Page 53 of Cardinal House

He thinks it’s good for me to see if anything jogs my memory by seeing it, a house, he confessed, he had also driven by earlier today. I didn’t ask why, but he told me anyway.

To protect you, Little Moon.

That was enough for me.

There are tall street lamps dotted along both sides of the road we come to a stop on, and Wolf parks the car a little way down from the house, in a spot that isn’t under any light.

We sit quietly for some time, just us in the gloom. It's late now, early morning hours, but I’m not even a little bit tired.

“Do you recognise anything, Little Moon?” Wolf breaks the silence with his deep gravel, low tones, my right hand in his left, our fingers laced together.

Without words, I lift my left hand slowly, pointing at the large white house of horrors a little way up on the opposite side of the street. I don’t know what happened to me inside that house, but somehow, deep inside, I know it wasn’t good. Evidently, someone or something inside that large mansion killed me. It could have been something else. A stranger attacking me when I went out for a walk, perhaps. But deep down in the pit of my stomach, I know it was this house.

“Do you remember anything else?” he asks me a few more silent minutes later.

“No,” I reply quietly.

“Luna?”

“Yes, Wolf?”

“The rabbit,” he starts, his head turning towards me, his eyes burning into the side of my face, I keep my own gaze on the house. “Did you kill it to frighten Haisley?” he asks me so simply, emotionless, I almost feel like smiling.

Blinking, without turning my head in his direction, I glance at him from the corner of my eye, “No.”

“Did she do something to upset you?” he asks next, my focus back on the house, the curtains drawn, no light spilling out from inside.

“No,” I say, but I frown, and this time it shows.

“Are you sure?”

I think of the frothing water and the rainbow pinwheel and the blue eyes.

“I killed the rabbit because it was sick.” The words drift out of me almost silently, my frown pulling at the healing skin of my head, making me want to wince.

“Luna-”

“There’s a man,” I gasp an inhale, squeezing Wolf’s hand as a man exits the house.

He steps out onto the front porch, dressed in all black, and I have an urge, like a compulsion, to drop my gaze, to look away. Instead, I can hardly even blink. My throat gets tight, my mouth dry, tongue thick and heavy in my mouth. It feels as though I’ve licked sandpaper and shaved off all of my tastebuds.

“Do you know him?” Wolf is quieter now, watching the man like a predator readying to pounce.

No. That’s what comes to mind first, but my gaze drifts to the spark of a lighter, his fingers pinching a cigarette between his lips, and even though we’re far enough away that I can’t see any details, my skin crawls as though it can feel his phantom hands holding my naked body down.

“Yes.” I answer, taking in a nice slow breath.

“Did he hurt you, baby girl?” It’s a loaded question.

I can hear the violence in the strain of his voice.

Can feel it thrumming through the interior of the shadowed car we sit in.

Taste it on my tongue, blood, as we sit here in the quiet.

A ghoul and her monster.

‘The only monster here is me, Luna. And I’m yours.’

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