I couldn’t.”
“So then you…don’t know?” Chuck asks.
Verna’s eyes clear as she fixes him with a sharp stare. Stella shuffles uncomfortably beside him, thumping him on the leg before he goes too far. Verna doesn’t need to know about the myth surrounding Sarah, not yet, not like this, not when even the mere mention of Sarah’s name practically brings her to tears. But Verna isn’t deterred; she grinds her teeth and asks, “Know what?”
Stella holds her hand out to Chuck in a let-me-handle-this gesture; he throws his hands up in surrender. She turns back to Verna, shivering at the sharpness of her gaze. “There was a…myth,” she says slowly, watching Verna’s face for a change, “that went around about Sarah.”
With that, Verna’s face falls. Her eyes cloud again, brimming with tears. “What?” It barely comes out as a whisper.
“Um…” There’s no good way to do this, no way to keep Verna from breaking down. Ripping off the band-aid is too cruel. Dancing around the bush is even worse. Stella can’t seem to find any happy-medium to deliver the news in a way that won’t upset the poor woman even further. “About, um, some of the, uh, children…in the town…that Sarah—”
“No,” Verna whines. “No. Sarah wouldn’t—she wasn’t—no…No, not my Sarah.” She drops her head, resting her forehead on her hands, muttering something that doesn’t sound like English. She sniffs heavily, her shoulders shaking with a sob. Sella catches her own eyes tear up; she reaches under her glasses to wipe her tears away. Verna has never stopped mourning Sarah. Seventy years couldn’t make her niece’s loss hurt any less.
The book feels heavier in Stella’s bag.
Verna leans back, wiping her eyes, and pulls something out of her pocket, a large black rectangle. She fiddles with it, only glancing up at Stella as she goes. Finally, she says, “What that town says Sarah is, is not who she was.” And she hands Stella the box.
On the surface—the screen, Stella discovers as she takes it—is a shot of a window in the Bellows house—long before it was run down and decaying. Behind the window, the sky is blank and pale gray, and that’s about all Stella can see. Nothing to do with Sarah.
“I don’t—”
“Hit play.”
Stella does, a little blue right-pointing triangle at the bottom of the screen, and watches the video play out before her eyes.
Verna’s face comes into frame, smiling, with bright eyes and a face clear of exhaustion.
“It snowed last night,” she whispers. “Sarah hasn’t seen snow in years.” She turns the camera around to face out the window, revealing a landscape covered in a fresh layer of snow. The property surrounding the Bellows house is nothing like it is now, overgrown and running rampant with brush and ivy. It’s wide opened, clear, and filled every which way with snow.
Then the camera turns again, this time to a dark wood bed with a thick, dark golden comforter, underneath which Stella can see someone sleeping. She can’t see the person’s—Sarah’s—face, only a lock of…white hair?
Verna’s arm appears and gently shakes the sleeping feature. “Sarah,” she whispers. “Hey, Sarah, wake up.”
Sarah groans and curls tighter. “’M too t’red, Aun’ Verna,” she mutters.
None of the group can hold back a short gasp of surprise. Sarah Bellows, the local myth and boogieman, has a voice. It’s low and raspy with sleep, but sweet. Nothing like someone who would hurt children. But then, what is a child murderer supposed to sound like?
“I know, honey,” Verna says. “But come on, come look at this. It snowed last night.”
This time, instead of burrowing deeper, Sarah Bellows rolls over. “It wha?” And before she can say more, Stella has to pause the video. Sarah Bellows has a face. For the first time ever, someone in Mill Valley, outside the walls of the Bellows house, sees Sarah’s face.
Sarah is tiny, first and foremost, hardly taller than Stella herself, she thinks, and with a messy head of white hair. Her skin is pale and tinged with pink around her cheeks and her nose—the house must be cold, given the way she’s snuggled into the blankets. Even with a sleepy frown on her face, Stella can see the color of her eyes: pale blue.
“Albino,” Stella whispers. “Sarah was albino.” She looks up as Verna nods, wiping away tears.
“That’s why they locked her away,” Verna says softly. “Because she was different.”
Stella looks away from Verna, into the sleep face of Sarah Bellows. Everything she thought she knew about the myth, about Sarah, is unraveling. Sarah was locked away because she had albinism. Verna was alive and well and mourning the girl the town said was a monster.
How much of the legend is true?
She lets the video play.
“It snowed,” video-Verna says. “Here, come on, come look.”
Sarah grumbles and rolls back over, pushing her face into the pillow. Then, after a moment, she sighs and throws the blankets off and rolls back over, then gets out of bed and goes to hug her aunt. The camera turns to show Sarah tucking her head under Verna’s chin and closing her eyes with a sigh of contentment. “Can I go back to sleep after?” she asks.
Verna kisses her niece’s forehead. “Course you can, sweetheart. Can I show you this first?”
“Sure, Aunt Verna,” Sarah says, but she snuggles closer to Verna, having no intention of letting go any time soon, and Verna welcomes it.
Stella pauses the video again, staring at the image of Sarah with her head tucked into Verna’s shoulder and Verna hugging her with one arm. She’d always known Verna had loved Sarah, that was always part of the myth. But the part no one ever mentioned, or considered, was how much Sarah loved her aunt in return.
Sarah never killed Verna. Sarah was never capable of killing Verna. Whatever happened that night in the Bellows house…it was something else entirely.
She plays it again.
Verna guides Sarah to the window, urging her gently, “Go on, take a look,” all while Sarah looks at her with a questioning smile on her face. She looks so young, Sarah, not much older than Stella in this video, maybe a couple years younger.
The camera stays trained on Sarah, as she steps a little closer to the window and finally looks out. The smile on her face fades to a gasp as she look out over the snowy landscape. For a moment, she says nothing, standing at the window staring
“Aunt Verna,” she whispers, “it’s beautiful.” She turns from the window and looks at Verna with something else in her eyes; Stella can almost see the gears turning in her head. She reaches up and curls a strand of white hair around her finger.
“It sure is,” Verna agrees, and Sarah smiles. She turns back to the window, hair still curled around her finger, and and rests her free hand on the glass.
“Wanna go play in it?”
Sarah turns from the window and blinks. “What?”
“Play in it,” Verna repeats. “I took my kids out in the snow all the time when they were your age—” And Stella realizes then that the copper-haired woman at the door must have been Verna’s daughter— “I can teach you how to make snowballs. We can bean Delanie in the face.”
Sarah laughs. “You can bean Delanie in the face. I’m happy to watch.”
A moment passes where they say nothing. Stella can’t see the look on Verna’s face, but Sarah is staring at her, smiling still, and her eyes are bright. Finally she concedes and says, “I’ll make more.”
And Verna cackles and pats her on the shoulder. “That’s the spirit!” She pats Sarah again, turning away from the window. “Come on, let’s get ready.”
The video ends there. Stella hands the phone back to Verna.