The Hollow Masquerade

The world smelled of wet earth and burning sugar.

Eleanor clutched Emily to her chest as the new cage sang a low, grinding hum of bone settling into place. Jacob's petrified face stared blankly from between the ribs, his mouth frozen mid-scream. The Hollow Priest stroked the bars with something like reverence, his fingers leaving smears of black mold where they touched.

"He'll last longer than the others," the Priest mused. "The angry ones always do."

Emily stirred in Eleanor's arms. Her gray skin had warmed to something almost human, though her eyes still too large, too dark darted around the crumbling chamber. The stitches had fallen from her lips, revealing a mouth full of tiny, needle-like teeth.

"Where's Danny?" she whispered.

The crow answered before Eleanor could. It pecked at the fresh bone bars, its beak leaving hairline cracks that oozed a substance like liquid amber. "Gone. And not gone. The house eats memories first."

A wet snap echoed through the chamber. The floor split open, vomiting up thick, black roots that twined around Eleanor's ankles. She tried to kick free, but the roots pulsed, injecting something cold into her veins. Visions flooded her:

A younger Jacob (no, Daniel) planting roses in the Blackwood garden. "When we run," he whispered, tucking a key into her palm, "burn them. Burn it all." The petals bled where he touched them.

Herself as a child, sewing the first crow mask. The way the feathers stuck to her bloody fingers. The way the house hummed when she pricked herself.

The Priest in his original form not a monster, but a stable boy with kind eyes pressing a kiss to her forehead. "You'll forget me by morning," he lied. "But I'll remember you."

The roots retreated, leaving Eleanor gasping. The Priest tilted his head. "Ah. You're remembering now."

Emily wriggled free of Eleanor's grip. She pressed her tiny hands to Jacob's petrified face. "You can't have him," she told the house.

The floor lurched.

Stone cracked as something enormous unfurled beneath them not roots, but fingers. The house's true form, finally waking.

The crow took flight in a storm of feathers. "Run," it croaked. "Before it understands what she is."

The Priest moved to block their path then froze as Emily looked at him.

Not with fear.

With recognition.

"Hello, Thomas," she said.

For the first time in centuries, the Hollow Priest flinched.