Night: Celia and the Sister Duo | Sister Trio (Scenes 1-5)
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Written on 7/30/17. Camp NaNoWriMo, July 2017 edition.

Night: Celia and the Sister Duo

Sister Trio (Scenes 1-5)

The orphan by the oak was set,
Her arms, her feet, were bare,
The hail-drops had not melted yet,
Amid her raven hair.

—Sir Walter Scott,
“The Orphan Maid”

1

The moment the elder Hearn sisters reached the blurry mass of ever-changing shapes and colors of someone else’s dream, they had missed their intended target zone and found themselves in the amorphous realm of Mara's subconscious mind in the middle of her comatose state. Yet on entering, Madison felt a wave of nausea passing through her and needed to lie down, raising her knees with her feet flat on the ground and shutting her eyes and placing her forearm over them to keep herself from throwing up. All the while, Katherine felt no such aftereffects and commenced her search for a silver thread lying around her feet. And so, while Katherine searched, Madison just laid there thinking what had happened to Celia and the Cairns twins.

Yet after a time of no success, Katherine said, “Maddy, are you still dizzy, or are you faking it?”

Madison raised her forearm and looked up at Katherine, saying, "Ugh, it’s not fair! Why are you and Grandma the only ones in the family not affected?"

"You’re still feeling it?" Katherine said.

“Of course, I’m still feeling it!” Madison said. “I’m not gifted like you, you know!”

"Just hang in there, okay?” Katherine said, continuing her search for the silver thread again in this kaleidoscopic realm. “I'll find it eventually."

"Ugh, hopefully before I throw up," Madison said, closing her eyes and covering them with her forearm again. As such, while her sister kept looking for the thread, Madison let her mind drift from one stray thought to another—

(breathing in the brisk air of a December afternoon in the park, petting that dog in the park, folding origami cranes in the park, looking out across the knoll at other couples in the park, staring at her watch in the park, eating powdered green tea kimchi in the park, hoping that her date hadn’t stood her up in the park, roasting Celia's ass, getting a phone call in the park from Katherine, leaving her date a voicemail message of canceling their date and saying sorry, getting into Katherine’s car and riding to the police station, roasting Celia's ass, hitching another ride with Katherine and Celia to their Dad's bookstore, falling for Celia's antics, roasting Celia's ass, feeling a rush of horrible emotions, hitching another ride with Katherine to their house, getting to Celia's door, reading Celia's notes, roasting Celia's ass . . .)

—till something at the back of her mind surfaced in her thoughts, at first as incomprehensible as any conundrum Katherine threw her in Celia's room, but now a new set of links to an invisible chain of logic filtered past the static, focusing on the emotions she had felt and adding to them the human element of touch and even taste.

An impression of a kiss lingered on her lips, like the kiss of first love or even the kiss of death. And with it came fleeting images and sounds of guns pointed at heads, of applause and cheers and screams, of shedding tears and fraying nerves, of one last desperate struggle before the pull of two triggers, and of two percussive blasts and searing pain and static. And in that static came Mara's voice screaming out Nico's name and the lurid image of a spreading pool of blood on a lighted stage, and amidst the cheers, the voice of a man in a white suit riling up the crowd to a riotous applause . . .

When Madison jolted up from her nap and screamed, her heart racing and her breath coming in fast and shallow, catching her sister's attention.

Katherine came up to her and shook her shoulders, shaking her back to her senses and saying, "Maddy, wake up, wake up," till Madison finally shook off the remaining residue of panic from her mind. "Are you okay?"

Madison sat up, wiping the tears from her eyes and keeping her gaze to the ground, as she collected herself and said, "There's someone else we weren't expecting."

"Do you know who it is?"

"I don't know, but he's one twisted fuck," she said, getting to her feet with Katherine's help. "A man in a white suit made the twins play Russian Roulette in front of their parents, and one of them died. I don't know what happened to the other one, but I think they’re both here."

"You mean Nico and Mara?" Katherine said.

"Yeah," Madison said, looking at her sister in a way that only Katherine could understand. "I don't like this at all. If Celia ran into someone like him . . . If that man did anything to Celia, that fucker's going down!"

"Maddy, we have to be thorough," Katherine said. "I don't wanna miss any clues if there’s a chance."

"Don't give me your detective crap! We've been here for half an hour with you trying to find clues, but there aren't any here. So can we just go there already?"

Katherine pouted and let out a sigh, saying, "Fine, but if we miss something, it's gonna be your fault," and she summoned a mirror showing the last known location of the Cairns twins in the reflection, a Chinese pavilion overlooking a darkened sea. "They're not there."

"Fuck!" she said. "See what I mean?"

"Okay, okay, geez! Follow me then," Katherine said and stepped through the surface of the mirror, with Madison following after her—

2

Into the pavilion, where they spotted a pool of blood in the center of the floor.

"Ah, shit!" Madison cried.

Both sisters sprinted towards the stain, Katherine squatting down and placing two fingers on the bloody surface and then breathing out in relief.

"It's not Celia's blood, thank God," Katherine said, "but there's no Life left in it.”

Madison bit down on her lower lip and said, “I think it might be Nico's, the girl who died."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, I’m pretty sure," Madison said.

Her opinion made Katherine wrinkle her brows in thought, so she said, "I'm still trying to figure it out myself, so I’m trusting your intuition on this."

"Let's change tactics then," Madison said. "First, get to Celia’s location and get her to safety. Then we'll ask her about what happened. Sounds good?"

"Just wait for a little bit longer, okay?” Katherine said. “If I run out of options, then we'll do it your way."

Madison sighed, saying, "Fine."

So Katherine pressed her hand on the bloodstained ground and closed her eyes, focusing on the vision she had of Celia and Nico and Mara and wheedling through the chaos of Celia's emotions in that erratic moment of insanity, pinpointing one dominant emotion to the exclusion of all else. And through the long black tunnel of eternity, she opened her inner sight and saw Celia kissing Nico and suffering a paroxysm of grief so great that it brought tears to her eyes. But through it all, Katherine persevered and saw the scenes unfolding from Nico comforting Celia to the introduction of that man that Madison had mentioned, the man in the white suit and black gloves taunting Nico and mentioning something to Celia before she had teleported away, something that nearly made Katherine's heart skip a beat—

"And as for you, darling," she heard the man say, 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, the stab of horror that had pulsed through Celia's heart at the mention of her grandmother's name now pulsed through Katherine's heart.

In her mind’s eye, Katherine saw Celia placing her hand on the floor, for a darkness more than night flooded into the seams of Nico's barrier, filling Katherine’s mind with Nico screaming at unspeakable images flooding her head. She saw Celia's seal of pink roses glowing through the darkness before Celia blinked herself and the twins out of sight, but not before Katherine (like Celia) heard the man's last words:

"Your mother killed her."

Katherine jerked her hand away, trembling at the man’s words and almost hyperventilating, her pupils shrunken to bullet points of fright, and saying under her breath, "Oh my God," and she placed a hand to her gaping mouth.

"Kathy, what is it?" Madison said, grabbing her sister and shaking her by the shoulders. "What happened? Is Celia hurt? Is she hurt? Tell me, God damn it!"

"Celia's not hurt, okay? Calm down!" she said, shutting her inner eye from the damning revelation about her own mother and willing her mind to forget about the man's accusation, yet it was just as her mother had said. “It can’t be true. It’s just not true.”

"What's not true?" Madison said.

"That man's a liar," Katherine said, getting up to her feet. "It wasn’t her fault.”

"Kathy, what are you talking about?"

But Katherine stayed silent, wondering if she should let Madison know about it, but before she was about to let her sister into her thoughts—

"Oh, but it is, darling," the man said behind them.

Instantly, both girls jumped and turned and saw the man himself with the suit and gloves and all of his vile presence standing on the edge of the pavilion.

"Who the fuck are you?" Katherine yelled.

"No need to shout," he said, raising his hands to placate her, then bowing to them. "I am Lord Aaron Rancaster, 6th Baronet Rancaster, the last of the Rancaster Baronetcy."

For a moment, neither sister spoke, for his candidness as well as his name dispelled their thoughts, but only for a moment when Madison said, "What did you do to Celia?"

The mention of Celia's name put a smile on his face, so he said, "Are you two relations of that spunky girl? Are you both her sisters, perhaps?"

"Listen buddy," Katherine said, "we're not your friends. We know what you did, so don't be coy with us!"

"I stand accused of a crime I know nothing about," he said, still with his hands raised. "Ex post facto, is it not? Is it not? Is it fucking not?"

And all at once, a darkness more than night washed out the surrounding scenery and surrounded the pavilion with a dark mist flowing from his feet and obscuring part of the ground. So both girls stood on their guard, alert for anything he might throw at them, but he just stood there with his hands raised like a complete imbecile—

Which wasn't lost on Katherine in the least, now keeping her eyes on his hands as something nagged her at the back of her mind when she thought of his hands held up and empty like that. He was too confident for someone in such a position of weakness, like that of a magician about to perform a sleight-of-hand trick before her eyes.

His pose and attitude was just a ruse, but of what kind she hadn't yet figured it out, so Katherine said, “What the fuck are you planning?”

“Whatever it is, don’t try it,” Madison added.

The man just laughed and said, "You’re both just like your younger sister: too obvious. The real master of the field doesn't reveal his hand, until it's time for everyone to lay their cards on the table. So before I lay my cards down, can you guess the cards in my hands? What say you, redhead? Care to make a guess?"

"Fuck this dude," Madison said, and her hair began to float in waves of warm heat. "I'm roasting him."

"Don't!" Katherine said.

"But—"

"I said, don't!" Katherine said, and to make sure she didn't do anything rash, Katherine grabbed onto Madison's hand in a tight grip, feeling waves of anxiety surging through her, then said to the man, "Whatever game you’re trying to play with us, we’re not playing it."

"Ah, I can see that you're the brains of this outfit. Good! That’s more fun for me," he said, still standing there with his hands raised. "So what about you, braid girl?"

Instead of speaking, Katherine summoned a mirror below her feet, taking Madison with her into the mirror just before two man-sized hands snatched them from behind—

3

And dropping into Katherine's dream mansion of hallways and mirrors. And on landing, both girls split up just as the reflection above their heads changed to a deep black hue, preventing Katherine from dispersing it. The mirror’s surface began bulging outwards and cracking the reflection into a spider’s web of cracks above their heads, making both sisters look up at the man from the other side of the reflection trying to force himself into the mansion.

So Madison threw her seal on the mirror, exploding it into a shower of glass shards and a light spray of blood over their heads, and her sister's domain got rocked with a percussive shock shaking all around them.

A moment passed, with both girls breathing hard after a close escape with death.

Katherine dispersed the broken mirror, leaving the upper part of the walls and mirrors below coated in a spray of blood, the man's blood. But no sooner had she done so when a vision entered her mind, and she sucked in breath.

"Celia's here," Katherine said, then summoned another mirror against the wall and entered it, grabbing Madison’s hand and pulling her along with her—

4

And stepping through the one-way mirror in Katherine's boudoir and finding Mara lying in bed and Nico clinging to Celia and Mara’s hands and Celia forming her seal underneath all three of them, so both elder sisters said, "Celia, wait!"

On realizing it was her sisters, Celia canceled her magic circle and sat on Mara’s bedside next to Nico and put her hand to her chest that was beating like a drum, relieved that it was her sisters and not that crazy guy in the white suit. So she looked at her sisters, saying, "Geez, you could've used a better entrance than an explosion!"

Yet both elder sisters sprang up on Celia.

“Whoa, wait! I can explain,” Celia said, teleporting herself and Nico out of their way, before they dog-piled her over the bed, yet they were one step ahead of her. As soon as Celia and Nico both reappeared in another part of the room opposite the bed next to Katherine’s one-way mirror, Katherine summoned another mirror beneath herself and dropped out of the room. “W-what the hell? Where did she go?”

Madison folded her arms over her chest, saying, “You’ve got a lot of explaining to do!”

“I said I was gonna explain!”

“Then spill it, Celia!” Madison said.

Yet with Celia distracted, Katherine came out through the mirror again and nabbed Celia from behind, wrapping her arms around her and lifting her off her feet in a reverse bearhug, making it hard for Celia to breathe. In this way, Katherine carried her back over to Mara’s bedside and body slammed her onto the bed, and Madison dog-piled over her, squishing Celia into the padding and against the springs and making it hard for Celia to breathe under their combined weight.

All the while, Katherine let go and wrapped her arm around Celia's head and gave her a vigorous noogie, saying, "There’s a damn good reason for that explosion, brat-face!"

"And you scared us to death," Madison added, digging her hands into Celia's sides and jabbing her thumbs into her waist. "Now feel my wrath, you little troll-whore!"

Celia was now kicking her legs against the bedside and flailing her arms over the bedsheets and wrinkling them beside a sleeping Mara Cairns, struggling to breathe under Madison's headlock, feeling her scalp burning and her sides aching and every muscle in her body straining under the combined assault of two older women subduing her.

Looking on with widening eyes, Nico approached the struggling trio and touched both elder sisters on their heads, saying, "Uh, do you two always do that to her?"

Both sisters looked up at Nico and stopped their assault, getting off of Celia and letting her stand.

Yet Celia took in massive gulps of air, her chest heaving on the bed, before she slid off of it and collapsed down to her knees on the floor, leaning against the bedside in utter exhaustion.

Katherine and Madison traded glances, and Katherine said, "I think we overdid it a little."

When Celia finally regained her breath and got to her feet with her sister’s pulling her up by her armpits, Celia steadied herself on the bed, saying, "You two nearly killed me! What the hell was that for?"

"You're lucky I didn't just roast you on sight for what you did," Madison said, arms akimbo with her glaring eyes boring through Celia’s head. "You nearly gave us a heart attack! We honestly thought that guy did something to you!"

"And now we find you in my dream realm inside my private bedroom with two other girls without my permission," Katherine said, crossing her arms over her chest and glaring sunspots through Celia’s head. "On top of that, you broke into my room and used one of my mirrors, and you endangered not only your own life but our lives just to get here! Do you have any idea how much trouble you're in right now?"

"I'm sorry, okay? I really am," Celia said, "but I didn't have a choice. It was an emergency!"

"Was it an emergency when you stole Dad's keys?" Madison yelled. "It's bad enough that we had to pick you up from the police station, but it's gonna get worse when dad and Mr. Faraone come back and find their bookstore trashed!"

"And was it really an emergency when you broke into my room and used my mirror?" Katherine yelled. "Because it became an emergency when we thought something happened to you! Does that even mean anything to you?"

Celia remained silent, blinking back tears that now welled in her eyes, because her sisters' words had hurt her. Of course, she knew she wasn't under any time pressure when she did those things, and of course, she felt bad about messing up their dad’s bookstore, and of course, she felt bad about making her sisters worry, and of course, her sisters' feelings meant something to her. She just didn't want to inconvenience her sisters more than she already had when they picked her up from the police station, but of course, they wouldn't understand that, and of course, she knew they were right and she was wrong, because knowing all of that still irked the hell out of her.

So Celia glared hellfire at her sisters and first said to Katherine, "Kathy, I know I stole your mirror, and I'm sorry, but you always have your door closed, and you never ever give me permission, anyway! And I didn't 'break' anything while I was in your bathroom. I just took what I needed, and that's all." Then to Madison: "And, Maddy, I did you a favor when I took those keys, because with you handling them, you probably would've lost them like you did last time you were at Dad's bookstore, and it took me and Kathy hours to find where you last put them. It was aggravating!" Then she addressed both sisters, saying, "And if you think, just because you're older, and just because I'm still a minor, that you two can boss me around like I'm still a little kid, then you don't fucking know me!"

Katherine and Madison and Nico just stared at her.

And with tears now trailing down her cheeks, Celia released a seal below her feet and was about to teleport from the room, when Nico wrapped her arms around her and said, "Don't go! It's not like that! They're really not like that!"

And all at once, Mara's own accusation that Celia had forgotten her promise to Nico fluttered up in Celia's mind, and something inside her cried out for mercy.

She said, "I'm sorry, Nico."

And she fell to her knees and cried in front of her sisters.

Then the world around Katherine and Madison grew smaller inside the room. Everything else that had dogged them up to this moment fell away from their minds, and their former glares and expressions of shock softened into sisterly concern.

So they reached out with hands of mercy and touched her shoulders, and Madison said, "We didn't mean to make you cry."

"You had us scared that time," Katherine added. "It hurts me to think that you'd do something so dangerous and not let us know." She then bit down on her lower lip and said, "Don't you trust us? We'll have your back no matter what happens."

Celia stayed silent, still crying, so Nico still clung around her waist and had the final say, saying, "They're your sisters, Celia. They love you more than you know."

5

After reconciling, the three Hearn sisters and Nico left Mara sleeping in Katherine's private bedroom and went to Katherine's library just off the bottom of the left staircase of the double grand staircase, where the three Hearn sisters sat on the salon sofa, while Nico sat by the cafe table. Celia sat between her elder sisters with Katherine on her right and Madison on her left, holding their hands as she told them what happened to her. She told them everything, from last night's dream when Celia and her friends encountered Mara and Nico to Mara stabbing Colbie, from the promise they made to Nico to find Mara to everything Celia and her friends did in the old Rancaster district to find Nico and Mara, from their encounter with the wolves and their escape from the old district to their subsequent questioning and detainment at the police station, from her own attempt at finding Mara alone to her initial meeting with Nico and Mara in the Phantom Realms, and from her first encounter with Aaron Rancaster to his damning words about her grandmother's death at the hands of their mother Lima.

When Celia finished, her sisters just sat there on the salon sofa, looking in amazement at her and Nico sitting at the cafe table before them. Still, Madison was skeptical of Celia's last point about Rancaster's accusation of their own mother killing their grandmother, but Katherine shook her head.

“Maddy, listen to me,” Katherine said. “We both had that vision, but did you hear him, too?“

“No,” she said. “Why?”

“Because I also heard him saying it," Katherine said, “word for word, just as Celia said.”

"You can't be serious," Madison said, looking at Katherine and Celia in horror. "Please don't tell me you two actually believe what he said.”

“It’s complicated,” Katherine said.

“What’s so complicated about it?” Madison said. “He could’ve been lying just to screw with us, but you two seem to think—”

"Look, I'm not saying what he said was true," Katherine said.

“Then what are you saying?” Madison said.

Katherine scooted herself towards the edge of the sofa and faced her skeptical sister, saying, “It wasn’t Mom’s fault, okay? I know that for a fact, but . . .“

Katherine averted her gaze.

“But what?” Madison said, looking at her eldest sister.

Yet Katherine stayed silent for a spell, keeping her gaze to the floor, seeming to roll things through her head as though wrestling with a hidden weight chained around her heart.

Which Madison picked up on and said, “What are you hiding?”

Without looking up from the floor, Katherine let out a sigh and said, “Let’s just drop it for now.”

“Kathy, look at me,” Madison said.

But Katherine refrained from looking and shook her head.

“Looking at me, damn you!” Madison yelled.

This time, Katherine looked at her and said, “I said, drop it, so drop it, okay?”

“What aren’t you telling me?” Madison said.

Katherine said nothing but never averted her eyes.

“Celia and I deserve to know, so spill it!” Madison said.

“Maddy, please,” Celia said, caught in the middle of a skirmish that threatened to blow up into a rare fight between her older siblings. “Just calm down, both of you.”

“I won’t, until I get an answer,” Madison said.

“Jesus, Maddy,” Katherine said. “Can’t you just drop it?”

“Fine,” Madison said and got up from the sofa with clenched fists and glared at Katherine. “Have it your way, but I'm not gonna sit around and wait on your sorry ass! I’ll ask Mom right after I wake up from this dump!” She then headed out of the library, saying to herself, "Fucking can't believe . . .”

"Maddy, come back," Celia said.

"Fuck off!"

Celia got up, but Katherine grabbed her hand and pulled her down and said, "It's no use, Celia."

"But—"

"You don't know her like I do," Katherine said, leaning back against the backrest of the salon sofa. "Maddy's just pissed, okay? Just let her deal with it on her own, and she'll come back to us, I promise."

"Are you sure?" Celia said.

"I'm sure," Katherine said. "Don't worry. I've got mirrors all over this place, so I know where she is." Then she noticed Celia's hand trembling beneath her grasp, and when she looked at her face and saw her eyes glistening with tears, she added, “It’s okay. Maddy and I have our differences, but nothing’s gonna come of them. I promise.”

“I hope so,” Celia said, then pulled her hand from Katherine’s grasp and wiped her eyes. “I’ve never seen you two fight like that. Like, ever.”

That’s when Katherine looked at Nico for the first time, sitting stiffly with her hands on her thighs and squeezing them together as though she were suppressing the urge to pee, so she said, "I'm sorry you had to see that. Maddy gets that way a lot of the time, but it's normal."

Only then did Nico relax a bit on her chair, who had been sitting like that the whole time she had been watching, and said, “Was it that bad?”

“What are you talking about?” Katherine said.

“Whatever you’re not telling,” Nico said. “Was it that bad?”

Katherine nodded.

"I see," Nico said, then slumped in her chair and relaxed her hands over her thighs.

"What is it, Nico?” Celia said.

“Do you have something on your mind?” Katherine added.

Nico nodded her head, stiffening in her chair again, and said, “It’s the way you two fought just now. It sort of reminds me of my parents' fights, but theirs were way more frequent . . . and scary.”

“I’m sorry,” Katherine said.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Celia said.

“Sure,” Nico said.

So Nico told them about her parents’ deteriorating marriage and the increasing frequency of their bickering, which later turned into heated arguments, which later turned into full-blown skirmishes replete with yells and curses echoing up the stairs into Nico and Mara’s bedroom like the screams of hell on the nights when sleep was impossible. As such, Nico also told them about the nighttime games she and Mara played, consisting of tickling and pinching each other and having fun, which later turned into touching and fondling and being naughty, which later turned into hugging and kissing and making love. Nico then told them about her parents finding out their secret, first her mother and then her father, both of whom said what they needed to say to their daughters before their subsequent abduction by Rancaster.

Nico stopped.

Both Hearn sisters looked at Nico, both sisters glued to their places on the sofa with wide eyes.

After a pregnant pause, Katherine said, "Maddy and I saw some of what happened to you and your sister when we had our vision, and Celia filled in a lot of the details about it, but we still don't have the whole picture. We still don't know how you and Mara ended up in Celia’s dream dive with her friends last night, and we still don't know how the wolves fit into all this.”

“Those wolves were his wolves,” Nico said.

“When you say ‘his wolves,’” Celia said, “do you mean they were Rancaster’s wolves?”

Nico nodded but stayed silent.

After another pregnant pause, Katherine said, “Nico, I know this is gonna be difficult for you, and if you're not comfortable telling us what happened next, then you don't have to answer if you don’t want to. Nobody's forcing you to tell us. Do you understand?”

Nico nodded.

“Okay,” Katherine said, crossing one of her ankles and sitting forward on the sofa. “Do you know what happened after you died?”

At her question, Nico squeezed her hands over her thighs and said, "Yeah."

"Then do you remember what happened to Mara after that?"

"Yeah," she said under her breath.

"Do you remember how the wolves were involved?"

"Yeah," she said in a whisper as tears began trailing her cheeks.

At this, Celia got up from the sofa and sat by Nico’s side, pulling her chair closer to her and placing her hand on top of hers and giving it a squeeze. She said, "Nico, I'm here for you. If it gets too difficult, you can stop, okay?"

Nico said nothing but she nodded her head.

With that, Celia turned to her sister on the sofa and nodded, saying, “Go on, Kathy.”

So Katherine said, "Nico, we need to know why you and Mara landed in Celia’s dream dive last night, because everything that’s been happening today stems from that. Can you tell us about it?”

For a moment, Nico paused and took a deep breath to steady her nerves, even as she couldn’t stop her hands from shaking, and looked at Celia and Katherine in turn. She looked to their expressions of compassion and knew that she wasn't alone anymore.

She said . . .

Tsuzuku

2