The light soon went out. She stepped forward, then stopped, suddenly worried about what lay ahead. She wanted to be off this property. Let whatever secrets existed stay hidden, but what if the answer was there? She hesitated, her attention focused on the window. The question of what if lingered. What if Jesse had been right after all? She shouldn’t risk it but she needed to know. Her desire to know overpowered everything else. She would not leave without finding out the truth, without knowing once and for all what was in the house.

The scream that came next was unmistakable. A wailing echo. She picked up her pace, running up the path to the Woodsmans house.

Then she heard the scream again.

It took the babies drowning for the rest to say, Enough.

It took the babies drowning for the rest to say, Enough. They hadn’t been the first to go; many others had killed themselves, hoping for deliverance. Often it was the young girls newly come. Warned of the fate awaiting them, they took to the river rather than face the shame of what their futures held. Each time, those who’d stayed behind hoped that they had escaped, until their bloated bodies rose to the surface and they knew what had happened instead. Over the years, both men and women alike had disappeared into the river, but never had it been children, and never by those who’d borne them.

These mothers gave their children a baptism of death before deciding they would follow too. They let the water wash their spirits to their promised land, that’s what they’d forced themselves to believe, yet the others knew they lived in a world where the only promise was this life meant to break. They broke bread together in the morning and their spirits were broken by evening, hunkering down on the floor, cloistered together, their sweat-stunk bodies from the heat, hoping by night the air would cool but it never did, off to sleep for another day and another. Can see to can’t, morning to evening, every day until they could do no more.