Settling In
The town didn't know what to do with the twins' return.
For weeks, they had been the ghost story everyone whispered about at the bakery, the cautionary tale parents used when their children wandered too close to the woods. Now, they were a miracle — flesh, breath, and heartbeat.
Neighbors came bearing casseroles and flowers, their smiles trembling as they said "We never gave up hope." The mother thanked them all, even the ones who had clearly stopped hoping long ago. She told them the girls were resting, that they just needed time. She didn't tell them that sometimes, when she touched her daughters' shoulders, she flinched — not from fear, but from the chill that still clung to their skin.
The police came again, a final round of questioning, though it was more ceremony than investigation. The girls' silence was chalked up to trauma. The file would be closed soon. A success story, they called it.
The mother smiled when she heard that word. Success.
The father did not.
At first, the twins barely spoke. Their eyes followed movement slowly, their voices came soft, delayed, as if each word had to be remembered before it was spoken.
But over the next weeks, something shifted.
They began to rejoin the rhythm of life.
Elena took her old sketchpad from the shelf and began drawing again — birds, rooftops, their mother's hands resting on a teacup. Always delicate things. Always daylight.
Mara helped in the kitchen, humming under her breath, her hands moving in gentle, practiced motions as she peeled apples and folded dough.
At dinner, they laughed quietly, answered questions. They told their mother they didn't remember much — just flashes, dreams maybe. She didn't press them. It was enough that they were there, breathing the same air.
Sometimes she'd find them sitting together by the window at dawn, wrapped in the same blanket, staring at the fog rising from the trees. When she asked what they were looking at, Elena would say, "It's just beautiful," and Mara would nod.
The mother chose to believe it.
She filled the house with life again — music from the old radio, fresh flowers in vases, sunlight pushing through the curtains she'd kept closed for months. She baked their favorite bread again. She sang while cleaning. The sound of her voice made the air feel alive.
The father pretended to enjoy it too.
But in his silence, he noticed things the others didn't.
The nights had gone too still. The whisper of the oak, the rustle of its branches — gone. For six months, the wind had carried voices that no one else heard, faint murmurs calling his name, begging him to listen. Now, the silence pressed against the windows like something holding its breath.
His sketchbook no longer changed. The pages were exactly as he left them, as though whatever force had moved through them before had grown bored.
And the twins…
They were perfect. Too perfect.
Their laughter came in the same tone. Their steps matched even when they weren't side by side. They finished each other's sentences — not like sisters who shared thoughts, but like one voice rehearsing through two mouths.
At breakfast, he watched them eat in mirror image — left hand, right hand, sip, chew, swallow. In perfect rhythm.
The mother said it was natural. That they'd always been close. "You're seeing patterns because you want to," she told him gently one night. "They're healing, and you can't stand that it's happening without you."
He didn't argue. But when he lay awake, staring at the ceiling, he remembered the bracelet. The one he'd found in the dirt under the oak, crusted with soil and blood. He had it locked away in his desk drawer. But Elena was wearing hers again. Identical down to the tiny crack on the silver clasp.
He stopped trying to explain.
One evening, he came home early and saw them in the backyard. The light was dimming, the air pale with mist. The twins stood side by side at the edge of the grass, facing the woods. Neither moved. Neither spoke.
He called to them.
They didn't answer.
He stepped closer, heart thudding. Only when he was a few feet away did they turn their heads — at the same moment, in the same angle.
"What are you looking at?" he asked.
Elena smiled faintly. "Nothing."
Mara smiled the same way. "Just nothing."
Then they walked back toward the house, barefoot, leaving faint prints in the dew.
That night, he dreamed of the oak again.
Its roots writhed like veins beneath the soil, spreading toward the house, pulsing faintly with light. And from its trunk, two figures grew — not climbing out but unfolding, faces blank, eyes hollow. They opened their mouths, and he heard his daughters' laughter spilling out of them, echoing in the wind.
He woke with a start, sweat cold on his skin.
The house was silent again.
No voices. No wind. No movement.
And still, in that heavy silence, he felt the distinct sense that something was holding its breath — waiting for him to believe they were really home.