Chapter 12: Night: Celia and the Sister Duo | Sister Duo (Scenes 1-2)

Night: Celia and the Sister Duo

Sister Duo (Scenes 1-2)

"For there is no friend like a sister
In calm or stormy weather;
To cheer one on the tedious way,
To fetch one if one goes astray,
To lift one if one totters down,
To strengthen whilst one stands."

—Christina Georgina Rossetti,
“Goblin Market”

1

After a time, Celia stopped bawling into Nico's shirt and withdrew from her hug, wiping the tears from her face with the sleeve of her jacket. She was still sniffling, and her breathing came in rapid and shallow breaths, and her heart was still thundering in her chest, but at least her emotions settled somewhat, and her mind regained some semblance of sanity.

"I'm really sorry you had to see all that," Nico said, reaching out and wiping away excess tears that have yet to fall. "I wasn't planning on making you so upset."

Celia shook her head, wiping away the last of her tears, and said, "I can't help it. I'm just speechless. I have two sisters of my own, and I can't imagine losing either of them like that."

"Try not to think of it, if it's too much for you. I just wanted to show you what kind of monster we're dealing with." Her words held Celia's gaze, so she added, "And there's one more thing I suspect about this guy."

"What is it?"

"I think . . . I'm not completely sure," she said, thinking of her father's accusation about her mother, that she was cheating on him, "but I think he caused my mom to leave my dad that night. And I think he was the reason for my mom and dad fighting all the time. They never used to fight like that before."

"So you believe he tore apart your family?"

"Yeah," she said, clenching both hands atop her knees into fists, looking over at her sister again. "I had a feeling something was going on with my mom, and I should've asked her about it before things got out of hand, but I thought she'd get angry if I did." She sighed, and tears welled up in her eyes. "I just wanted to protect Mara from it all, not telling her the truth. I wanted her to believe that things would get better, but now look at her. Her family's dead, and she's barely hanging in there, and I can't even . . ."

Tears trailed down her cheeks.

Nico's plight tore at Celia's insides, viewing this shell of Nico's former self in an agony of remorse. She was about to ask her why that man did what he did, but she refrained from asking her. Asking Nico that question was like asking an orphan why she was orphaned. Nico could never know why, so all Celia could do was to comfort her the best she could.

Then she remembered Nico's last request before disappearing from the Astral Realm, so she said, "Nico, listen to me. However bad things are right now, it's going to get better. I swear it! Everything you did for Mara is gonna work out, okay?"

Nico barely managed a weak smile. "I hope so."

At those words, a slow clap resounded in the distance out at sea, and both girls turned to see who it was.

And there stood the outline of Lord Aaron Rancaster on the water several feet from the pavilion, still clapping, now ambling towards them and making ripples as he walked. He was still wearing the outfit he had worn on the stage—a white suit pants and jacket, black gloves, minus the cane he had twirled in front of an adoring audience.

"Is he the guy?" Celia said.

But Nico never said a word. She only glared at her murderer and executioner, the culprit behind it all, squeezing her fists till her knuckles were white. She never broke eye contact with him, either, not even to blink.

Which Celia noticed when turned around, saying, "Nico, is he—"

"Don't take your eyes off him!" she ordered, and took Celia's hand in her own, keeping an eagle-eyed glare on the man. "He's a tricky bastard."

And all at once, Celia turned and felt her stomach lurch. The man, who was several yards away from them a moment before, was just outside the confines of the pavilion among the lilies. He brushed both sleeves of his white suit with his gloved hands, as though he was brushing away dandruff and making himself more presentable.

But Nico wasn't buying the charade. "What are you planning?"

"Nothing, darling," Lord Rancaster said, just one step away from stepping onto the floor of the pavilion. "Don't go poisoning the well when I haven't the chance to have my say."

"Why are you here?" Nico said.

"To talk."

"I don't believe you."

"You can believe or disbelieve—it's your choice," he said, raising his hands, palms forward, then snapping the fingers of his left hand. A chair appeared with a plop on the surface of the water, and there he sat, placing his hands flat on his thighs. Ripples broke out and then faded away on the mirror sheen. "I only came here, so we could understand each other. Is that too much to ask?"

"It depends on why you're asking," Nico said.

All the while, Celia kept silent next to her, only placing her palm on the floor, ready to release a spell should the man before them make any sudden movements.

Which the man noticed. "Whatever you're planning, darling," he said to Celia, "try not to make it too obvious. It spoils the novelty."

Celia took offense and gritted her teeth, saying, "If I even suspect you of doing anything weird, I'm taking both of them out of here, got that?"

"All right, all right," he said, raising his hands to placate the girl. "How about I take these hands and place them under my ass on this chair," and he suited his actions to his words, sitting on his hands. "There. Can't do much without the use of my hands, so you're all safe. Now can I have my say?"

Celia and Nico exchanged quick glances, but said nothing.

"I'll take my cue, then," he began. "I know what you're trying to do, darling. And I'll be the first to admit it; you've got my hands tied. Despite all my efforts, I can't reach her."

"Good," Nico said. "I hope you never will."

The man shook his head in admonishment. "No good deed goes unpunished. You're the reason why your sister's still in a coma, still on life support. If she doesn't wake up, they'll have to pull the plug, and it'll be adios to your dear sister forever. Is that really what you want? Do you want her to die?"

"No! I just want her to be—"

"With you?" he said. "You just want to be with her, is that it?"

Nico didn't answer, and Celia couldn't help but look at Nico's stern expression of contempt on her face, and her heart fluttered in her chest. If Celia herself had been in Mara's position, she wondered if either of her elder sisters would put up such a stand, even if they were alive.

"Listen, darling. I'm not as heartless as you think. If you really want to be with her, then I can make compromises. If you allow me past this threshold," he said, kicking at an invisible barrier surrounding the pavilion, "then I can wake her up for you and allow you to stay with your precious sister as her imaginary friend. It'll be marvelous. You'll see her grow into a beautiful strong woman, and she'll be your playmate whenever she falls asleep and dreams. Maybe you can become a spirit guide or anything at all, whatever you wish. Any and all desires you could ever wish for, you can have in your sister's dreams."

At his words, Nico wavered and her heart ached, as visions of all the nights she spent together with Mara flooded her mind. She licked her lips and looked at Mara's face and then at her lips. How many times she tasted those lips, she couldn't remember, and how much she burned to taste them again, she couldn't bear to admit even to herself.

"I can see it in your eyes, darling," he continued, "how they rove over her. Just allow me but one kiss to bring her back, and I'll let you have her for the rest of her life. I'll be that selfless prince that wakes your sleeping beauty from her slumber, and from then on, I'll let you be her prince to hold her and make love to her in your bed whenever she dreams. Just one kiss from me, and all that paradise and more will be yours."

Tears welled up in Nico's eyes, and her breath became shallow, and her stomach flipped and flopped, and her cheeks burned, but through it all, Nico said under her breath, "No."

"What's that, darling?" he said. "I can't hear you."

"I said, NO!" Nico yelled. "You think you know what I want, but you don't! You fucking don't!"

The man leaned back in his chair, exasperated, and said, "Then what do you really want, then? Tell me!"

But Nico said, "Why would I tell you?"

Looking at her companion, Celia kneeled closer to the girl and wrapped her arm around her shoulders, whispering, "It's okay, Nico. Don't listen to him."

"Or maybe," the man continued, "it's not what you want that keeps you from relinquishing her to me. Maybe it's what you fear. Am I right, am I right, am I fucking right?"

"Stop it!" Celia said, glaring at the man. "You have no right to talk to her that way!"

"I'm just telling the truth, darling. The truth needs no sugar coating for her to understand the futility of her actions," he continued, "but I see that she's being stubborn for a reason." He said to Nico, "I see now the kind of burden you hold in your heart. You're afraid that once she wakes up, she'll eventually recover from her ordeal and move on with her life, and maybe forget about you. Is that it?"

"No! It's not true!"

"Oh, come, come, darling. You're being selfish."

"It's not fucking true!" Nico doubled over her sister and sobbed into her shirt, hugging Mara's motionless body close to hers. "It's not fucking true, it's not fucking true!"

Celia came to her aid, wrapping her arms about Nico, trying to calm her down as her own tears trailed down her face, thinking of Colbie dead and bleeding in her arms.

"You fucking bastard!" Celia said. "It's not fair to her! It's not fair to either of them!"

"You think life is fair? Well, guess what: Life doesn't give a damn, either. Life will keep beating you down, till you're nothing but a crying puddle of memories! Life doesn't give a damn about you! It doesn't give a damn about me! It doesn't give a damn about anyone! The sooner you realize that, the sooner any of you will know the truth!"

"And what's that?"

"There is no meaning to life!" Lord Rancaster yelled, getting up from his chair, clenching both hands into tight knuckle-white fists. "Life can't bring back the loved ones you've lost, no matter how much you honor their memories! They're dead as dust, never to rise again, never to see the light of day!"

That's when Nico raised herself up with defiance in her eyes, saying, "I don't care what you say! You'll never have her!"

"Then I'll just take what I can get, whatever the costs. And as for you, darling," he said, looking at Celia with a slasher's smile stretching across his face, "I can smell the blood of Amelia Hearn in your veins."

And all at once, a stab of horror pulsed through Celia's heart at the mention of her grandmother's name.

She placed her hand on the floor, just as a darkness more than night flooded into the seams of Nico's barrier, making Nico scream at the unspeakable images flooding her head, images that were not her own, images of Aaron Rancaster's tragic life cutting at her mind like knives.

Celia's seal of pink roses glowed through the darkness, and blinked all three girls out of sight, but not before Celia heard the man's last words to her:

"Your mother killed her."

2

Katherine drove down the street using headlights and took the center lane and waited for the cars to pass, then took a left turn that led towards their house, the Hearn family mansion, half a block ahead of them under street lights. By this time, full night had fallen over the city of Larkington, and long shadows crept over the pavement and sidewalks as they passed each address.

Madison said, "You said you saw her crying, but how? I saw Celia's face, but the rest I felt."

"Trust me," she said, "I felt it, too."

"Did you see what made her so upset?"

Katherine shook her head. "I didn't see what Celia was seeing, so I don't know what it is, but I managed to see one or two people with her. Celia must've used one of my mirrors."

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"Which one?"

"It's gotta be the one in my bathroom," she said, pausing for a moment, then sighing. "I swear, if she used it to open any portals, I'm gonna freak the fuck out."

"And if she did?"

"Don't get me started."

"Come on, Kathy," Madison said. "You and I both know how Celia is. She's bound to get in trouble some time, so how bad is it?"

"She can't use mirrors like I can," she said. "If she used it, she could only use its reflection on some door, and then open that door into wherever."

"Do you know where?"

"It depends on what key she uses," Katherine said, then added, "You said she stole the keys I gave you?"

"Yeah. She snatched it right out of my hands, the brat!"

"I hope she lets us know which one before entering. Otherwise, she's screwed."

Madison paled at her sister's last word. "W-what do you mean by 'screwed'?"

"If she entered a portal using a mirror's reflection, she's under a time limit," she said. "If she doesn't get back out in time, she'll be trapped inside!"

"But I thought you said there was no—"

"I can control mirrors directly, so there's no time limit for me, but Celia can't. If she doesn't get out in time, the mirror will break, and she won't get out!"

When Katherine reached the house, she pulled into the driveway and threw it in park, and both sisters got out of the car, and sprinted towards the entrance of the door and found it unlocked. They passed the threshold and ran down the entrance way and up the staircase.

"Go check on Celia's room!" Katherine ordered her sister, while she sprinted towards her room and found the door handle unlocked. She cursed, then went inside and into her bathroom and found her mirror missing, and cursed again.

"Kathy," Madison said, "I can't open her door! It's locked on the inside!"

She cursed for the third time, snatched a hand mirror from her vanity table, and ran back into the hallway to meet her sister, where she found her still trying the door handle. Katherine tried the handle herself, but it wouldn't budge.

"That's it," Madison said, getting ready to cast a spell on Celia's door. "I'm blowing the door down!"

"Don't!" she said, grabbing at her wrist before an explosion happened. "If my mirror's in her room, she's using this door as a portal! Blowing it open will trap her inside!"

"Then what do we do?"

"Just let me check, damn it! You're so fucking impatient," Katherine said, making her sister back off. She crouched down and angled her hand mirror under the bottom of the door, looking in the reflection. "My mirror's inside her room, but it's not broken. We can still reach her."

Madison breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank God!"

"Follow me," Katherine said, and with her sister following in tow back into her room, she led her into her bathroom and opened her bathroom closet, showing shelves of neatly pressed towels, hand towels, and bathrobes. She found a set of handles on the inner wall of the closet and grasped onto them with both hands, then said an incantation in her mind that released the spell, and slid the closet along invisible tracks, revealing a secret doorway where Katherine kept all her magic mirrors.

"Holy shit!" Madison said, staring in shock at what she was seeing. "So this is where you keep all your mirrors. No wonder you always put a spell on your door."

Katherine glared over her shoulder at her, making her flinch at the sight. "Don't let Celia know about this, got it? If she somehow gets inside this room, God knows what's gonna happen!"

She then led her inside the room, where a whole array of body-length mirrors from the ornate to the modernist to unfinished specimens leaned against the walls, stacked one against the other.

She said to Madison, looking through the stacks, "Take one of these mirrors and wait at Celia's door. I'll meet you there when I find what I need."

With that, Madison took one of the mirrors and carried it into her room and out into the hallway, where she leaned it right next to Celia's door, while Katherine continued sifting through the stacks for the one mirror flat enough for her to use. She eventually found it and carefully slid it out among the others in the stack, and carried it out of her room and into the hall, where she saw her sister waiting.

"So what's the plan?" Madison said.

"I'll get inside using both mirrors," she said, laying her mirror flat on the floor before the door, and slid it along its length underneath the door and into Celia's room. "Lay the mirror you have on the floor exactly how I did it, but don't push it up against the door."  

Madison followed her sister's instructions to the letter, and said, "Now what?"

"Just watch," she said, removing her jacket and throwing it to the floor. She then sat carefully on the surface of the mirror, so she wouldn't break it, then laid herself on top of it, letting the reflection encompass her entire body. She said an incantation in her mind, and the surface of the mirror glowed and absorbed Katherine into itself.

On the other side of the door, the other mirror glowed, and Katherine appeared lying on her stomach. Rolling herself off, she got to her feet, went to the other mirror that Celia had taken from her bathroom, and tipped the mirror over on its axis, breaking the mirror's hold over the door.

Katherine said, "Maddy, you can open it now, but be careful where you step."

The door opened, and her sister entered and stepped gingerly around both mirrors and then shut the door.

No sooner had she done so when Katherine spotted the notes on the door. "Maddy, look behind you. Celia left us messages."

Both sisters came to the door, taking care not to disturb the mirror at their feet, and looked at what their younger sister wrote for them. On reading the notes, especially the last one, both girls began fuming at Celia's attempt at humor.

"Arrrrrgh, why does she always have to be such a troll-whore?" Madison said, blushing in exasperation and squeezing her hands into fists. "I swear, when I get her back here, I am sooooooo roasting her ass!"

Katherine then spotted the keys Celia left for them on the bed, and said, "At least she was nice enough to leave us the keys."

Madison pouted. She was still going to roast Celia.

Katherine picked up the keys and thumbed through them for the 'dreamer's key' and found it, then walked over to the mirror on castor wheels and tipped the mirror back to its original position, catching the door and Madison in the reflection.

She said, "Now that the easy part's done, we still have to deal with the hard part. Maddy, you've seen the news reports of the Cairn family's disappearance, right?"

"Yeah."

"So you know what the twins look like?"

"Yeah, but they're identical twins. It doesn't really work with identical twins."

"But there's a caveat in this case: one of them is dead," Katherine said. "When I had my vision earlier, Celia was with two people, so they have got to be the Cairns twins. One was consoling Celia, while the other was lying down. I think the one lying down was Mara."

Madison looked at her sister, saying, "How do you know?"

"Because Celia told us to focus on Nico," Katherine said. "I'm taking a leap here, but I'm willing to bet that the one I saw comforting Celia was Nico. I don't know how, but Celia must've known or at least believed that Nico would help Mara in some way, or maybe Celia had an idea of how to help Mara, because Nico told her. I'm not sure, but Celia might have followed Nico into the Phantom Realms because she wanted to help Mara out. I just don't know what part of the Phantom Realms, though." Here, she looked at her sister and said, "Maddy, come on. Stop being an idiot, and help me figure this out!"

"Okay, okay, I will," she said. "I'm just not that good at this detective stuff, you know. It's not really my thing."

"Just try and help me think about it, okay?"

So Madison thought about it. For a time, both girls stood there rolling Celia's first note in their minds in the context of Celia's other notes and the information they had gleaned from the televised news reports.

"I don't know," Madison said. "It just doesn't make sense."

"What doesn't?" Katherine said.

"Nico's dead, so she can't really help her sister out in the physical way," Madison reasoned. "That means that Nico needs Celia to help her help Mara. I mean, Mara's in a coma at the hospital; she's not dead, like Nico. So wouldn't it be the other way around? Wouldn't it be Mara trying to help Nico?"

"Yeah, that's the weird thing about all this," she said. "There must be one specific thing we're missing."

Madison gave it more thought, and her face turned grim. "Kathy?"

She looked up and noticed her sister's expression. "What is it?"

"If Celia died," she reasoned, "how do you think we would experience it?"

Katherine gaped in horror at her question, saying, "Maddy, what the hell? How can you even think like that?"

“I’m just saying it as an example, geez!"

"But why that one?"

Madison sighed in exasperation and said, "Don't you remember how we experienced Celia going through all that anguish earlier? We both felt her emotions, but I only saw her face, while you saw her with Nico and Mara. Is there any other detail you remember seeing in your vision, like scenery or anything?"

Katherine sucked in breath at her sister's astute observation and clapped her hands onto her face, saying, "Oh my God, Maddy, you're a genius!"

"You know where she is?"

"Yeah," she said. "Take off your jacket. We're going in."

"Where exactly?" Madison took it off and threw it on the bed next to Celia's. "Tell me!"

"It's in a Chinese pavilion overlooking the sea," Katherine said. "It had a red moon on the surface, but no moon in the sky!"

With that, she grabbed her sister's hand with one hand and opened the door with the 'dreamer's key' with the other hand, and both sisters passed the threshold of the door, letting it shut with the finality of a casket lid over the dead.

And in the reflection of the mirror, the door sealed shut, and the reflection cracked. Katherine's mirror had broken.

Tsuzuku

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