The ground opened like a mouth.
Not to swallow them to speak.
The voice that emerged was the worst thing Eleanor had ever heard: not a sound, but a pressure, slithering into her ears like liquid glass. It spoke in shattered nursery rhymes and backward prayers, its words peeling the flesh from her arms in spirals.
"YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO FORGET"
Thomas fell to his knees, clutching his head. "I tried! God help me, I tried—"
Emily stepped forward. The earth crawled up her legs, forming a dress of living roots and bone. "You made me the angel," she repeated. "But angels don't forgive."
The house's voice twisted:
"THEN BE THE MONSTER INSTEAD"
The roses attacked.
Not Emily. Not Eleanor.
Thomas.
Thorns burrowed into his flesh, blooming through his eye sockets, his mouth, his fingernails. He didn't scream he sang, his voice harmonizing with the house's wail as the vines rearranged him into something new.
Something obedient.
The crow laughed. "The gardener becomes the garden."
Emily turned to Eleanor. Her eyes were fully black now, reflecting nothing at all. "Now you choose," she said. "Run with the crows. Or burn with the house."
Behind them, Jacob's cage splintered.