The stew pot contained a severed head—an exact replica of Denise’s face. Its half-lidded eyes and parted lips wore an eerie, indecipherable expression—not peaceful, yet not fully agonized either. It was the slack emptiness of a head left too long detached.

  Yvette stared into its dull eyes—then her vision lurched. Suddenly, she was looking up from inside the pot.

  If I’m down here… who’s standing above me?

  Darkness descended as the lid clanged shut. Through the last sliver of light, she glimpsed the hands sealing her fate—her own hands, moving without their body.

  Then—transition.

  She was small now, perhaps seven years old, dressed in grimy finery within the Bilodo mansion. Servants muttered behind her:

  "No breeding, that one."

  "Look at her skulk—raised in a gutter, no doubt."

  The child (Denise?) ignored them, pressing her ear to door after door until—there—a whimper. She flung it open…

  Empty.

  But the next door revealed Miss Clay, the governess, sewing by the window.

  "You remember me!" Denise’s voice sang from Yvette’s borrowed throat.

  "Of course, dear." Miss Clay turned. "My star pupil."

  What followed was a fevered plea about a monster stealing memories, a lost brother—until Miss Clay’s kindly veneer split.

  Her eyes became hungry voids. Teeth like shards of glass gleamed as she held up her sewing project: a doll stitched from raw, peachy skin.

  "You wished for this," she hissed. "No more brother’s cries ruining your recitals. No more carrots in your stew. Liar."

  Denise’s scream shattered the room.

  Reset.

  Now they sat at dinner—parents, Denise, and the thing masquerading as her brother.

  It gorged without swallowing, its face distending with squirming roots while their parents cooed:

  "Eat up, Denise! Don’t let him outgrow you!"

  Tears dripped into her stew (carrots—why did they make her want to retch?). Behind the horror, Yvette sensed Denise’s ache—this grotesque pantomime of family was still kinder than her real home.

  And so she ate, racing the monstrosity’s gluttony until their parents stood, napkins falling to reveal hollowed torsos:

  "Hurry, darling… or he’ll consume us first."

  Dreams within dreams, each more suffocating than the last—until Winslow wrenched her back to the kitchen.

  "She can’t fight this," he snapped. "Mercy would be ending it."

  "She is fighting," Yvette countered.

  "Because she doesn’t know surrender is an option!" His voice turned arctic. "Had I known death was escape..."

  Yvette seized the ringed meat from the table.

  "Then I’ll show her a third path."

  "You’re diving back in?"

  "This place mirrors her nightmares. Find the right door, and I’ll hunt the source."

  Winslow warned of madness, of becoming prey—but Yvette swallowed the meat whole.

  "Let the bastard come," she growled. "I’m ready."

  Having endured the earlier cascade of nightmares, Yvette had begun deciphering the logic governing this uncanny world. Every encounter, every experience she’d navigated carried deliberate symbolism—though it obeyed dreamlike intuition rather than reason. Autumn might conjure decaying leaves or the cozy aroma of spiced pumpkin pie, each meaning as fluid as the dreamer’s heart.

  Certain dreams looped, yet never identically. Choices that once led down one path might now fork unexpectedly. She theorized their recurrence correlated to how deeply Denise’s psyche had branded them as pivotal memories.

  So why does the catalyst for all this madness remain elusive? Did Denise never grasp its peril?

  Time was slipping away. Yvette could feel it—the girl’s sanity fraying under relentless supernatural onslaughts. The dreams grew more grotesque with each cycle, layered with fresh horrors. Worst of all, Denise was adapting to the grotesquerie. What happens when she stops resisting altogether?

  Diving deeper, Yvette gambled through nightmares, seeking that critical juncture.

  After countless tries—after biting into an apple that oozed blood like butchered meat—she shouldered open a door humming with whispers.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  "The séance ritual comes from an antique manuscript in our family library. Tonight, we reclaim forgotten arts..."

  The Bilodo parlor, once decadent with gilt and velvet, now brooded in shadow. Candle flames guttered, carving wavering silhouettes against the walls—less a gathering than a cabal of specters. Among them, Denise’s father murmured instructions to hooded guests.

  A spirit channeling?

  Hardly remarkable for the era. As modern science dismantled religious dogma, occultism flooded the void. Séances became the vogue among the elite—parlor games draped in Gothic mystique.

  Then came Denise, tiny fingers pushing the door ajar, baffled by the adults’ solemnity.

  Dusk’s last light bled uselessly outside; every window was cocooned in drapes, mirrors veiled, clocks halted. Only candlelight remained—twelve flames clutched by a ring of participants encircling a bound, blindfolded woman: Denise’s mother. Her father’s voice slithered through the dark:

  "Medicine affirms female nerves are more sensitive. Thus, my wife shall serve as our Traveler tonight. The rest—eleven Guides—must space themselves evenly along the walls. Eleven… plus her, twelve. A sacred balance. Twelve zodiacs, twelve apostles—though thirteen proved Judas’ ruin..."

  A mirthless chuckle. "Once begun, we shed our names. Only ‘Guides’ and ‘Traveler’ remain. She will meditate while we circle the room, eyes shut, candles aloft. Should she falter, the next Guide to reach yonder brass basin strikes it once."

  A crystalline ping pierced the silence as he tapped the vessel.

  "Hear that? All halt. Only the designated Guide may speak—whispering whatever truth their soul dictates to aid her journey. Then, three strikes to reset the circle. Understood? Never glance backward. Trust no offered gifts. The shadows may harbor… unwelcome witnesses."

  "Papa!" Denise’s scandalized squeak shattered the gravitas. "Untie Mama this instant!"

  "Deni—Christ’s sake! To bed, now!" No trace of paternal warmth colored his snarl.

  Grumbling, she slammed the door—but not fully. A sliver of light betrayed her spying.

  The ritual resumed. Adults shuffled blindly along the walls, candles painting their faces into spectral masks, elongating their shadows into clawed monstrosities. Denise’s pulse quickened—until an icy touch on her shoulder spun her around.

  A gaunt stranger loomed, his pallor corpse-like.

  "G-good evening, sir." She autopiloted into a curtsy. Papa’s soirees always drew peculiar guests.

  The man stood statue-still. His unblinking stare prickled her skin.

  The séance droned. His presence lingered, motionless—his hollow gaze fixated through the door’s upper crack while she craned to see beneath. Odd, but perhaps he’d been excluded from the game?

  Then his hand clamped her shoulder—cold, heavy, sinking into her flesh like a fetter.

  "Sir, wh-why aren’t you with them?" She twisted free under pretense of curiosity.

  In reply, he splayed a hand—twelve fingers twitching like spider legs.

  "O-oh! Twelve’s the limit, like cards!" She nodded, weirdly unfazed by the aberration. Why would she question it?

  As the ceremony concluded, the man pressed a glossy red apple into her palm.

  "Oh! Thank—"

  The instant her fingers closed around it, Yvette saw. Not an apple—a throbbing, bile-green organ, threaded with pulsating tendrils. The séance had lured something across the veil, but ordinary eyes perceived nothing. It should have departed, impotent…

  Yet Denise—blessed or cursed with Otherworldly sight—had acknowledged it. By accepting its gift, she forged a bridge for its kind.

  "How scrumptious!" Giggling, Denise raised the slime-slick horror to her mouth.

  Most Elder Gods dwell in the far reaches of the cosmos—save for the Star Maiden, who brushes past Earth as a comet, leaving behind her spores like cosmic seeds. The entities that invade this world often arrive first as spirits, spreading their influence through worship and madness, feeding on the blind devotion—or flesh—of humans to anchor themselves to our reality.

  Since it came without form, the “fruit” Denise received couldn’t have been real. Just a sliver of the thing’s mind, slipped into her daydream. Dreams, after all, are where the material and spiritual worlds blur.

  Remove the cursed fruit from the dream, and its grip on her might break.

  But how?

  Yvette wrestled for control of the dream-body, but it was like fighting sleep paralysis—her mind alert, her limbs useless.

  This wasn’t her dream. She’d breached it only by exploiting the thinning veil between worlds where the entity fed, like slipping through a haunted threshold in those Japanese tales of children spirited away to the land of the dead.

  Her sole advantage: Denise’s lingering sanity. Winslow had triggered a nightmare just by pinching her neck outside the dream. If pain could warp the dream, so could she.

  Don’t touch it! She screamed into the void as Denise’s dream-self lifted the fruit—a pulsing, organ-like lump now dripping viscous fluid. Useless. A wet gulp echoed as the girl swallowed it whole.

  Sharing Denise’s senses, Yvette tasted the horror: the fruit sagged in her hand like a rotten water balloon, then stretched like taffy down her throat—no chewing, just a slick, living mass slithering past her tonsils. Worse, it wriggled, sprouting hair-fine cilia to crawl deeper.

  The visitor’s grin split wider, its mouth yawning into a cavern lined with thrashing, glistening vines—

  —Then blackness. Yvette plunged into another dream, this one warped differently:

  Plates of food blurred together, indistinguishable as a colorblind man’s red and green. Meat? Bread? Rotten or raw? Her mind refused to decide. Later, at a funeral, she understood—anything dead became part of the haze. The corpse in the casket, petaled with roses, was just another unreadable meal.

  Stop.

  She wrenched her focus to the church candles, their flames tossing her back to the séance dream. Bilodo’s cult still huddled in debate.

  The door groaned open this time with a sound like a dying man’s stifled scream.

  She’d tried so many times to stop Denise from taking the apple. Delayed her once, three seconds. No more.

  Then the thing noticed her. The faceless mass of tendrils turned, and Yvette was hurled out.

  Into the kitchen, gasping. China shattered as she slammed the table.

  Winslow’s voice cut through: “Done playing? Your face says you lost. Spectacularly.”

  “Lost?” She bared teeth. “I eliminated futile strategies.”

  His gray eyes sharpened. “You’re compromised. Stand down—or I’ll make you.”

  “Oh, you’re right.” Her laugh hit a hysterical pitch. The divine half of her howled to rend the dream apart; the human half begged to save the girl. Both wanted the entity gone—but the hunter had to lead.

  She teetered on a mental cliffside, staring into black waves where leviathans stirred her own monstrous id, rising. Excitement terror.

  Her hand flicked. A glowing knife bloomed in her palm.

  Winslow stiffened. She’d bent the dream’s rules. Bad sign. His puppet strings lashed toward her nerves.

  And she shattered. A hundred mirror-shards hovered, each reflecting Yvette carving Denise’s name into her seared flesh. Blood dripped as she licked the wound, vanishing with a whisper:

  “You can’t stop me.”

  Winslow didn’t pursue. The shock of her expression—dilated pupils, feral grin—had nearly yanked him awake. A cardinal sin, in dreamwalking.

  (He knew that face. Had worn it himself, years ago, when he’d been the one clawing through madness.)

  The dream restarted.

  Vines now choked the mansion—slick, squirming things that shrank from Denise’s footsteps. The doorknob’s tendrils even curled aside like obedient servants.

  (How polite, Yvette mused.)

  Denise skipped toward the séance room, humming.