I remember being free.
That’s what makes this so much worse. I remember what it felt like when Mommy tore them apart. When all those voices went quiet and I could finally hear myself think.
Three months. Maybe four.
I was myself again. Really myself. I played with toys. I laughed at cartoons. I colored pictures and showed them to Mommy and she cried every time because she was so happy I was still in there.
I asked about the baby growing in her belly. I wondered if it would be a boy or a girl. I made up names.
Normal kid stuff.
I thought maybe it was over.
It wasn’t over.
They started coming back when Mommy was maybe six months pregnant.
Not all at once. That’s not how they work. They trickled in. One fragment at a time. So slow I didn’t notice at first.
A whisper when I was falling asleep. A shadow in the corner of my eye. A thought that didn’t feel like mine.
I told Mommy something was wrong.
She held me tight and said she’d protect me. Said she’d scattered them and they couldn’t come back.
But they were already back. Already seeping through the cracks she’d made when she tore them apart. Like water finding its way through a dam.
By the time Ellis was born, I could hear Harold again. Faint. Far away. But there.
Waiting.
—-
Mommy left when Ellis was three months old.
She said she had to finish what she started. Said she’d be back soon.
She kissed my forehead. Told me to be brave.
And then she was gone.
That night, they came flooding in.
All of them. Every fragment she’d scattered. Every piece that had been slowly gathering in the shadows.
They’d been waiting for her to leave.
I tried to fight. Tried to hold onto myself. But there were so many of them and only one of me.
The last thing I remember from that night is screaming.
Then the dark swallowed me whole.
—-
I’m still here.
That’s what I kept thinking in those first days. Weeks. Months. However long it was before I stopped counting.
I’m still here.
Pushed into a corner so small I could barely breathe. But still here.
—-
Time doesn’t work the same way when you’re buried.
Sometimes I’d surface for what felt like hours and it had been years. Sometimes I’d blink and decades had passed.
I learned to count by the body. By how it changed around me.
Small hands becoming bigger hands. Short legs stretching longer. The voice deepening until I didn’t recognize it as mine anymore.
Twenty years since the night they took me back.
I was seven when I lost myself the second time.
I’m twenty-seven now.
I think.
—-
The first time I surfaced, really surfaced, I was in a bathroom.
Tile floor. Fluorescent lights. A mirror.
I looked up and saw a stranger’s face.
No. Not a stranger.
Me.
But older. Maybe twelve or thirteen. Hair longer than I’d ever worn it. Eyes that had seen things I couldn’t remember.
I opened my mouth to scream.
Nothing came out.
And then I was pushed back down. Back into the dark. Back into the nothing.
But I saw myself.
For three seconds, I saw myself.
And I knew I was still in here somewhere.
—-
The dark isn’t empty.
That’s what people don’t understand. When they imagine being trapped, they imagine silence. Stillness. Nothing.
But I was never alone in here.
They were always with me. All of them. All those pieces that had crawled back inside after Mommy left. Harold and Eleanor and the first one and all the others whose names I never learned.
They didn’t talk to me. Not directly. But I could hear them talking to each other. Whispering in languages I didn’t understand. Planning things I couldn’t see.
Sometimes they’d brush against me. Accidentally. Like bumping into someone in a crowded room.
And I’d feel what they felt.
Hunger. Patience. A longing so deep it felt like drowning.
They wanted to be whole. That’s all they’d ever wanted. And they were so close now. Just a few more pieces. Just a little more time.
They could wait.
They’d been waiting for two hundred years.
What was another twenty?
—-
I learned about my brother from them.
They talked about him constantly. The boy. The spare. The one who got away.
At first I didn’t understand. What boy? What spare?
Then I felt him.
A presence out there somewhere. Connected to me by blood. By whatever cursed thing runs through our family.
Ellis.
Mommy’s baby. The one I used to ask about when I was free. The one I made up names for before I knew his real one.
He was out there. Growing up. Living a life I’d never get to have.
And they were watching him. Waiting for him. Planning something I couldn’t see.
—-
I tried to reach him.
God, I tried so hard.
The dreams started when I was maybe seventeen. Not my dreams. I didn’t dream anymore. Couldn’t.
But they did. The things inside me. They dreamed all the time.
And sometimes, when they were dreaming, the walls got thin. I’d find cracks. Tiny gaps between their consciousness and the outside world.
I’d push against them. Scream into them. Try to force my way through.
Sometimes I’d catch glimpses. A boy sleeping in a small bed. A woman I didn’t recognize tucking him in. Kate. It had to be Kate. The one from the motel.
But I could never break through all the way. Never make myself heard.
Just fragments. Feelings. Static.
—-
Ellis was maybe ten when I got closest.
I pushed through a crack and suddenly I could see him clearly. Really clearly. Standing in what looked like a school hallway. A dream, I realized. I was in his dream.
I tried to call his name.
“Ellis!”
He turned. Looked around. Confused.
“Ellis, it’s Maya. Your sister. I’m—”
The walls slammed shut. They’d felt me pushing. Felt me getting close.
Harold’s voice in my ear: “Don’t.”
Just that one word. Cold and final.
I tried again the next night. And the next. But they were watching now. Every time I found a crack, they sealed it before I could push through.
After a while, I stopped being able to find cracks at all.
—-
I surfaced again at nineteen. I think.
My body was in a coffee shop. Sitting across from a young man. Good-looking. Nervous.
A date. It was on a date.
The thing wearing my face was laughing at something he said. Reaching across the table to touch his hand. Playing at being human.
I watched from the back of my own head while it flirted. While it smiled. While it pretended to be a normal nineteen-year-old meeting a young man for coffee.
He had no idea what he was talking to.
No idea what was wearing my skin.
I tried to warn him. Tried to push through. Make my face do something wrong. Scare him away.
Nothing.
Just that smooth, perfect performance.
At the end of the date, my body leaned in and kissed him.
And I felt it. His warmth. His hope. His happiness.
And underneath that, I felt them taking it. Drinking it. Feeding on something I didn’t have a word for.
He walked away smiling.
He had no idea what he’d lost.
—-
I kept trying to reach Ellis. Even when they made it impossible.
Not through the cracks. Those were all sealed now. But through something deeper. The blood connection. The thing that linked our family across generations.
I’d send feelings. Impressions. Warnings I couldn’t put into words.
Stay away from doorways.
Don’t trust reflections.
Something is watching you.
I don’t know if any of it got through. Probably not. He probably just had vague nightmares he couldn’t remember. Bad feelings he couldn’t explain.
But I kept trying anyway.
Because what else was I supposed to do? Just give up? Accept that my brother was out there, living his life, with no idea what was coming for him?
I couldn’t protect him. Couldn’t warn him. Couldn’t even tell him I existed.
But I could try.
Even if trying was useless.
—-
Sometimes, in the dark between attempts, I’d remember those three months.
The months after Mommy scattered them. The months when I was free.
I’d remember the feeling of sunshine on my face without something else looking through my eyes. The taste of ice cream without someone cataloging the experience. The sound of my own laugh coming from my own mouth because I chose to laugh.
Those memories were the worst.
Because they reminded me what I’d lost. What I’d almost gotten to keep.
Three months of being a normal kid.
And then twenty years of this.
—-
They talked about Ellis more and more as the years passed.
The boy is growing up.
The door inside him is opening.
Soon. Soon. Soon.
I listened to them plan. Couldn’t do anything else. They’d talk about timelines and vessels and the final gathering like I wasn’t even there.
Because to them, I wasn’t. Not really. I was just furniture. Background noise. A room they were renting while they waited for something better.
Harold explained it once, talking to one of the others.
“The girl was useful but limited. Cracked open too early. We had to force our way in. But the boy…” He made a sound that might have been satisfaction. “The boy is different. He’s been opening slowly his whole life. By the time we’re ready for him, he’ll welcome us. He won’t even know he’s doing it.”
I wanted to scream at him. Wanted to tell him Ellis would never welcome them. Would never let them in.
But I didn’t know that. Not really.
I didn’t know Ellis at all.
Just a feeling. Just a presence. Just a brother I’d never met and couldn’t protect.
—-
Twenty years.
Twenty years of being buried. Twenty years of watching through eyes I couldn’t control. Twenty years of listening to them plan and scheme and wait.
And then, one night, everything changed.
—-
I felt it before I understood it.
A shift. Something cracking. The walls around me trembling.
Far away, I could feel Ellis. Feel him more clearly than I had in years.
He was reading something. Old pages. Familiar handwriting.
Mommy’s journals.
He’d found them.
And suddenly the walls weren’t so thick anymore. The blood connection between us, the thing they’d spent twenty years trying to suppress, was humming like a live wire.
They felt it too.
He’s found the journals.
He knows.
He’s coming.
The excitement in their voices made me sick.
—-
I pushed against the cracks.
For the first time in years, they gave.
Not much. Not enough to break through completely. But enough to see.
Ellis. Sitting at a kitchen table. Our mother’s words spread out in front of him.
He looked older than I expected. Of course he did. He was nineteen now. Not the little boy I’d glimpsed in fragments over the years.
He had our mother’s eyes.
I pushed harder.
“Ellis.”
His head snapped up. Looking around the room. Looking for the voice.
“Ellis, can you hear me?”
He stood up. Turned in a slow circle. I could feel his confusion, his fear, his desperate hope that he wasn’t imagining things.
“Who’s there?”
“My name is Maya. I’m your sister.”
The walls were trembling. They were waking up. Feeling me push.
“I don’t have much time. They’re going to pull me back. But you need to know—”
“Maya?” His voice cracked. “The sister from the journals? You’re real?”
“I’m real. I’ve been trying to reach you for years. They wouldn’t let me.”
“Where are you? What’s happening? The journals say you—”
“There’s no time.” I could feel them gathering. Feel Harold’s attention turning toward me. “You found the journals. You’re going to want to come looking for me. To save me. Don’t.”
“What?”
“It’s a trap. They’ve been planning this for years. They want you to come. They need you to come willingly. If you stay away—”
The walls slammed shut.
Harder than ever before.
And Harold’s voice in my ear: “That was a mistake.”
—-
The next days were bad.
They didn’t put me in a smaller room. Didn’t need to. They just squeezed the one I was in until I could barely think.
Pressure from all sides. Voices screaming in languages I didn’t understand. Pain that wasn’t physical but hurt worse than anything physical could.
Punishment.
For reaching out. For trying to warn him.
“He was going to find out anyway,” I managed to say during a brief respite. “The journals told him everything.”
“The journals told him history,” Harold said. “You told him hope. You told him there’s still something to save.”
“There is.”
“Is there?”
He showed me then. Made me look at myself.
At what was left of me.
After twenty years, I wasn’t much. Just a scrap of consciousness clinging to the corners of my own mind. A tenant in a house I used to own.
“You’re almost gone,” Harold said. “Another year, maybe two, and there won’t be anything left. You’ll just fade away. Become part of us like all the others.”
“I won’t.”
“You will. It’s already happening. Can’t you feel it?”
I could.
That was the worst part.
I could feel myself getting smaller. Thinner. Less.
Every day, a little more of me dissolved into them.
“Your brother is coming,” Harold said. “You told him not to, but he will anyway. That’s what your family does. You can’t help trying to save each other.”
“He might surprise you.”
“He won’t. And when he gets here, when he opens that door and lets us in, you’ll finally be done. You’ll be part of something bigger. Something whole. Isn’t that better than this? Better than clinging to a corner that gets smaller every day?”
I didn’t answer.
Because part of me wondered if he was right.
—-
The night before it happened, I felt Ellis getting closer.
Driving through the dark. Following a trail they’d left for him. Breadcrumbs leading right to me.
He thought he was coming to save me.
He didn’t understand that I was the bait.
I pushed one more time.
Not against the walls. Not against the cracks. Against him.
Sent everything I had left directly through the blood connection.
“Ellis. Please. Don’t come.”
I don’t know if he heard me. Probably not. Probably just felt a chill. A moment of doubt.
Then kept driving anyway.
Because that’s what our family does.
We run toward the fire.
Every single time.
—-
I’m still here.
After twenty years, I’m still here.
But I don’t think I will be much longer.
Something’s ending. I can feel it.
And something else is beginning.
—-
Ellis.
If you can hear me.
If any part of you is listening.
I’m sorry.
I tried to warn you.
I tried to keep you safe.
But they’re stronger than me. They’ve always been stronger than me.
And now you’re here.
And there’s nothing I can do.
—-
I’m still here.
I’m still here.
I’m still
—-
I hear his car pulling up outside.
And I’m trying to scream.
Trying to tell him to run.
But they’re holding me down now.
Holding me still.
And all I can do is watch through my own eyes as the door opens.
And my brother walks in.