Jane sank to her knees, undone.
“I forgot you,” she breathed. “I wanted to forget you.”
Still her mother did not respond. It would have been easier if she had; Jane could more readily argue away a kind and loving apparition, or a cruel one, the way she had with the Cunninghams. She could have walked past, or locked the apparition in another infinite circle.
But this, this disinterest? Jane reached out for her, before recoiling.
Did it matter that ghosts were not real and this was not her mother? Or was it only the beating of her own heart that mattered, the longing there, the loneliness?
To walk past her was abominable, when Jane had no other trace of her left.
“Please, please look at me,” Jane whispered.
Her mother shifted then, and Jane’s heart leapt, but it was to take a step away, leaving once more. Jane surged forward, then, desperate to see recognition in her eyes. She seized her mother by the shoulders, turning her around. Her mother’s body was warm, and her features were so detailed, so specific. It could have been her mother, if she had wanted. If she could have known it to be true.
Surely magic could transform the creatures it had given life to.
The temptation consumed her, and she whispered, “It’s your daughter,” as if it were only aging that caused this distance. “Your daughter, Jane. I am here. I am here.”
Her mother’s expression flickered with faint annoyance, and her eyes focused briefly on Jane’s face. It stole Jane’s breath. And then her mother’s attention moved on again to somewhere beyond her. How fitting that Jane could not see recognition in her eyes, or interest, or awareness. Jane had shut herself off from the memory of her mother long ago. But now the old scar inside her was torn open afresh, and she was bleeding, hemorrhaging a pain she hadn’t touched in near on two decades. She had forgotten how to stanch the flow.
Crying, Jane let go of her mother’s shoulders to touch her cheeks, her fingers light over the warm, real flesh. She brushed her thumbs along her mother’s hairline, and sought out every element of herself in her mother’s face.
She found the smallest buckle along the line of her jaw.
At first, her eyes slid off it, her mind unwilling to accept the fracture in the illusion. But beneath that buckle was dark granite. Its weight anchored her when everything else threatened to fade away, and she dug her fingertips beneath it. It was tempting, so tempting, the idea of giving herself over to the melancholic, aching dream of her mother the way she had planned to so many days ago, but she forced herself to fight instead, tearing at the false flesh, unveiling more and more of the truth beneath.
She had forgone sleep for this. She had subsisted only on bits of hare, tangled sea grass, raw eggs. She had made herself half mad, following a set of rituals designed to open her mind to the workings of the world, and she saw them now.
The flesh sloughed off like a drumhead cut from its frame.
The statue rose above her, looking down with the same dispassion as her mother’s eyes had held. It had always been that. Always, always.
why will you not feed us? the creature said, its words unlike anything she had ever heard. They were more than sounds. They snaked over her chilled flesh, her tired bones. feed us, and we will carry you out of here.
The same hunger that Mrs. Cunningham had voiced. These things grew desperate when denied, she realized, and that knowledge gave her strength.
“And what would feed you?” she asked, stepping back and regarding it with her chin lifted.
your shame.
She remembered Augustine in the kitchen, bewitched, staring at her and seeing blood in her eyes, sickness under her skin. Shame was overwhelming in its paradoxical comfort. When Jane saw her mother, she felt the desperate need to fix things. When Augustine saw his patients, he saw the chance to heal what he had failed to repair.
Simple. It was so simple. These were not the ghosts of the dead, but hungry things that wore their forms, extracted from memory, bound to cause the maximum amount of pain because they drew only the details that hurt from their victim’s minds.
Jane bared her teeth. “I will not be ashamed,” she said.
you will die down here without our help. It was barely a threat. It sounded like truth, and Jane had to claw her way past it, like spiderwebs tangling between her teeth and nails.
“I will fight,” Jane spat.
There was no circle she could force the creature into. Could she draw a ring before her, and drag it there? The thought seemed ludicrous, seeing the heavy base of the statue before her. But she could still draw one around herself.