“Hell has enlarged itself detective, spilled over into our world from below,” Sofi said, voice heavy, almost sad. “My whole life, I spent blind, wondering what wonders sight would bring, now I wish I were still blind, deaf.” There on the rocky crags of a wilderness undone, teeming with creatures not truly alive, Sofia took Ortega by her hands and began to convey to her the last remaining shreds of her humanity. Sofi began, “I’d believed in love, a love so blind that in my eternal darkness I could see, a light so bright, a hope so tangible that even my deaf ears could hear him say, ‘I love you, Sofia, I love you with all that I am,’ my Brad. My heart yearned for soft kicks from my womb, a living mixture of the two of us, the mystery of creation within me told in flesh. We’d have a boy, my fingers searching across his tiny face to know every crease intimately, our son, to bond upon my breast, our hearts beating as one, a blessing I shall never know, replaced by an unearthly shadow. That world so distant now, my cocoon kept me safe but has birthed not a butterfly but a wasp.” Sofi’s voice faltered, the words buzzing like trapped flies against the silence. Ortega’s hands trembled in hers, cold and slick with sweat, as if she too could feel the venom seeping through Sofi’s skin. The air around them thickened, heavy with the scent of rust and something sweeter—rot, perhaps, or the ghost of what once bloomed here. Beyond the crags, the creatures shifted, their forms half-seen through the haze: limbs too long, eyes too hollow, mouths that opened like wounds.

The jungle watched curious and impatient. The barefoot white child left the group with a bag of relics even the jungle didn’t recognize. Noisy howlers now stoic, joined the group of treetop voyeurs, hoping for a glimpse into this little intruder’s heart. But too afraid to look. Abigail found her place among the leaves and opened her backpack. She spread a handkerchief and carefully set the relics in no specific order atop the threadbare cotton. One by one she examined them for a clue of origin. There was none. Poche appeared beside her, bent at the waist, if that’s what you call it. The apparition more a heat signature than anything else. But the heat had a voice. “Knock, knock.” Poche cooed, as if the leaves had been invited to answer. They did not. “Who’s there?” Abigail responded without looking up. Her fingers tracing the artifacts the way a mother tests the fontanelle—curious whether the skull beneath has finished closing. “The cenote that drinks its own blood.” And Poche was gone Abigail giggled, pinching her nose in uncertainty and pulled the sat-phone from her pack and dialed the museum. The museum phone rang in the tone of cracked time, the curator answered on the second chime—not too fast, not too slow. “How’s Dr. Whaler holding up dear?” the voice slithered through. “He looks tired, Mommy,” Abigail said, turning the conch-shell trumpet over in her fingers so the warrior’s voices whispered in her ear, “but otherwise he’s as dedicated as ever.” Just then a low rising keen broke the silence—H e l p m e. Abigail gazed skyward, unfazed at both the request, and the hell now breaking loose above. A single ceiba petal drifted down and landed on the handkerchief, right between the jade sandal and the still-beating heart-stone. The petal had a mouth. It opened and closed once, soundlessly, tasting air that sounded like a broken memory.

In 1952, Morwenna—Winnie to her husband, Philip—traversed the cliff road to Cassandra Cove, her mother’s namesake, no less tragic than her doomed attempt to claim the estate in ’48. The lawyer’s letter, freeing Angus O’Shea’s mansion, Tide’s Haul from probate, burned in her lap. Philip, chasing profit, scowled at the spires piercing the fog. “A ruin,” he said, his voice thin with unease. Winnie, stirred by its decay, smiled. A sharp gust shook their Plymouth, carrying the curse’s call. The road, rarely traveled, wound tight and steep, its slick stones treacherous. Morwenna had insisted on this route, her mother’s last. “I want to see what she saw, feel what she felt,” she mused, eyes fixed on the sea’s gray churn below. Philip gripped the wheel, his knuckles pale as the Plymouth lurched over a rut. “This place feels wrong, Winnie,” he said, glancing at the cliffs where Cassandra’s car had plunged four years prior. The locals whispered of —shadows on the road—before it plunged, but the sheriff called it reckless driving. Or was there something else at play? Morwenna didn’t answer, her fingers tracing the letter’s wax seal, its weight like a summons. The mansion loomed closer, its windows dark as tidepools, and a faint call—almost a whisper—seemed to rise from the sea below. She leaned forward, heart quickening, as if the house itself called her name. The Plymouth rumbled to a stop before the mansion’s iron gates, rusted and latch broken. Philip mumbled about resale value—his debts a glare behind his eyes—but Morwenna stepped out, her boots sinking into the muddy path. The air was thick with the sea’s sour breath and decay’s cloying musk, and the house’s spires seemed to lean toward her, as if alive. “It’s beautiful,” she whispered, ignoring Philip’s frown. Somewhere inside, she sensed, her mother’s truth—and O’Shea’s—waited.