lady down. For some reason, she could feel their presence around, lurking far away from where they could see them, but present enough to swarm in should the need demand it. She shook her head and turned her back on Naomi.

“I never asked for any of this, and I am sorry”, she whispered again.

Naomi made no move to acknowledge her friend’s plea. Nora took the silence with a heavy heart, and began to walk away.

“Muzin! Nora! Help! Help!” the loud cry came from the bedroom, and more specifically, from Lama’s room.

Laura jumped to her feet, as Nora headed in the direction without giving it a moment’s thought. They arrived by her room and stopped by the door at the sight of Lama holding out her bloodied hands for them to see.

“He was in here… that thing… your friend!” she screamed.

Muzin came running into the room not long after, panting with soap on his face as indicative of the fact he was having his bath.

“What did this to you?” he asked as he drew closer to his wife.

The wound bled profusely, almost like a lion had mauled her.

“Daren”, she simply muttered, weeping as she winced in pain.

Muzin shot his daughter an accusatory look, causing Nora to walk away immediately. It was bad enough that her best friend wasn’t speaking to her, but her father adding salt into her injury wasn’t something she could stomach.

“I am putting an end to this thing once and for all!” Nora mumbled to herself.

She returned to the dining room and armed herself with the deck as she headed down the staircase leading to the basement. She paused and turned back around to head over to the kitchen to pick seven candlesticks and a match box, before returning to her previous destination. Naomi spotted her friend acting oddly and decided to tail her, but Nora had moved too fast and slammed the basement door in her face before she could breach it.

Hammering her weight into the door, Naomi called out. “What are you planning on doing!? Open the door, Nora! Open the door!”

Nora leaned into the door and whispered in response, “I cannot sit and watch while you guys continue to suffer for my actions… I have to end this right now!”

Her words didn’t sound as convincing as she had hoped it would, and her heart weighed in pain more than she could let on.

“I really don’t know what I’m doing, but I have to try”, she confessed.

Naomi gave no response, prompting Nora to head over to the abandoned table and chair Lama had tossed down there some years ago when she began decorating the house anew. It was her way of cementing her presence in the new home, and casting away memories of Nora’s mother as best as she could and Nora hated it to the depths of her heart.

She set herself up with a chair and dragged it towards the table. Carefully, she set the candles into place and lit them one after the other, hearing her own heart beat aggressively, while the dusty air in the room thickened.

“Keep your calm and get this done right… keep your calm and get this done right”, she muttered to herself.

With the candles set into place, and the room as silent as a graveyard with nobody around to interrupt what she was about to do, She took out the cards from its deck and held it together in her left hand on the table. It suddenly felt lighter than it had been on the first day she handled it, but Nora didn’t care for such oddity at present; all she wanted was answers.

Nora pictured it all in her head; all that had happened and all that haunted her for the past few days.

“If you can bring them all back, I want you to show me”, she whispered to herself.

Everything around her suddenly seemed to stop, while her fingers began to tremble as she hoped to read her own cards. One after the other, she placed them on the table in the familiar cross she read with, while her heart raged and her stomach weighed heavily as if it could not stomach what was to come.

Reading one’s own card is often against the rules or at least it was what she read online through the times she was attempting to learn how to read tarot cards. Definitely frightened beyond words, and unsure of what would turn up, she reached for the first card and flipped it over without looking at it. With her eyes still closed, she did the same to the second, and third and continuously until she had flipped all her own cards upside down to show their faces.

The candles began to blow out one after the other, and Nora parted her eyelids to see what she had drawn for herself. Her face drew blank and her eyes narrowed in vision as she leaned closer towards the card in hopes she wasn’t seeing what exactly was before. She had drawn a pair of reddened eyes and what appeared to be dark mist or vortex.

“Oh my God!” she exclaimed as the wall opposite her slowly began to chip away.

Nora slowly got to her feet, drawn to the wall as it crumbled before her to reveal nothing but darkness inside of it. Something about it felt wrong, but her heart yearned to know what exactly it was, as she felt her legs develop minds of their own as they carried her forward, absent thoughts and absent proper reasoning.

“Nora!” she heard the voice whisper from within the darkness.

It was unmistakable and she didn’t need to hear it for the second time to know whose it was.

“Mother?” she asked, knowing too well it was the woman calling.

Loud bangs emanated from the bolted door behind her as her father’s voice echoed aloud while he threatened to break the door down.

“Whatever you’re doing, don’t do it!” the man yelled. ‘Please, Nora!”

She figured Naomi had gotten their attention and brought them over.

Her Aunt Laura’s

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