50

50

A fter Connor situates Iris in the crib upstairs, the group settles around the coffee table in the living room, everyone close enough that their fingers touch. Each of them holds a mirror. Belinda brought her own, and the others found some around the house.

"It's called ‘scrying,'" Belinda explains to the group. "If we manage to make contact, it will be through the reflection. And that is how it must remain. In the mirror only."

"What do you mean?" Michael asks.

When Flora looks over to her father, who sits to her left, black spots dance over his face. She cannot blink them away; the vision in her right eye is almost completely gone.

"If someone appears in your mirror," Belinda replies, "you should only look at them through the glass. Don't turn around."

"Why?" Connor asks. "What happens if we turn around?"

Belinda frowns. "I'm not sure, honestly."

"Jesus," Connor says, "are you sure you know what you're doing?"

Flora stares at the large black candle in the center of the table, mesmerized by its flame. On one side of the candle is Zephie's baby hat. On the other lies her mother's wedding ring atop the Polaroid. In the picture, Jodi smiles with her feet in the ocean and arms outstretched toward the sun.

"Connor," Flora says, "please. Let's just do what Belinda tells us."

The soft candlelight reflects off her husband's face and carves deep dark spots under his eyes. Or maybe he is just that tired. Maybe Flora has done that to him.

He holds up his hands in surrender.

"So keep your focus on the mirror," Belinda continues. "That's where Jodi will reveal herself." Belinda then presses her hand against her jeans pocket and nods a confirmation to Flora.

the birth tusk

Flora retrieved it from the back of her drawer and gave it to Belinda. They don't want it on display for Jodi, as it might deter her from showing up, but they do need it close. Within reach. And Flora doesn't trust herself with it. What if she doesn't have the strength to use it when the time comes?

Belinda places her mirror in her lap and holds her journal. She flips to a page toward the middle and begins reading a prayer.

"To our Spirit Guides," she begins, "our Guardian Angels, our Ancestors. We approach you humbly in this moment. We seek your guidance. We seek to connect…"

As Belinda talks, Flora watches the flame of the candle. It flickers normally, the very tip turning black and emitting a thin, wispy smoke that detaches from the flame and immediately dissipates.

Flora holds up her own mirror, the nondescript black one she keeps in the bathroom for when she needs to tweeze her eyebrows. She barely recognizes the woman who returns her gaze. New wrinkles have sprouted beside her eyes, new cracks in her lips. She looks years older. Even the color of her eyes has dimmed.

"Jodi?" Belinda asks, her voice returning to a more conversational tone after the conclusion of the opening prayer. "Jodi, if you're here with us, can you please give us a sign?"

Flora's gaze travels around the circle. With her good eye, she sees her father staring intently into his mirror. Connor watches Belinda carefully, like a lion ready to pounce. Belinda holds her mirror between her hands and speaks into it, as if chatting with her own reflection.

"Jodi?" she asks again. "We would love to hear from you. We've brought you some things. Did you see that Flora found Zephie's hat?"

Suddenly, Flora's rash is on fire. "Ah!" she cries out. The rash eats its way through her skin, expanding yet another inch down her back.

Connor reaches for her, but she doesn't want to break the circle. "I'm fine," she manages to eke out, though the pain shoots down her spine all the way to her ankles.

"Is that you, Jodi?" Belinda asks. "Can you hear us?"

Another blaze of pain, this time in an upward motion, running between Flora's shoulders and wrapping around her neck like thin fingers. She can't help it; she rips off her sweatshirt, and her father gasps in horror at what he sees. Bright red welts and swollen, oozing blisters. A red-hot imprint of a hand around her throat.

"My God, Flora, what is happening to you?" he asks.

"You're hurting her!" Connor shouts to Belinda.

Belinda looks to Flora to gauge the situation.

"It's okay," Flora says. She turns to her husband and assures him, "I'm okay. We can't stop now. We have to finish this."

But she doesn't know if she believes her own words. This might have been a mistake. She has a strong urge to stand, to break the circle and smash her mirror. But then she remembers the curdled milk, and her blood boils hotter than her rotting skin. She will not let this thing keep her from her daughter.

"Jodi, my friend," Belinda says, gentle but firm, "hurting Flora will not get you what you need. What is it that you want? Let us help you."

A draft travels through the room. Has a door opened somewhere? Ice cold slinks up Flora's spine and even to the roots of her teeth.

To her left, her father pulls his feet in close, making himself small in his chair. He looks at the ground around him, as if it's suddenly covered in lava. Flora cannot see what he sees, but she can tell he is frightened. When she comes back to her own mirror, she notices that her right eye now has a glassy white pupil.

"My legs!" Connor shouts. "My legs are gone!"

Connor is wrong. Flora can see his legs. But Jodi must be playing some mind trick on him, because he is convinced they are not there. His face is white with panic.

"Connor," Belinda says, "your legs are there, I assure you. Everyone, keep your eyes on your mirrors." There is a new desperation in Belinda's voice, like she is grasping for some sense of control.

"Oh my God!" Connor keeps shouting. "What the fuck happened to my legs?"

He grabs at his pants, pulling them up from the ankle to his upper thigh, seemingly unsatisfied with whatever he finds there. He looks around frantically, dropping the mirror to the floor, and grabs the black candle from the center of the circle. Without hesitation, he flips it over and guides the hot wax to drip onto his bare knee.

"Connor, don't—" Flora shouts.

"I don't feel it," he says, looking up at them with wide, childlike eyes. "I can't feel it. I can't feel it at all. Do you hear me?"

Frantic, he lowers the candle—Flora and Belinda both shouting for him to stop—and burns the wick straight into his skin, stamping out the flame. His flesh sizzles.

"I feel nothing," he says. "Nothing!" He laughs, then cries, hysterical, trying to stand from the chair but convinced he cannot move.

"What's happening?" Flora asks Belinda. "Is this normal?"

Belinda shakes her head, clearly out of her depth, eyes unblinking. "I—don't know—I've never—"

"It's rising," Michael says, still staring at the floor around him, preoccupied with his own hallucination. "I can't—" His hands come to his chest and throat. He lifts his chin high, as if trying to keep his nose above water. "I can't breathe."

"Belinda," Flora says, "what do we do?"

Belinda stares dumbly at Flora. "I don't know. Maybe we shouldn't have… Making contact with an evil spirit seems to be something else entirely…"

Beside her, Michael gasps for air. Across the table, Connor continues to panic, twisting and writhing in his chair.

Flora reaches into the center of the table and grabs the baby hat.

help me Zephie what do I do

Flora stares into her mirror, squeezing the hat between her fingers, chanting Zephie's name in her head like a prayer. The room is dark, the cold undeniable now. The stench of spoiled milk fills her nostrils.

But Flora will not be distracted. She leans in close to her mirror, her nose almost touching the glass, then pulls away, like she's looking at one of those Magic Eye illusions. And as she does, finally, mercifully, the shape of a girl takes form.

there you are

Zephie looks healthy. Her hair is in French-braided pigtails, and she wears a soft cotton romper. She lifts her hand to wave, and a slight smile spreads across her lips.

"Zephie," Flora says, "Zephie, we need your help. We need—"

But before she can say more, Jodi appears in the mirror, too, just behind Zephie. She is sickly thin and pale and barely resembles the mother Flora once knew. Her bony hands reach toward Zephie's throat, but Zephie does not sense her approaching.

"Zephie!" Flora warns. "Watch out, Mom's there, behind you, she's—"

"Flora, wait," Belinda says, reaching across the circle toward Flora.

But it's too late. Flora is already turning toward Zephie, desperate to stop her mother from hurting the little girl. "Don't touch her!"

"Don't turn around!" Belinda yells, but Flora has already done it and now stares into the space where Zephie should be. All she sees, though, is a growing, moving hole of darkness—a living shadow.

"It was a trick !" Belinda moans. "That wasn't Zephie!"

Flora hears it again, the deafening sound of metal gears clashing. Her body is pushed backward with force, landing flat on the couch, and immediately paralyzed. Everything else—Belinda's muttering, her father's gasping, Connor's panicked cries—is suddenly very far away.

The shadow moves closer, its edges undefined, its movements jerky and inhuman.

the Night Hag

she is here

The figure glides toward Flora. It does not walk, does not move around furniture. It follows a straight trajectory to Flora, and then the familiar weight on her torso, the familiar crushing of her organs. More intense than ever before. One of her ribs SNAPPPPS.

The figure leans in, bringing its face an inch from Flora's, and Flora finally sees: the Night Hag is her mother. Or a version of her mother. Like a Victorian painting that only resembles the likeness.

This is not surprising. In fact, Flora feels as though she has always known this. She has been here many times before. And now she understands why. Maybe this is what dying is like; maybe, on the way out, the world, for the briefest of blips, makes sense.

Flora knows now that the very first time she was here—the first time she was ever suffocated under the weight of her mother—she was a six-week-old baby. She was wrapped tight in her swaddle, unable to move, when her mother approached the crib with a blanket. And when her mother thought the deed was done, Flora heard the rush of running water from the nearby bathroom. She sensed the empty space beside her where Zephie had been. Flora's tiny little body knew that her sister was in trouble. And there was nothing she could do.

Now, all these years later, the Night Hag smiles grimly at Flora. Her teeth are impossibly crooked, and each sports a tiny hole in the center, as if they are rotting from the inside out. Her eyes are hollow, and she wears a mask like the ones Flora saw in that library book. It is white with sunken pockets and large cutouts around the eyes and mouth. The space where her nose should be is flat, like nothing is there. Below that is the broomstick mustache. Flora feels it scrape against her own chin, scratchy and unforgiving.

Her mother the Night Hag opens her mouth wider, as if to speak, but the mouth keeps opening, wide, wide, wide, the jaw unhinging, and Flora stares into the dark, empty throat, unable to move. Spindly, dirty fingers find their way toward Flora's mouth, gumming around inside, and Flora is reminded of doing this very thing to Iris when she saw the beetles. Flora tries to bite down, but she cannot. The fingers taste like sour sweat and rubbing alcohol. Flora's mouth spreads wider and wider as the fingers pull her lips apart, stretching them beyond repair. They finally rip at the corners, and she tastes blood on her tongue. She tries to scream, but when she can't, her demented mother screams instead—as if Flora is speaking through her—and when her mother leans her head back, howling to the sky, it is not really a scream that comes out but, rather, the loud wail of a baby.

That cry is Zephie's cry. Flora is six weeks old again, tight in her swaddle, staring at the world from the bottom of a crib. She hears her sister, feels her pain and fear. Flora's own baby muscles tighten in response.

I remember everything

Adult Flora lies immobilized, just as she did the morning of Zephie's death, and watches as her mother's body evaporates from the feet up, as if it were only ever made of mist. And then, with only her head and arms left, her dirty fingers pull and pull until she fits all of what remains of her inside Flora's mouth. She crawls down Flora's throat, igniting a jolt through her spine, firing up the blisters and rash on her back.

And once again, Flora can move her limbs—the marionette to her mother's ghost.