5

When she awoke, it was dark, and she was no longer in the sitting room, but instead in her own bed. She had been tucked into the covers, and her shoes lay neatly side-by-side on the floor beside the bed.

On the bedside table sat a plate with a serving of what appeared to have been dinner that night, and a glass of milk.

She stood up out of bed and crossed the room to the window.

The moon was big and bright, and almost full. How long had it been since the night the world had ended?

A month? A day? 

She thought of the sound she'd heard, just barely above the howling of the wind and the crash of thunder and the pelting of the rain against the window. A long, high-pitched shriek, blood-curdling, like the sound a fox made.

She remembered knowing something was wrong. Leaving her bedroom, running down the hall, rounding the corner, and staring deep into that pitch-black doorway down the hall.

The bedroom.

It was now very, very quiet in the hall, and she felt she couldn't move at all. Lightning flashed, illuminating the hallway and the room in the blink of an eye, and there, she could see – A tall man in her parents' bedroom, standing confidently over her father's body. He was tangled in the sheets, slumped against the side of the mattress.

He was dead when she saw him. She wasn't sure how exactly she knew, but there was no doubt in her mind that by the time the thunder rolled overhead and the light faded, both of them were dead, and he was gone.

She remembered screaming. Screaming and screaming until her throat was raw. Until a guard burst from a nearby room and grabbed her and demanded to know what was wrong. Screaming, because she couldn't tell him. She could hardly believe it wasn't a dream, but the way his fingers pressed into her flesh felt much too real for her to be sleeping.

And then, she remembered nothing, for what felt like days, but in reality could only have been a few hours.

She doubted the night, and the days that followed, would ever fade. She shut her eyes.

It wasn't quite a voice, perhaps only a force, a summons. She turned away from the window and faced her bedroom, looking around.

Do you feel that? Bishop had asked her. It's a spirit.

It came again, like a hand against her back, or a rope around her waist, pulling and pushing and guiding her towards the vanity.

She sat down, heavy, and stared intently into the mirror. Her hand picked up the ivory-handled hairbrush, and began to run it through her hair, pulling on day-old knots.

The motion was repetitive, almost soothing, and she watched her hands move in her reflection.

She blinked.

When she opened her eyes, her hands rested one over the other in her lap, and behind her, gently running the brush through her hair, stood her mother, gentle and vibrant, humming softly to herself.

Elodie stood and turned away from the mirror, reaching out and grasping at… – open air.

Her mother was not there.

Of course not. She never had been. Elodie looked down at the hairbrush sitting innocently on the vanity table.

She did not remember putting it back down. In fact, she was almost certain that she hadn't.

"...Mom?" She called.

But the room was still empty, and she was still alone.