Matilda entered Maria's room quietly, though the creak of the door seemed to her like thunder in the silence. Her daughter was sitting upright on the bed, rigid, her dark hair disheveled across her pale cheeks. Her eyes were wide, dilated, fixed upon the far corner of the room where nothing existed. Or rather—where something existed for her alone.
Matilda had seen this posture before: the immovable gaze, the lips half parted as though caught between whisper and scream. Each time it returned, the fear inside her grew sharper. She sat down beside her daughter, her hands trembling as she smoothed the bedsheet, though she avoided touching Maria herself, as though afraid to shatter the girl's fragile hold on reality.
She wanted to speak as a physician, with the steady tone of science. But she was a mother first, and Maria was already too clever, too proud, to accept the easy consolations doctors offer to frightened patients.
"Maria," she whispered, her voice almost reverent, as though intruding upon some sacred vision. "Do you know what this is? What's happening to you?"
Maria did not move her gaze from the corner. Her lips parted, her voice hoarse, almost hushed in awe.
"They sit there, Mother. All of them. As if we are the evening's entertainment. Their eyes glitter—oh, how they glitter!—but never blink. You don't see them?"
Matilda's heart broke, but her face remained composed, firm, though her eyes betrayed the storm within. "No, my child. And neither would anyone else. What you see has a name. Charles Bonnet Syndrome. Do you understand? It is not madness. It is not possession. It is your eyes."
At last Maria turned, and her face—so pale it seemed cut from marble—was sharpened by intelligence and defiance.
"My eyes are traitors then. The world they give me is not the world itself. And still—it looks so real. I cannot doubt it. I cannot."
Matilda leaned closer, lowering her voice into the register of conspiracy, as though revealing to her daughter a forbidden truth.
"Listen carefully. The brain abhors emptiness. When the nerves of the eyes fall silent, the brain paints. Faces, dolls, saints, grotesques—anything to fill the void. You are not mad, Maria. You are cursed by silence. Do you hear me?"
Maria's breath quickened, her chest rising and falling as though she were running in place. "And how shall I tell illusion from reality, Mama? How shall I not go mad anyway?"
Now Matilda's tone changed again. She was no longer the physician speaking about nerves and cortexes, but the mother who feared her child was standing on the edge of some abyss—perhaps not of madness, but of prophecy.
"You must fight back," she said gravely. "Do not trust the first vision. When they come—when the dolls crawl down from the ceiling, when the faces linger too long with their smiles—you must count. One… two… three… four… five. Out loud, if you can. Or in your head, if you must. And then—click your fingers."
She raised her hand and snapped her fingers sharply. The sound cracked through the room like the breaking of glass.
"You see, Maria—this interrupts the chain. It wakes you. The brain is a liar, but it hates rhythm it cannot command. The count, the snap—it reminds you that you are awake, that you are not theirs."
Maria's eyes, large and hollow, fixed upon her mother's trembling hands. Then she lifted her gaze, filled now with an ancient sorrow, as though she had lived centuries in silence.
"And if I count… if I snap… and they are still there?"
Matilda swallowed hard. Her throat burned. She forced her voice into calm, though her heart hammered like a trapped bird against her ribs.
"Then, my love, you will know the worst truth of all—that they are not illusions. And in that moment, you must pray."
A hush filled the room. The kind of hush that feels alive. Maria closed her eyes and pressed her fists into the sheets as though to anchor herself. Above her, in the blank white ceiling, the dolls began their march again.
They were porcelain, with painted red mouths stretched into fixed grins, their cheeks powdered, their eyes black as beetles. Hundreds of them, some cracked, some pristine, all descending in perfect military order, their tiny legs clattering as they marched along invisible ledges in the air.
Maria's lips moved.
"One… two… three… four… five."
Her fingers trembled, then snapped.
The dolls wavered, flickered, collapsed into ash.
For a moment she breathed freely. But then—her gaze drifted back to the corner of the room.
He was still there.
Case 33.
Not porcelain. Not painted. But flesh—rotted, smiling, his grin stretching impossibly wide, like a wound carved into his face. He stood in shadow, his head tilted, his eyes full of mockery.
Maria whispered: "Then it seems prayer will be all that saves me."
The next day, Matilda returned with books. Heavy tomes of neurology, psychology, and theology. She spread them across Maria's desk, but Maria only laughed—softly, bitterly, with the laugh of one who knows she is already defeated.
"I can read, Mother. I can study. But when they come, when their hands reach out from the wallpaper, when their mouths open and spill insects onto the floor—books are nothing. They are paper shields against iron swords."
Matilda gripped her daughter's hand, though it shook beneath her own. "Then use your mind. You are stronger than the visions. Analyze them. Break them apart. Find their errors, their seams. If the doll blinks—it is real. If it does not—it is a painting of the brain. You are clever, Maria. Cleverer than me. Use that against them."
But Maria only smiled faintly, her lips pale.
"Mother, I am clever, yes. Clever enough to know this: illusions cannot be defeated with cleverness. They wait for me when I close my eyes. They march when I wake. They whisper when I speak. And when I count and snap—sometimes they vanish. Sometimes they don't. What then, Mama? What then?"
Matilda had no answer. She looked away, toward the window, where twilight pressed like a bruise against the glass.
In the silence, Maria tilted her head, as if listening. Then her face hardened.
"They are speaking again. Do you hear them?"
Matilda shook her head.
Maria's lips moved, repeating their words as though translating:
"She will betray you. She sits beside you, smiling, but her hands hide the knife. Count, Maria. Snap, Maria. Watch her throat."
Maria's pupils widened. Her gaze locked on her mother's neck.
Matilda forced herself to remain still, though her body screamed to flee.
"Maria," she whispered, "it is illusion. Count. Count, my love."
Maria began, her voice low, shaking.
"One… two… three… four… five."
Snap.
Her eyes blinked rapidly, her face twisted between fear and clarity. The whispering ceased. The shadow dissolved.
She gasped, covering her mouth with her hand. Tears streaked down her face. "They nearly had me, Mama. They nearly made me strike you."
Matilda at last embraced her daughter, clutching her trembling body. "That is why you must always count. Always snap. Never forget."
But in the corner, unseen by the mother, Case 33's smile widened, as though the ritual itself amused him.