Although I had not killed them, it felt as though I had.
The corpses piled up as I pondered Mother’s spree on my conscience.
Heavy. Entirely too heavy.
As I shook, bile curled inside my stomach and threatened to spill. I hadn’t eaten anything, leaving tears clinging to the corners of my eyes as I dry heaved. Every empty hurl was the sharp point of a knife dragging and twisting through my insides.
“Tell me you didn’t kill all these people,” I said through clenched teeth. “Tell me it isn’t true.”
A menacing laugh reverberated in my skull from the other side of the veil.
At that moment, a gust of wind blew into my face, fanning the journal pages with an invisible rage-filled hand.
I watched the years descend before my eyes—the years Mother lived while I’d suffered the same repeated death for over a century. And if Mother had her way, perhaps an eternity.
She lived on, and she used me to do it.
The room spun when I tossed the journal to the side. She didn’t do this for me. She did this for herself. No one else had to die because of me. Enough blood has already been spilled. It never had to be this way.
Mother’s laugh turned manic. A celebratory howl in my ears.
The cold winds rushed past my face despite the sealed windows.
Anger unloaded inside me. “Why are you still here? What do you want?”
The journal opened again from a foot away, its pages flipping quickly.
It stopped on another journal entry.
I reached forward and slid the journal closer.
It was a spell to bring her back from the other side.
She’d lured me here so I could find her journal to bring her back.
“No,” I shook my head.Take a look at what it has already made you into.
Then the room halted. A standstill.
But this thing hadn’t left. I knew because there was a presence in the air.
I could still feel it in this very room.
The journal at my side only fed the raging fire inside me.
Once I gained the ounce of strength I could, I used the wall to help me to my feet and staggered for the exit. The floor bowed and bent beneath me. I entrusted the railing to carry me out of the watch room and down the spiraling staircase with the journal clutched to my side.
I loathed the journal. I wanted nothing to do with it any longer.
Upon entering the main living area, the room curtsied and waltzed before I could reach the fireplace. Then the floor dissolved, my steps falling into nothing, and I collapsed to the ground. The journal was no longer in my hand but had slid across the floor under the couch.
Mother released more laughter laced with insanity.
The brand of laughter that echoed, no matter the passing of time.
Fire erupted on the hearth, igniting the entire room before cold darkness swallowed the flames. A lightning bolt struck outside the window, and electric blue speared across the mirror resting on the mantle. Mother’s silhouette appeared inside it.
With long blonde hair and a slim ghastly face, she looked as I remembered, but with grim outlining the shape of her eyes. She dragged her finger across the glass from the other side of the mirror with a chanted spell.
