The earth vomited up corpses.
Not whole bodies pieces. Hands still clutching toys. Jaws frozen mid-scream. A tiny ribcage with roses growing between the bones. The garden soil turned to liquid rot as the house's roots retreated, leaving behind tunnels that pulsed like exposed veins.
Emily stood at the center of the devastation, her bare feet sinking into the muck. The rose thorns bent away from her, their fangs sheathing themselves in a grotesque mimicry of reverence.
"You remember now," Thomas whispered. His mask had cracked down the middle, revealing one human eye brown, bloodshot, terrified. "What we did to you."
Eleanor's stolen memories surged forward:
A younger Thomas pressing a scalpel into her hands. "Make her forget," he begged. "Or they'll use your sister next."
Emily (not Emily, never Emily) strapped to a wooden table, her mouth sewn shut with harp strings. Her eyes—black then, black now—tracking Eleanor's every move.
The first time the house spoke, its voice the sound of a hundred children crying in unison.
The crow reassembled itself from the blood-soaked petals, its feathers now threaded with gold. "The angel remembers," it croaked. "Now the house will too."
Emily raised her hands. The roses screamed.