Always (Scenes 4-8)

4

While Kendra was tending to Nico’s wounds, the lights overhead flickered on and off, and a darkness more than night flooded a corner of Katherine’s hallway, turning it into a void that drummed to a beating heart. And in that beating void, there appeared the hazy figure of Rancaster in wisps of fog emanating from his feet. He had returned to the very spot where he had stopped Auna Wenger from shooting Kendra and the Cairns sisters, yet he had second thoughts on showing leniency on the trio of party crashers in the hallway earlier.

He thought of Auna Wenger in Katherine’s library and said, “I hope you’re ready to play your part, bambina,” and he stomped his foot onto the floor and dispelled the haze from the hallway, save for the trail of footsteps leading around the corner.

He then followed the trail of residual fog, crunching over broken mirror shards, and spied the ruined door with its knob shot out, thinking of Kendra’s barbaric redecorating ideas, and shook his head at Edward Tellerman’s lack of adequate parental guidance and said, “Eddie, you should’ve been more strict with her. That girl has no sense of propriety, thanks to you.”

Nevertheless, he followed the astral footsteps of the trio of party crashers and spied more of Kendra’s destructive handiwork of kicked-in doors and shot-out door knobs along three more hallways, when he stopped at the sight of those footsteps heading into the last door at the end of the hallway just before the turn around the next corner.

He peered in and stammered back, gaping at the sight of all the phallic objects on the shelves, and gulped down his qualms about entering a lady’s private boudoir. The sight brought long-dead memories of his tour of the bordellos of Italy and Spain and France in the spectral company of their most famous libertines, Giacomo Casanova and Don Juan and Marquis de Sade, respectively.

So he mustered up his courage and passed the threshold and then remembered Jonathan Swift’s “The Lady’s Dressing Room,” which colored Katherine Hearn’s character when he considered Celia Hearn’s delinquency in his mind, and said, “Lady Katherine, you naughty minx! Your dirty secrets have rubbed off on your youngest sister,” and he quoted Swift’s poem, saying,

“O never may such vile machine
Be once in Celia’s chamber seen!
O may [Kathy] better learn to keep
Those ‘secrets of the hoary deep!’”

He ignored the phalluses and the television and DVDs and DVD player and paused at a set of books with titles such as Story of O and Lolita and Ada, among others, none of which he recognized. So he manifested the translation of Marquis de Sade’s Juliette that he had ‘checked out’ of the Arcana Bookstore after Madison Hearn’s outburst and before Auna Wenger’s arrival and flipped its front cover, where the blood seal he had traced on the back fluoresced in the lamplight.

Here, Rancaster traced a sleeper curse over the blood seal and wrote Katherine Hearn’s full name on the cover. He then closed the book and placed it in between the other volumes on the shelf and smiled at his handiwork.

“That should take care of you, braid-girl,” he said and smiled at the thought of Katherine Hearn being cursed to sleep by a book she might have otherwise enjoyed as a guilty pleasure. “Sweet dreams, darling.”

Though he wouldn’t admit it to anyone, much less to Auna, Rancaster still had his naughty proclivities from his sojourn in Italy and Spain and France with those long-dead playboys. As such, he thought of introducing Auna to this room, wondering if someone of her appetites would approve, but he quelled such thoughts when he spied the bed that Kendra had moved and noticed the afterglow of Celia’s seal inscribed with red roses.

He crouched and placed two fingers on the seal and closed his eyes, in which he saw Kendra and Nico making their getaway. And before he knew it, he felt the psychic presence of Mara Cairns behind him. He turned and barely caught her afterglow, reaching out for her as the image dissipated from his mind’s eye.

“So you decided to stay, darling?” Rancaster said to the lingering afterglow. “Quite admirable of you. I guess every play needs its heroine.”

He paused at Celia’s seal a moment longer, till he remembered leaving Auna Wenger to occupy her time alone in Katherine’s library by the double grand staircase. So he turned and exited Katherine’s extra private boudoir. Just as he passed the threshold into the hallway, he took himself away in a gray fog, leaving wisps of it lingering in the air—

5

Only to arrive and get an eyeful of Auna Wenger masturbating on the solan sofa. He had manifested next to a cafe table, so he sat on a nearby chair and watched her continue to pinch and rub herself beneath her panties.

He watched her in silence, feeling himself getting hard, till she gasped and took in massive gobs of air as if coming up from a deep dive and sprawled herself over the salon sofa. Her head rested on a pillow over an arm rest, with her left arm over the edge of the sofa and her fingers over a book lying parted with its pages down on the parquet flooring next to the sofa. Her other hand was still in her panties, and she pulled out and wiped the residue over her shirt and clipped on the fastener of her skirt.

“Was it fun?” Rancaster said.

And Auna sat up in a panic, flustered at the sight of him.

She said, “How long were you there?”

“Long enough to see the whole show,” he said, getting up from the chair and approaching her . . .

6

Meanwhile, Mara manifested atop the bed in Katherine’s boudoir, inscribed in a seal of red roses and one enormous rose pillowing her astral form. When she opened her eyes, Mara found the three Hearn sisters and Nico still debating what they should do next. And when she found that they still couldn’t see her conscious self sitting up from her bed, Mara decided to play a trick on Nico and the Hearn sisters.

Mara got off the bed and leaned in towards Nico’s ear and whispered, “They’re right, you know. Have faith.”

Nico turned again and looked at her sister sleeping on the bed, thinking, Is that you, Mara?

So Mara responded by passing her finger through Nico’s lips and blowing through her finger, filling her sister with warmth like that of their first kiss, sending color to her cheeks. She then walked through Nico's astral body, filling her sister with her strength and willpower, and Nico’s breathing became labored, her lips parted, and her heart drummed in her chest.

"What is it?" Celia said.

But Nico stayed silent, thinking, What are you up to?

And in response, Mara kissed Nico’s forehead, forming an image in Nico's mind of both sisters playing hide and seek when they were children, and driving her parents crazy for hours on end. Mara was up to her old tricks, coaxing Nico to play along with her sister-in-crime.

Each of the Hearn sisters followed Nico's gaze.

Madison said, "Wait, is it Mara? Is she with us?"

Nico turned with a smile on her face, saying, "Yeah, she's definitely here. It just took her some time to wake up, but she won't be obvious about it."

"What do you mean?" Katherine said.

"Mara and I used to play hide a seek a lot when we were little, and we drove our parents crazy every time. We'll do something similar here," she said, "but we need your permission to mess with this place a little. It's your dream realm, after all."

Katherine looked in Nico's eyes and saw mischief there, and had qualms that Celia’s influence must've rubbed off on her. "Try not to mess with it too much, okay? I don't want a certain someone getting any ideas."

Celia protested. "Hey, I'm not like that!"

"Sure, you're not." Katherine ignored further protests from Celia and said, "What have you got?”

When Celia calmed down, Nico looked at her fellow conspirators, and said, "Okay, here's the plan. First, we let Mara distract them, and trust me—they won't find her in this room. They'll be too busy with Mara messing with them. Once they're distracted, we'll separate them. Celia and Maddy will deal with that 'bambina' girl, and I'll handle Rancaster.”

7

“That was the original plan, anyway,” Mara said, “but it didn’t turn out that way. What happened after that was a complete mess, because we overlooked one important detail.”

“Alice?” Colbie said.

Mara nodded and said, “And not just her, either. We weren’t aware of the sleeper curse on Katherine, till it was too late. In fact, we weren’t even aware of each other’s movements during most of tonight, until now,” and she shook her head at her own incompetence, as well. “And I even forgot about my own movements before I woke up in front of the Hearn sisters and Nico—the other Nico. God, I’m so stupid!”

“Beating yourself up won’t change anything, you know,” Kendra said, then looked at her companions, one after the other: Nico, Mara, and Colbie. “Look, I know we made mistakes. Hell, I almost got myself killed if it hadn’t been for you, Mara, but . . . we have to focus on what we can do right now. You all get me?”

And one by one, all three of Kendra’s companions nodded in understanding, and Mara gleaned the sense that Kendra was in her element, taking charge.

“Good,” Kendra said. “So what are our options now?”

“Get Katherine to wake up,” Mara said.

“That’s one,” Kendra said. “What else?”

“Deal with Rancaster,” Nico said.

“That’s two,” Kendra said. “What else?”

“Deal with Alice,” Colbie said.

“That’s three,” Kendra said. “Anything else?”

None of Kendra’s friends added in anything else, so Kendra added a fourth and said, “You’re missing a fourth objective.”

“And what’s that?” Colbie said.

“Deal with unknown variables,” Kendra said. “Since we all came here virtually blind, we had no idea what to expect, and so we had no idea how to react in case of an emergency. Hence, we’re all in the middle of this mess right now. We need a strategy on how to deal with these variables. You all get me so far?”

Again, all three of her companions nodded, and Mara got the sense that Kendra had some inklings of an idea bubbling in her head, though Mara left her thoughts about them unsaid. For now, at the moment.

“Good,” Kendra said. “I choose dealing with unknown variables as the most important objective, since it’s these unknowns that fucked up everything up to now. Do you all agree?”

And again, all three of her companions nodded.

“Okay, so that dwindles it down to three,” Kendra said. “Out of those three options left, what do you all think is the next most important objective? Colbie, what do you think?”

“Wake up Katherine,” Colbie said.

“Nico,” Kendra said, “what about you?”

“Deal with Rancaster,” Nico said.

“Mara,” Kendra said, “what about you?”

“Wake up Katherine, first,” Mara said.

“I agree with Colbie and Mara,” Kendra said, then turned to Nico: “We’ll deal with Rancaster after we wake up Katherine. We need to focus on getting more help, and since we’re infiltrating Katherine’s mansion, she’ll be a big help to us in the long run. Does that make sense?”

Nico nodded without a word of protest, but Mara zeroed in on her sister’s expression, anyway, wondering what she was thinking to make her differ in her opinion.

“Is there something on your mind?” Mara said.

“Yeah,” Nico said.

“Did you notice anything?” Colbie said.

“Yeah,” Nico said, and faced her three companions as though she were on the cusp of connecting the dots.

“What is it?” Kendra said, and again Mara wondered where her thoughts were going, wondering if Kendra’s prior inklings had any connection with Nico’s burgeoning thoughts. “Does it have anything to do with our encounter with Amelia Hearn?”

“Part of it, yeah,” Nico said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Nico said, “I didn’t really notice until Mara pointed out that there were two Nicos, one with Celia and her sisters, and me when I met Kendra. I just didn’t realize . . .” She lost her train of thought, so she looked at her surroundings and said, “Kendra, before we entered this place, you told me what we can do here, but what can’t we do here?”

“Well, for one, we can’t bring people back here from the dead,” Kendra said, “and we can’t do anything beyond what we would normally do in our dreams.”

“And that means?” Nico said.

“That means no sex,” she said, “and no killing. Those are Connie’s rules. Barring those two things, we have free reign to do whatever we like, and during Connie experiments, we follow her objectives under her supervision.”

“Okay, so does that mean we could make a simulation of places while we’re in here?” Nico said. “As in, we can recreate the same space or building or landscape that we saw before, right?”

“Yeah,” Kendra said. “As long as the place we recreate inside here comes from our own observations, like a memory of a prior visit to someplace, or a photograph of it, or even just a painting of it.”

“Okay, that makes sense,” Nico said, and again Mara wondered what was going through her mind when her sister added, “And besides Connie, who usually takes charge while you’re in here?”

“I do,” Kendra said, “though Connie delegates who’s in charge based on the kinds of experiments she runs. What are you thinking? Does it have anything to do with Amelia Hearn?”

Nico stayed silent in her thoughts, but Mara had the gist of them in her mind as she considered the contents of her own dream sequence before and after she met the Hearn sisters, then said, “Nico, are you talking about doubles, as in doppelgangers?”

“You’re both almost there,” Nico said.

So Colbie took a crack at it and said, “Are you talking about mirror reflections?”

“Yes! You got it,” she said, turning to face her friends with a smile on her face.

“I see where you’re going with this,” Colbie said, “but a mirror reflection only explains how you replicate something. That doesn’t explain how you make a copy of it.”

“Colbie’s right, you know,” Kendra said. “Unless you recreate it through a medium, like a drawing or painting or a photograph, it won’t last.”

Nico shook her head, but Mara had enough links in Nico’s argument to form an idea of what she was getting at, so she said, “I don’t think she means making something permanent by recreating it, but just remembering it long enough to form an impression of it in your mind.“

“Exactly!” Nico said. “Now do you see what I’m saying?”

“But what does this have to do with Amelia Hearn?” Kendra said.

“And what does this have to do with doppelgängers?” Mara said.

“And what does this have to do with Rancaster?” Colbie said.

“Everything,” Nico said, and her thoughts shifted the massive ballroom into another manifestation—

8

Of a large garden lake lying before them, where they stood on the boarded walkway of the embankment.

“Kendra, Amelia Hearn took us here when we entered Katherine’s dream realm,” Nico continued. “And Mara, this is the place where you fought that doppelgänger of Rancaster on the same lake. Also, Kendra, Mara, you were both with me in the hallways. What did you notice when you were there?“

Kendra and Mara traded glances, and both said, “Mirrors.”

“I saw the mirror shards strewn all over the floor,” Mara added.

“And when I came to your rescue, Nico,” Kendra said, “I saw all of those mirrors breaking in the hallways, but I never meant to break all of them. I only wanted to break one to get to your location.”

With both of their observations rolling through Nico’s mind, creating a chain of logic that Mara was just beginning to piece together in her own mind (just beginning to manifest the sequence of events like footage of a movie projector on the screen), Nico pointed at the mirror sheen of the lake towards the blood moon reflected on its surface.

“Look at the moon there,” Nico said, “and then look at the sky.”

And when Kendra, Colbie, and Mara did, each girl caught onto Nico’s drift, and Kendra said, “There’s no moon in the sky.”

“That’s exactly my point,” Nico said, “but if that was truly the case, then wouldn’t this entire place be in total darkness? Look around you. There’s no moon overhead, nor are there any stars visible in the sky, but we can still see in this place as if there still is a moon in the sky.”

Indeed, the more Mara thought about it, the more she realized the veracity of Nico’s claim. When Mara cast her gaze across the garden lake to the other side of the embankment, complete with the boarded walkway against a screen of trees, she found herself wondering if this very lake was itself a mirror—a mirror in Katherine Hearn’s mind.

“And,” Kendra added, “I noticed the same thing when Amelia Hearn took us to this place. When we walked with her down across the bridge over the water, I saw the same blood moon in the reflection of her lake, but I saw nothing in the sky.”

“Wait,” Colbie said, looking from Kendra to Nico, then back to Kendra, “are you talking about the Blood Rose Witch?”

“Yeah,” Kendra said. “Same person.”

“Do you think Rancaster and Amelia Hearn used the same spell?”

“I don’t know about that for sure,” Kendra said, “but from what Nico’s implying, and what I’ve seen in my dream sequence, I think Rancaster might have the same skill set—maybe not the same expertise as her, but definitely the same skill set.”

“Which means,” Nico said, following through on her chain of logic, “that Rancaster must’ve infiltrated Katherine’s dream mansion in a similar way.” Nico then dissipated the construct of Katherine’s lake under a moonless night sky—

Tsuzuku