On a side table, a leather case held sketchpads and drawing utensils.
Initials AR were pressed into the flap enclosure.
Through the cold winter night, with only a lantern casting a buttery glow across the paper, drawing was all I could do because the infection was slowly stealing me.
The sketchpad was balanced on one knee as I tried to find answers to Circe with every stroke on the paper. With my head tilted and my eyes focused, the pencil curved around the shape of her lips and moved freely down her neckline. The clues to what she was hiding had to be in the drawing, but instead of finding her secrets, I lost myself in the pair of eyes I could never get right. And when frustration overcame me, I set the sketchpad down, staggered to the toilet room with my hand clutched to my side, and spent little time in front of the mirror.
Mother had to have succeeded because, finally, I could see my face.
But a stranger lived in the reflection of the mirror.
A ghost. A shadow. A face that didn’t belong to me.
I touched my fingers to my cold cheek and ran them down the length of my jaw.
My expression was like one of my drawings, and I tried to feel what it was like to smile, to frown, to make the same faces I’d seen in my twenty-four years, but I was nothing more than a fraud whose life force was slowly slipping away.
Was it because of the infection or something else?
In Circe’s eyes, smile, and emotions, she was entirely connected with herself. She was so easy, honest, and certain of who she was. She was able to express herself in all the ways she desired. She could embrace herself rather than hide, and she could hide, too, if that was what she wanted. She had her whole life to draw whatever picture she wanted others to see and had done these things as if it had become second nature.
Without the grain sack covering my face, I was afraid to admit that I did not recognize the man staring back at me. I did not know who this stranger was.
My breath achingly held as I stumbled into the bedroom for a bedsheet to cover the mirror. But I didn’t make it far.
A pale dash of movement appeared in the dark corner of the room.
I didn’t turn my head to see what it could be. Not right away. I kept my head forward, believing it was an apparition created by my mind from restlessness, hunger, or infection. But then soft, desolate whispers slipped from the corner, filling my ears.
A white figure stepped out of the shadow-clad corner near the bedroom door.
It took the shape of a woman.
In a billowing white dress that hid her feet, and long blonde hair floating above her waist, she kept her head down so I couldn’t see her face.
As I leaned my shoulder into the bathroom doorway, my heart pounded and my hand curled around the door frame. My lungs ached as though there was no air left in them, but cold air blew between my lips with every shudder, reminding me I was breathing.
Upon turning my head completely, I caught the tail end of her as she slipped past me, causing fear and grief to climb my spine. With it, a shiver swept up the nape of my neck. As though she had brushed her fingers across it.
The sad, eerie whisper slithered in her wake as she stopped at the spiral staircase.
She turned her head just enough for me to catch her profile.
Its transparent shape possessed intense and determined eyes as it stared at me. Ones that held me tightly, watching me, waiting for me to act. However, as the temperature in the room began to drop, I was frozen to the ground, encased in its grasp.
“Mother?”
She wasn’t a memory but in this very room with me.
She wanted me to follow her.
I complied, and the floor was soft and unsteady beneath me as I climbed the lighthouse stairs. My movements were not my own, robotically following the cusps of white around every turn, every dash. My footfalls were hollow, an echo in the night, dancing with Mother’s gentle whispers.
The last few minutes were stolen from me once I found myself standing at the top of the lighthouse, the pain from my wound seizing my breath, shooting to my limbs, crawling and squeezing around my bones like ivy would do. I stood in the watch room surrounded by glass windows that overlooked the Atlantic, my gaze spinning about for her.
The door slammed shut behind me.
There was a book on the windowsill, surrounded by candles melted down to the wick. The book was caked with dust, the pages swollen, preventing it from closing entirely. This was when the air hissed. A raspy, unsettling sound.
It wanted me to take it.
Mother brought me here to show me something.
But I couldn’t move. The uncontrollable tremble in my muscles kept me stuck here. Every movement felt like it cost the little air left in my lungs, the pain taking half my breath away. My joints were stiff from the cold, and when I reached out to grab it, my fingertips shook when they grazed the leather corners.
When my hand curled around the book, I brought it to my chest and slid down the window until my bottom met the floor.
I swiped dust from the cover, revealing a delicate design imprinted into the leather—a tree emblem of sorts. The slight touch sent flashes of Mother spinning in my mind: with the full moon shining behind her, Celia screamed out to Mother, her name echoing throughout the hollow staircase as she scribbled angrily into the journal beside the windowsill. These flashes stuck in my mind, coming through like lightning would cut through the sky.
The spine cracked when I opened it, and the pages fanned out before me by some invisible force. I flinched, and the journal slipped from my fingers and fell onto my lap.
There was no stopping the pages that flipped rapidly.
Until the book stalled on a journal entry.
September 5, 2015, screamed across the yellow, brittle paper. A date that didn’t align with what I thought it to be. If the date was accurate, then over one hundred and fifty years had passed while I had endured slow and agonizing deaths.
September 5, 2015
The moonchild must die to break the Curse of the Hollow Heathens.
It is the only way.
Celia once told me an immoral tale about a girl who fell into an enchanting sleep. Like all impressionable works of art, it was inspiring and the beginning of an idea. One that would take over a century to complete.
Much like this tale, my idea of breaking the curse planted a seed, sprouted roots, and grew into something much bigger than Celia and I could fathom. Although Stone’s story was a nightmare, his ending would be an unforgettable one, unlike other twisted tales with tragic ends. A monster no more and a man free from his wretched curse.
It is during this 151-year span that Stone continues to give me the precious gift of youth and time as my son lies in a coffin at the bottom of the sea, waiting for the day that the moonchild dies.
I have made a few mistakes across the decades, as you can see in the pages before, consumed by lust and power, but this is what’s so magnificent about endless youth and the ability to defy time. Mistakes can be erased and forgotten.
But unlike Stone’s powers, spells are not forever.
What rises falls. What starts always ends. And with spells comes a cost.
There is a timer on the spell we cast on Stone, and we are running out of time.
Celia and I will die if we do not bring Stone back soon.
It is safe to say Celia pulled me back from the deceiving path as she always does. Together, we regained control of the plan to break Stone’s curse.
After failing many times to kill the Lone Wolf, she gave birth to a daughter, but their keeper whisked the child away just after she was born. This keeper was crafty, casting a spell to chain up the descendant’s location. Breaking through wasn’t easy, but we found her. Her name is Fallon, and she resides in Texas, of all places.
There were difficult challenges, such as killing her keeper with many miles separating us, but I succeeded. The next step is to hex her maternal grandfather with sickness to lure the moonchild to Weeping Hollow because Fallon must die here, where it all began. It could take a few more years, but once it’s done, I’ll need to send a letter informing the moonchild of her grandfather’s illness. I’ve spent many lonely nights perfecting Benjamin Grimaldi’s handwriting.
The truth is, something else is standing in my way that first needs my attention.
For years, I could control Javino Blackwell’s shadow-blood from Bone Island, practicing killing from afar, but seven years ago, The Order executed him, leaving his son as my only option.
Julian Blackwell is stronger, which forces me to leave the island much sooner than I’d anticipated.
For the first time in over a hundred and seventy years, I will step foot onto the mainland of Weeping Hollow and insert myself into the townspeople’s lives. Enough time has passed, and I am confident they’ve forgotten me. Once the new generations learn to accept and trust me, I will be close enough to Julian to control him like I once owned his father.
Making sure a Blackwell takes the life of the moonchild completes the circle and will keep my hands clean to have a deserved life with my uncursed son. If all turns out well, my son will awaken from his deep sleep and will be able to take off his mask.
For the 151st time, this day marks my son’s twenty-fifth birthday. For months, I’ve stared into the eyes of this circled date I’ve carved into my mind. It is the day people will meet me under the name of Carrie Driscoll with a false lover by my side.
All the horrible things I have done that have led me here do not haunt me. I have no regrets. It is for my son, and I would do it all again until my dying breath.
Should I not survive this, I will leave this journal behind so my true name will not be forgotten like the original tales we take and twist to omit the ugly things we hate so dearly. As well, I hope that the day Stone awakens, his life will not be as miserable as before but will become a beautiful after with the new ending I’ve created for us.
Forever yours,
Clarice Annabelle Woolf
“It can’t be.” The whisper had fallen from my lips, but as much as I detested it, I recognized Mother’s eloquent penmanship stained on the pages. In her handwriting, the truth mocked me from the spine.
What she’d done to me was unnatural. What she had willfully taken from others was monstrous. All the lives lost were for breaking a curse I’d accepted and could live with, and I was disgusted with myself.
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.
“Elb murcuoy yam traehre pap!”
The world became hazy until I was devoured by darkness.