coming from the depths of all seven mirrors in this room, and it was growing closer with each passing second.
“Something is coming for us!” Vauvert yelled, terrified. “It’s crossing the mirrors! We have to block it!”
Leroy raised his weapon and aimed at a mirror. Vauvert aimed at another mirror. They fired into the void.
The glass exploded. Black shards flew in every direction, and blood gushed from the mirrors of darkness. The monstrous bellowing overwhelmed their ears.
Instinctively, Leroy and Vauvert pressed their backs together and took aim at the other mirrors. Without thinking, they fired into each of the shifting black rectangles, smashing them one by one. And with every shot, with every shard, more blood surged.
The ground began to shake.
73
The woman’s shrill howling rips into Eva’s eardrums. The witch is spinning and twisting on the floor now, nearly dislocating her limbs.
Then, like a wounded beast, she stops.
The wrinkles on her face have spread and deepened. Folds of skin hang from her exposed arms. The skin on her scrawny hands is translucent, the bones and green veins showing through. And her fingernails are growing. They make a screeching noise as she claws the floor. The howling becomes agony.
Eva does not have much time.
She has to free herself.
Right now.
She keeps tugging, up, down.
A new energy throbs in her heart.
She imagines her sister’s little hands on her wrist, invisible and yet here with her, helping her as much as a ghost can help a flesh-and-blood person. Hope grows with every move, enabling her to pull a bit harder with every jerk. One last time up. One last time down.
Until, with a sharp snap, the rope breaks.
Her right arm is free.
Nearby, the masked woman lies shriveled on the floor.
74
The last of the mirrors shattered in the concentrated fire.
Except for the buzzing of the flies, the room was silent.
Captain Nadal poked his head though the door.
“Oh my God,” he whispered.
Vauvert aimed his flashlight at the floor.
The blood was not just gushing from the shards now. It was surging and spreading across the floor.
“What the hell does that mean?” Leroy yelled.
“Whatever it is, I think we set something off,” Vauvert said.
The red puddle was spreading, slowly.
The two men carefully backed toward the door.
“Did you see anything… in the mirrors?”
“What was I supposed to see? They were black.”
“Eva,” Vauvert said. “I thought I saw her in that blackness.”
He scanned the room with his flashlight. On the wall, the tapestry of silent, immobile faces stared at him, their eye sockets gaping and their mouths parted in silent grins.
Suddenly, a wet sound rising from the trough startled them. They pointed their lights at the bloody surface.
“We’ve got to get out!” Nadal pleaded.
But Vauvert and Leroy were paralyzed, their eyes fixed on the coagulated content. A huge bubble was forming. It swelled and burst.
“Hurry up, God dammit!” Nadal repeated.
New bubbles appeared, as though the blood was starting to boil.
The trough began to vibrate. Then it began to shake. The shaking gathered speed and force-until finally the trough cracked and gave way, sending its bloody contents to the floor.
Vauvert and Leroy retreated as fast as they could.
75
“They broke the doors. The bastards broke the doors.”
The woman has gotten to her knees. She’s bent over, and the form of her knobby spinal column shows through the thin material of her dress. Her wig has slid off her head, revealing a bald, blotchy skull.
But when she looks at Eva, her eyes still burn like flames behind the porcelain mask, which is once again an immaculate white.
“It doesn’t matter,” she says before coughing and spitting up blood. “The ceremony can be completed. The gods will have their last sacrifice. They found her. They showed her to me.”
She rises to her feet. She stares at the wig in her hand and then pats it back on her head. It is askew.
“Now, yes.”
She breaks into a demented laughter.
Somewhere in the darkness of the basement, in the walls and the floor, the whispering starts again. It grows and vibrates faster and faster.
After pulling on the rope so long and so hard, Eva’s right arm is wracked with pain. But it is free. That is all that matters. Wincing, she twists to the side to reach her left arm.
To her horror, she realizes that she can’t.
“What do you think you’re doing?” her tormentor says.
Eva does not answer.
She tries to focus.
The monstrous misshapen woman raises the scalpel above her head.
She brings it down.
Eva stops her with her free hand.
The eyes, lit behind the mask, fill with surprise.
And, for the first time,
With all her might, Eva turns the blade around and pushes. Just as she pushed another blade into the chest of another monster. She is no longer a little girl. She knows where to strike. She knows that she has pierced the heart.
The masked woman lets out a shriek.
The handle of the scalpel is sticking out of her chest.
When Eva pulls the blade from its sheath of flesh and bone, a stream of blood spurts from the woman. She steps backward, hands pressed against her heart.
Eva can see her fall to her knees, opening and closing her mouth but unable to emit a sound. Then, finally,
