The Devil's Keeper - Blackhill

Chapter 16 - Veritas Vos Liberabit

[August, 1990 – Chicago]

Maria liked to play pretend, like kids tended to do when they were bored. Unlike others, she was used to doing so most of the time. She never had many toys to play with and, aside from a game she'd learnt from a lady she met once, she didn't know many games at all. When she couldn't get the buttons and sewing supplies, she sat as quietly as she could and closed her eyes, imagining how her life could have been, in a perfect world.

First and foremost, her mother would be alive and well. Her family would be happy and her father would have drank a lot less than he did. About a year ago, he'd started drinking more and sometimes he would get home so wasted he could barely make it to the couch. It could happen, in those moments he was addled, that he would get excessively mad at her for something silly or deemed unimportant by Maria herself. A dozen of times, he'd grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her while he reprimanded her for her actions. A few times, he'd raised a hand against her. Maria could still feel her cheek burning with pain if she thought too hard about it.

She tried not to think about that at all, but it wasn't easy. Something would always remind her.

She started spending a lot of time at her grandmother's house, where her grandmother would play and talk to her. She would tell Maria stories about her mom, Inhumans, super powers, and even about a lady in a portrait. Her father often forgot to pick her up in the evening if he was too drunk, or when he did remember and brought her back to sleep in her own bed, he would barely acknowledge her. It was still better than when he came home and she was there. He was never happy when she was in his way, but it inevitably happened eventually, more often than Maria would have liked.

Her grandma loved her and Maria loved her back, but her grandma had a job and her father was still - legally at least - her father. So she endured.

One night he was drunk and angry, more so than Maria had ever saw him before. When he was done with her, Maria's lip was bruised and her cheek scratched. She'd fled to her room and cried her heart out silently so he wouldn't hear her and punish her further.

The next day, her grandmother put ice on her lip and kissed her scratch better. Maria was too young to understand why her grandmother couldn't just bring her to the police. She didn't understand that her father was her legal guardian and if he wasn't arrested, he would never let her see Maria again. Even if they reported him and he was arrested, there was no guarantee that a court would let her grandma be Maria's legal guardian. But they'd never had evidence before. He'd never left her more than a tiny bruise that he could justify by a kid falling down. This was different. She was sporting the print of his fingers on her face.

"Wait here, love. I'll take my purse and be right back."

Her grandma was gone for less than a minute, it couldn't have been longer than that. But, even if she didn't know it yet, that was the one minute in Maria's life that changed everything. It was the most important minute in the world.

Maria got up from the bed she'd been sitting on when her grandmother was disinfecting her scratch and walked toward the open drawer of the nightstand. She immediately recognized the box. It was the one containing the album with all of her mother's pictures. She hadn't seen them in a while so she carefully took the box out of the drawer and put it on the bed, sitting beside it and taking the lid off.

The album was there, but something beside it captured her attention. There was something carefully wrapped in paper, but curiosity got the best of her and she unwrapped it quickly, wondering why her grandma would keep something like that in that box only to have it wrapped so tight it couldn't be seen. The paper came off easily and revealed a strangely shaped crystal, black as night.