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Sara
By: Chantal Noordeloos
Not often did a trial horrify Judge Marie St Jacques, but the case of Fleur Bellecourt caused her flesh to hurt. Plainly the woman had murdered her eldest daughter, Sara. The photograph of the victim portrayed a pretty seven year old girl with big grey eyes, black curls and bleached death. Bellecourt even admitted to the murder, but she pleaded with the court and told them she murdered her child to protect her three other children.
Marie looked over at the three fearful faces staring at their mother with the same grey eyes as the girl in the picture. She assumed the fearful faces were meant for their mother, who in Marie’s eyes was clearly insane. Marie sentenced the woman to be committed to a psychiatric hospital in Ontario.
The look in Fleur Bellecourt’s eyes touched her, frightened her. “Don’t take me away from my children,” the woman pleaded. “If you take me away from them, I can’t protect them from Sara.”
Marie looked at the woman with her pale skin, dishevelled black hair and large grey eyes, and she said: “I am protecting your children. I am protecting them from you, so that you can’t drown them in the bath like you did with your eldest.”
The finality in Marie’s words set the frail looking woman into a rage. She cleared the table at which she sat and, before the guards could even react, Marie climbed over the judge’s bench and clawed her fingernails into the temples and cheeks of Marie.
Bellecourt’s face shocked Marie. The woman looked like a wild witch and her gashing was drawing blood. “May she visit you next,” she spat and Marie flinched as drops of saliva struck her face. “La mort vous attend.” Death awaits you. Court deputies pried the small but strong woman from Marie, and that was the last time Marie saw Fleur Bellecourt.
Three weeks later Bellecourt and her children were dead. Doctors could not diagnose the cause of Bellecourt’s death, but the frozen expression on her face testified to terror. The children were found in their separate foster homes, torn to little pieces, the walls decorated with their blood like paint. Marie had seen the pictures and could not believe any human could do this to a child. The report said that something had ripped the jaw clean off the three year old girl. The skull of the nine year old boy was crushed; his brains spilling out of his ears. The thought of the report kept Marie up at night. In her mind’s eye she kept seeing the desperate face of Fleur Bellecourt.
After Fleur’s death, Marie became paranoid. As if someone was watching her. There were moments Marie thought she saw something move in the peripheral of her vision. Her husband told her she was just tired, an understandable result of her emotional involvement in the Bellecourt case. One night in early April when Marie went to bed after having spent a long time working on a new case she was judging, she noticed her husband was not in bed. Perhaps he was in the bathroom, she thought, as she crawled under the cool duvet. She turned on her nightlight and lay down. The mural upon the ceiling commanded a scream.
“La mort vous attend,” scripted in blood; a frame made of human parts. A body had exploded. In between the blood spatter she saw fingers, hands, feet, legs, intestines, arms . . . all in pieces. The worst was the top half of a head cut off half way through the nose, and was now attached to the ceiling as if gravity refused to let it fall. Crying and screaming Marie tried to get up, she called for her husband, but there was no
response. A hand fell off the ceiling. It fell right next to her on the bed with a soft thud, the only remaining finger, the ring finger... She couldn’t help but stare at it and realised the hand still bore a ring; her husband’s wedding ring. Marie screamed again. Something moved on the ceiling: a little girl in a pretty white dress crawling like a spider. She turned, her large grey eyes sparkling, and her smile . . . Marie screamed for the final time.
Bio:
Chantal Noordeloos is a writer from the Netherlands who graduated from the Norwich School of Art and Design (UK) with a major in creative writing in 1999. Apart from work, motherhood and a busy social life that also includes -playing in and organising of- regular LARP events, she has been writing stories and honing her writing skills through workshops, seminars and a lot of writing. During 2012 she decided it was time to start her actual writing career and to have her work published. She now writes stories for various English language magazines and anthologies and works on her debut novel. Chantal lives in The Hague with her family.
