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The sound of the waves crashing against the sand was the first sign that something was wrong; Cobbet’s Break was nowhere near the sea. Lydia blinked her eyes a few times, letting them adjust to her awakened state.
It was then she realized that her bed was too soft, the windows on either side of it too large, the mahogany walls, the red and gold curtains-.
This was her room, her room back at Manderley.
Was she dreaming? Another nightmare perhaps. At least this time she had figured it out before the worst could happen.
A hand gently brushed against Lydia’s cheek, and when she looked up, she saw that familiar pale face, those chilling gray eyes with its mass of dark hair staring down at her. She hadn’t even bothered to hide in the shadows this time, and she was even smiling, almost like how Danny would smile whenever she held Rudolph tightly in her arms.
When did Rebecca ever smile like that?
It was far from unexpected for Rebecca to appear to her in her nightmares, just as she did in Lydia’s waking hours. What was unexpected was this show of tenderness from her. Lydia’s first thought was that she was being lulled into a false sense of security. She would not let her guard down this time. She wouldn’t let herself be hurt again. She wasn’t that frightened little girl anymore.
Until she was.
“I thought you’d never come to me.” Rebecca sounded inexplicably glad, and that smile — so unlike the cold ones Lydia was used to — only seemed to grow.
What the fuck was going on? Whatever it was, Lydia just knew it was a trap. She wouldn’t stand for it. Rebecca was dead, she reminded herself; she couldn’t actually hurt her outside of her own mind.
“You thought I’d-…” Lydia shot up from the bed, trying to make herself look more confident than she felt.
Then, Rebecca grabbed hold of her hand. Lydia waited for her to pull her closer and slap her, only to receive a light squeeze instead. The woman who had tormented her all her life looked almost afraid that she would disappear. “You have no idea how long I’ve waited for you, my darling. You look just like me, and you have Max’s eyes, his nose.”
This was absolute insanity. Rebecca had never called her darling unless it was to mock her. What’s more was that she was acting like she had never laid a hand on her. So unlike her, Lydia thought. Usually Rebecca only put on that sort of act in front of strangers, friends, relations, anyone except Lydia, Danny, and Maxim.
How dare she!
“And this is news to you? You don’t get to come here and pretend you don't know who I am, that you didn’t make my life a living hell!” Lydia had never in a million years imagined that she would speak in such a way to Rebecca. Before she died, even the slightest contradiction would’ve earned her a beating, a day or two spent locked in her room. She had learned from an early age never to speak out of turn in front of Rebecca.
“I don’t do this for my own amusement, Lydia. Why must you constantly disappoint me? You must be molded into a proper lady; one worthy of the fortune you stand to inherit.”
That speech had been repeated to her so many times. She vividly recalled the first time she had heard it; the very first time Rebecca had hit her. She had been five years old at the time, and she’d gotten her dress dirty, having fallen right into a puddle of mud while playing out in the rose garden with Rudolph. When asked why she would ever be so careless with her clothes, she had said that she hadn’t meant to be and it was only a little stain. Rebecca hadn’t liked that answer.
It seemed that Rebecca didn’t like her answer now either, but instead of getting angry, she just looked confused. She looked…regretful, hurt. “I know I’ve done terrible things, I know I’ve caused Danny and your father so much pain, but you…a living hell? I don’t understand.”
God damn it, why was Rebecca giving her that look? It almost made Lydia believe what she was saying. Almost. She was still angry, livid, scared. Scared. Was this where the real nightmare would begin? If Lydia were to cry out how fucking awful a person she thought Rebecca was, how she deserved nothing but the hottest seat in hell for the abuse she’d forced her to suffer for years, would Rebecca drop the act?
She didn’t want to take that chance, so she backed away and stared at the floor, memorizing the floral pattern on the gray-blue carpet she was standing on. Deep breaths, in and out. Ignore the trembling in her body. Maybe if she concentrated hard enough, she could wake from this nightmare and she’d be back in her room at Cobbet’s, snuggled against Rudolph.
Rebecca slowly lifted her chin, brushing a strand of hair out of her face. “Why are you so afraid of me, Lydia?” The question was not mocking, not one bit, and that wounded expression still adorned Rebecca’s features. She looked like a deer caught in headlights, and it made Lydia further reconsider meeting her late mother with equal hostility that had she had been shown all her life.
Instead, she rolled up the sleeves of her nightdress, revealing the scars that adorned her arms. Some self inflicted from her self destructive habit of scratching, but most given to her by Rebecca. She then lifted the hem, revealing more scars on her legs. Lydia wanted to say something, anything; she wanted to tell Rebecca that this was what she’d been reduced to and she would never forgive her — or herself — for it. She said nothing though, unable to find the right words.
Rebecca gently traced the scars on her arms with her fingers. “Darling, who did this to you? I’ll kill them.” There was the anger that Lydia knew all too well. It was almost relieving.
Or at least it would’ve been had Rebecca not been the one who did it. Was she playing dumb? Did she seriously believe that this would get her anywhere? Lydia’s face darkened as she uttered “You.”
She could clearly see Rebecca’s jaw drop, her face going pale. She seemed bewildered by her own cruelty, maybe she had truly forgotten. Or maybe this really wasn’t the Rebecca she knew. Maybe this Rebecca had come from an alternate reality of Lydia’s own making? Oh, she had truly gone off her head now.
One thing was certain, she couldn’t let Ileana or Danny, or even Rudolph, know of this when she woke up. The weight of her past was still suffocating her, though things were improving. They were supposed to be, anyway.
“I-I did this?” Rebecca stuttered. She never stuttered. She had always told Lydia that a lady must speak clearly, never falter lest she appear stupid and undignified.
All Lydia could do was nod. Then came Rebecca’s tears. Rebecca never, ever, cried. Maybe she really was from an alternate reality. Her long and slender arms wrapped around Lydia, holding her close in a way that she had lost hope of ever being held by her mother.
Her mother. Lydia hadn’t called her that in six years.
“Oh god. My sweet girl…” Rebecca began whispering tearful apologies in her ear, rubbing her back in slow circular motions. “What have I done?”
Lydia was not supposed to cry, not in front of her. Never in front of her. But that uncharacteristically remorseful question broke all of her resolve. “It never stopped. Even after you died, y-you still come to hurt me, h-haunt me.”
Her words caused Rebecca to hold her tighter, and Lydia could see that confusion return to her face as soon as the word died left her lips. “After I died? Lydia, I never died,” In any other of her hallucinations, that statement would’ve been accompanied by a wicked laugh, a harsh reminder that the haunting would never stop; but now, Rebecca spoke as though she didn’t understand, as if she truly believed herself to be alive.
“No,” Lydia said, “you died seven years ago and this isn’t real. You aren’t…you’re never…this isn’t…Manderley burned down months ago.”
She didn’t know what compelled her to do so, but she relayed the entirety of the last seven years to this strange, loving, regretful version of her mother. Her murder, the murder that Maxim committed, the gunshot Lydia had heard; the one she forced herself to forget she had heard for six years. Maxim’s transformation into the distant, cold, neglectful, cruel man he had become; his abandonment of her, of Manderley. Rudolph, Danny’s beloved son conceived through a vile and unjust act, who had grown up at her side and been her friend in an otherwise bleak and empty household, who was nearly as battered by the world as she was. Ileana, the twins; they had been kept from her and she from them, but still they loved her. The shipwreck, the trial, the fire, Danny’s near death, Maxim’s execution.
All of it. Every sordid detail. Everything that made her into the broken fucked up little thing she tried to tell herself she no longer was.
Lips pressed against her arms. A hand running through her hair. Rebecca was kissing her scars. Then she stopped, taking Lydia’s face in her hands. “My poor sweet girl,” she sighed sadly, though that affectionate smile returned only a moment later. “What if I told you that there’s a world where Manderley still stands? A world where you’ve never been, never will be, hurt?”
Lydia laughed halfheartedly, knowing that such a world could only exist in her dreams, in her hallucinations. She wasn’t meant for such a place, even if Ileana and Danny; and now the new Rebecca, told her the opposite.
“You laugh now, darling, but it’s true. I come from that very world.” Rebecca took Lydia’s hand again, kissing the top of her head. “I told you before, we’ve waited so long for you.”
We. It was ‘we’ now. Who was ‘we?’
Rebecca apparently sensed Lydia’s confusion, quickly clarifying “Danny, your father, and I.”
This was the second time Rebecca — the one from her alternate reality — had mentioned Maxim, and it occurred to Lydia that neither time had been hateful, filled with the venom she — the Rebecca from the real world — usually spoke of him with. “Maxim? But…you hate each other,” Lydia pointed out.
It was Rebecca’s turn to laugh now. “No, not really. We certainly don’t love each other — he’s a horrible man, I'm even worse — but hate is a strong word.” Her mother didn’t even acknowledge the fact that she had called her father by his name. She knew all that had happened, she understood now.
Lydia didn’t know why the image of Rebecca and Maxim not hating each other in another life, a Rebecca who acknowledged how awful she was, seemed to be the thing that was almost too much for her to believe. At least, it should’ve been, but she was so focused on the fact that this Rebecca actually seemed to love her that she allowed herself to suspend her disbelief.
Until this world the new Rebecca spoke of turned bad as things usually do.
No, she couldn’t think that way. Ileana and Danny had been trying their damndest to convince her that she was allowed to be happy, that things would get better. She reminded herself once more that they were getting better. She would allow herself this one dream, and damn her own mind for making it so hard to tell herself that it didn’t make her fucked up.
“I know it’s hard to believe. I know I’m not perfect, but perhaps someday I’ll take you there with me. You could be free from pain, from anyone who dared hurt you,” Rebecca’s offer was just so tempting, and Lydia felt herself instinctively resting her head on her chest. It felt so nice, so warm, inviting.
The scars on her body disappeared before her eyes, and she watched it happen in complete awe. “They’re…they’re gone,” she smiled.
Rebecca looked down at her arms as well, smiling back. “They’ll never return,” she declared with a firm conviction. “And I swear to you, those horrible cunts will be dealt with.”
How one could deal with two people who were already six feet underground was beyond Lydia’s comprehension, but the sentiment was appreciated nonetheless.
The ground began to shake around them, making a loud rumbling sound, and Rebecca quickly grabbed hold of her once more so that she was safe in her grasp. “There’s not much time, darling. I have to go,” she said hurriedly.
For once in her life, Lydia didn’t want Rebecca to go, though she knew better than to ask her to stay. “You will come back, won’t you?” she asked, praying that the answer was yes.
The shaking grew more intense with each moment, to the point where the rumbling was nearly deafening. Lydia couldn’t hear what Rebecca’s response was, but from the way she held her, kissed her head again, she could tell that her mother would come back for her. She never wanted to let go, she had to let this embrace last. Let it linger, so she would always remember it.
What was it that Ileana had said about bottling up memories?
The rumbling stopped as the floor split open in two, revealing an abyss below. They were floating above it. Rebecca caressed Lydia’s face, a single tear running down her cheek. “I hope you’ll always remember that I love you,” she whispered into her ear. “One day, my darling, one day you’ll come home.”
Without warning, Rebecca slowly pulled away, falling down down down. No, this wasn’t happening. No. No. No. God please, no. “Mother?!” Lydia’s anguished cry resounded through the room, and then her surroundings began to fade.
Fade away. Nothing. Nothing left. And then, with a jolt she had returned to Cobbet’s Break. It really had been just a dream. Rudolph must have woken up before her; his side of the bed was empty.
If only it had been real, if only this Rebecca had been the one she’d known all along. It made her curious about what Rudolph, Danny, Ileana, and even Maxim would have been like in that alternate reality. Maybe she wouldn’t find out, but god she hoped she would.
Last night Lydia dreamt of Manderley. This morning when she looked in the mirror, she wasn’t repulsed by her resemblance to Rebecca, and her scars had started to fade.