Page 41 of An Invocation of Monsters

There was a hard lump in my throat as I looked over the blurry, dim photos of the Void, in contrast to the bright, technicolor photos of our world. All of them were smeared, but I could make out the vague hint of a swirling sky, glowing water.

One of them was of the lake, I could tell that much. But there was a smoky darkness covering half the picture.

And in one picture, my mother returned. There was a light of triumph in her eyes. She posed in the kind of white dresses Willow wore, her hands cradling her still mostly-flat stomach.

My own stomach dropped as I turned the pages, seeing the documentation of Gillian’s pregnancy.

Of me.

I flipped through the pregnancy pictures, noting that as they progressed, the light died in my mother’s eyes. Her gaze grew harder.

But where the hell was my father?

I remembered what Joseph had said about Benjamin: he hadn’t been cut out for the Wendigo Society. Had they brought him here? Was he simply an outsider, never included in any of the pictures?

I’d never been close to my own father. He was heavily involved in his work, and preferred to spend his time at home manicuring the lawn rather than playing with his own child.

Even when he’d died I’d hardly shed a tear; I had only been mourning the ubiquitous masculine presence in our house, not the person.

But… there. Finally a picture with him in it.

He stood with Joseph and Mary, a dark figure in the background. In his slacks and polo, he looked almost ludicrous next to their bright colors, spangled jewelry, and layered scarves.

And he looked obscenely uncomfortable, his mouth turned down at the corners, his posture stiff.

Why had my mother ever married him?

The photos became more sparse after that, culminating in photos I’d seen before in our own home: Gillian and Benjamin, her in white, him in a tailored suit, cutting a wedding cake. Her wedding dress had an empire waistline, hiding her burgeoning belly.

By this point, the light in my mother’s eyes was gone. Her face was like a mask, any smiles pasted on.

There were two more pictures of the Void, just as blurred as the previous ones. If anything, the quality was even worse than the first slew of images. I was only guessing that it was the Void due to the smeared colors.

And then a photo of a baby with a tiny shock of crimson hair, wrapped in a blanket.

I touched the photo of myself, then pulled it out and flipped it over.

The back simply read, Elle.

No messages of love. No other announcement of my birth. Just my name.

The photos stopped after that.

I had a hard lump in my throat, which I forcefully swallowed, dropping the album to stare up at the ceiling.

Maybe I was overreacting, or reading into things that weren’t there.

But if I had to guess, based on the album, my coming into the world was not a joy for my mother.

When she had been young, there had been light in her eyes. The initial pictures of the Void, her and Tasha posing… she’d been happy. Excited.

But at some point during her pregnancy with me, her light had died.

I had always loved her, especially with such an absent father. But now I thought about her selfishness, the vanity, the anger she’d shown towards me and Juno as children… and I wondered if she had ever loved me in return at all.

“Stop being such a sap,” I told myself. I was getting all worked up for no reason. This was just a montage of small slices of Gillian’s life, not a declaration that I’d been nothing but a burden to her.

There was plenty missing from between these pages.

---