The attic smelled of mothballs and betrayal. Ayla kicked aside a moldering wedding dress—Mother's? Selena's?—and crouched beneath the slanted eaves. Her flashlight beam caught the rusted lockbox hidden behind generations of discarded porcelain dolls. Their painted eyes followed her as she pried the lid open with a screwdriver.
"Nine years old," she muttered, thumbing through the crumbling diary pages. Selena's childhood handwriting looped with psychotic precision:
April 12thFed Subject 7A (black wolf pup) raw venison mixed with my hair. He licked the plate clean. Good dog.
Ayla's nail tore the corner of a page. The paper bled sepia tears.
(Three miles west, Lila thrashed in her hospital bed. Her IV stand rattled as she dreamed of stone walls weeping black water—the same walls now housing Lucas' feral pack.)
II. Puppy Love
Moonlight oozed through a cracked skylight. Ayla spread the diary open on a cobwebbed vanity. Between entries about tea parties and dead sparrows, sketches emerged:
Wolf pup gnawing a silver-coated bone (labeled "training reinforcement")Adolescent Lucas wearing a choke chain studded with rose thornsA tally chart tracking "bite inhibition progress"
"Damn it, Lucas." Her whisper stirred dust motes into frenzied spirals. "You told me she adopted you at fourteen."
A Polaroid slipped from the diary's back flap.
Age eleven. Selena in a lace pinafore, gripping a wolf pup's scruff. Her patent leather shoe pressed on its tail. The pup's golden eyes burned with familiar defiance.
Ayla's throat tightened. She flipped the photo. Selena's looping script:
First successful imprint. He cried when I left the room. Progress!
III. Echoes in the Dark
The attic door creaked. Ayla spun, screwdriver raised. Moonlight revealed only shadows and the faint shimmer of Lucas' residual energy—a heat haze lingering near the skylight since his disappearance.
"Still haunting me?" She lobbed the Polaroid at the shimmer. It passed through, landing in a shaft of moonlight. The pup's eyes glowed neon gold for three heartbeats.
(Real-time: In Lila's dreamscape, black water rose to her chin. Stone walls morphed into rib cages. Wolves howled in familiar cadence—Lucas' childhood night terrors.)
Ayla struck a match. The diary pages curled like dying rose petals. "Let's see her train you through this."
Flames engulfed Selena's neat script. Smoke coiled into a phantom wolf's muzzle that snapped at Ayla's face.
"Pathetic." She blew smoke into its form. "Even your ghosts half-ass it."
The fire roared suddenly, pinning her against the vanity. Not smoke—solid heat shaping into lupine haunches, glowing eyes, teeth grazing her jugular.
Lucas.
Or what remained of him.
IV. Good Dog
His spectral fangs dripped molten wax onto her collarbone. She gripped the burning diary.
"Mad at me for burning your baby pictures?" Her laugh choked on smoke. "Join the club, Fido."
The flame-wolf snarled. Its paws left charred roses on the floorboards. Ayla scrambled backward, still clutching the diary's spine.
"Sic her," she mocked, throwing Selena's training command like a knife.
The wolf froze. Its head cocked—eleven-year-old Lucas hearing a new equation.
Ayla pressed her advantage. "Fetch!" She hurled the burning diary through the skylight.
The wolf dissolved into a comet streak after it. Glass rained down as flames consumed Selena's words midair:
Final entrySubject 7A killed his first deer today. I made him eat the heart raw. He vomited, then licked my shoes. Perfect obedience.
V. Afterburn
Dawn found Ayla picking glass shards from her hair. The diary's ashes formed a crescent moon on the lawn below—Lucas' favorite childhood shape to trace in dirt.
She pocketed the unburned Polaroid. The pup's eyes still glowed if she tilted it just right.
(In Lila's hospital room, nurses found new bruises forming—paw prints circling her throat.)
Postscript: The Thorn Garden
That night, Ayla dreamt of eleven-year-old Lucas chained in Selena's rose garden. His hands bled from deadheading thorns.
"Good dogs earn their keep," Selena sang, braiding roses into his hair.
When he looked up, his eyes were the same molten gold as the flame-wolf.
"Should've bitten her face off," Ayla muttered in the dream.
His laugh rustled the rose bushes. "Tried. She tasted like aspirin and dead things."
The dream dissolved. Ayla woke with thorn scratches across her palms.
Somewhere, a wolf howled in triplets—Selena's childhood "all clear" signal. Somewhere, a diary page survived.