The red letters of CANON MARK IV seared into her corneas like a branding iron. As she looked at the glossy white box on her passenger seat, she couldn’t help but feel she’d made a Faustian bargain. Impossible. You needed a soul for a deal with the devil, and yet, she had made a trade. She’d agreed to go to the cabin all the way up in Who-the-fuck-knows-where-ville, and for what purpose? It was an event she wouldn’t be getting paid to photograph. Rather, the Reynoldses seemed genuine about wanting her to participate.
It was a trap. Laid by Carlisle and David, and whoever else was hell-bent on taking her down for the things she’d done. The lives she’d probably ruined.
But what unnerved her most about going up north was that she wouldn’t have the protection of hiding behind her camera. People might see the real her, the scared little girl beneath the sharp metal piercings and the stone-cold stare. Or worse, they might see the things she’d done, written on her face with ink that was invisible until she turned toward the light. Torture. Blackmail. Ruin.
That was why she had to cancel. She’d wait a day or two and then email Bennett that something had come up. Her grandpa had fallen on the ice. That one always got her out of obligations.
And yet, she couldn’t deny she was curious about what else simmered beneath the Reynoldses’ seemingly perfect surfaces. The Christmas party had been a performance for everyone else, with kraft-paper presents and flutes of effervescent champagne. But this morning, her third encounter with them, they’d begun to let their guards down, peel back the curtains. What would they be like off-camera, she wondered. Once the cable-knit costumes came off, would the claws come out?
The streets were empty, still. The plow must have come through not long ago. Piles of greyish snow butted up against yards, burying mailboxes. She watched a couple of kids in snowsuits dragging new plastic sleds before she veered left on Winslow Street.
Morgan stared through the windshield. In the daylight, the house at 604 was less intimidating. A dingy white with paint flaking off, it was camouflaged with its grim surroundings. She put the car in park, this time, and when she’d taken her new camera out of its box, clicking the battery pack and memory card into place, she did feel somewhat fearless.
“Focus,” she whispered. She turned her wrist, then, ensuring the key was in its holster.
All roads lead back to home.
Well, she’d come home, now. Finally. Morgan drew in one last breath and exhaled before getting out of the car. She slammed the door. The sound was muffled, muted by the insulation of the snow. How comforting, she thought as she approached the front porch. If she screamed, probably no one would hear her.
The stair groaned as she put pressure on it. Gripping her camera tightly, Morgan skipped up the last three steps and squared up with the yawning doorway.
It was dark inside but for a ray of silvery light streaming in from a window. Her heart was in her throat, threatening to abandon ship if she didn’t turn back now. But she couldn’t. She’d come all this way with only the clothes on her back and a key that had become her everything—a hint, a hope, a promise—that there was life for her beyond Black Harbor. Whatever it opened could mean escape, the end of her sentence in this stark, coal-dusted prison.
And it was Christmas Day. Nothing bad happened on Christmas, right?
The wind whistled, rocked her back on her heels. A piece of hair cut across her face. Morgan pushed it away and, biting down on the studs in her lip, walked into the house that had shown her that Hell existed right here in Black Harbor.
Silence.
She’d wandered into a crypt. It was so quiet, the walls might as well have been poured concrete, marked by old graffiti. Drawings of pot leaves and pentagrams. Spent candles lay on the floor, their wax melted and hardened next to soggy pizza boxes, the remains of a seance.
The more Morgan looked around, the more her hope diminished. The cabinets were all opened and emptied, even the ones Bern had kept locked. The pantry had been pried open, the fridge lying faceup like a coffin. Her boots crunched on the pieces of a shattered crack pipe as she ventured farther in, toward Bern’s bedroom.
The door was closed. Morgan drew in a breath before setting her hand on the cold brass knob and pushing it inward. She’d never stepped foot in this room before. It was smaller than she’d always imagined it would be. A full-size mattress lay on the floor, scantily covered by a stained sheet. The dresser drawers were pulled out. Someone had stolen all the clothes and knickknacks, whatever they had been. She didn’t know what kinds of things Bern held dear, if anything at all.
The key was in her hand now. She tried it in anything that had a lock, seeing if she’d somehow overlooked the great mystery she’d been lured to discover. The bedroom door, the shallow closet, the top dresser drawer.
All empty.
She caught a glimpse of herself in the fogged mirror. She looked sad, on Christmas of all days, and small. Her glasses were too big for her face. Her jacket hung off her like a shirt on a scarecrow and her legs were stick thin, not even touching. Who did she think she was, honestly? That she could come in here and conquer her fears? She was nothing. Nobody. Just a scared little girl the world rejected over and over and over again.
The taste of salt made her tongue tingle as a tear meandered its way to her mouth. The image was achingly beautiful, in a way that she didn’t usually consider anything about herself to be. Turning a smidge more toward the hoary light, Morgan chose a low aperture on the dial. Making eye contact with herself, she held the shutter down for a second until she felt the autofocus find purchase, and clicked. She took two more for good measure, already envisioning a black-and-white, grainy print she might make of it, when in the background, just over her shoulder, a spot of red peeked in and out of the frame.
Morgan jumped, dropping her camera onto the dresser top. She rescued it before it bounced onto the floor and clutched it to her chest like a newborn kitten as she tiptoed toward the hall.
The door to her old room was open. The edges of her vision darkened as she neared it. Her mouth felt dry. Her eyes watered as she fought the urge to cough, to not disturb the ghosts and the dust mites that had made this hovel their home.
She realized the cause of her tunnel vision now. Subconsciously, she’d lifted the camera to her face to only peer through the viewfinder. She gasped. A red balloon floated in the center of the floor, like the one that had waited for her in the smoky haze at The Ruins.
Morgan knelt. The balloon was tethered to a present wrapped in cheap holiday paper—white, patterned with the words NAUGHTY OR NICE in red calligraphy. A note was taped to the top of the box. It was a scrap of the same wrapping paper that had been folded, and on the blank inside was written TO: MY RUIN.
Her stomach seized. A cold sweat prickled at her hairline.
Morgan tore at a corner of the paper, wincing at how the empty house magnified the sound.
The box itself was nondescript, no name or shipping address to denote where it had come from. Inside, it held a black device. A portable DVD player, she realized, when she opened it. Stuck to the screen was a Post-it with two words that chilled Morgan’s blood: Wanna play?
Her breath rattled in her chest. The sudden gust of cold that swept in through the busted windows dug into her shoulders, keeping her in place. She pressed Play, and watched as all the walls she’d carefully constructed since returning to Black Harbor came crashing down.
She recognized the room depicted in the video. The walls were painted matte black, mostly, but for a white orb: a skull missing its bottom jaw. Words were spray-painted in white in a scrawl-like fashion. Shatter me. Beat me. Break me down. A bench on a chain protruded from beneath the half skull where Morgan, herself, sat. Shackles glinted around her wrists.
The view was that of a first-person video game. The image moved as the person wearing the camera advanced into the room. She heard the door shut and she knew what was about to happen. In the video, Morgan wore a long wig, twisted into double braids, and lipstick the shade of blood. A plaid schoolgirl skirt left little to the imagination. She stared doe-eyed up at the guest, whose hand came into view as they peeled her bra strap down over her shoulder.
“Let’s play,” Video Morgan whispered. She offered up her hands, knuckles folded and pressed together in the shape of a heart, waiting to be undone.
“That depends,” said the guest. “Have you been naughty or nice?”
Video Morgan gave her best catlike smize. “Naughty.”
Before she’d finished saying the word, the guest grabbed her by the neck and squeezed. In the house on Winslow Street, Morgan felt heady, as though his hands were around her throat now.
“There’s a wooden bat in the corner. Why don’t you punish me properly?” whispered Video Morgan.
A carnal sound rumbled from the guest, a laugh. And then suddenly, it was cut by a yelp that evolved into heavy breathing. His hands let go of her, not by her command, but because he’d suddenly lost control of them. The camera lurched forward, showing Video Morgan expertly dodging out of the way as the guest’s body crashed to the floor. A groan that sounded like white noise crackled in his throat.
Video Morgan disappeared off-screen.
Watching from her old bedroom, Morgan knew what came next. But she didn’t tear her eyes away. She wanted to see what her guests saw in their final seconds before being marked forever, exposed to the world for what they truly were. Monsters. Wolves in sheep’s wool. Ruined souls who ruined souls.
Video Morgan returned, wielding a glowing red branding iron. She straddled the paralyzed guest and, in her old room on Winslow Street, Morgan listened to the sibilant sound of scorching metal stamping into human flesh.