Page 15 of Little Doll

I turned my head and found my brother Fane seated across the room. Watching me.

He was in a hard, high-backed chair with black silken cushions. He leaned back with his hips pushed out and legs spread wide and relaxed.His hands rested behind his head and he leaned the chair on its back two legs and his head and hands against the stone wall behind him.

“Did you have a nice slumber, Little Doll?” Fane purred when I looked at him.

“Where am I?” I whispered, surprised at the voice that came out of me. It was breathy and sultry, one I barely recognized.

“You are in the night wing of Blackmoth House.” His eyes twinkled in the dim candlelight as he stared at me as if utterly fascinated.

“Night wing?” I asked. But he did not answer.

The room we were in appeared circular, made of stone for the walls and floor. Nothing was in it except for the bed I was in, Fane’s chair, and a small plain chest of drawers.

I threw back my covers and drifted into a sitting up position, kicking my feet over the edge of the bed. I noted I was wearing a filmy white nightgown that hugged curves I didn’t formerly remember having. There was almost no telling where the material of the gown ended, and my alabaster skin began.

I dropped my feet to the stone floor, expecting a jolt of cold. But the stones were warm when my skin made contact. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Fane watching me still. He had leaned forward and returned the front legs of the chair to the floor. He sat with his elbows propped on hisknees and chin tilted down. He peered up at me through the fringe of his dark lashes.

I realized how provocative my night gown was. Shadows of my nipples were visible through the bodice of the gown, and it scooped low between full breasts. I knew I should cover myself.

But I spun to face Fane. I lifted my chin so that I could look down at him through narrow eyes. His handsome, thin face broke into a lurid grin, and he ran his tongue over his teeth. I turned away from him again, losing interest in him, and closed the rest of the distance to the chest of drawers.

On top of the chest were a few strange items. A crucifix and ancient looking black Bible. A crystal bottle of some clear substance. A handkerchief. Out of place miscellaneous things.

I opened the top drawer, and inside there was a hairbrush and a hand mirror. I lifted the mirror carefully, holding it delicately in my hands.

“Nova, no!” Fane cried, leaping to his feet as though snapped awake during a stolen nap.

But I paid him no mind and lifted the mirror and turned it so that I could peer into my reflection.

My eyes were no longer terrifying and black, but somehow larger, with longer lashes and a natural shadow that made them sultry and becoming. I brought the mirror closer and notedthey seemed to have changed color as well and were now a light brown with flecks of red and gold that almost made them appear to glow. My lips looked red and held the full luscious look of lips that had just been kissed.

I angled the mirror down a little as Fane came up behind me. Indeed, my body was different. Full round bosoms, a tiny hourglass waist, voluptuous hips and long legs. Where Fane once towered above me, now he only had a few inches on me as he stood with his front pressed to my back.

“You shouldn’t look,” Fane whispered, his breath flitting a lock of my shining black hair out from my face and then giving me a chill when it came back and brushed my tender flesh.

“Why?”

Even as I asked, my attention was pulled deeper into my reflection, as my eyes seemed to darken and change right in front of us. The color left the already pale skin in the reflection and my face became ashen. I gasped as my eyes sunk and my cheeks hollowed drastically. Fane also stared into the mirror. He appeared to search, as if trying to see what I saw.

Violent red veins appeared in the whites of my eyes and then the irises turned into the blackest of pitch, as though they’d burned and turned to charred ashes.

My lips cracked and paled, then pulled into a vicious snarl.

I gasped and touched my fingers to my lips. Although I could physically feel lips at rest in no particular expression; in the mirror, my ghastly reflection sneered evilly. My teeth in the mirror somehow lengthened before my eyes into razor sharp fangs, the fingers of the hand I was holding to my face elongating into nasty claws with cracking skin.

Patches of my reflection’s skin grew blistering pocks and festered, boiled, and peeled.

I began to weep, staring in terror at my reflection.

In the reflection, sparkling red droplets of blood dripped first from my eyes. Then my nose. Then my leering mouth, and finally from my ears, pouring down my slender scabbed neck.

I screamed.

My reflection laughed.

I heard both haunting sounds in tandem.

Fane grasped the mirror and ripped it from my hands. He raised it above his head and brought it down hard onto the corner of the chest of drawers. Its million broken pieces sprinkled down onto the wood floor as I shrieked in utter terror.

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