Chapter 6
The silence didn't last.
It shattered the moment Scarlett disappeared, leaving behind an air so thick, Olivia felt like she was swallowing smoke with every breath. The shattered glass crackled under their feet as the siblings stood frozen in the ruined library.
Lila was the first to speak.
"She didn't say one of us… she said all."
No one dared respond.
Because it was true. Scarlett wasn't offering a trade. She wasn't after justice anymore—she wanted blood. All of it.
And every one of them was marked.
⸻
They tried to sleep that night, each of them retreating to their corners of the old house, but rest was impossible. The shadows moved wrong. The mirrors whispered. The clocks all stopped at 3:07 a.m.—and stayed there.
Olivia lay in her mother's old room, surrounded by dusty perfume bottles and cracked porcelain dolls that hadn't been touched in decades. The air was still tinged with Eleanor's lavender scent, but there was something else beneath it now. Something sour. Like rot.
She kept hearing the whisper.
"You carry their guilt…"
But it wasn't just guilt. It was inheritance.
And the more she thought about it, the clearer it became. Scarlett wasn't just targeting them because of their names—she was targeting them because of their blood. Whatever their mothers or aunts had done… they had passed the curse on. Like a disease.
Olivia sat up and reached for the box of Scarlett's letters they'd unearthed in the garden.
There was one envelope she hadn't noticed before.
It was sealed in wax—black wax. Her name was scrawled on the front in the same trembling handwriting:
"Olivia Hawthorne"
⸻
Inside, a single page.
"She made a pact. With something that lives beneath the roots. We begged her not to. But she said pain was better than shame. That if we couldn't silence the truth, then we had to feed it.
She was the first to offer a name. Mine.
It wasn't the forest that cursed me. It was her.
And now you carry her blood."
The paper smelled like smoke. Olivia ran her fingers over the last line, a numbness crawling up her spine.
Scarlett had been betrayed not just by friends.
She'd been sacrificed.
By Eleanor Hawthorne.
⸻
Morning came grey.
Lila hadn't left her room. When Olivia knocked, she didn't answer.
Henry stood in the kitchen, staring into a mug of untouched coffee.
"Marlene's gone," he said flatly.
"What?"
"She's not in her room. Not in the house. Her phone's still here. Her boots are gone."
Olivia felt ice spread through her chest.
"She wouldn't just leave…"
Henry nodded slowly, but his eyes were hollow.
On the kitchen table, someone had laid a bundle of white roses—fresh, despite no one having picked them.
They were bound with red thread.
And tucked beneath them, another letter.
This time, the handwriting was unfamiliar. Sharper. Older. Almost carved into the paper.
One has returned to the soil.
Three more must kneel.
Then she may sleep.
Olivia's voice caught in her throat as she read the words. The house had gone still again—like it was holding its breath, waiting to see who would fall next.
She reached out and touched the roses, only to recoil instantly.
They were cold.
Not chilled—cold, like frostbitten flesh. And the thread binding them? It wasn't thread.
It was hair.
Long, red strands, tied around the stems like a noose.
Lila appeared in the doorway just as Olivia stumbled back from the table. Her eyes were sunken and bloodshot. "Where's Marlene?" she asked, voice too calm.
Olivia held up the note.
Lila didn't flinch. "Then it's begun."
⸻
That night, none of them spoke. Olivia lit candles in the hallways, trying to fight the growing sense that the house was shrinking. The rooms felt tighter. The ceilings lower. And the air… it buzzed.
Somewhere, a music box played on its own.
Henry stayed in the dining room with a shotgun on his lap—not that it would help. James locked himself in the attic and refused to come down. Lila moved like a ghost, her long black dress sweeping the floors like a mourner before a funeral.
Olivia found herself back in the garden.
It looked different now. The flowers had started to bloom again—aggressively. Roses climbing the walls, vines sprouting through the cracks in the bricks. Something was feeding them.
She knelt near the spot where Scarlett had appeared.
There was a hole now. A small, perfectly round one. The dirt around it was wet. Too wet.
Like blood had seeped through it.
⸻
Suddenly, she remembered something: her mother's journal. She hadn't opened it since the funeral, too afraid to look at Eleanor's thoughts laid bare. But if anyone had known what had been buried here… it would be her.
She rushed inside, up the creaking stairs, and into her mother's study.
The journal was still on the top shelf. Red leather. Gold lettering faded with time.
She cracked it open.
April 3rd
Scarlett is still crying in my dreams. I told them it wouldn't end with the pact, but they insisted. Marlene—
Not our Marlene. The first Marlene—said it was the only way. "Better a girl than a scandal." That's what she said. I wonder if she'd say the same now, if she saw what I see at night. The forest, whispering. The dirt, swallowing her.
She begged us not to leave her alone. We said she'd be remembered. We lied.
May 6th
James saw her. In the mirror. He screamed for an hour. I told him it was just a bad dream, but I know better. She's waking up. She wants what we stole: her name, her story, her peace.
She wants our children.
⸻
Olivia's hand shook as she closed the journal.
They'd done it.
Scarlett had been sacrificed for a scandal. And now that the truth was rising, so was the girl they left to rot.
The garden didn't just hold her remains.
It held her rage.
⸻
At exactly 3:07 a.m., Olivia awoke to a whisper against her ear.
"I never wanted to die."
She shot up, heart racing.
But the room was empty—except for the roses on her pillow.
White.
Bound in red.
The hair again.
Olivia screamed.
The others came running, and when they saw what was on her bed, their faces fell.
Henry took the flowers without a word and burned them in the fireplace. Lila sat on the edge of the bed, running her fingers through her tangled hair. James, still shaking, whispered, "We're next, aren't we?"
Olivia didn't answer.
Because she didn't need to.
⸻
Later that day, they found Marlene.
In the well behind the garden.
She wasn't alive.
But she wasn't… whole, either.
Her eyes had been replaced with white rose petals. Her hair was gone—cut at the root. And carved into her chest, in Scarlett's own hand, were the words:
"First to forget. First to fall."
James vomited behind the hedge.
Henry sat down and wept.
And Olivia—Olivia knelt beside her sister's body, brushing dirt from her bloodless cheek, and whispered, "I remember now."
Lila didn't cry. She just said, "There's no running, Liv. Not from this. Not from her."
⸻
That night, the house changed.
The rooms rearranged.
Doors opened to different places.
Mirrors cracked in perfect circles.
Scarlett was no longer hiding.
She was home.
And the rest of them—Olivia, Lila, James, Henry—were trapped in it.