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Long, black hair spills over the top of the figure’s head, concealing the face, while it stalks like a spider down the wall to the floor. Crystals of fear branch beneath my ribs, hardening over my lungs. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t so much as move a muscle right now. My limbs are so locked in place, it’s a wonder I can still manage a breath.

Once it reaches the floor, its bent form straightens upright, and the lithe silhouette takes the shape of a woman. She glides past me, her long white dress trailing behind her. The air locks up in my throat, my muscles painfully clenching with tension.

“Calm down, child.” The whispery lilt of her voice carries over the dark room like a cold rush of air. “You look like you’re about to have a stroke.”

“Wh--who are you?”

It’s not until she turns around and seats herself in the rocking chair across from me that I have any suspicions of who it might be. “Take a guess.”

Pale, milky skin. Long chestnut hair, with subtle curls that cascade over her shoulder. Aside from the creepy black eyes, she might as well be my twin—my dark, gothic twin. “Mother?”

“Do you remember me?”

Sometimes, I think I do. I remember feelings, mostly. Like when the sun shines through an open window, it reminds me of napping on plush pillows with soft singing, in what I’m guessing was my mother’s voice, seeing as my father never sang to me. Not trusting that anything is true, I don’t bother to answer her.

“I remember the moment you were born. Hours of excruciating labor, all through the night. The pain was unbearable at times, but then you arrived, and it was like the darkness parted for the light. Dawn sat on the horizon outside my window of that small, cramped room. While I held you in my arms, I watched the sun rise for a new day. Heavenly. Your name came to me in that exact instant.” Eyes closed, she cradles her arms as if a baby lies in them. “I dreamed I held you in my arms,” she sings. “A mother never forgets her child.”

“Why did you leave us? Why did you leave my father and me?”

“Is that what you think I did?” Tears glisten in her black doll eyes. On her hand is an inked symbol that looks like a triangle within a circle. On closer inspection, the more prominent base line extends beyond the two sides, and seems to give the shape of an animal. A fox, or a goat, maybe. “As above, so below,” she whispers.

The words are familiar to me. I swear I’ve heard them before, but I can’t remember who spoke them. Or when.

“You need to return home, little one. Back home to your birthplace.”

“There’s nothing for me there now.”

“Everything is there. If you want to know the truth, you have to go back.”

“I can’t. Russ says it’s too dangerous to go back.”

“It is. So many terrible things wait for you there.”

“What kinds of things?”

Instead of answering, she tips her head, eyes drawn toward my neck. “He left you the key, didn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“It will unlock everything you wanted to know.”

“And if I don’t want to know?”

“I’m your mother, Céleste. You can’t fool me. But promise me one thing.”

“What?”

The smile on her face fades for the sobering expression that stares back at me in her wide black eyes. “Don’t look away. No matter what you see. What you feel.”

“And if it’s too painful?”

“Pain is only the beginning.”

Not a breath later, her face morphs, twisting to a frightening distortion as a gut-wrenching scream flies past mutilated lips.

She lurches from the rocking chair, scrambling toward me on all fours.

Eyes squeezed shut, I brace for the attack.