Sister Trio (Scenes 6-10)

6

All was silent for a moment.

In that hideous span of time, the residual echoes of two gunshots and the thud of Nico's corpse hitting the floor of the stage mingled with Mara screaming Nico's name in the silent theater, but now her parents overcame the man's psychic hold over their mouths and filled that empty void with the brutal chorus of screams and sobs over Nico's death. Nico’s body lay on its side, her legs and arms splayed in awkward directions on the floor, her head lying at an awkward angle against her own arm, and her eyes staring lifelessly into the audience and gleaming under the stage lights, while a spreading pool of blood kept pouring from the hole just above her ear and formed a bloody halo around her head.

Then came a massive applause from the crowd of spectators, standing up from their seats and giving Lord Aaron Rancaster's show a standing ovation. They cheered for the show, and they whistled at Mara, and they jeered at her parents, who were still moaning and sobbing in agony on their chairs under their invisible restraints.

And above the horror of the stage floated Nico's spirit, just beginning to manifest her astral form into a wispy outline of her former body, now watching the blood on the stage lose its vitality with exposure to the air. She had a bird's-eye-view of the scene below her, witnessing her parents and her sister in the grip of insanity, thinking thoughts that terrified her to see and feeling emotions that horrified her to feel. Even in astral form, the dead still knew how it feels to grieve even when they themselves were still clouded with the feelings of their final moments.

Nico wanted to tell Mara she was still with her, but Nico had no voice, for only her consciousness manifested in the earliest stage of becoming a ghost. She could only witness with lidless eyes her sister getting up from the chair and dropping to her knees beside Nico’s lifeless body, thudding the stage and crying over her passing as the crowd catcalled and whistled at Mara. And in the middle of it all was the source of their plight, the man now walking into the stage to another round of applause from the crowd and standing just a foot away from the pool of blood. All the while, several members of the sick crowd kept crying out, "Encore!" over and over again.

Aaron Rancaster raised his hands and quieted the crowd, then said to Mara, "Get up, darling. Get up, darling! You have been sorely tested just now and have been found worthy, but as promised, you're now free to go. Or do you want to say goodbye to your parents first?"

And like a zombie Mara raised herself to her feet and stared vacantly at the man who had proclaimed her freedom to the crowd, then looked to her parents still trapped on their chairs, still sobbing over the loss of one of their children, muttering to God to help them in their plight.

By this time, Mara had lost almost all sense of who she was, only retaining the infantile ability to recognize her parents and walk towards them on tenuous steps. She wanted to kiss her father and her mother, to wrap her arms around them and commiserate with them in what would be their last moment together as a real family.

And in a shaky voice, she said, "Mom . . . Dad . . . I'm sorry, I'm so sorry . . ."

She wanted to hug her father first for being that rock of strength and love for her and Nico after her mother had left the house. She also wanted to hug her mother for telling her that she and Nico were sisters, not lovers. And she would have done so in her current state—

Till Aaron Rancaster took one of the revolvers on the table and aimed it at Mara's father and fired.

Another deafening report resounded through the theater, and a part of Paul Cairns' skull got blasted into pieces of bone and brain matter amid a spray of blood, leaving his corpse limp and leaning sideways over the left armrest of his chair and bleeding out a pool of blood onto the stage floor right beside his screaming wife.

And along with her mother, Mara was screaming at witnessing another headshot claim the life of another loved one, screaming at the sound of it echoing through her head as it echoed through the stage and the electrified audience. If Nico's death had gutted her of all her emotions in one long scream, her father's death now cracked her mind, letting out psychic waves of energy gushing into the theater and through the crowd.

The audience gasped in shock and awe, as a new spectacle was born before their wonder-filled eyes, their trembling hearts fluttering in anticipation of another marvel.

"Ah, we have a live one here, folks," Lord Rancaster said, cocking the hammer back again and chambering another round in the barrel. "Gaze upon this beautiful goddess and tremble at the sight of her!"

Then the floorboards of the stage rumbled and cracked, as the whole theater itself shook under the buffeting tremors of Mara's psychic waves. The very power that had kept Mara alive now consumed her, digging at her sanity and loosening her control over her emotions and letting her rage spill out into the crowd, making them wonder at her—

And making her mother stare up at her.

With her surviving daughter turning into a monstrous shell of herself, Lucy Cairns screamed through the waves and screamed through her tears, trying to reach Mara with her voice, and said, "Mara! Mara, please, listen to me! I want you to live, I want you to LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVE! Just get away from here, just run! Just ruuuuuun! RUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUN!"

And against all odds, somewhere deep in the torrential storm of Mara's insanity, her mother's words filtered through her ears and activated the synapses of her brain, and the animal drive to escape immediate danger took over her body. So Mara turned on her foot, forming a crater on the floorboards, and ran from the stage amidst more applause.

And Lord Rancaster, standing like a rock in the middle of their mad applause, aimed his gun at her mother and said, “Any last words, darling?”

“Fuck you!” Lucy Cairns said—

Before a grinning Rancaster fired another shot.

Yet as another report resounded through the theater, Mara ran past a girl (still frozen in place) on the far side of the stage and down the backstairs into the rest of the backstage area, squinting her eyes as she sprinted like a tsunami and sweeping unfortunate passers-by off their feet and slamming them against partition walls and windows and doors and pillars in her wake. And when she reached the exit, she blasted through the door and cracked part of the masonry and ended up inside the spectral maze that was the abandoned Rancaster district at night before collapsing to the ground and bawling into fits and mewling sniffles.

7

Under Rancaster’s psychic restraint keeping her stock-still like a statue on the backstage, the ‘bambina’ had witnessed Mr. and Mrs. Cairns screaming their lungs out and crying over the death of their daughter Nico, while their other daughter Mara had screamed like a tsunami. Even at that moment, the ‘bambina’ had shivered at the amount of psychokinesis surging through her like a blizzard, but what had shaken her the most was the twisted agony of Mara’s face. At that moment, Mara’s face had taken on a hideous aspect of a demon that had just awakened, which reminded the ‘bambina’ of her own face whenever she looked in the mirror at herself. And at that moment, the ‘bambina’ felt a connection to that girl, for something precious had been taken away from both of them, although the ‘bambina’ knew nothing of Mara Cairns beyond what Rancaster had told the audience on the stage. Now she knew what the man had meant when he said, ‘Misery loves company.’

At this, tears trailed her cheeks as Rancaster waved at the cheering audience before approaching her backstage, at which she squinted her eyes shut. Yet in the darkness of closed eyes, the ‘bambina’ saw her father’s face and cried.

So Rancaster released his psychic restraint on her and hugged her close like a surrogate father, telling her that he was sorry she had to see all that and promising her that it would all be worth it in the end and saying that it’s going to be okay. It was always okay, even when it wasn’t, because that’s what fathers said to soothe their children after they had been hurt.

He said all of this, while the ‘bambina’ cried into the collar of his while jacket, because she needed him at that moment like a marionette needs a puppet master—

Because the ‘bambina’ was his at that moment.

8

For a time, Mara stayed there in the middle of the street, breathing harder than she ever had during P.E. almost to the point of hyperventilating, breathing out foggy plumes in the chilly night air. When she finally regained herself, regaining her sanity in the process, she picked herself up and proceeded down the street.

Old neon signs glowed and flickered along the decrepit streets and squares ahead of her, and the sky above her head seemed to leer at her through the pinpricks of myriad stars. She walked closer to the square before her, till a set of lamp lights turned on overhead and lighted the space, and on the ground beneath her feet lay a folded letter sealed in wax that she had inadvertently stepped on.

She bent down and picked it up, breaking the seal and reading the contents that read:

Dear Contestant,

When I said, 'You're free to go,' I merely meant that you are free to choose your fate. Your fate is in your hands, and in the Labyrinth before you, your fate lies somewhere in those twists and turns.

Through the Labyrinth, there are places you can go, and there are places you can't. I've made it easy for you, if you follow this one clue leading to the exit route out.

This is the Clue: (blank)

But be careful where you step, for trap doors are hidden in plain sight. And the more doors you open leading closer to freedom, the more doors you open and free monsters that lurk in the night.

Good luck, darling! You're going to need it.

Yours truly,

Lord Aaron Rancaster,
6th Baronet Rancaster

Immediately Mara turned around, intending to go back, but she bumped into an invisible barrier. She placed her hand on it, feeling the surface of it like the surface of cold glass, like the glass that she and Nico had run into on the stage when they ran towards their parents on the chairs.

At that moment, the urge to run and hide like a wounded animal from a dangerous hunter subsided into an animal rage, and Mara yelled, "Who are you? What do you want with me?"

And on cue, speakers turned on in a hiss of static, and Lord Rancaster said, "Ladies and gentlemen, here is your encore for tonight, a tramp through the Labyrinth that is our humble corner of the Phantom Realms."

And the cheers of the crowd came on through the speakers.

"Why are you doing this?" Mara yelled.

"Because it's entertaining, darling," Lord Rancaster said. "And don't forget to read the post script. It just might become your lifeline in the next few moments!"

At first, she wanted nothing more than to tear the damn letter into shreds, but her mother's last words (to keep on living) restrained her, so she read:

P.S. Answer is Clue! Try not to die too soon, darling.

—A. R.

P.P.S. In 'Clue,' there is one noun (plural), one verb, one preposition, and one noun (singular). There! Give us a good show, darling.

—A. R.

Mara fumed and crumpled the letter in her hand but thought better than to tear it into pieces, looking at her surroundings in the darkness of the night and wondering where all this was headed. She needed to know what this 'Clue' pertained to in this sick game, so she folded up the letter and stuffed it in the waistband of her dress skirt just over the tucked-in hem of her shirt and proceeded on her way.

And all the while, Nico's spirit followed Mara through the Labyrinth as an unseen sentinel watching over her.

9

While Nico told her bird's-eye-view account of Mara's ordeal to Celia and Katherine in the library, Madison had ascended the double grand staircase and stalked into the inclined hall leading up to the endless rows of hallways and mirrors one floor above it. She was still fuming over Katherine’s refusal to tell her what she knew, especially when it concerned their mother and grandmother. It wasn’t like Katherine to keep her younger sisters out of the loop, nor was it like Madison to start fights with Katherine in front of Celia like that. And when she thought about all the tricks Celia played on her over the years, harried as she was at her sister’s antics, Madison couldn’t help but wonder what Celia was thinking when she saw her two older sisters fighting. Madison hadn’t been that angry in a while, so for Celia’s sake, she promised herself that she would make amends with Celia, even if she couldn’t make amends with Katherine just yet.

When the incline leveled off near the end of the hallway, ending at a two-way corridor, she turned from those thoughts and took the left way and headed towards the naughty room where Katherine kept her dirty magazines and DVDs. She knew she was old enough to indulge herself, and what Katherine didn't know wouldn't end up in Madison's face, either. And even if it did end up blowing up in her face, she was old enough to face Katherine's hell, even when Celia’s version of it was more persistent.

But it wasn't very long when Madison got lost after crossing the third or fourth hallway to Katherine's naughty room. Going back and forth between hallways, she just couldn't remember the exact number of hallways (third or fourth) that she needed to count before turning right into another hallway that led to (get this) another hallway where Katherine's naughty room was supposed to be, and the endless rows of mirrors and doors made things worse for her.

So she then stopped at the third intersecting hallway, looking to her right, then walked up to the fourth hallway, again looking right. She turned around but repressed the urge to backtrack, this time committing to one route and going along it with her eyes peeled.

She said under her breath, "Damn it, Kathy, why do you have to make yours so damn complicated? It's hard enough trying to navigate the first floor, let alone this one!"

But then again, she noted, Katherine did not create this dream mansion with Madison in mind. In fact, Katherine created it to thwart the ever-bratty and ever-curious Celia from finding her more private things like the troll-whore of a brat-face she was. The one that their parents spoiled to no end had warped this dreamscape into a navigator’s nightmare the way Nicky Roth’s persistent break-ins into Mr. Peterson’s house had turned it into a gigantic funhouse in Hello Neighbor.

Passing yet another set of doors and mirrors, Madison turned right into yet another corridor that gave her no clue where she was and just about gave up. Like it or not, she needed Celia's help and mentally prepared herself to bribe her miscreant little sister if she had to.

Then she stopped, realizing something, and backtracked to the other end of the hallway where she thought she and Katherine had dropped in through the mirror from Mara's dream realm. Madison followed the train of her emotions as she walked, focusing on that split-second moment before both sisters dropped through the mirror, that moment when Madison felt her hair floating in anxiety and looked up. And as she mulled over those thoughts, the same feeling came back to her, and her hair began to float under another current of anxiety.

When she rounded the next turn into another hallway of mirrors and doors, she saw it ahead of her.

The light spray of blood stains still gleamed on the upper portion of the walls, where Madison had exploded Katherine’s mirror in a shower of shards.

And right below those stains where the shards still gleamed upon the carpet, there was a dark pool of blood that had since seeped into the fibers. Walking up to sticky mass and crouching down, Madison placed two fingers on the surface and felt the lingering traces of that man in the white suit reverberating through her head and solidifying his image into her mind.

"Oh my God, he’s here!" she said under her breath, getting back up and running the other way to warn her sisters, praying she could find her way back to them.

10

Moments after getting shot, Mrs. Cairns found herself falling for a time down through the rabbit hole of endless sleep, down through the slow-wave madness of bearing witness to the deaths of her daughter Nico and her husband Paul dying before her, their blood pooling from bullet wounds in their heads into spreading circles on Rancaster’s stage. And with the reports of gunshots echoing around her, she kept screaming words she couldn’t hear, calling out the names of her husband and two daughters and screaming for Mara to run away. She couldn’t hear any of her words as if her voice had been stolen, as if the very spirit in her voice had flown from the madness and condemned her astral self into a dark abyss of repeating memories.

And with those memories came a flood of regrets over her failings as a mother, of which there were many: failing to see how Mara and Nico were affected by all the fighting between husband and wife, failing to notice how her daughters were coping with it till she got woken up in bed by one of her daughters yelping in their bedroom, and failing to speak up before it was too late to do anything but just leave the house and let the closing of the door close the final chapter of her life before the bloody epilogue of gunshots and screams tore her family from her. Thus, she wondered if she deserved all of this for failing to act sooner, for failing to see a truth that her husband had picked up on while she was blind to it, and for failing to see eye to eye with her husband.

So she surrendered to the darkness, letting it swallow her up in a flood of tears pooling below her like an underground pond, letting the silence remain for a time. So here she stayed for the next few moments, till a voice called out to her in the darkness, calling out her name.

At first, she thought it was her daughters.

Mara? Nico? Mrs. Cairns said in her mind. Is that you?

She heard the voice again, a little stronger this time, yet it was a different voice belonging to a different woman.

What is it? she said. What are you saying?

And the voice said, “Can you . . .”

And it cut out again.

I can’t really hear you, she said.

And out of the silent void of her thoughts came another voice in her head as if it was the voice of God, saying, “I’ve been trying to reach you, Lucy Cairns.”

Who are you? Lucy Cairns said. How do you know my name?

“I’m Amelia Hearn,” the voice said, “and I’m here to help you.”

And all at once, Lucy Cairns felt herself getting enfolded into the arms of another woman, feeling the warmth of her presence before her and hearing her words warm against her ear.

“Open your eyes,” Amelia Hearn said.

And when Lucy did, she saw another woman around her age, perhaps another woman who knew the travails of being a mother. This woman held her hand out to her and said, “Don’t fret, dear. I’m here to help,” and she coaxed Lucy to open herself up to her and trust in her kindness. So Lucy reached out her hand to this woman, yet her hand passed through the woman’s grasp like the grasp of a hologram.

W-why can’t I touch you? Lucy said.

“It looks like you’re still in limbo,” Amelia said, “and it seems you’re holding onto deep regrets. I’ll have to try again later, but whatever you do, don’t . . .”

Yet her words faded away when Lucy’s vision clouded over in darkness once again, obscuring the woman named Amelia Hearn from view, as she fell back into the fold of limbo and slept with visions of going into an underground cavern, where all the tears she had been shedding over the last few months of her rocky marriage to her husband had collected into her own Pool of Tears shimmering in the darkness. And there Lucy stayed for the next 24 hours with visions of her daughters’ disappointed faces haunting her.

Tsuzuku