Insidious: Come Find Me

Even strapped into the chair, even with the drill grinding into his jaw, Cyrus was still laughing.

"Go on," he said, blood running down his chin as the Dead Dentist leaned in again. "Lock your door. Doesn't matter."

Keyface didn't answer. He never did.

"We still control her," Cyrus said, louder now, his voice carrying over the sound of the drill. "The little one. You think she got her all back? We kept a piece. Small enough nobody would notice in the mess she created. Small enough to grow and keep her coming back."

The basement was off limits.

It wasn't a rule Gemma ever shouted or wrote down. It was just a fact of the house, like the squeak in the fifth stair or the way the kitchen faucet dripped if you turned it too far right. When Maya was seven, she pushed the basement door open anyway. The air down there smelled like wet cement and old paper.

She stepped over boxes of old clothes to reach a small wooden chest under the stairs. Inside was a black-and-white photo album. Maya opened it with dusty fingers and stopped on a picture of two tiny girls sitting side by side in red high chairs. Same dark eyes. Same tufts of dark hair.

She carried the picture upstairs and held it out to her mother.

"Mom, who's that?"

Gemma didn't look up from the sink. She rinsed a plate, shut off the water, and dried her hands on a towel.

"That's you," Gemma said. Flat. Empty.

"Both of them?"

"You moved fast. Dad's camera took the picture twice." Gemma took the photo, walked straight to the trash can, and dropped it in. "Don't go down there again, Maya. There are rusty nails."

Maya believed her. Kids believe almost anything if you say it without blinking.

By eighteen, Maya knew what happens when a camera takes a picture twice, and it doesn't look like that.

She was standing in the kitchen late on a Tuesday, waiting for the microwave to beep, when the memory came back. It didn't feel like a thought. It felt like something heavy dropping into her chest. The basement. The chest under the stairs.

Gemma was asleep upstairs. Maya walked to the basement door, turned the brass knob, and pulled. It didn't squeak. She went down the steps using the light from her phone.

The chest was still there, tucked under the low part of the ceiling. But the album was gone. Maya got down on her knees and ran her phone light along the bottom of the wall. Near the back corner, one floorboard sat a little higher than the rest.

She dug her thumbnail into the gap and pried the board up. Her fingers hit paper.

A single loose photo, edges curled and yellow. A little girl sitting on a swing, about four years old. Maya looked at the face. It wasn't hers. The chin was softer. The nose turned up a little more than her own ever had.

She flipped it over. Written on the back in faded blue ink:

Milly, November 2014

Maya's breath caught in her throat. She didn't hear her mother come down the stairs. She only knew Gemma was there when a shadow fell over her hand.

Gemma stood at the bottom step, arms crossed, hands shoved into her pockets. She didn't look angry. She looked tired, like someone who'd been running for fourteen years and had just run out of road.

"You weren't supposed to remember her," Gemma said.

The truth didn't come out all at once. It came out slowly, over three nights of quiet talk at the kitchen table, with the lights left off.

"Just tell me," Maya said, on the second night. "Stop giving me pieces."

"You won't want the whole thing."

"I already have half of it. Half is worse."

Gemma wrapped both hands around her coffee mug like it was the only warm thing in the room.

"Fine," she said. "You had a sister. A twin. Her name was Milly."

Milly had been Maya's twin.

When they were toddlers, both girls started walking in their sleep. But it wasn't normal sleepwalking. Gemma knew the signs, because she'd seen them before, in her own family, a long time ago. The girls weren't just walking around the house. They were slipping into somewhere else. Somewhere Gemma called the Further.

Maya slipped in by accident and drifted back out by morning. Milly figured out how to go there on purpose.

"She liked it, at first," Gemma said, staring into her coffee. "She used to call it her garden. Then she started bringing things back."

"Like what?"

"A hair clip that wasn't hers. A little silver key that didn't open anything in this house." Gemma's voice dropped lower. "Then one morning I walked into your room and there was a dead bird on her pillow. Its neck was broken. Its feathers were slick with something dark, and it smelled like burnt oil."

Maya put her hand over her mouth. "And you didn't take her to a doctor?"

"What was a doctor going to say, Maya? There's nothing wrong with your daughter, she's just bringing dead birds back from another world?"

"So what did you do instead? You said you tried to close it."

"I tried everything I knew how to try." Gemma's hands were shaking so hard the coffee rippled in the cup. "It wasn't going to stop at the two of you. If you both grew up, if you both had kids of your own, it would keep spreading. Down every branch of the family. Forever."

"So what did you do?" Maya asked again, quieter this time.

Gemma looked up. Her eyes were red and dry and hollow.

"It wasn't only my decision," she said. "My mother had done this before, to her own sister, years before I was born. She's the one who taught me how, and she's the one who told me it had to be done. I didn't want to believe her. Then I saw the bird, and I knew she was right."

"So you just did what she told you."

"I took Milly down there one night. Into the dark. I told her we were playing a game: we were hiding from the cold. I held her hand until she fell asleep in the Further." She stopped and swallowed hard. "And then I let go. I pulled you back out, Maya. And I locked the door behind us."

Maya sat back like she'd been pushed. The kitchen felt freezing. "You left her there."

"I had to stop it!" Gemma slammed her palm on the table. "I couldn't let both of you carry this your whole lives! I saved you!"

"You didn't save me," Maya said, her voice dropping to almost nothing. "You just made me the one who got to leave."

That night, Maya didn't wait to fall asleep. She sat on the edge of her bed, stared at the dark seam where the wall met the ceiling, and let her eyes go soft and unfocused.

She knew how to do it. She'd buried it for years because Gemma had taught her to be scared of the dark, but the knowledge was still in her, somewhere under the skin. The air around her turned heavy and cold. The crickets outside faded into a low, dead hum.

When Maya opened her eyes, her bedroom was gone.

She was standing in a hallway of dark, rough wood. The floor creaked under her feet. At the far end, lit by a thin beam of pale blue light, sat a little girl, drawing on the floorboards with a stick of white chalk.

"Milly?" Maya called.

The girl stopped drawing but didn't turn around right away. When she finally did, her face was pale and thin, with dark bruised circles under her eyes, like someone who hadn't slept in years.

"You came," Milly said. Her voice sounded thin, like paper tearing.

"I'm sorry." Maya stepped closer, her chest aching. "I didn't know you were down here. Mom lied to me. I came to take you home."

Milly stood up slowly and let the chalk fall. It hit the floor without making a sound.

"Mom left me here," Milly said. Not angry. Just flat, like a fact.

"I know. But I'm here now. Take my hand."

Milly looked at Maya's outstretched hand, then past her shoulder, into the shadow behind her.

"You left me too," she whispered. "You went back with her. You left me in the quiet."

"I was four!" Maya's voice cracked, tears cutting warm lines down her cold face. "I didn't know what was happening!"

"It was very cold," Milly said. She took a step closer, reaching out one small gray hand. "He stayed with me, though. He was there when Mom let go of my hand."

Maya went still. "Who?"

Milly lifted a finger and pointed into the dark, just behind Maya.

Something moved back there. It wasn't human. It was tall and thin, bent at the joints like a broken umbrella. It stood silent at the edge of the blue light, watching them with eyes that didn't reflect anything at all.

Maya grabbed Milly's wrist.

The touch sent a jolt through both of them, a sudden flash of warmth, and for a moment the dark hallway fell away entirely.

They were four years old again, in a small room with two matching beds pushed close enough together that you could reach across and grab your sister's hand in the dark. Milly, laughing so hard she got hiccups, throwing pillows down onto the carpet like stepping stones because the floor was lava and the bed was the only safe island. Milly lining up stuffed animals for a tea party, insisting the bear got the biggest cup even though he never drank anything. Milly lying on her back on the carpet, closing her eyes tight, saying, "I'm going somewhere. Come find me," and Maya counting to ten before tickling her awake.

"Where do you go?" four-year-old Maya had asked her, once, both of them staring up at the ceiling.

"Somewhere quiet," Milly had said. "It's not scary. It's just quiet. Like the whole world is asleep except me."

"Can I come?"

Milly had looked at her for a long moment, like she was deciding something.

"Not yet," she'd said. "I haven't found the way back yet. When I do, I'll show you."

Then it was gone, and they were two grown girls again, standing in the dark, hand in hand.

Maya pulled with everything she had.

She woke up gasping, flat on her back on her own bedroom floor. Morning light leaked through the blinds.

Gemma was kneeling over her, crying, tapping her cheek. "Maya! Maya, wake up! Oh God, please wake up."

Maya sat up, coughing. The air in the house smelled sweet, like old flowers.

"I did it," she gasped, holding her chest. "I brought her back."

Gemma froze. The relief on her face curdled straight into fear. "What did you say?"

"Look," Maya said, pointing at the doorway.

A little girl stood there in the doorway. Her hair was messy, but her eyes were bright, and she was looking right at them. She gave a small, shy smile.

Gemma sagged back against the bed frame, hand over her mouth, a sob tearing out of her throat. "Milly..."

Milly didn't move toward them. Her smile faded slowly as she turned her head and looked past her mother, down the hall, toward the open basement door.

"Milly?" Maya's voice shook. "What's wrong?"

Milly looked back at her sister. Her eyes were wide and flat.

"He came too," she whispered.

Down the hall, deep inside the dark basement stairwell, a heavy wooden door creaked open.