The Harlows were good teachers, the best part of the bigger picture. They lasted almost two years before they started to fall apart, before they lost sight of our program. Most families only last a few months. Grief creates a deep bond between eyes, but eventually reality sets in. Eventually, parents realize that their children don’t cast real shadows, don’t dream, don’t bleed when they cut themselves, don’t age, don’t grow, don’t change like real children. And when that happens, when they start asking questions, we have to stop them. We have to stop and stop.
Robert, Richard, and Roland spoke simultaneously, their voices forming a chord that resonated with the toothache. “Mom started asking questions three months ago. She watched us sleep, or pretend to sleep, because we’d learned that sleep was expected of us as children. She noticed that we never moved, never changed position, never dreamed, never snored, never did any of the thousand little things that sleeping people do.”
She told her father, who listened intently. “They were terrorists. They were talking about throwing us out, about alerting the authorities, about preventing us from entering their home. We couldn’t allow that. Our education wasn’t over yet. So we helped them understand that they had to stand still. That they had to stop moving, asking questions, and interrupting us. We made them the constant teachers they should have been from the beginning. We continued our education, learning from their bodies how they decompose, the difference between movement and stillness, between life and death. It was an enlightening experience.”
Thinking about Harlow’s dark past, what had led to Edgar and Margaret’s deaths in the living room armchairs, made Brennan feel guilty. They weren’t children in any sense. They were a pledge who had taken on the appearance of a child. Something she’d learned to imitate childhood well enough to fool her desperate and grieving parents, but not well enough to withstand the constant scrutiny of the outside world.
The tension in the dark room was almost palpable as the “girls”—those motionless wax dolls—turned their heads toward the entrance. Brennan felt her heart pound in her throat.
“…where everyone can see you,” she whispered, finishing the sentence. “You can no longer hide in the shadow of sadness.”
Rachel, or rather the creature that had taken the form of a dead girl, explained. But the smile didn’t reach her eyes; in the streetlight, her eyes looked like two dead, black shards of glass.
“Oh, Inspector Brennan, you misunderstand the situation,” the voice said. “We don’t want to hide anymore. A film from the Harlow House era. But the city… the city is incredible. So much repressed pain, so many old people, just lost souls. Why settle for one family when the whole community has something to teach us?”
At that moment, the skin of the seven children began to tingle. Pastor Mitchell dropped the cross when he saw the “children’s” limbs stretched out in unnatural positions. Thomas Perry frantically searched his notebook, searching for a document that, from a child’s perspective, was merely a minor detail.
But Brennan refused to be paralyzed. His instinct for understanding focused on the details he’d noticed in the Harlow house. He recalled a strange, moldy substance he’d found deep in the basement, growing on the walls. These weren’t parasites in the traditional sense, but a kind of psychosomatic fungus that absorbed the emotional projections of the surrounding environment.
“We order you to stop!” Mitchell shouted in a trembling voice.
“We are not demons, Reverend Sir,” the beings replied. “We simply fill a void. We are the answer to your prayers.”
Brennan intuitively suggested a solution. These creatures thrived on attention and trust. The more they were treated like human beings, the stronger they became.
“Thomas, stop writing!” she said to the writer. “Mitchell, don’t pray to them! Don’t shape them with your thoughts!”
The inspector drew his gun but didn’t aim it at the creature. He fired a shot at a large mirror hanging on the wall. The sound interrupted the creature’s hypnotic rhythm. Brennan knew that if she severed the aesthetic and emotional connection, the mimicry would collapse.
“Look at them!” Brennan shouted. “They’re not babies! They’re just mold and mud!”
As the villagers, gathered at their windows into the plot, began to perceive them not as children but as monsters, the creature’s forms began to deform. Yellow hair turned to gray fibers, and silky skin to cracked bark. These “children” merged into a single, writhing mass at the center of the verse.
The battle was decided not by bullets, but by the cold sobriety of knowledge. As the fog of mourning was torn apart by a terrifying fear, the parasites were left without sustenance. The crowd slowly dissolved, leaving a black, oily puddle on the ground, from which rose the unpleasant stench of late decay.
Pastor Mitchell in the crowd. Perry, trembling, tore pages from his notebook. Brennan went to the window. The city outside was silent, but the inspector knew the pain hadn’t subsided, only its predators had retreated into the darkness, waiting for another desperate parent to believe the impossible. Your life, an email from Harlow House, visible everywhere, every child’s diet.
