Page 40 of An Invocation of Monsters

Toth, I whispered, but I was just a dream-ghost, neither here nor there.

But he saw. His wings shivered, preparing to take flight as he watched the Hunter with red, glaring eyes.

He flew between the branches, aiming for a dark mirror between the dense trucks. The Zizhatl vanished into it without a ripple, but when I tried to follow, I rebounded off the mirror.

I was in the cold woods, all alone. A shiver coursed through my ghostly body when I felt eyes on me.

I looked down, and the pale figure was standing at the base of the tree, staring up at me. The sockets of the skull were wide and empty, sucking me in…

I sat up with a gasp, pressing a hand to the headache pounding in my temples.

What a lightweight. I’d barely gotten halfway into the bottle and I felt like dehydrated death.

My dreams were already shattering into fragments of dim memory. I tried to remember what I’d seen, but all I could remember were wings and a long, pale, skull-like face.

“No more wine,” I groaned, rolling over to check the side of the bed.

There was no sign of Kiraxis, but then, it was broad daylight. I hoped he would come back by nightfall.

After a quick shower, I raided the kitchen and found some bottled water and aspirin. Tater seemed to be avoiding me, concentrating on making the fluffiest, most golden pancakes I’d ever seen.

I stole a plate to bring back to my room, and then settled on the couch to down my aspirin.

I was very, very intrigued by the monsters, but I was neglecting my purpose.

The aspirin slowly took effect as I opened the photo album and began leafing through the next pages, skipping past Sophie.

Every photo thereafter showed a side of my mother I’d never seen before.

Of course I knew this was Gillian Gray, but she was one I’d never seen before. One I’d never imagined.

There was a light in her eyes in the pictures where she was present. Her long blonde hair hung to her waist, covered with a sparkling purple scarf, her eyes smoky with kohl. In some of them she held up a Tarot card: the Lovers, the Star, the World.

I saw younger versions of Mary and Joseph, and my heart squeezed a little when I noticed that in almost every picture, Joseph sat with his arm around Mary, but his gaze was always possessively, hungrily glued to my mother.

What an absolute creep.

In one picture, they posed in front of a massive set of wrought-iron gates, the iron-worked letters arching across the top reading Miskatonic University.

I frowned at that one, studying it; as far as I knew, my mother had attended and graduated from the University of Rhode Island with a Bachelor’s in Finance.

The mystery of her being deepened, creating a hollow pit in my stomach.

There was another woman in many of the photos, dark-haired and olive-skinned, unlike the others with their blonde hair and blue eyes. Judging from the pictures, she seemed to have been close friends with my mother.

In one of them, they were posing in front of the lake with their arms around each other’s waists, both of them in bell-bottom jeans and cropped shirts, wearing flowers in their hair. I gently eased the photo from its sleeve and flipped it over.

Gillian and Tasha, love you forever, the bubbly writing proclaimed.

The dark-haired woman was Tasha Vintner, the missing founder.

They must have all met at this Miskatonic University. How could my mother have never mentioned this to me?

I eased the photo back in and turned another page.

The tale continued: cozy nights curled up in front of fires, Ouija boards, Tarot cards.

Then the pictures stopped being of people. It was a place, captured in Polaroids.

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