River’s End

she knew the story about how they’d met when they were both pretending to be other people. They’d fallen in love and gotten married, and they’d had a baby girl.
    When Olivia missed her father, she could look in the big leather book at all the pictures of the wedding when her mother had been a princess in a long white dress that sparkled and her father had been the prince in his black suit. There was a big silver-and-white cake, and Aunt Jamie had worn a blue dress that made her look almost as pretty as Mama. Olivia imagined herself into the pictures. She would wear a pink dress and flowers in her hair, and she would hold her parents’ hands and smile. In the pictures, everyone smiled and was happy. Over that spring and summer, Olivia often looked at the big leather book. The night the monster came, Olivia heard the shouting in her sleep. It made her whimper and twist. Don’t hurt her, she thought. Don’t hurt my mama. Please, please, please, Daddy.
    She woke with a scream in her head, with the echo of it on the air. And wanted her mother.
    She climbed out of bed, her little feet silent on the carpet. Rubbing her eyes, she wandered down the hallway where the light burned low.
    But the room with its big blue bed and pretty white flowers was empty. Her mother’s scent was there, a comfort. All the magic bottles and pots stood on the vanity. Olivia amused herself for a little while by playing with them and pretending she was putting on the colors and smells the way her mother did.
    One day she’d be beautiful, too. Like Mama. Everyone said so. She sang to herself while she preened and posed in the tall mirror, giggling as she imagined herself wearing a long white dress, like a princess.
    She tired of that and, feeling sleepy again, shuffled out to find her mother. As she approached the stairs, she saw the lights were on downstairs. The front door was open, and the late-summer breeze fluttered her nightgown.
    She thought there might be company, and maybe there would be cake. Quiet as a mouse, she crept down the stairs, holding her fingers to her lips to stop a giggle. And heard the soaring music of her mother’s favorite, Sleeping Beauty. The living room spilled from the central hall, flowing out with high arched ceilings, oceans of glass that opened the room to the gardens her mother loved. There was a big fireplace of deep blue lapis and floors of sheer white marble. Flowers speared and spilled from crystal vases, and silver urns and lamps had shades the colors of precious jewels.
    But tonight, the vases were broken, shattered on the tiles with their elegant and exotic flowers trampled and dying. The glossy ivory walls were splattered with red, and tables the cheerful maid Rosa kept polished to a gleam were overturned. There was a terrible smell, one that seemed to paint the inside of Olivia’s throat with something vile and had her stomach rippling.
    The music crescendoed, a climactic sweep of sobbing strings.
    She saw glass winking on the floor like scattered diamonds and streaks of red smearing the white floor. Whimpering for her mother, she stepped in. And she saw. Behind the corner of the big sofa, her mother lay sprawled on her side, one hand flung out, fingers spread wide. Her warm blond hair was wet with blood. So much blood. The white robe she’d worn was red with it, and ripped to ribbons. She couldn’t scream, couldn’t scream. Her eyes rounded and bulged in her head, her heart bumped painfully against her ribs, and a trickle of urine slipped down her legs. But she couldn’t scream.
    Then the monster that crouched over her mother, the monster with hands red to the wrists, with wet red streaks over his face, over his clothes, looked up. His eyes were wild, shiny as the glass that sparkled on the floor.
    “Livvy,” her father said. “God, Livvy.”
    And as he stumbled to his feet, she saw the silver-and-red gleam of bloody scissors in his hand.
    Still she didn’t scream. But now she ran. The monster was real, the monster was coming, and she had to hide. She heard a long, wailing call, like the howl of a dying animal in the woods.
    She went straight to her closet, burrowed among the stuffed toys. There her mind hid as well. She stared blindly at the door, sucked quietly on her thumb and barely heard the monster as he howled and called and searched for her. Doors slammed like gunshots. The monster sobbed and screamed, crashing through the house as it called her name. A wild bull with blood on