The Tulip Field

I remembered that song. The song that used to lull me to sleep every night back when I was completely oblivious to what it meant. What it really meant. How twisted and awful, to sing such a thing to children I thought. Little did I know that it wasn't meant to be a lullaby. Oh no, far from it. It was meant to be a warning. Granted no one ever took it seriously; I never took it seriously. I only ever considered it on my fourteenth birthday.

That day was my last day of freedom, and I'll never forget it. It was late, around eleven o' clock, almost midnight. My black hair was in fine curls tied up with a red ribbon and I was wearing my new party dress that mother had bought for me the day before. The servants were cleaning up the kitchen from our small celebration and my parents were sound asleep in their beds. I was to stay up with one of my closest friends, Nickolas, until his parents had arrived to take him home. As was proper manners. He was the same rank as me, Duchess, and my age. Our parents had always wanted to keep us close, but I never really understood why. Whatever the reason I didn't care because he always made me laugh even when I was really depressed.

While we were sitting on the sofa playing some kind of guessing game, which I can never remember the name of, Nickolas starts talking about that lullaby. He asks me if I believed it and back then I would have said no. He kept asking me all these questions about it and saying he dared me to go to the field up on a hill a few blocks down from where I lived.
"Come on Jackie. If you don't believe it then why don't you go?" He said teasing me.
Nickolas was the only person in the world who called me Jackie. To everyone else, besides my parents, I was young Duchess Jacqueline Delue of England.

"Why? Because I do not wish to disobey my parents! That is why." I snapped at him.

He gave me a look.

"Since when do you have to speak proper around me? Gosh, I get enough of that crap from my tutor," he said leaning back on the sofa while putting his feet up on the coffee table.

Mother would have had a fit if she saw him then. I giggled and he flashed that prideful smile that made it seem like he succeeded in some big feat.

The light from the chandelier gleamed off his dark chestnut brown hair and his grey eyes shone with some kind of gleeful emotion that I hadn't seen before. Suddenly he sat back up and took my hand in his.

"Come on, you're always such a goodie-goodie. Live for once! If you go, I promise I'll get you something even better for your next birthday,"

I sat there and mulled it around in my brain for a little while until I finally agreed. The minute the word yes left my lips he was up and already had managed to pull me off the sofa all while running for the door. Very softly and quietly we closed the large double doors then began to sprint towards the field. When I say sprint I mean Nickolas dragging me up the hill by my wrist. Nickolas is the first to see the field and suddenly stops, giving me some time to catch my breathe.

When I gathered my thoughts I got an idea of how we look. My shoes were stained forever and squishy with mud, the dresses hemline was torn in a few spots and also stained, and my hair ribbon was blown away and was probably tumbling down the hill leaving my hair in a curly mane. Nickolas looked a little better than I did, his shoes getting the worst of it but his trousers were repairable. However, the number one thing that stuck out to me the most was the image we had that moment. We looked like a couple on the run.

I pushed my thoughts away and joined Nickolas by the side of the field. Already I knew something was wrong. He looked pale, his eyes seemed soulless, and he didn't say anything when I talked to him.
"Nickolas?" I ventured. "Nickolas."
Panic started to rise up in me and I was standing in front of him now, shaking his shoulders like it would help.
"Nickolas!" I shouted in his face but he didn't look at me or so much as blink.
Suddenly that song came to mind, the one that I hated so much.

Tulips red, tulips white, tulips yellow, and tulips bright.
They dance; they sway, and call to the
children of night.
When the moon is full and you see the first light; Mothers hide your children for
they will take flight.
She will not let them go and only when it’s too late, this the children will know.
Keep them safe and make them yield when they hear you say.
Stay away from the tulip field.

It was playing in my head over and over again and I didn't know why. Then I saw them, the tulips. All in different size and range of color and it was odd, they started to glow. My hands dropped from Nickolas' shoulders and I found myself facing the field. My limbs felt numb and useless and yet they moved, further and further into the tulips. No…no. I thought to myself trying to resist, but I couldn't. My legs moved on their own and slowly I was brought through the field. Splitting the tulips as I passed and not minding the little bugs that zipped through my hair. The very thought of those nasty creatures touching my hair made me want to cringe.

I'd been walking for what seems like a half-hour until I saw it. The old farm house that was said to have been here long before the Delue Manor was even built. The wood paneling was moldy and fragile looking. The windows murky with dust and dirt, some put out of their misery and shattered. There was a rusty windmill that had one of the wings hanging off by just a thread and it spun agonizingly slow with an annoying screeching noise.

She stood there like a ghost in the doorway. She was lanky, like me, but in a kind of emaciated, ghostly sort of way. Her boney finger pointed at me and then she smiled a strange smile, a fake smile. She made the motion of come here and my body obeyed. The closer I get to her the more I felt my mind become foggy and cluttered. I felt drunk.

When she grabbed my wrist I got goose bumps and the hair on my neck stood on end. I wanted to scream, I wanted to run, I wanted to wriggle free from her grasp and never return to that spot again. Little did I know that I would remain. She took me into the house then led me into a small, isolated room with a red tulip painted on the door. There was one rickety old chair placed in the middle of the room and she let me sit down. No, commanded me to sit down.
"Just wait here my pretty." She said in a voice that sounded like nails on a chalk board and sandpaper all wrapped into one.

She slinked out of the room and slowly closed the door that seemed to squeak like everything else in the house. When she closed it I was left in the dark. That whole night I just sat there. Weaving through my thoughts and trying to make sense of them. I only stopped when I ran over the memory of Nickolas. His deathly pale skin and those soulless grey eyes that would look at me with so much life and joy. He was gone. For the first time that night I had the one thing I could control in my body. My eyes stared straight ahead at the door with a blank expression as tears fell down my cheeks. I stayed like that and cried the whole night.