Page 22 of Traithorn

“But…everyone has been to one at least once!”

“Not us,” she replies sadly.

“Well, where did you come from then?”

She takes a step closer, with her brother following close behind. I have to crane my neck to look up at them since they’re much taller than me.

“A bad, bad place,” she says.

“Like the evil castle in Snow White?”

She tilts her head that way again. “Sure.”

Her hair whips in the wind, lashing across the boy’s face, who has been silently staring at me all this time.

“I told you to tie it up,” he mutters, brushing it off with a bitter expression. Her smile reappears at his comment.

I don’t know why, but something about them makes my stomach tighten.

The boy is still staring at me. He lifts a hand to the back of his neck, messing up his curly brown hair. Aren’t they supposed to be twins? His gaze makes me shift on my feet, a little uncertain.

I feel Mommy and Daddy’s eyes on me from behind. That helps a little.

Then the boy speaks his first words to me since he got here. “You’re our new plaything,” he says, smiling.

I blink, not understanding. Was that a joke?

I look back at my parents, but their brows furrow, too.

“He’s kidding,” the red-haired girl says quickly, looping her arm through mine. “I’m Celine. This is Vernon. We’re ten years old!”

That makes them two years older than me.

Vernon sighs and crosses his arms, still watching me with that unreadable look that makes me squirm. I instantly want to run back to my parents and hide behind them.

Mommy and Daddy glance at the gray-haired lady, their smiles unsure and tight. I turn back to the twins, something sneaky in the air, while they look at me like I’m a toy. Their smiles are weird too, strange and obsessive smiles.

Yeah. These two mean trouble.

—————

PRESENT DAY

STANDING OUTSIDE WHAT USEDto be a church, I stare at the remnants of decay and debris. Some of the façade has been left, but the roof has caved in, leaving it abandoned for the past few years. I’m back at the perimeters of the graveyard, masses of graves stretching as far as my eye can see. And yet, I cannot bring myself to visit my parents’ grave.

I still feel guilty about what happened. My heart aching, splintering apart like old wood inside my ribcage, ultimately stabbing my heart.

The memories of the past push to the forefront of my mind, causing a headache to take root in my temples. It’s throbbing, as if someone is banging on it with a hammer.

The cold from the late midnight winter air washes over my face, and I bask in the sensation of freedom it offers. How it digsdeeper into my skin, seeping into every crevice of my body and freezing me from head to toe.

My hair is a tangled mess in the wind, and I already dread the battle it’ll be to brush through these stubborn waves.

Staring at the church’s façade, I remember how it was just across the street where I met them for the first time fifteen years ago in the playground. And it was here, at this church, I saw them for the last time—here where the cops caught them, leading to their arrest.

Oh, the rage fueling their expressions when they realized I had called the cops after stumbling upon my parents’ murdered bodies. I still remember their tongues nailed to the asphalt outside our house, the utter horror that made everything around me too palpable with the thoughts that refused to stop racing.

“It’s almost poetic, isn’t it? Silencing them like they silenced us,” she states, calm as ever. “Don’t you see? We killed them for you. Now, we can be together forever. There’s no one to prevent us from taking you.”

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