Read Darkest Hour for Free Online Page A

were taken in. A week after you came, Tottie's father was run over by the hay wagon and had his chest crushed, and then we had the fire in the barn and lost the cows and horses. You're a curse," she fired. I shook my head, my tears hot and continuous now. She took a few steps into my room, her eyes fixed on me with such hate I cowered back in my bed and pulled the blanket up to my chin again.
    "And then when Eugenia was born, you had to go in and look at her. You had to be the first one, ahead of me, and what happened? Eugenia's been sick ever since. You cursed her too," she spat.
    "I did not!" I screamed back. Blaming me for my sister's illness was too much. Nothing was more. painful to me than watching Eugenia struggle to breathe, watching her tire quickly after a short walk, watching her struggle to play and do the things all young girls her age were doing. Nothing broke my heart more than seeing how she gazed out the windows of her room, longing to go running over the fields, laughing and chasing after birds or squirrels. I was there for her as much as I could be, entertaining her, making her laugh, doing the things for her that she couldn't do for herself, while Emily barely spoke to her or showed the slightest concern.

"Eugenia's not going to live long, but you are," Emily sneered. "And it's all your fault."
    "Stop it! Stop saying those things!" I screamed, but she neither faltered nor retreated an inch.
    "You shouldn't have told on me," she replied calmly, revealing that was the sole cause of her venom. "You shouldn't have turned Papa against me."
    "I didn't," I said, shaking my head. "I haven't seen Papa since I came home from school," I added, and sobbed harder. Emily stared at me in disgust for a few moments and then she smiled.
    "I pray," she said. "I pray every day that God will spare us the curse of Jonah. Someday, He will hear my prayers," she promised, looking up at the ceiling, her eyes closed, her arms at her side, her hands clenched in small fists, "and you will be tossed overboard and swallowed by a whale, just like Jonah in the Bible."
    She paused a moment, then lowered her head and laughed at me before pivoting quickly to exit my room and leave me shivering with fear instead of with fever.
    All that morning I thought about the things Emily had said and wondered if any of it could be true. Most of our servants, especially Louella and Henry, believed in good luck and bad luck. There were charms and there were signs of evil; there were specific things to do to avoid bad luck, too. I remembered Henry bawling out a man who, while waiting for something to do in the barn, stood there killing spiders.
    "You bringin' bad luck on all of us," Henry charged. He sent me in to Louella to fetch a fistful of salt. When I returned with it, he made the man turn around three times and cast the salt over his right shoulder. Even so, he said he didn't think it was enough because too many spiders were killed.
    If Louella dropped a knife in the kitchen, she would positively break out in tears because it means someone close was going to die. She would cross herself a dozen times and mutter all the prayers she could in a minute's time and hope the evil had been stopped.
    Henry could read the swoop of a bird or interpret the hoot of an owl and know whether someone was going to give birth to a dead baby or fall into an unexplained coma. To ward off the evil spirits, he nailed up old horse's shoes over as many doors as Papa would permit, and if a pig or cow gave birth to a deformed baby, he would spend a good part of the day shivering in anticipation of some greater disaster.
    Superstition, bad luck, curses, they were all part of the world in which we lived. Emily knew what my fears were when she told me with such hatred that I was bad luck for the whole family. Now that I knew for sure that my birth had meant the death of my real mother, I couldn't help but believe Emily was right. I only hoped Henry knew a way to counter any