The morning after the scream did not feel like morning at all.
Light seeped through the kitchen curtains in thin, colorless ribbons, laying itself across the counters and floor like it didn't belong there. The house looked the same—same chipped mug by the sink, same faint dent in the couch cushion where her father used to sit—but everything carried an unfamiliar hush, as if the walls were trying not to remember what had happened the night before.
Arlee sat at the table with her hands wrapped around a cup of tea she hadn't touched. The steam had long since died. The warmth was gone, but she kept holding it anyway, because it gave her something to hold that didn't feel like grief.
Across from her, her mother stared into nothing.
There were faint shadows under her eyes, and her hair—dark again, ordinary again—was pulled back into a low knot like she'd done it quickly to keep her hands busy. She looked too human this morning. Too fragile to match the woman who had stormed into Arlee's room and screamed into empty space like she was facing something real.
Arlee kept seeing it: the way her mother's voice had cut through the air, the way the room had trembled, the way the silver glow had lit the shadows like they were afraid.
And then the words.
It has begun.
Arlee swallowed, throat dry. "What did you mean last night?"
Her mother's eyes flickered—sharp, tired. She didn't answer immediately. She seemed to be choosing which truth to hand over first, as if the wrong one might break something that couldn't be repaired.
"It wasn't supposed to happen like this," her mother said finally.
"What wasn't?"
Her mother's gaze dropped to Arlee's hair—silver, dull in the morning light, not glowing, not enchanted. Just hair. But Arlee watched her mother's eyes linger there a moment too long, as if seeing something layered underneath.
"It was only supposed to be able to sense you after you turned eighteen, Arlee."
The words slid into the room like a cold knife.
Arlee blinked. "Sense me?" she repeated, almost embarrassed by how small her voice sounded. "Who is 'it'?"
Her mother's jaw tightened. The air around her seemed to tighten too, as if even the house didn't want that word spoken clearly.
"Something old," her mother said carefully. "Something that doesn't walk through doors the way people do. Something that doesn't need permission unless it's forced to follow rules."
Arlee's fingers curled around the cup. "And it's supposed to sense me when I'm eighteen because… what? Because then I'm… ripe enough? Visible enough?"
Her mother flinched at the phrasing, but she didn't correct it. That alone was an answer.
"You were protected," her mother said quietly. "Hidden."
Arlee let out a rough laugh that sounded nothing like humor. "Hidden? From what? From that thing in my room last night?"
Her mother's eyes sharpened. "Yes."
Arlee's heart beat harder, as though it had been waiting for a word to latch onto. "Then why did it find me now?"
Her mother's hands tightened around her own mug. The porcelain clicked faintly. "I don't know," she admitted, voice strained. "And that's what terrifies me."
Arlee stared at her. "You don't know."
"I don't know why it found your father first," her mother went on, more forcefully now, as if saying the words out loud would pin them down. "I don't know what he had been doing, who he had contacted, what he might have agreed to, what he thought he could outsmart." Her voice trembled at the edges. "But I intend to find out."
The mention of her father twisted something sharp in Arlee's chest.
"They said it was a hit-and-run," Arlee said, her voice hardening. "They said there were no leads. No witnesses. Nothing."
Her mother's face didn't move much, but something dark passed behind her eyes, like a shadow crossing the sun. "They always say that when they can't explain the truth," she murmured.
Arlee's pulse leapt. "So you're saying—"
"I'm saying," her mother interrupted softly, "that some things don't look like what they are. Some deaths are… arranged."
The word arranged made Arlee's stomach turn.
"You think he was killed."
Her mother didn't deny it.
Arlee pushed back from the table so abruptly the chair scraped the floor. The sound was too loud in the quiet house. Her breath came fast, shallow. "Why didn't you tell me any of this the moment you showed up? Why did you wait until—until it touched me?"
Her mother's eyes flashed with pain. "Because I wanted you to have one more day of ignorance," she said, voice rising. "One more hour. One more breath without fear. Do you understand how rare that is for people like us?"
People like us.
Arlee stared at her mother, the words echoing in her skull. "What do you mean—people like us?"
Her mother looked away, as if the answer lived somewhere on the wall. "If you want the whole truth," she said, "you have to believe me."
Arlee barked a laugh, raw and cracked. "Believe you? I barely know you."
Her mother turned back, eyes bright with something desperate. "You know me more than you think," she said. "And I know you more than anyone ever has."
"That's not possible."
"It is," her mother said, and for a moment her voice carried that same steel it had carried last night. "Because I have been watching you longer than you remember."
Arlee's skin prickled. "That sounds like a threat."
"It's not," her mother said quickly. "It's a confession."
Arlee's thoughts skittered, searching for a shape that made sense. "Okay," she said, forcing steadiness into her voice. "Fine. Then prove it. Tell me something you can't possibly know."
Her mother exhaled slowly. "When you were six," she said, "you used to hide under the dining table when thunderstorms came. You didn't cry. You didn't call for your father. You just sat there with your knees to your chest and whispered the same sentence over and over like a prayer."
Arlee froze. A flicker of memory—a child's voice, shaking, whispering into darkness.
"What sentence?" Arlee asked, throat tight.
Her mother's gaze softened. "You said, If I don't look at it, it can't look at me back."
Arlee's mouth went dry. She hadn't told anyone that. Not even her father. It had been something she'd believed before she had words for fear.
Her mother continued, voice quieter. "And when you were nine, you drew the same symbol in every notebook you owned. Curved lines. A circle. An eye. Your father thought it was a phase. But it wasn't."
Arlee's hands began to shake. "Stop."
"When you were eleven," her mother said, and her voice trembled now, "you woke up screaming because you said something was standing in the corner of your room with no face. Your father called it a nightmare. But I knew."
Arlee pressed her palms to her temples like she could hold her skull together. "Stop," she said again, louder. "Why are you saying this to me?"
Her mother swallowed. "Because I need you to understand something," she said. "You have been protected from yourself."
Arlee's eyes snapped up. "From myself?"
Her mother nodded. "Because you started doing things, Arlee. Communicating with things. Opening doors you didn't know were doors. Your father and I—" She paused, as if that sentence carried a whole graveyard of pain. "We had to close them."
Arlee's laugh came out sharp, almost hysterical. "So you're telling me I was some kind of—what? A haunted child? A witch? A freak?"
Her mother flinched. "No," she said. "You were gifted."
Arlee's throat tightened around the word. "Gifted."
"It's not the kind of gift people want," her mother said quietly. "It's the kind they fear. The kind they chase."
Arlee stared at her. The kitchen felt suddenly too bright, too exposed. She remembered the fog at the cemetery. The way it had curled around her like it recognized her. The way the air had shifted in her room before the touch came.
"What did you do to me?" Arlee whispered.
Her mother hesitated, then spoke as if stepping onto glass. "I sealed your memories," she said. "And we closed your third eye."
The phrase landed with strange weight, like it wasn't metaphor at all but anatomy.
"My… what?"
Her mother leaned forward. "The third eye isn't a poetic idea," she said. "It's a door. It's sight beyond sight. It's the part of you that can perceive what the world hides—what the world refuses to admit exists."
Arlee's chest tightened. "So you're saying my father—"
"Your father could see some things," her mother said. "Not like we can. But he was close enough to the line to notice the shadows."
"We?"
Her mother's gaze held hers, unwavering. "You and I."
Arlee's skin prickled with sudden, inexplicable recognition, as if a part of her had been waiting for that sentence her whole life.
Her mother continued, voice urgent. "Closing it was a choice. A cruel one. But it saved you. It brought you back when you were slipping too far away."
Arlee's breath hitched. "Slipping where?"
Her mother's eyes flickered toward the hallway, toward the bedroom stacked with boxes, toward the unseen spaces between rooms. "Somewhere you wouldn't have come back from," she said softly.
Arlee stood abruptly, chair scraping again. "No. No, that's not—" She shook her head hard. "You don't get to show up after he dies and tell me my whole life was… edited."
Her mother's face tightened with grief and frustration. "I didn't want to," she said fiercely. "But your father—he begged me. He begged me to keep you unaware for as long as possible. He wanted you to be a girl with school problems and heartbreak and stupid little arguments about curfews. He wanted you to have a life untouched by this."
Arlee's eyes burned. "Then why is it happening now?"
Her mother's voice dropped. "Because something has changed."
Arlee's heart pounded. "What changed?"
Her mother looked at her like the answer was a bruise she didn't want to press. "I think your father tried to unseal something," she said. "I think he went looking for answers and found a door. And I think he opened it."
Arlee's mind snapped back to the final phone call. His urgency. His fear. Go with your mother. She'll keep you safe.
"Did he know he was going to die?" Arlee whispered.
Her mother's eyes glistened. "I don't know," she said honestly. "But I know he sounded like a man saying goodbye."
Arlee's breath shook. The grief rose fast, sharp, threatening to drown her. "He told me you'd keep me safe," she said. "Safe from who? Safe from what?"
Her mother's voice turned low, firm. "From it," she said. "From whatever has been circling your bloodline. From whatever woke up the moment your father started digging."
Arlee swallowed hard. "And you can actually protect me?"
Her mother's gaze flickered with something fierce. "I did last night."
Arlee remembered her mother's scream. The way the pressure had retreated like an animal forced back by fire. The way her hair had turned silver and luminous, like moonlight made solid.
"Your hair," Arlee whispered. "What was that?"
Her mother's lips parted, then closed, as if she'd decided the truth would only scare her more. "A reminder," she said softly. "To it. And to you."
Arlee's pulse hammered. "So what now?"
Her mother stood and crossed the kitchen toward a cabinet Arlee had never seen used. Its wood was darker than the others, the handle worn as if it had been gripped a thousand times. Her mother opened it slowly.
Inside were bundles wrapped in cloth—dark fabric tied with twine. Objects lay beneath, their shapes uneven, old, wrong in a modern kitchen.
Arlee took a step closer despite herself. "What is that?"
"Tools," her mother said, voice steady. "And history."
She lifted one bundle carefully and untied it. Metal glinted dully—a thin chain, a small, tarnished charm shaped like an eye, etched with the same curved symbol Arlee suddenly remembered drawing as a child. Her breath caught.
"You said you sealed my memories," Arlee said, voice shaking. "How?"
Her mother's gaze returned to her. "The same way I'm going to unseal them," she said.
Arlee's stomach dropped. "You're going to do it now?"
Her mother nodded. "We don't have time anymore."
Arlee stepped back, fear flashing hot. "No. No, I—what if I don't want to remember? What if whatever I remember makes it worse?"
Her mother's voice softened. "Arlee," she said gently, "it's already worse. It found you before eighteen. That means the rules are breaking."
"The rules?"
Her mother nodded. "Everything has rules. Even monsters. Even miracles."
Arlee's throat tightened. "And you think unsealing my memories will tell you what my father was doing."
"I'm hoping it will," her mother said. "Because your memories don't just belong to you. Not all of them." She swallowed. "Some were… hidden for a reason. Some were sealed because you were seeing things you weren't meant to survive."
Arlee's hands trembled. "So you did this to me on my birthdays."
Her mother's eyes flickered with guilt. "Yes," she admitted. "And other times. When you were close to remembering on your own."
Arlee's voice rose, sharp with betrayal. "You sealed my memories?" she shouted. "But why?"
Her mother's voice rose too, the calm cracking. "To protect you!" she yelled. "Because you were starting to reach out to things that heard you, Arlee! You were answering back! You were—" She stopped, breath hitching, then forced the words out. "You were opening your third eye wider every time you got scared, and the more you saw, the more they saw you."
Arlee's eyes burned with tears. "Who are 'they'?"
Her mother's gaze darkened. "The ones who wait," she said. "The ones who listen. The ones who claim what they can."
Arlee's breath came fast. "I don't understand."
"I know," her mother whispered. "That's why you need to see."
Arlee backed toward the table, bracing herself. "What do you mean, see?"
Her mother stepped closer and lifted her hand, hesitating only a moment—asking without asking.
Arlee's fear and curiosity twisted together until they were the same thing. "What are you going to do to me?" she whispered.
Her mother's voice was almost tender. "I'm going to give you back to yourself," she said. "And I'm going to show you what your father tried to bury."
Arlee's breath caught. "What do you mean?"
Her mother's eyes held hers. "Let me show you," she said.
Arlee's heart pounded like it wanted to escape her ribs. She thought of her father's grave. The fog. The touch in her hair. The way the house had felt like it was listening. She thought of the boxes in her room, the countdown to strangers and paint and forgetting.
Two more weeks, Daddy.
The truth was already moving. Whether she wanted it or not.
"Do it," Arlee said, voice trembling. "Show me."
Her mother exhaled like she'd been holding her breath for years. She stepped forward and placed two fingers gently against Arlee's forehead.
The room went cold.
Not the cold of weather, but the cold of something opening.
Arlee's vision blurred. The edges of the kitchen peeled back like paper, and beneath it was something deeper—darkness layered with light, like the world had been hiding its true face beneath a mask. A sound filled her ears—not a voice, not words, but a hum that felt ancient and intimate, as if it had been inside her bones all along.
Then the memories came.
Not neatly. Not kindly.
They crashed into her in fragments: a younger Arlee standing in a hallway that seemed longer than it should be, whispering to something in the corner; her father's frantic face illuminated by candlelight; a symbol drawn in chalk on the floor; her own hands glowing faintly as she pressed them against a mirror and watched it ripple like water.
Arlee gasped and tried to pull away, but her mother's fingers held steady, anchoring her while the world broke open.
She saw herself at nine years old, eyes wide, staring at the ceiling as shadows crawled across it like living ink. She heard her own voice—small, calm, wrong—speaking a language she had never learned. She saw her father grabbing her shoulders, shaking, pleading.
Arlee, stop. Please. Don't answer it.
She felt her mother's presence then too, not in the room, but in the air—an invisible hand forcing the door closed, sealing something inside Arlee's mind like locking a monster in a cage.
Arlee's breath turned into a sob. The memories kept coming—birthdays where her mother's fingers pressed to her forehead and the world went white; nights where Arlee screamed because she could see faces in the dark; moments when she stood outside in the rain and looked up at the sky like it was speaking directly to her.
Her third eye opened.
Not as a metaphor.
As a sensation.
A widening.
A painful, beautiful awareness that unfurled behind her eyes like a new organ waking up. Suddenly the kitchen wasn't just a kitchen. It was a thin place. A place where something else could press through if invited. The shadows weren't just absence of light—they were shapes. Watching shapes.
Arlee screamed—not from pain, but from recognition.
And somewhere far beyond the walls of the house, something ancient lifted its head, as if it had been waiting for this precise moment.
Because what had been sealed was no longer sleeping.
And whatever had touched her hair in the dark now knew her eyes were open.
Arlee's mother's voice cut through the roaring in Arlee's head, fierce and trembling: "Stay with me. Don't let it pull you. Arlee—look at me."
Arlee tried. She tried to cling to the sound, but the memories were a storm, and in the center of them she saw one thing clearly:
Her father, standing in a dim room, speaking into a phone with a voice full of fear, saying a sentence Arlee had never heard before—words that made the air around him ripple like heat.
And then he looked straight toward her, as if he could see her watching through time.
As if he had always known this moment would come.
His lips moved.
And the world went silent—
right before the next memory opened like a door.The morning after the scream did not feel like morning at all.
Light seeped through the kitchen curtains in thin, colorless ribbons, laying itself across the counters and floor like it didn't belong there. The house looked the same—same chipped mug by the sink, same faint dent in the couch cushion where her father used to sit—but everything carried an unfamiliar hush, as if the walls were trying not to remember what had happened the night before.
Arlee sat at the table with her hands wrapped around a cup of tea she hadn't touched. The steam had long since died. The warmth was gone, but she kept holding it anyway, because it gave her something to hold that didn't feel like grief.
Across from her, her mother stared into nothing.
There were faint shadows under her eyes, and her hair—dark again, ordinary again—was pulled back into a low knot like she'd done it quickly to keep her hands busy. She looked too human this morning. Too fragile to match the woman who had stormed into Arlee's room and screamed into empty space like she was facing something real.
Arlee kept seeing it: the way her mother's voice had cut through the air, the way the room had trembled, the way the silver glow had lit the shadows like they were afraid.
And then the words.
It has begun.
Arlee swallowed, throat dry. "What did you mean last night?"
Her mother's eyes flickered—sharp, tired. She didn't answer immediately. She seemed to be choosing which truth to hand over first, as if the wrong one might break something that couldn't be repaired.
"It wasn't supposed to happen like this," her mother said finally.
"What wasn't?"
Her mother's gaze dropped to Arlee's hair—silver, dull in the morning light, not glowing, not enchanted. Just hair. But Arlee watched her mother's eyes linger there a moment too long, as if seeing something layered underneath.
"It was only supposed to be able to sense you after you turned eighteen, Arlee."
The words slid into the room like a cold knife.
Arlee blinked. "Sense me?" she repeated, almost embarrassed by how small her voice sounded. "Who is 'it'?"
Her mother's jaw tightened. The air around her seemed to tighten too, as if even the house didn't want that word spoken clearly.
"Something old," her mother said carefully. "Something that doesn't walk through doors the way people do. Something that doesn't need permission unless it's forced to follow rules."
Arlee's fingers curled around the cup. "And it's supposed to sense me when I'm eighteen because… what? Because then I'm… ripe enough? Visible enough?"
Her mother flinched at the phrasing, but she didn't correct it. That alone was an answer.
"You were protected," her mother said quietly. "Hidden."
Arlee let out a rough laugh that sounded nothing like humor. "Hidden? From what? From that thing in my room last night?"
Her mother's eyes sharpened. "Yes."
Arlee's heart beat harder, as though it had been waiting for a word to latch onto. "Then why did it find me now?"
Her mother's hands tightened around her own mug. The porcelain clicked faintly. "I don't know," she admitted, voice strained. "And that's what terrifies me."
Arlee stared at her. "You don't know."
"I don't know why it found your father first," her mother went on, more forcefully now, as if saying the words out loud would pin them down. "I don't know what he had been doing, who he had contacted, what he might have agreed to, what he thought he could outsmart." Her voice trembled at the edges. "But I intend to find out."
The mention of her father twisted something sharp in Arlee's chest.
"They said it was a hit-and-run," Arlee said, her voice hardening. "They said there were no leads. No witnesses. Nothing."
Her mother's face didn't move much, but something dark passed behind her eyes, like a shadow crossing the sun. "They always say that when they can't explain the truth," she murmured.
Arlee's pulse leapt. "So you're saying—"
"I'm saying," her mother interrupted softly, "that some things don't look like what they are. Some deaths are… arranged."
The word arranged made Arlee's stomach turn.
"You think he was killed."
Her mother didn't deny it.
Arlee pushed back from the table so abruptly the chair scraped the floor. The sound was too loud in the quiet house. Her breath came fast, shallow. "Why didn't you tell me any of this the moment you showed up? Why did you wait until—until it touched me?"
Her mother's eyes flashed with pain. "Because I wanted you to have one more day of ignorance," she said, voice rising. "One more hour. One more breath without fear. Do you understand how rare that is for people like us?"
People like us.
Arlee stared at her mother, the words echoing in her skull. "What do you mean—people like us?"
Her mother looked away, as if the answer lived somewhere on the wall. "If you want the whole truth," she said, "you have to believe me."
Arlee barked a laugh, raw and cracked. "Believe you? I barely know you."
Her mother turned back, eyes bright with something desperate. "You know me more than you think," she said. "And I know you more than anyone ever has."
"That's not possible."
"It is," her mother said, and for a moment her voice carried that same steel it had carried last night. "Because I have been watching you longer than you remember."
Arlee's skin prickled. "That sounds like a threat."
"It's not," her mother said quickly. "It's a confession."
Arlee's thoughts skittered, searching for a shape that made sense. "Okay," she said, forcing steadiness into her voice. "Fine. Then prove it. Tell me something you can't possibly know."
Her mother exhaled slowly. "When you were six," she said, "you used to hide under the dining table when thunderstorms came. You didn't cry. You didn't call for your father. You just sat there with your knees to your chest and whispered the same sentence over and over like a prayer."
Arlee froze. A flicker of memory—a child's voice, shaking, whispering into darkness.
"What sentence?" Arlee asked, throat tight.
Her mother's gaze softened. "You said, If I don't look at it, it can't look at me back."
Arlee's mouth went dry. She hadn't told anyone that. Not even her father. It had been something she'd believed before she had words for fear.
Her mother continued, voice quieter. "And when you were nine, you drew the same symbol in every notebook you owned. Curved lines. A circle. An eye. Your father thought it was a phase. But it wasn't."
Arlee's hands began to shake. "Stop."
"When you were eleven," her mother said, and her voice trembled now, "you woke up screaming because you said something was standing in the corner of your room with no face. Your father called it a nightmare. But I knew."
Arlee pressed her palms to her temples like she could hold her skull together. "Stop," she said again, louder. "Why are you saying this to me?"
Her mother swallowed. "Because I need you to understand something," she said. "You have been protected from yourself."
Arlee's eyes snapped up. "From myself?"
Her mother nodded. "Because you started doing things, Arlee. Communicating with things. Opening doors you didn't know were doors. Your father and I—" She paused, as if that sentence carried a whole graveyard of pain. "We had to close them."
Arlee's laugh came out sharp, almost hysterical. "So you're telling me I was some kind of—what? A haunted child? A witch? A freak?"
Her mother flinched. "No," she said. "You were gifted."
Arlee's throat tightened around the word. "Gifted."
"It's not the kind of gift people want," her mother said quietly. "It's the kind they fear. The kind they chase."
Arlee stared at her. The kitchen felt suddenly too bright, too exposed. She remembered the fog at the cemetery. The way it had curled around her like it recognized her. The way the air had shifted in her room before the touch came.
"What did you do to me?" Arlee whispered.
Her mother hesitated, then spoke as if stepping onto glass. "I sealed your memories," she said. "And we closed your third eye."
The phrase landed with strange weight, like it wasn't metaphor at all but anatomy.
"My… what?"
Her mother leaned forward. "The third eye isn't a poetic idea," she said. "It's a door. It's sight beyond sight. It's the part of you that can perceive what the world hides—what the world refuses to admit exists."
Arlee's chest tightened. "So you're saying my father—"
"Your father could see some things," her mother said. "Not like we can. But he was close enough to the line to notice the shadows."
"We?"
Her mother's gaze held hers, unwavering. "You and I."
Arlee's skin prickled with sudden, inexplicable recognition, as if a part of her had been waiting for that sentence her whole life.
Her mother continued, voice urgent. "Closing it was a choice. A cruel one. But it saved you. It brought you back when you were slipping too far away."
Arlee's breath hitched. "Slipping where?"
Her mother's eyes flickered toward the hallway, toward the bedroom stacked with boxes, toward the unseen spaces between rooms. "Somewhere you wouldn't have come back from," she said softly.
Arlee stood abruptly, chair scraping again. "No. No, that's not—" She shook her head hard. "You don't get to show up after he dies and tell me my whole life was… edited."
Her mother's face tightened with grief and frustration. "I didn't want to," she said fiercely. "But your father—he begged me. He begged me to keep you unaware for as long as possible. He wanted you to be a girl with school problems and heartbreak and stupid little arguments about curfews. He wanted you to have a life untouched by this."
Arlee's eyes burned. "Then why is it happening now?"
Her mother's voice dropped. "Because something has changed."
Arlee's heart pounded. "What changed?"
Her mother looked at her like the answer was a bruise she didn't want to press. "I think your father tried to unseal something," she said. "I think he went looking for answers and found a door. And I think he opened it."
Arlee's mind snapped back to the final phone call. His urgency. His fear. Go with your mother. She'll keep you safe.
"Did he know he was going to die?" Arlee whispered.
Her mother's eyes glistened. "I don't know," she said honestly. "But I know he sounded like a man saying goodbye."
Arlee's breath shook. The grief rose fast, sharp, threatening to drown her. "He told me you'd keep me safe," she said. "Safe from who? Safe from what?"
Her mother's voice turned low, firm. "From it," she said. "From whatever has been circling your bloodline. From whatever woke up the moment your father started digging."
Arlee swallowed hard. "And you can actually protect me?"
Her mother's gaze flickered with something fierce. "I did last night."
Arlee remembered her mother's scream. The way the pressure had retreated like an animal forced back by fire. The way her hair had turned silver and luminous, like moonlight made solid.
"Your hair," Arlee whispered. "What was that?"
Her mother's lips parted, then closed, as if she'd decided the truth would only scare her more. "A reminder," she said softly. "To it. And to you."
Arlee's pulse hammered. "So what now?"
Her mother stood and crossed the kitchen toward a cabinet Arlee had never seen used. Its wood was darker than the others, the handle worn as if it had been gripped a thousand times. Her mother opened it slowly.
Inside were bundles wrapped in cloth—dark fabric tied with twine. Objects lay beneath, their shapes uneven, old, wrong in a modern kitchen.
Arlee took a step closer despite herself. "What is that?"
"Tools," her mother said, voice steady. "And history."
She lifted one bundle carefully and untied it. Metal glinted dully—a thin chain, a small, tarnished charm shaped like an eye, etched with the same curved symbol Arlee suddenly remembered drawing as a child. Her breath caught.
"You said you sealed my memories," Arlee said, voice shaking. "How?"
Her mother's gaze returned to her. "The same way I'm going to unseal them," she said.
Arlee's stomach dropped. "You're going to do it now?"
Her mother nodded. "We don't have time anymore."
Arlee stepped back, fear flashing hot. "No. No, I—what if I don't want to remember? What if whatever I remember makes it worse?"
Her mother's voice softened. "Arlee," she said gently, "it's already worse. It found you before eighteen. That means the rules are breaking."
"The rules?"
Her mother nodded. "Everything has rules. Even monsters. Even miracles."
Arlee's throat tightened. "And you think unsealing my memories will tell you what my father was doing."
"I'm hoping it will," her mother said. "Because your memories don't just belong to you. Not all of them." She swallowed. "Some were… hidden for a reason. Some were sealed because you were seeing things you weren't meant to survive."
Arlee's hands trembled. "So you did this to me on my birthdays."
Her mother's eyes flickered with guilt. "Yes," she admitted. "And other times. When you were close to remembering on your own."
Arlee's voice rose, sharp with betrayal. "You sealed my memories?" she shouted. "But why?"
Her mother's voice rose too, the calm cracking. "To protect you!" she yelled. "Because you were starting to reach out to things that heard you, Arlee! You were answering back! You were—" She stopped, breath hitching, then forced the words out. "You were opening your third eye wider every time you got scared, and the more you saw, the more they saw you."
Arlee's eyes burned with tears. "Who are 'they'?"
Her mother's gaze darkened. "The ones who wait," she said. "The ones who listen. The ones who claim what they can."
Arlee's breath came fast. "I don't understand."
"I know," her mother whispered. "That's why you need to see."
Arlee backed toward the table, bracing herself. "What do you mean, see?"
Her mother stepped closer and lifted her hand, hesitating only a moment—asking without asking.
Arlee's fear and curiosity twisted together until they were the same thing. "What are you going to do to me?" she whispered.
Her mother's voice was almost tender. "I'm going to give you back to yourself," she said. "And I'm going to show you what your father tried to bury."
Arlee's breath caught. "What do you mean?"
Her mother's eyes held hers. "Let me show you," she said.
Arlee's heart pounded like it wanted to escape her ribs. She thought of her father's grave. The fog. The touch in her hair. The way the house had felt like it was listening. She thought of the boxes in her room, the countdown to strangers and paint and forgetting.
Two more weeks, Daddy.
The truth was already moving. Whether she wanted it or not.
"Do it," Arlee said, voice trembling. "Show me."
Her mother exhaled like she'd been holding her breath for years. She stepped forward and placed two fingers gently against Arlee's forehead.
The room went cold.
Not the cold of weather, but the cold of something opening.
Arlee's vision blurred. The edges of the kitchen peeled back like paper, and beneath it was something deeper—darkness layered with light, like the world had been hiding its true face beneath a mask. A sound filled her ears—not a voice, not words, but a hum that felt ancient and intimate, as if it had been inside her bones all along.
Then the memories came.
Not neatly. Not kindly.
They crashed into her in fragments: a younger Arlee standing in a hallway that seemed longer than it should be, whispering to something in the corner; her father's frantic face illuminated by candlelight; a symbol drawn in chalk on the floor; her own hands glowing faintly as she pressed them against a mirror and watched it ripple like water.
Arlee gasped and tried to pull away, but her mother's fingers held steady, anchoring her while the world broke open.
She saw herself at nine years old, eyes wide, staring at the ceiling as shadows crawled across it like living ink. She heard her own voice—small, calm, wrong—speaking a language she had never learned. She saw her father grabbing her shoulders, shaking, pleading.
Arlee, stop. Please. Don't answer it.
She felt her mother's presence then too, not in the room, but in the air—an invisible hand forcing the door closed, sealing something inside Arlee's mind like locking a monster in a cage.
Arlee's breath turned into a sob. The memories kept coming—birthdays where her mother's fingers pressed to her forehead and the world went white; nights where Arlee screamed because she could see faces in the dark; moments when she stood outside in the rain and looked up at the sky like it was speaking directly to her.
Her third eye opened.
Not as a metaphor.
As a sensation.
A widening.
A painful, beautiful awareness that unfurled behind her eyes like a new organ waking up. Suddenly the kitchen wasn't just a kitchen. It was a thin place. A place where something else could press through if invited. The shadows weren't just absence of light—they were shapes. Watching shapes.
Arlee screamed—not from pain, but from recognition.
And somewhere far beyond the walls of the house, something ancient lifted its head, as if it had been waiting for this precise moment.
Because what had been sealed was no longer sleeping.
And whatever had touched her hair in the dark now knew her eyes were open.
Arlee's mother's voice cut through the roaring in Arlee's head, fierce and trembling: "Stay with me. Don't let it pull you. Arlee—look at me."
Arlee tried. She tried to cling to the sound, but the memories were a storm, and in the center of them she saw one thing clearly:
Her father, standing in a dim room, speaking into a phone with a voice full of fear, saying a sentence Arlee had never heard before—words that made the air around him ripple like heat.
And then he looked straight toward her, as if he could see her watching through time.
As if he had always known this moment would come.
His lips moved.
And the world went silent—
right before the next memory opened like a door.