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I barely notice the drip, drip, drip of the water from my hair landing on the hardwood floor, or the clumps of mud I’m tracking inside. Morris, our butler, or Agnes, our housekeeper, will shake their heads and say, “Mr. Rex, play indoors when it’s raining.”

It’s the creepy silence I notice first. I hear nothing other than the pitter-patter of the rain.

Goosebumps form on my arms, and the little brown frog jumps out of my hands.

“Hey! Come back here!” I chase after it but nearly trip and fall when I see it.

A pair of feet sticking out from the foot of the staircase.

I slowly inch forward.

Then the orange dress with the small penguins Mom loves because Dad got it for her last week for her birthday.

Then her pale arms, her neck, her face, her dark hair.

All twisted in weird angles.

“Mom!” I scream, and run as fast as my short legs can carry me.

Tears wet my face when I finally reach her, because I know something is wrong.

Very, very wrong.

I grab her shoulders and shake her. “Mom! Mommy! You okay?”

But all I see are blank eyes staring at the ceiling.

“Mommy!”

She doesn’t answer me.

And around her, red and blue marbles are scattered over the floor and the stairs.

My marbles.

I gasp as I bolt up, finding myself on the floor of the foyer, sweat dripping over my forehead.

Fuck. Again. Another blackout. Something sharp pokes my hand and I look down and choke out an exhale.

A knife. I’m holding a kitchen knife. Why the hell am I in the foyer with a kitchen knife?

I quickly stand, my hand trembling as I set the knife on the nearest table and stumble back into my bedroom.

Mindlessly, I reach for the bottle of Velowake on my nightstand, uncap it, and shove a few pills into my mouth.

I can’t let myself fall asleep. I can’t do this—the blackouts, the nightmares.

Reliving one of the worst days of my life night after night, remembering in stark clarity her dead eyes, her cold body, the blood pooling on the ground. The split second of elation when I held the frog morphing into utter terror.

And finally, seeing the marbles on the ground.Mymarbles. The ones I didn’t put away before I ran outside, notebook tossed aside, angry at the twins, wanting my petty revenge on them.

It’s macabre. It’s torture even the guards at Guantanamo Bay can’t come up with.

For almost thirty years, we thought she had slipped on my marbles and tumbled down the stairs, her neck snapping upon landing. It was the curse of the eldest son when he fell in love with his wife. The woman would die within one year of his confessing his love to her. After all, this had happened for generations.

My family never questioned it. Dad was racked with guilt because he fell in love with Mom, his arranged wife, years after they got married.

Then, a little over two years ago, Maxwell was a mess because he was falling in love with Belle, his wife from a similar arranged marriage. When strange things started happening to her, he spent every ounce of energy trying to defeat said curse. Ultimately, he unraveled everything and caught the culprit behind the generations of deaths.