She wasn’t breathing. Her heart had stopped.

His body had frozen from shock and for the briefest of moments, instead of seeing Taryn lying on the cold ground surrounded with blood. He saw Paul lying there instead.

Robert frantically shook his head. No, he couldn’t panic. He needed to think straight. He had to get her heart to start again.

When Paul died, Robert had been such a wreck. So much so that he went and took classes to learn how to resuscitate someone if they couldn’t breathe or the heart suddenly stopped beating. As his sister called it, it was an exaggerated precaution, but Robert was more than willing to be prepared if something happened. He just never thought he would need to do so on his old friend. He undid her sweater and her shirt’s first few buttons, so nothing was in the way. Then placed his hands long on her chest, one hand overlapping the other before pressing down hard and releasing. Doing it in the timing of the song Stayin’ Alive before covering her mouth with his and breathing air into her lungs.

He did this on repeat, eyes moving back and forth from what he was doing to her face to see if anything changed. But nothing did.

“Come on,” he whispered as the fear grew inside of him. “Come on, Taryn, breath!” he wasn’t going to stop. Not even if there were signs of a faint change, he wouldn’t stop. He needed to be sure that she was breathing on her own again. “Come on, please…”

* * *

All she could see was death.

That was all.

A torrent of images flashed across her eyes; it became impossible to know who she was even seeing. A man? A woman? She didn’t know. It all blended together. All she could do was watch as she kept being dragged along the countless images and memories of so many people like a doll tossed and turned in an ocean during a relentless storm.

Along with what she saw, she heard screams, cries, and incoherent words but could do nothing to help. Over and over again. Of different people, and of what they were going through. The pain and writhing in agony. She couldn’t stop it. It was like a kaleidoscope inside her head, making her witness all of this and more. The barrage of voices was too much to take. Screams, begs, whispers, others talking, demanding. But could not make out a single word.

And the sensations along her body, it felt as though her flesh was burning, only then to lose all sensation in her limbs, as though they had been removed and replaced. Everything felt empty, a void of nothing, before the pain returned, like tiny needles pricking at her nerve endings. Like she was being dismantled and put back together again. Again and again, what happened to these people?

She wasn’t sure how long she was made to see it until she felt hands grasping her shoulders. Reaching out from the endless images to her. Nails digging deep as if she were violently shaken by someone unseen, followed by a shout.

“Breath!”

A woman’s voice, June’s, and she did as told.

She inhaled deeply and began to cough. Her vision once blurred now cleared; the first thing she saw was Robert looking down at her. Scared out of his mind, his body prone and still like a statue.

“Rob…ert?” she said between coughs. “What are you…”

“Don’t get up.” He says to her softly, his voice still filled with worry. “Just stay still and breath, here.” He held up the blue and orange medication for her asthma. “Two hits of each, right?” he helped her with both, keeping her close to his chest as he then rested his middle and index finger along her throat. “Your heart’s beating like crazy now. That’s probably good, though, given what happened. You’re going to have to take it slow. So, don’t get up right away. Do you feel dizzy at all?”

“No,” she said as she moved to sit on her own before looking down at herself. “Why is my shirt…?”

“You can hit me for that later,” Robert said to her, his face flushed with embarrassment as he remained close to her if she fell. “I kind of panicked when doing CPR, sorry.”

“Why would I hit you if you saved my life?” She was about to attempt to do them up, but Robert did so instead as she looked around the bloodstained room. “How long was I out?”

“I’m not sure I was kind of concentrating on trying to keep you alive. I think maybe a minute or two?”

Taryn was silent. It felt so much longer than that. Way too long.

“Thank you,” was all she said as she leaned against him. He didn’t flinch or move away; he merely looked at her. Her skin was visibly paler than usual, as her cheeks were the only thing that brought any colour to her face now that she was breathing on her own again. The whole ordeal of it was bizarre; what caused her to collapse or even stop her heart?

He noticed how she looked at her left hand. Almost staring at it absentmindedly, a hand that was covered in blood. He glanced back to the alter, the only place where it could have happened. Did she touch it? His thoughts began to swirl in his mind, trying to understand why she had done that in the first place. But all of that could wait.

Taking out a cloth from his back pocket, he removed whatever blood remained on her skin, trying to get it off as best he could without hurting her. Then, afterwards, they merely sat in that room, even though they were in such a horrible place, Robert couldn’t help but feel relief, relief that she was alive, that she was okay.

“We should go,” she said, finally drawing Robert from his thoughts as she staggered to stand upright on her own two feet. Stumbling slightly as she did so.

“Wait, hold on. It might still be too soon for you to do that.” Robert said as he tried to get Taryn to remain sitting still, but she refused, shrugging off his hold and facing him.

“I don’t want to be in here.” She tells him simply. “If I need to sit, I’ll do it somewhere else. Not here.”

He wanted to fight on it, to tell her to stop being so stubborn and remain where she was. But the way she looked at him, the faint tremor in her pale skin, made all the fight in him vanish. He’d never seen her look so on edge before. “Okay, but when you start feeling dizzy or sick, you sit. No arguments.”

“Just let me get out of this room.” They left, and Taryn merely went and sat in the tunnel, arms resting on her knees as she pressed her back along the wall before looking down at her clothes. There was no blood, luckily enough. But the smell of it still lingered.

“What happened to you in there?” Robert asked as he knelt in front of her, concern still on his face. Taryn said nothing; she couldn’t tell him what she saw. But he still pressed. “Do you even remember?”

“I thought I heard something.” She lied. “Next thing I know, I’m on the ground.” She looked past him and back towards the room with a narrow gaze. This was what Yoko meant.

She couldn’t even begin to imagine how many had gone through such an ordeal or if they somehow survived or died from it. It all just felt countless. She couldn’t even begin to fathom why someone would do that or its purpose.

What’s the reason for it? Why? She frowned at her thoughts when recalling the etching on the stone Torii Gate. Dolls... so they really were. Her teeth clenched together; she had only thought of it as a slight possibility when talking about it with Stephanie and Rachael considering her attacker, but now that hypothesis looked to be fact. Of what she had seen through the eyes of living people, being turned into dolls.

Her blood ran cold at the thought as she now stared at the open door with morbid realization. It still didn’t explain why, what was the purpose of it?

Could they, whoever they were, do this to another person? Were they obsessed with the legend about Kuronochi? Her body turned into that of a doll and wanted to replicate it, and they saw it as some twisted form of immortality.

Then there was the doll that looked like Toya’s grandfather. How could it have moved on its own? Was it some kind of outlier? From the conversation she had with Toya, she gathered that it wasn’t made from a deceased person’s flesh and that it was made long after the man had passed. Which, logically, should have been impossible for it to have remained as it had for whatever amount of years it had been lost in the mansion. It would have decomposed a long time ago. But the doll was made out of ceramic, not living tissue. Unless Toya was lying about it…

Taryn grasped her hands together and pressed them to her forehead as her elbows rested on her knees. She was missing something vital to this, she knew that.

How would turning a person into a living ceramic doll be even possible? She closed her eyes to recall what she had seen from the altar, only to wince in pain. As if her brain had been stabbed with a needle. Her mind must have repressed it from the shock. She stared at her left hand, a hand that shook faintly before letting it fall to her side and taking a slow breath.

She looked back at the room with a mixture of dread and guilt resting in the pit of her stomach like a weighted stone. These people, however many, didn’t deserve this.

“Let’s go back,” Taryn said to Robert. “We won’t be able to leave the same way we came through since she sealed the entrance through the well. We’ll have to find another exit.”

“Any idea where that might be?”

“Fuyuko said that a tunnel did connect to another shrine before closing the hatch above us. It’s right on the mansion’s grounds. I think if we head back to the other tunnel, we’ll be able to find our way.” And if worse were to come, she could use her abilities to find clues for escape. She stood up slowly and dusted whatever dirt was on her off with her hands. “How do I look?”

“Like you just died.” He said matter of fact.

She looked at herself and then at him. “Well, you don’t look so good yourself. At least we aren’t covered in blood. We should count ourselves lucky for that. If we can get out unnoticed, we can say that we got lost wandering the mountains. It will at least make a believable story as to where we were.”

Robert merely stared at her in silence before finally asking what had been on his mind as he stood up. “How can you be so calm after what just happened to you?” he pointed to the open door, everything inside still visible at a mere glance. “You died in that room for more than a minute, and yet you act like it’s nothing.”

“Would you rather I scream and cry about it?”

“Yes, because then that would at least be normal!” he stopped, hand reaching up to his forehead as a scowl formed on his face while Taryn merely stared at him. “I’m sorry, I know now’s not the time to act like this, but this is far from normal.”

“It’s okay, Robert.” She said in a soft voice and gave him a slight faint smile, one that had no emotion in it whatsoever. Like a mask she would wear. “I get it, besides you’re certainly not the first to say I’m not normal.”

“No, I… that’s not what I—”

“Robert,” she said his name with more firmness. “It’s okay, really. But look at it this way; if I wasn’t calm, my asthma would kick in. It would possibly draw attention and may very well get us killed. Could still get us killed if we aren’t careful since we’ve been lucky to not run into anyone. It’s not the first time I’ve been in a situation that could end badly if I’m not careful. I have no choice but to remain composed. There are people out there in the world who want me dead because of what my parents do. It’s something I’ve had to deal with all my life. And because of that, I can’t be like other people. This is my normal, but there’s nothing wrong with that either.”

Robert fell silent, unable to meet her gaze, she rested a hand on his shoulder, making him look at her. Her expression was kind, full of ease and softness. He just wasn’t sure if it was for him or even herself.

“Come on, let’s take it slow, heading back to the fork.”

Taryn then turned around, with a flashlight in hand and led the way.

Robert opened his mouth to say something only to clamp it shut. His hazel brown eyes looked back to the two doors that were still open, the smell still permeating from it as he then looked to Taryn’s back. He did know nothing about her.

They walked back to the fork in complete silence, following the same footprints as before following them down the other tunnel with Taryn turning on her flashlight once again. And soon came across something else that they didn’t expect.

It was homes, or at least something close to it.

“It’s an underground village,” Robert said softly as they looked around with both awe and total confusion. As the lights from candles and torches guided their way through. “Think this is recent?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Taryn said as she took a closer look at one of the homes in question. “These buildings look to be older than that. Much older. Just look at the architecture and how they’re raised from the ground. Japanese homes aren’t made like that anymore.”

The homes were older than the ones above ground, that much was true. Looking around, they found that the houses in question were all in livable condition from what they could tell and were not just for show. Thinking about it, the homes here reminded Taryn of the Shrine at the village’s highest point.

“This is only my assumption but, I think these homes were built when the original village was established before the fire.”

Robert frowned. “Maybe they made this to avoid earthquakes? That’s possible right?”

“Perhaps, but that seems a bit moot when earthquakes can cause massive cave-ins or even floods from the ground opening up pockets of water. Not the best idea to live underground with situations like that.”

He thought about it. “Then maybe it was to avoid war?” he offered.

“That’s a better possibility than the first. Some of the castles I visited with my Uncle in Ireland often have secret underground passageways. To go into hiding if a siege or a war was taking place.” She rested her left hand along the wall of one of the homes. “Still, it’s an amazing find. Our history teacher would love it, too bad he’s on an archeological dig in Tibet. He’d be all over this place with a fine-toothed comb.”

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

He looked at her, sometimes he’d forget how much she loved history. “Yeah, well, why not save that for when we get out alive? Maybe contact the proper authorities? With how things are, some might be in on it, given how many people disappeared.”

“I know… They’d need to have something kind of agreement with the police for it to have gone on for as long as it did.” She said, leaving the old house before looking at it again, wondering how it could have been so well kept after so many centuries of being underground. Like it was frozen in time, as much as it fascinated her, it also unnerved her, with how little it seemed to have deteriorated in age.

They moved through this small underground village, peeking inside a few homes but finding nothing of note before coming across a rather sizeable burning brazier in what looked like a similar but much smaller version of the village’s square.

It still burned intensely like the many other torches and candles that had been left all around them. However, what drew Taryn’s attention was another fork, somewhat similar to the village entrance and mansion paths. One which led to the supposed outside of this underground village had been sealed off with fallen rocks with no way to get through. The only way they could be in the other direction. And what greeted them was that of another Torii Gate at the top of stairs carved out from the rock itself.

Another sense of unease began to creep along her neck and shoulders. This was the only way to go. The same way that June had before her end. But they were not running from something, not like with June. No monsters were chasing them.

The two then headed up past the other gate and down another tunnel with several torches that lined the walls to guide them. And at the end of it, they came across several more tunnels, five of them in total and all going in different directions.

“Which way should we go?” Robert asked.

Using her flashlight, Taryn looked at the five tunnels before her gaze went to the floor, where she saw those same set of footprints go down one of them. The question now, though, do they continue to follow with how far they have come? Or go their own way?

Her hand rested along her back pocket where the compact lay in wait as she cast a glance to Robert, who seemed to be mulling it over himself in his head. Should she even attempt it here?

Before she had the chance to decide, she heard something, a scratching nose towards her feet. She looked down to see that a message had been left in the dirt.

One that was not there before.

Follow Me.

Clear and to the point with a familiar sense like before with most of the previously discovered notes.

“We should follow the footsteps, better the going aimlessly given the number of options that are here now,” Taryn said, but not before rubbing out the message with her foot.

“And if they lead to a dead-end? Then what?”

“Then we backtrack and work from there. I’d rather follow someone with a lead than wander around in a place that could very well be like Paris’ catacombs. Not a place you’d want to get lost in.”

He looked at her puzzled. “Why Paris as your example?”

“With the supposed amount of dead, why not Paris?” she led the way again, and Robert stalled to look back the way they came.

“Have you ever been? To those catacombs, I mean?”

She paused. “I’ve been to Paris twice, once when I was five, and later last year for some family stuff. But I never went into the catacombs, it’s… a place I’d rather avoid.”

“I’d rather be there than here right now…” he muttered to himself before running to catch up with Taryn, who showed no signs of stopping or slowing down. With only the sounds of their footfalls to keep them company. At least all that Robert was aware of. Taryn was acting strange, stranger than usual, at least to him.

What was going on with her? He couldn’t bring himself to ask her as she led him through following the footsteps of a dead woman.

On and on, they went through winding tunnels, some lit with many torches or candles, while there were very few in others. Only to them come to an abrupt halt. The footsteps had ended rather abruptly.

“Now, what do we do?”

Taryn knelt on the ground; it looked as though they had been swept away, she looked up, and they were once again stuck with a choice. A tunnel on the right, left, and center.

She leaned even further, hands on either side of the remaining footprints as she tried to gauge where they intended to go. Right? Left? Straight? Something her Uncle could do and had done several times when in the field for work. But she couldn’t, she couldn’t tell where they might have gone. Not like she could anyhow, her Uncle had years to hone whatever skills he possessed, and she was a nineteen-year-old kid.

Was worth a shot. Taryn thought. Only for her gaze to then fall to her left hand when she heard something faintly being scratched in the dirt. An arrow was drawn, pointing right.

“What are you doing?” Robert asked as she used her hand to remove it.

“Trying to figure out where to go based on what’s left.” She said before standing and dusting off her hands. “I think we should go right.”

Robert’s hazel eyes looked to the remaining footprint and then to the tunnel that went right before finally landing on her. “Something from your Uncle, I take it?”

“Yes, actually.”

He shook his head. “Speaking of, why is your uncle so terrifying?”

“To you, maybe, he’s not to me. And I’m not saying that because he’s family. I trust him, and he trusts me. As do my Mom and Dad. Even those who are in my parents’ employ were from my Uncle to keep me safe.”

“So then why not contact him to help?”

“I can’t, with as bad as the reception is, we might not be able to connect, and if we did, it would take too long with where he is now. Not to mention with his work… anyway, it’d just be hard to get him here. And if he were to arrive, I’m not exactly sure what he’d do.”

“You make it sound like he’d kill someone.”

She looked at him dead on. “He has, he was in the Army, what do you expect that people do when they go and fight in a war? He, my Dad, Roy and Isaac. They’ve all killed people, Robert. It was their job. Would they have wanted to do it, I think not, but they did, and they don’t take pride in what they had to do. Hell, I know my Dad is grateful that I couldn’t enlist. My Uncle, too, and everyone in my family. Who wants to see their child go off and do the same thing as you with a smile on your face when you’ve seen firsthand the horrors of war? My parents even tried to convince Roy and Isaac, but they went anyhow regardless. It was something they all chose to do. And because of that, they have blood on their hands, but in a way, so do I. For different reasons.”

Robert paused. “You’re not talking about what happened to Roy… are you?”

“We should go,” she diverted the topic as she turned to head down the right tunnel. “We can keep talking if you want as we head down the tunnel. No more standing around. Come on.”

Robert, however, just looked at her back. Not able to keep the conversation going as it had, for the simple reason that he learned why through Stephanie and new articles he found recently after being rightfully yelled at by Rachael.

After Roy had been shot, gunned down by that kid. Taryn seemed to have completely changed at that moment. Gone into a silent, all-consuming rage, and before anyone knew it, she was trying to strangle the life out of him while covered in her brother’s blood.

For Taryn to do something so unlike her, Robert couldn’t picture it, but then there was so much he just wanted to ignore. Pretend that all of the bad things didn’t happen.

Yet here they were in the thick of it. Unable to ignore anything any further, and it was probably for the best. It’d be ignorance if Robert had, not to mention what he had seen on his own already and what she told him too.

Casting one last glance at the two remaining tunnels, Robert quickly followed after her to not be too far apart. He’d have to stay close, just in case.

For at some point, he’d tell her why he was so adamant in coming with.

And why he felt relief when she said she had no interest in Toya.

* * *

They continued walking, following tunnel after tunnel, going through this maze of an underground. Robert wondered just how anyone could make their way through without being completely turned around. Yet Taryn seemed to be doing fine given the circumstances of this mysterious place. She continued to keep a level head, even after what had just happened to her, not twenty minutes previously.

He couldn’t understand.

Robert knew that her family was very influential in their work, but that seemed like a stretch with how she seemed now. He couldn’t doubt that even an officer of the law would be in total panic if he or she were to come across a room completely covered in blood with tools. But then again, maybe not, how was he to know how someone would react in the heat of the moment?

Taryn wasn’t a police officer, however, just the daughter of one.

That still didn’t explain the eerie calmness she possessed while going through this. How she showed no signs of panic while in such darkness with only their flashlight and the few torches that lit their way as they passed. What’s more, she seemed to know exactly where to go, even though they both had never been down here before. What did that mean?

“Hey,” he said to draw her attention, hoping to ask, but the question died on his tongue when she came to a sudden halt. The tunnel that they were currently in opened up to a new area. For a moment, he thought that they might find something like the mansion but underground; instead, all that he saw was something similar to a Japanese-style bedroom. A very fancy one.

“Nice bedroom.” He said, trying to lighten the mood. “You know if we didn’t have to deal with some crazy nut-job, I’d think it’d be a cool place to sleep. You know, if you like weird places to sleep, that is.” Taryn didn’t respond to his comment as she began to scan the room, wandering around before stopping once again at an old chest and what rested before it.

“Huh,” Taryn muttered to herself when seeing a certain scroll and realized what it was. “That’s a Shunga scroll.”

Robert frowned. “What now?”

Taryn looked at him then looked back at the scroll in question, tucked away but still on display if anyone wanted to see it while here. “I guess you’d call it historical porn?”

“Oh,…” was his response. “That’s neat.” Then he asked. “If we took that, how much do you think we’d get?”

She cast a glance with an arched brow before answering him. “A ton of money, and no, we are not taking it.” She trailed off when noticed an odd outline, something was underneath the scroll. Moving it, she found what looked to be a notebook. There were no emotions, but the moment she touched it, she heard the sound.

The familiar squeaking of joints.

Turning around, she saw that it was the doll standing right behind her. Reaching for her.

She wanted to scream, why was it suddenly here?

Only for Robert to suddenly grab her by the upper arms with both hands and firmly shook her. “Taryn!”

She looked at him for a moment, then past him. There was no doll. There was nothing.

“What the hell happened?” he demanded, worry from before still at the forefront of his mind as his shaking hands clutched at her arms.

“It’s… no, it’s fine. Really. I’m… I’m okay.”

That was an answer he was okay with. He kept his grip on Taryn’s upper arms, making her look at him. “You keep telling me it’s nothing! That you’re fine, but you’re not! You died in that room after touching that stone slab covered in blood! And you expect me to take your word when you weren’t even breathing previously!?” he looked her dead in the eye. “Tell me what’s going on. What’s going on with you? No bullshit.”

Taryn glanced away. “You won’t believe me.” She says after a moment of silence between the two. “Even if I tell you, you won’t believe me.”

He didn’t budge. “Try me.”

She looked back to his face, his eyes. He was so resolute, so determined. How quickly would that change to disbelief after she told him? Taryn placed a hand over one of his. “Can you let go of me first?”

He did, ever so slowly, it’s not like she would run. Given all that had just happened, call it her frayed nerves or a lapse in her judgement again, she decided to just tell him. The outcome afterwards would be one of two. It was always one of the two.

Either they believe her, which was rare, or deny completely, which was the norm. It was why only a select few knew of her abilities.

Her parents didn’t even know what to think of it at first until she kept going, telling them about the dead or objects she found. Her mother was highly skeptical, while her father seemed far more open to it, given that he had dealt with several strange cases that never could be made heads or tails when he was merely a regular officer on night patrols. Her Uncle believed her right from the start, for his and her father’s grandmother supposedly had a similar ability, as told by their father when they were a kid.

Joséphine Caitlín Delacroix-Lowell. As their father told it, she had seen the end of The Great War. Followed by the beginning of the Second World War, which would take a step beyond what the first had done in death and slaughter. And of her son becoming a well-respected young man and spy during these turbulent times.

She saw it all, and yet never took a single step outside of the province of Québec.

“What you can do, and what she could do are completely different.” She recalled her father’s words from when she was younger, trying to figure it all out with the rest of her close family. “But even then, we don’t even know most of what it was she had seen. Since she never wrote anything detailing what that was. At least not that any of us could find. All we have is the word of your grandfather.”

Joséphine could supposedly see the future, while Taryn could see parts of the past through objects.

But just trying to explain any of that, any of what Taryn could do, would always have some form of adverse reaction. Isabella, one of her bodyguards, was one to quickly deny it until she realized that it was true while they were in Paris, while Bob kind of just rolled with it.

When Taryn relented and told Rachael the truth, the girl’s reaction was confusion and a loss for words before Taryn had to try her best to explain it. Only to then ask to see Taryn’s teeth, since her eye teeth, both top and bottom, were more prominent and sharper than they normally would be, making Rachael think of them as the fangs of a vampire. As though they hadn’t just dealt with something awful while in that abandoned hospital which for once baffled Taryn in turn before obliging to the strange request.

But Robert wasn’t Rachael, knowing this might just make him confused, or even angry.

She hesitated, she never felt this nervous when telling Rachael, but that was because of what had happened between them in the hospital. This was a whole different thing.

Okay… she thought to herself before finally speaking softly. “I can see the dead.”

He visibly froze. “What?”

“I said I—”

“No, I heard you,” he cut her off, holding a hand up to stop her from saying anything else. “I just… I uh… how? Like, you-you just… you see them or…?”

She took the compact mirror out from her back pocket and held it up. “I see them through reflections. Be it through mirrors, water, or anything that reflects an image.” Then added as he went to sit on the dirt floor. “And now your sitting. Why?”

“Cause it’s a lot to take in?” he ran a hand over his face. “Like a lot to take in. And just kind of hard to even, you know, believe. Not that I’m saying you’re lying about this.”

She knelt in front of him so they’d be eye to eye again. “I know it’s crazy. But, do you remember when we were in high school, it was our third year, and our class went to the fare that was set up by the lake?”

“Yeah, yeah, I remember. We went on all the rides and did all of the games, but you…” then the realization came to his eyes. “You refused to go into the hall of mirrors.” He looked her dead in the eye. “And you never told us why.”

“Ever since I was little, I hated being surrounded by mirrors. I once saw a whole bunch of dead people in my aunt’s house. For some reason, she had a room full of mirrors, never knew why. But it’s because of that that I have this.” She lifted her bangs to show the scare. “That, and I developed asthma from the incident. Ever since then, I’ve avoided places with so many mirrors that are in a dark place. All because I’m afraid of what I might see with no way out.”

He frowned slightly and asked. “How many died in your aunt’s place?”

She glanced to the side. “No idea, it wasn’t that old of a house, I just know that within those mirrors there were so many I couldn’t see their faces. They all became nothing more than black shadows.” She paused for a moment, then continued. “If I’m going to be straight with you, I might as well tell you that there’s another thing I have. And this other ability was the cause of my heart stopping along with my breathing back in that room.”

His frown deepened. “What is it?”

She looked at the notebook in her hands. “You know how I would sometimes take certain things from abandoned homes and then try to find the respectful owner?” he nodded. “The reason for that is because, within a certain object, I could see a memory of a person’s past.”

Robert became confused once again. “So, wait, you can see the past too?”

“I can.” She nodded faintly. “The proper term to call it is psychometry or psychoscopy, it’s simply known as token-object reading. Though I can see memories of the past, it’s also tied to certain emotions left lingering by someone alive or dead. Depending on how strong the emotion is, can depend on how strong the memory will be. That Erkennungsmarke that we found for one, this notebook for another, same with that stone alter back in that room. It depends on how strong it is. Though if it’s weak, I have to concentrate on seeing anything if I want to. But if it’s too strong, I get pulled in whether I want to or not. like a moth to a flame. What happened at the stone altar and what had happened to that girl during our first year of high school are two examples of this…”

His head snapped up. “Wait, really? But… but I thought you found the body by chance?”

“I did, but only after I saw the memory of the assault.”

“How’d that happen?”

She smiled, but it was a bitter smile. “By picking up an eraser that belonged to one of the boys who took part.” The look in her eyes went dark as if she recalled the memory. “I saw it all happen through his eyes. The way he punched her, kicked her. While the others took turns violating her. She couldn’t even scream with her mouth covered in tape. The guy in question couldn’t get aroused physically, so he took whatever aggression he had in other ways. The others laughed at that, so he killed her. Brought his hands around her throat… and squeezed.”

She then stared at her own hands, recalling how she had done something similar not that long ago with the one who shot her brother, with hands covered in blood. Even now, she could still picture it, that and of the girl who died at those boys’ hands. A violent senseless death.

Slowly, she let her hands fall into her lap as she stared off in a direction with no real interest, eyes still lost in such a terrible memory, a memory that she’d be more than happy to never recall again. “I couldn’t believe what I saw. I have no idea why they did it. I still don’t. All I remember afterwords is finding the body and calling my Dad when I came back to the school before passing out. You know the aftermath.”

She looked at Robert, who had remained silent through her lengthy explanation.

“You doing okay with all of this?”

“Me?” he balked at her question as if it was a crazy thing to ask. “What about you? You had to deal with all of that and not tell anyone, I can’t even imagine what that would be like.”

“Don’t, it’s better that way. I know some people would call it a superpower. But it’s not. You saw the effect of one, and you can see the damage of what the other has done.” She said, indicating to her forehead. “Trust me, you wouldn’t want this. I wouldn’t even wish this on my worst enemy. What can you do when what you see is something you can’t fight back against?”

Robert didn’t answer, not as he could anyhow with all that she had laid bare. “How long have you had these abilities?”

The look she gave him was telling.

No words were needed to explain it to him.

All her life.