Night: Celia and the Sister Duo | Sister Duo (Scenes 1-2)
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Written on 7/25/17. Camp NaNoWriMo, July 2017 edition.

Night: Celia and the Sister Duo

Sister Duo (Scenes 1-2)

"For there is no friend like a sister
In calm or stormy weather;
To cheer one on the tedious way,
To fetch one if one goes astray,
To lift one if one totters down,
To strengthen whilst one stands."

—Christina Georgina Rossetti,
“Goblin Market”

1

After a time, Celia stopped bawling into Nico's shirt and withdrew from her hug, wiping the tears from her face with the sleeve of her jacket. She was still sniffling, and her breathing was coming in rapid and shallow breaths, and her heart was still thundering in her chest like a drum, but at least her emotions had settled somewhat, and her mind had regained at least some semblance of sanity.

"I'm really sorry you had to see all that," Nico said, reaching out and wiping away excess tears that have yet to fall. "I wasn't planning on making you so upset."

Celia shook her head, wiping away the last of her tears, and said, "I can't help it. I'm just speechless. I have two sisters of my own, and I can't imagine losing either of them like that."

"Try not to think of it, if it's too much for you. I just wanted to show you what kind of monster we're dealing with," she said, catching Celia's gaze. "And there's one more thing I suspect about this guy."

"What is it?"

"I think," she said, rolling something through her head that Celia could only guess at. "I'm not completely sure, but I think he caused my mom to leave my dad that night, and I think he was the reason for my mom and dad fighting all the time. They never used to fight like that before."

"You believe he tore apart your family?"

"Yeah," she said, fisting both hands atop her knees and looking over at her sister again. "I had a feeling something was going on with my mom at the time, and I should've asked her about it before things got out of hand, but I thought she'd get angry if I did." She let out a sigh, and tears welled up in her eyes, so she wiped them away and said, "I just wanted to protect Mara from it all by not telling her the truth. I wanted her to believe that things would get better, but now look at her,” she added, turning back to the sleeping Mara. “Her family's dead, and she's barely hanging in there, and I couldn't do anything back then or now . . ."

Now tears trailed down her cheeks.

Nico's plight tore at Celia's insides to see this shell of Nico's former self taking it like that, so Celia refrained from asking her why that man did what he did. To Celia, asking Nico such a question was like asking an orphan why she was orphaned. In the end, Nico could never really know for sure, so all Celia could do was to comfort her the best she could.

Then she remembered Nico's last request before disappearing from the Astral Realm during last night's dream dive, so Celia said, "Nico, listen to me. However bad things are right now, it's going to get better. I swear it! Everything you did for Mara is gonna work out, okay?"

Nico managed a weak smile, saying, "I hope so."

At those words, a slow clap resounded in the distance out at sea, and both girls turned to see who it was.

And there stood the outline of Lord Aaron Rancaster on the water several feet from the pavilion, still clapping and now ambling towards them and making ripples as he walked. He was still wearing the outfit he had worn on the stage—a white suit pants and jacket, black gloves, minus the cane he had twirled in front of an adoring audience.

"Is he the guy?" Celia said.

But Nico paid her no heed as she just glared at her murderer and executioner, the culprit behind it all, while squeezing her fists till her knuckles were white. She never broke eye contact with him, either, not even to blink—

Which Celia noticed when she turned to her and said, "Nico, is he—"

"Don't take your eyes off him!" she ordered and took Celia's hand in her own, keeping an eagle-eyed glare on the man. "He's a tricky bastard."

And all at once, Celia turned and felt her stomach lurch at the man’s approach. The man, who was several yards away from them a moment before, was just outside the confines of the pavilion among the lilies now, and he brushed both sleeves of his white suit with his gloved hands, as though he was brushing away dandruff and making himself more presentable.

But Nico wasn't buying the charade and said, "What are you planning, bastard?"

"Nothing, darling," Lord Rancaster said, just one step away from stepping onto the floor of the pavilion. "Don't go poisoning the well when I haven't the chance to have my say."

"Why are you here?" Nico said.

"To talk."

"I don't believe you."

"You can believe or disbelieve: it's your choice," he said, raising his hands, palms forward, then snapping the fingers of his left hand. A chair appeared with a plop on the surface of the mirror sheen of the water, and there he sat and placed his hands flat on his thighs, causing ripples to break out and then fade away. "I only came here, so we could understand each other. Is that too much to ask?"

"Depends on why you're asking," Nico said.

All the while, Celia kept silent next to her, only placing her palm on the floor, ready to release a spell should the man before them make any sudden movements.

Which the man noticed. "Whatever you're planning, darling," he said to Celia, "try not to make it too obvious. It spoils the novelty."

Celia took offense and gritted her teeth, saying, "If I even suspect you of doing anything weird, I'm taking both of them out of here, got that?"

"All right, all right," he said, raising his hands in a placating gesture. "How about I take these hands and place them under my ass on this chair," and he suited his actions to his words, standing up and then sitting on his hands. "There. Can't do much without the use of my hands, so you're all safe. Now can I have my say?"

Celia and Nico exchanged quick glances, but neither said anything and just stared at him.

"I'll take my cue then," he began and looked at the sleeping Mara Cairns before turning back to Nico. "I know what you're trying to do, darling, and I'll be the first to admit it. You've got my hands tied. Despite all my efforts last night, I can't reach your sister."

"Good," Nico said. "I hope you never will."

The man shook his head and smiled, saying, "No good deed goes unpunished, darling. You're the reason why your sister's still in a coma, still on life support. If she doesn't wake up soon, the ones looking after her in the hospital will have to pull the plug, and it'll be adios to your dear sister forever. Is that really what you want? Do you want her to die?"

"No! I just want her to be—"

"With you?" he said. "You just want to be with her, is that it?"

Nico didn't answer, and Celia couldn't help but look at Nico's stern expression of contempt on her face, and her heart fluttered in her chest. If Celia herself had been in Mara's position, she wondered if either of her elder sisters would put up such a stand, even if they were alive.

"Listen, darling. I'm not as heartless as you think. If you really want to be with her, then I can make compromises. If you allow me past this threshold," he said, kicking at an invisible barrier surrounding the pavilion, "then I can wake her up for you and allow you to stay with your precious sister as her imaginary friend. It'll be marvelous. You'll see her grow into a beautiful strong woman, and she'll be your playmate whenever she falls asleep and dreams. Maybe you can become a spirit guide or a phantom lover or anything at all, whatever you wish. Any and all desires you could ever wish for, you can have in your sister's dreams about you."

When Nico seemed to waver and look through hazy eyes, Celia imagined all the nights she must have spent together with Mara. And when Nico licked her lips and looked at Mara's face, presumably looking at her sister’s mouth, Celia wondered how many times she tasted those lips.

"I can see the hunger in your eyes, darling," he continued, "how they rove over her body. Just allow me but one kiss to bring her back, and I'll let you have her for the rest of her life. I'll be that selfless Prince that wakes your Sleeping Beauty from her slumber, and from then on, I'll let you be her Prince to hold her and make love to her in your bed whenever she dreams. Just one kiss from me, and all that paradise and more will be yours."

Tears welled up in Nico's eyes, and her breath became shallow, and her stomach flipped and flopped, and her cheeks burned, but through it all, Nico said under her breath, "No."

"What's that, darling?" he said. "I can't hear you."

"I said, NO!" Nico yelled. "You think you know what I want, but you don't! You fucking don't!"

The man leaned back in his chair and said, "Then what do you really want? Tell me!"

But Nico said, "Why would I tell you?"

Looking at her companion again, Celia kneeled closer to the girl and wrapped her arm around her shoulders, whispering, "It's okay, Nico. Don't listen to him."

"Or maybe," the man continued, "it's not what you want that keeps you from relinquishing her to me. Maybe it's what you fear. Am I right, am I right, am I fucking right?"

"Stop it!" Celia said, glaring at the man. "You have no right to talk to her that way!"

"I'm just telling the truth, darling. The truth needs no sugar coating for her to understand the futility of her actions," he continued, "but I see that she's being stubborn for a reason." He then said to Nico, "I see now the kind of burden you hold in your heart. You're afraid that once she wakes up, she'll eventually recover from her ordeal and move on with her life and maybe forget about you. Is that it?"

"No! It's not true!"

"Oh, come, come, darling. You're being selfish."

"It's not fucking true!" Nico doubled over her sister and sobbed into her shirt, hugging Mara's motionless body close to hers. "It's not fucking true! It's not fucking true!"

Celia came to her aid and wrapped her arms around Nico’s shoulders, trying to calm her down as her own tears trailed down her face at the thought of Colbie dead and bleeding in her arms during last night’s dream dive.

"You fucking bastard!" Celia said. "It's not fair to her! It's not fair to either of them!"

"You really think life is fair?” the man said. “Well, sorry to burst your bubble, but life doesn't give a damn either. Life will keep beating you down, till you're nothing but a crying puddle of memories. Life doesn't give a damn about you or me or anyone else, for that matter. The sooner you realize that, the sooner any of you will know the truth!"

"And what's that?"

"There is no meaning to life!" Lord Rancaster said, getting up from his chair and clenching both hands into tight knuckle-white fists. "Life can't bring back the loved ones you've lost, no matter how much you honor their memories, and I should know. I’ve been wandering this earth for centuries, and I’ve seen many faces come and go, but they're dead as dust, never to rise again, never to see the light of day."

That's when Nico raised herself up, glaring at him and saying, "I don't care what you say! You'll never have her!"

"Then I'll just take what I can get, whatever the costs. And as for you, darling," he said, looking at Celia with a slasher's smile stretching across his face, "I can smell the blood of Amelia Hearn in your veins."

And all at once, a stab of horror pulsed through Celia's heart at the mention of her grandmother's name.

Celia placed her hand on the floor, just as a darkness more than night flooded into the seams of Nico's barrier, making Nico scream at the unspeakable images flooding her head, images that were not her own, images of Aaron Rancaster's tragic mortal life cutting at her mind like knives.

Yet when Celia's seal of pink roses glowed through the darkness, she blinked herself and twins out of sight, but not before Celia heard the man's last words to her:

"Your mother killed her."

2

Katherine drove down the street using headlights and took the center lane and waited for the cars to pass, then took a left turn that led towards their house, the Hearn family mansion, half a block ahead of them under street lights. By this time, full night had fallen over the city of Larkington, and long shadows crept over the pavement and sidewalks as they passed each address.

Madison said, "You said you saw her crying, but how? I saw Celia's face, but the rest I felt."

"Trust me," she said, "I felt it, too."

"Did you see what made her so upset?"

Katherine shook her head and said, "I didn't see what Celia was seeing, so I don't know what it is, but I managed to see one or two people with her. I think Celia must have used one of my mirrors."

"Which one?" Madison said.

"It's gotta be the one in my bathroom," she said, pausing for a moment and then letting out a sigh. "I swear, if she’s used it to open any portals, she'll be in big trouble."

"And if she did?"

"Don't get me started," Katherine said.

"Come on, Kathy," Madison said. "You and I both know how Celia is. She's bound to get in trouble some time, so how bad is it this time?"

"She can't use mirrors like I can," she said. "If she used it, she could only use its reflection on some door and then open that door into wherever."

"Do you know where?"

"It depends on what key she used," Katherine said. "You said she stole the key ring I gave you?"

"Yeah. She snatched it right out of my hands, the brat!"

"God, I hope she left us clues which one before entering,” Kathierne said. “Otherwise, she's screwed."

Madison paled at her sister's last word and said, "W-what do you mean by 'screwed?'"

"If she entered a portal using a mirror's reflection, she's under a time limit," she said. "If she doesn't get back out in time, she'll be trapped inside!"

"But I thought you said there was no—"

"I can control mirrors directly, so there's no time limit for me, but Celia can't. If she doesn't get out in time, the mirror will break, and she won't get out!"

When Katherine reached the house, she pulled into the driveway and threw it in park, and both sisters exited the car and sprinted up the walkway towards the entrance of the door and found it unlocked. They passed the threshold and ran down the entrance way and up the staircase.

"Go check on Celia's room!" Katherine ordered her sister, while she sprinted down the upper hallway towards her room and found the door handle unlocked. She cursed (“Fuck!”), then went inside and stalked into her bathroom and found her mirror missing and cursed again (“Fuck!”).

"Kathy," Madison said, "I can't open her door! It's locked on the inside!"

She cursed for a third time (“Fuck!”), then snatched a hand mirror from her vanity table and ran back into the hallway to meet her sister, where she found Madison still trying the door handle. When Madison let her try, Katherine tried the handle herself, first by turning it, but it wouldn't budge, then by wrenching at it, but it still wouldn’t budge.

"That's it," Madison said, getting ready to place her seal on Celia's door. "I'm blowing the door down!"

"Don't!" she said, grabbing at her wrist before an explosion happened. "If my mirror's in her room, she's using this door as a portal! Blowing it open will trap her inside!"

"Then what do we do?"

"Just let me check, damn it! You're so fucking impatient," Katherine said, making her sister back off. She then crouched down and angled her hand mirror under the bottom of the door and looked in the reflection. "My mirror's inside her room, but it's not broken. We can still reach her."

Madison breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank God!"

"Follow me," Katherine said, and with her sister following her back into her room, she led her into her bathroom and opened her bathroom closet, showing shelves of neatly pressed towels and hand towels and bathrobes. She reached over the towels and bathrobes and found a set of handles on the inner wall of the closet and grasped onto them with both hands, then said an incantation in her mind that released the spell before she slid the closet over to one side along a set of invisible tracks, revealing a secret compartment where Katherine kept all of her spare magic mirrors.

"Holy shit!" Madison said, staring at the hidden stash. "So this is where you keep all your mirrors. No wonder you always put a spell on your door."

Katherine glared over her shoulder at Madison, making her flinch, then said, "Don't let Celia know about this, got it? If she somehow gets inside this room, God knows what's gonna happen!"

She then led her inside the room, where a whole array of body-length mirrors from the ornate to the modernist to unfinished specimens leaned against the walls, stacked one against the other.

Looking through the stack, she said to Madison, "Take one of these mirrors and wait at Celia's door. I'll meet you there when I find what I need."

With that, Madison took one of the mirrors and carried it into her room and out into the hallway, where she leaned it right next to Celia's door, while Katherine continued sifting through the stacks for the one mirror flat enough for her to use. She eventually found it and carefully slid it out among the others in the stack, then carried it out of her room and into the hall, where she saw her sister waiting.

"So what's the plan?" Madison said.

"I'll get inside using both mirrors," she said, laying her mirror flat on the floor before the door and slid it along its length underneath the door and into Celia's room. "Lay the mirror you have on the floor exactly how I did it, but don't push it up against the door."

Madison followed her sister's instructions to the letter, laying it down, and said, "Now what?"

"Just watch," she said, removing her jacket and throwing it onto the floor. She then sat carefully on the surface of the mirror, so she wouldn't break it, then laid herself on top of it, letting the reflection encompass her entire body. After that, she said an incantation in her mind, making the surface of the mirror glow and absorb Katherine into itself.

On the other side of the door, the other mirror glowed, and Katherine appeared lying on her stomach. Rolling herself off to one side, she got to her feet and went to the other mirror that Celia had taken from her bathroom and tipped the mirror over on its axis, breaking the mirror's hold over the door.

Katherine said, "Maddy, you can open it now, but be careful where you step."

The door opened, and her sister entered and stepped gingerly around both mirrors and then shut the door.

No sooner had she done so—

When Katherine spotted the notes on the door and said, "Maddy, look behind you. Celia left us messages."

Both sisters came to the door, taking care not to disturb the mirror at their feet, and looked at what their younger sister wrote for them. On reading the notes, especially the last one, both girls face-palmed themselves at Celia's attempt at humor.

"Arrrrrgh, why does she always have to be such a troll-whore?" Madison said, blushing and squeezing her hands into fists and glaring at the notes. "I swear, when I get her back here, I am sooooooo roasting her ass!"

Katherine then spotted the keys Celia left for them on the bed and said, "Hey, at least she was nice enough to leave us the keys here."

Madison pouted, still going to roast Celia.

Katherine picked up the keys and thumbed through them for the 'dreamer's key' and found it, then walked over to the mirror on caster wheels and tipped the mirror back to its original position, catching the door and Madison in its reflection.

She said, "Now that the easy part's done, we still have to deal with the hard part. Maddy, you've seen the news reports of the Cairns family's disappearance, right?"

"Yeah."

"So you know what the twins look like?"

"Yeah, but they're identical twins. It doesn't really work with identical twins."

"But there's a caveat in this case: one of them is dead," Katherine said. "When I had my vision earlier, Celia was with two people, so they have got to be the Cairns twins. One was consoling Celia, while the other was lying down. I think the one lying down was Mara."

Madison looked at her sister, saying, "How do you know?"

"Because Celia told us to focus on Nico," Katherine said. "I'm taking a leap here, but I'm willing to bet that the one I saw comforting Celia was Nico. I don't know how, but Celia must've known or at least believed that Nico would help Mara in some way, or maybe Celia had an idea of how to help Mara, because Nico told her. I'm not sure, but Celia might have followed Nico into the Phantom Realms because she wanted to help Mara out. I just don't know what part of the Phantom Realms, though." Here, she looked at her sister and said, "Maddy, come on. Stop being an idiot and help me figure this out!"

"Okay, okay, I will," she said. "I'm just not that good at this detective stuff, you know. It's not really my thing."

"Just try and help me think about it, okay?"

So Madison and Katherine thought about it. For a time, both girls stood there rolling Celia's first note in their minds in the context of Celia's other notes and the information they had gleaned from the televised news reports.

"I don't know," Madison said. "It just doesn't make sense."

"What doesn't make sense?" Katherine said.

"Nico's dead, so she can't really help her sister out in a physical way," Madison said. "That means that Nico needs Celia’s help to help Mara. I mean, Mara's in a coma at the hospital right now, so she's not dead like Nico. So wouldn't it be the other way around? Wouldn't it be Mara trying to help Nico?"

"Yeah, that's the weird thing about all this," she said. "There must be one specific thing we're missing."

Madison gave it more thought, her face turning grim as she said, "Kathy?"

She looked up and noticed her sister's expression, saying, "What is it, Maddy?"

"If Celia died," she said, "how do you think we would experience it?"

Katherine gaped at her question, saying, "Maddy, what the hell? How can you even think that?"

"I’m just saying it as an example, geez!"

"But why that one?"

Madison let out a sigh and said, "Don't you remember how we experienced Celia going through all that anguish earlier? We both felt her emotions, but I only saw her face, while you saw her with Nico and Mara. Is there any other detail you remember seeing in your vision, like scenery or anything?"

Katherine sucked in breath at her sister's astute observation and clapped her hands onto her sister’s face, saying, "Oh my God, Maddy, you're a genius!"

"You know where she is?" Madison said.

"Yeah," she said. "Take off your jacket. We're going in."

"Where exactly?" Madison took it off and threw it on the bed next to Celia's and said, "Tell me!"

"Our entry point is in a Chinese pavilion overlooking the sea," Katherine said. "There’s a red moon on the surface of the water but no moon in the sky!"

With that, she grabbed her sister's hand with one hand and opened the door with the 'dreamer's key' with the other hand, and both sisters passed the threshold of the door, letting it shut with the finality of a casket lid over the dead.

And in the mirror’s reflection, the door sealed itself shut, and the reflection flashed and cracked, for unbeknownst to the elder Hearn sisters, there were other visitors besides their little sister Celia and the Cairns twins.

Tsuzuku

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