When I turned toward the bed, a red rose lay across the sheets, and beside it,a Joker card,and on it with thick red letters, it read,HA HA.
My pulse roared in my ears. I spun in circles, checking every corner, every shadow, my breathing sharp and fast. Then I dropped onto the bed and pulled the blanket over me, curling up like a child afraid of the monsters waiting under the bed.
“This isn’t real,” I whispered again and again. “This can’t be real.”
A year earlier
Rocco was impatient. He locked himself in the office for hours, refusing to come out. All he wanted was to know who else he could silence from the Circle, and how he could reach the Family.
For years, people around La Maddalena went missing. No bodies were ever found. The police left the cases open until they went cold. Among those people was my mother,Arianne Serra.
People always talked. They whispered about figures in red and black hoods, faces hidden behind animal masks, walking through the woods near La Maddalena. About the abandoned house that led all the way to the cliffs. They blamed the Oleander flowers, saying their scent made people see things. But it wasn’t the flowers’ fault.
It was the evil that had taken root in La Maddalena long before any of us were born.
Rocco knew it well. Whoever died in La Maddalena never moved on. Their souls stayed behind, trapped between worlds, haunting the island until the day it would finally burn to the ground.
He used to tell me stories about every one of them, his hands resting on that old ledger filled with names of those who belonged to the cult. They were spread across Europe and the United States.
Everywhere.
The Family, that’s what they called the main group of six who left La Maddalena after World War II and moved to America. The ones who stayed behind formed the Circle. They built their houses around the main street of the little town, surrounding themselves like a fortress. Those who were useful to both the Circle and the Family were placed in the government ofItaly’s capital. Rome. The smartest and most dangerous of them all were called the Crows. They were everywhere, watching, whispering, brainwashing the weak. They promised wealth, beauty, and fame, anything you could ever desire,in exchange for your soul. And when the time came, they collected their debt.
The only reason Rocco wanted to stop them was because he didn’t want them to destroy the only thing he loved more than himself—the House of Clowns. But he sold his soul to them anyway. Maybe that’s why I’m broken now. Maybe I’m paying for his sins.
They held sacrifices in the basement beneath the House of Clowns. They hosted parties above while the crowd outside cheered for the circus. It lasted one week every year, a week when the whole town gathered to celebrate. No one noticed when people went missing.
They hunted them through the woods. When they caught them, they slaughtered them. Offered their blood as a sacrifice.
They believed the blood of others would cleanse their sins. That death, done in devotion, was holy.
But nothing holy ever smelled so much like iron.
They believed the world survived through“Equal Exchange.”Every birth must be balanced with a death. Every creation with destruction. They saw themselves as caretakers of that balance, keeping the universe from collapsing into chaos.
To them, sacrifice wasn’t murder; it was duty.
And when disasters, wars, or plagues struck, they claimed it was becausethe Balancehad been neglected.
They were a plague themselves, poisoning La Maddalena while believing they had brought paradise to lost souls.
And I was just like Alice, wandering through their Wonderland, trying to save what was left of it.
But I couldn’t even save myself.
I couldn’t even save what was left of me.
VII. DOLL
Present day
Idon’trememberhowI fell asleep, but the sunlight filtering through the blanket woke me. Morning had already come. I stood, staring down at my feet. The soles were still stained with blood. I couldn’t stop asking myself the same question.
Was any of it real?
The phone rang downstairs. I dragged myself toward the sound, still half asleep, trying to catch it before it stopped. I lifted the receiver just in time.
“Hello,” I said, my voice rough.
