29 Nov The Taxidermist’s Children

Part I

Sara didn’t realize how much of the town was gone until she hit Main Street and found more plywood than glass.

The old diner was a vape shop now. The hardware store her mother used to drag her through on Saturdays stood empty, windows painted over from the inside, the sign taken down but the cleaner rectangle of paint still visible above the door. A banner hung crooked over the road, advertising a fall festival that had already come and gone.

She drove under it without slowing, following the directions Sheriff Colling had texted her, even though she could have found her way blindfolded.

Past the last gas station, the town thinned out into scrub and tired-looking maples. The road narrowed, then split. She took the right fork automatically. Muscle memory. The same ruts were still there, only deeper now, patched with gravel that had scattered to the ditch.

Her hands tightened on the wheel when she saw the first thing she remembered clearly: a hand-painted billboard, leaning to one side, the image long since sun-bleached away. Once it had shown a proud buck’s head and a neat script: Barron’s Taxidermy – Preservation, Restoration, Display.

Now it was just gray wood and a ghostly outline where her father’s name used to be.

She checked the time on the dashboard. Sheriff Colling wanted to meet her at six. It was ten past. He could wait. He was the one who had dragged her here.

He had called her cell three times over the course of a week. Left messages that started off formal and softened each time, sliding from “Ms. Barron” to “Sara” by the third. In the end, it wasn’t his voice that brought her back. It was the sentence he’d dropped in almost as an afterthought.

“It’s about your father. And… there are two missing persons. Their last known location is out by his shop.”

She had told herself she was coming because she’d spent six years in law enforcement in another county and knew how these things went. Because she might be useful. Because if she stayed away and something ugly came out of this, it would be one more thing to lie awake about at three in the morning.

She did not admit, even to herself, that some part of her wanted to see if Edwin Barron was still capable of what she remembered, or if he had finally collapsed under the weight of it.

The road curved, flanked by trees that leaned in close. Through gaps in the branches she caught flashes of the river, dull and slow under the overcast sky. As a kid, she and her mother had walked that bank in the summer, skipping stones and pretending the factory upstream didn’t exist. On the other side of the road, the hill rose steep and rocky.

Edwin had always said the location was ideal. Close enough to town for customers, far enough that no one would complain about the smell.

She smelled it now, faint through the car’s vents. A mix of damp, old chemicals, and something else she didn’t want to name.

The truck parked ahead broke the view. White, with the county star on the door. Sheriff’s office. Colling was leaning against the hood, arms folded, a thick man in a brown jacket too light for the late-autumn chill.

She pulled in behind him and shut off the engine. For a moment she stayed in the car and looked past him, up the gravel driveway to the squat shape of the shop.

The sign on the post out front still read BARRON’S TAXIDERMY, but the paint had peeled, curling back in ragged strips. One of the letters hung at an angle where a screw had rusted through. The windows were cloudy, indistinct. No open sign. No hours posted. Just a door with worn boards and a tarnished brass handle.

Colling tapped on her window. She rolled it down halfway.

“Thought you might’ve turned around,” he said. His breath fogged briefly and drifted away.

“Road only goes one way out here,” she said.

He gave her a fleeting smile. “You look good, all things considered.”

“Yeah. You look older.”

“That happens.” He stepped back as she opened the door and climbed out. Gravel crunched under her boots. The air felt colder than it had any right to be. Wet, too, though it hadn’t rained.

Up close, Colling’s face showed new lines around the eyes and mouth, but his gaze was the same: weighing, careful. He glanced at the shop, then back at her.

“You sure about this?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “But you’re not letting this go without my help, are you?”

He shook his head once. “I’ve got two families asking me where their kids are. Last pings on their phones put them on this road. Amanda Greeley’s bike was found in the ditch half a mile back. Colby Treadwell’s truck was abandoned at the turnoff. Your father’s place is the only thing out here.”

“And you came alone,” she said. “Smart.”

“I’m alone now,” he said. “Backup’s waiting at the highway. I told them I was meeting a… consultant.” His mouth twisted around the last word. “Didn’t want a marked parade rolling up on your old man before we knew exactly what we were walking into.”

“You think he did something to them.” She tried to keep her voice flat. It still sounded like an accusation.

“I think he lives out here, he’s not in great shape last anyone saw, and people who come down this road aren’t making it home,” Colling said. “I’m trying not to jump to conclusions. That’s why you’re here.”

Because you grew up in that house. Because he might open up to you. Because if he’s dangerous, you should be the one to see what he’s become.

He didn’t say any of that out loud. He didn’t need to.

Sara looked at the building again. Memories rose in layers: jars on shelves, cloudy fluid and unblinking eyes; the slick sound of a knife running under skin; her mother’s voice, sharp and low, arguing with Edwin behind a closed door.

Then her mother’s voice had stopped. The knives had kept going.

“You said he’s still operating?” she asked.

“Off and on,” Colling said. “Last formal business license was renewed three years ago. A few hunters swear he’s done work on the side since then. Word is he’s slower. Forgetful.” He paused. “Nobody’s seen him in town for a while.”

“But someone’s seen him out here,” she said.

Colling’s eyes shifted to the shop windows. “Lights on at odd hours. Generator noise way past midnight. Delivery trucks sometimes, but nothing official. No invoices we can find.”

“So you don’t have enough for a warrant.”

“I’ve got enough for a welfare check and a conversation,” he said. “If we see anything that looks off, we go from there.”

“We,” she repeated.

“You still remember how to look at a room,” he said. “Even if you told me you were done with the job.”

She did remember. How to read small things. Displaced dust. A stain scrubbed half-clean. A line of footprints that didn’t match the story someone told.

The difference was that this time, the room belonged to her father.

She rubbed her palms on her jeans once, more habit than need, and started up the path without waiting for Colling. Her boots found the same flat stones her mother had laid years ago to keep them out of the mud. Half of them had sunk or tipped, but they were still there.

As she reached the porch, she heard a sound from inside the shop. A faint scrape, followed by something that might have been a shuffle. Not steady enough to be footsteps. Not quite random enough to dismiss.

She stopped with her hand over the doorknob.

“Ray,” she said quietly.

“I heard it,” he answered from behind her. His hand settled near his holster, not touching it yet. “Could be him. Could be an animal got in.”

Sara didn’t believe that. She knew the care Edwin took with his workspaces. Even now, she couldn’t picture him letting a raccoon or stray dog tear around among the mounts.

She knocked once, knuckles against the wood. “Dad? It’s Sara.”

Silence. The scrape came again, closer this time, directly on the other side of the door. Then the soft click of metal, as though something had brushed lightly against the chain lock.

She waited for his voice. For a cough, a curse, anything human.

What she got instead was a whisper of movement receding, followed by the distinct rattle of a chair leg against concrete. As if someone had stood up too fast.

A moment later, Edwin Barron’s voice came through the door, thin but unmistakable.

“Sara?” he said. “That you, girl?”

She swallowed against the sudden dryness in her throat. “Yeah. It’s me.”

“Well,” he said. “Took you long enough to come home. Door’s open.”

The deadbolt thudded back. The knob turned from the inside.

Sara glanced once at Colling, then braced herself and stepped over the threshold into the smell she had thought she’d escaped for good.

Part II

The smell hit harder once Sara stepped fully inside—chemical bite layered over something older, something that had seeped into the walls during decades of work. She paused just long enough for her eyes to adjust.

The shop looked smaller than she remembered. Lower, as if the ceiling had descended a few inches while she was gone. Shelves lined the walls, crowded with labeled jars and boxes that leaned toward collapse. The counter where Edwin once took payments was buried under piles of ragged fur, half-cleaned bones, and notebooks swollen with moisture.

Edwin stood behind all of it.

He wore the same canvas apron he’d worn when she was twelve, stained in irregular patterns that no amount of washing had ever removed. His hair had gone fully white. His face, once stern and precise, had sunk in around the mouth and eyes, giving him a hollowed-out look.

But he smiled when he saw her.

It wasn’t warm. It wasn’t cruel. Just… fixed, as if he were still practicing the expression after long disuse.

“Look at you,” he said. “Thought you might never come back this way.”

She kept her voice even. “Sheriff Colling asked me to drop in.”

Edwin’s gaze flicked past her to Colling, then back to her. “Of course he did. Lawman always needs something.” He waved the thought off. “But you didn’t come because of him. You came because blood knows where it belongs.”

She didn’t answer.

Edwin gestured broadly at the shop. “Place needs work, I know. But I’ve been busy. Real busy.”

Behind him, something shifted on a worktable draped in burlap. The cloth rose slightly, dipped, then went still.

Colling’s stance changed behind Sara, subtle but alert. He took a step to the side for a better view.

Edwin didn’t seem to notice. “Haven’t had many customers lately. Folks in town don’t appreciate craft anymore. Want everything quick. Cheap. Disposable.” He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. I’ve been doing more important work. Better work.”

Sara scanned the room, letting her eyes move the way they used to when walking a scene. Notes pinned with rusted tacks. Sketches in pencil—anatomy diagrams, some human, some animal, some impossible. A bundle of feathers tied with twine. An armature of wire and jointed rods shaped vaguely like a child’s torso.

Her stomach tightened when she saw the tiny shirt draped over it, as if Edwin had been dressing it for inspection.

“You’re still taking jobs?” she asked, watching him carefully.

“On occasion. Small ones,” he said. “But the shop isn’t the point anymore.” He lowered his voice. “Family is.”

Sara kept her expression still. “You live out here alone.”

“Only half true.” Edwin gestured toward the back door that led to the old workshop. “Been putting together something special. Something better than what life gave me.”

Another movement—too smooth this time to be a draft—shifted the burlap covering on the nearby table.

Colling stepped toward it. “Mind if I take a look back there?” he asked, tone neutral.

Edwin’s smile vanished. “Shop’s a mess. Nothing worth seeing.”

“That so?” Colling kept his eyes on the covered table. “Because we’re following up on a couple missing persons. Last seen near this road.”

Edwin’s jaw tightened. “You coming in here accusing me of something, Sheriff?”

“No accusations. Just checking in.” Colling tipped his head toward Sara. “She agreed to help.”

Edwin looked at her again. Something flickered behind his eyes—pride, resentment, longing, she couldn’t tell. “You always did care too much about what people expected of you.”

Sara kept her tone level. “I’m here because you’re my father.”

He stared at her, searching. Then his mouth cracked into another prepared smile. “Then you should meet them.”

“Meet who?” she asked.

“My children,” he said quietly, with reverence. “The ones who stayed.”

Edwin walked toward the workshop door, pushing it open with a slow creak. The room beyond was dim, lit by a single bulb that swung gently, though there was no breeze.

Sara followed, tension rising with every step.

The workshop was filled with figures arranged in unsettling poses.

On a small wooden bench sat a creature roughly the size of a toddler, fur stitched with surgical precision, glass eyes set too deeply in the sockets. Its hands—thin, spindly, almost human—rested neatly in its lap.

Another figure stood in the corner, taller, shaped like a deer but with elongated arms ending in blunt, padded shapes. A child’s backpack hung over one shoulder.

A third lay curled on a cot, facing the wall, its spine contoured wrong beneath the skin. The room felt crowded, though none of the figures moved.

“Beautiful, aren’t they?” Edwin murmured. “Took years to get them this way. Trial and error. But everything worthwhile takes sacrifice.”

Sara forced herself to step closer. On the bench near the toddler-sized creation, she saw a scrap of cloth half-tucked under a pile of tools.

It was purple. Stained. Patterned with tiny white stars.

Amanda Greeley’s favorite hoodie had the same pattern.

Her pulse climbed, heat washing through her chest.

“Edwin,” she said. “Where did this come from?”

He blinked at her, puzzled. “From her room. You remember. The one on the second floor. Closet by the window.”

“My room?” she asked.

“No,” he said gently. “Our girl’s. Before she left us.”

Colling had stepped to the far side of the workshop. His hand hovered over the handle of a half-open cabinet door. “Mr. Barron,” he said, “mind if I—”

“Don’t touch that.” Edwin’s voice cut sharp, brittle.

Sara didn’t look away from the scrap of cloth. “Dad… who is ‘our girl’?”

He smiled faintly, lost in memory. “You know who.”

When she didn’t answer, he tilted his head, confused. “Your mother. Who else?”

Sara felt the room constrict around her.

Colling lifted the cabinet door anyway.

Inside, something hung from a metal hook. Limbs furless, half-stripped of muscle, joints wired into fixed angles. A pair of small shoes rested beneath it, one upright, the other on its side.

Colby Treadwell’s shoes. Sara remembered the photo from the sheriff’s desk.

Edwin stepped between them and the cabinet, jaw clenched. “You’re interrupting my work.”

Colling’s voice was steady. “We need to talk outside, sir.”

“No.” Edwin gestured emphatically to the creations. “This is important. These are my children. My family. I’m giving them life again.”

Sara stared at him. “Again?”

For a moment, Edwin’s eyes softened with something that might once have been grief.

“You never understood,” he said. “But she will.”

The toddler-sized figure shifted. Just a fraction. A tightening in the shoulders.

Sara’s pulse spiked. Colling swore under his breath.

Edwin didn’t react—because he expected it.

Because he believed it.

“You hear that?” Edwin whispered. “They know you’re here. They’ve been waiting.”

Sara forced her voice steady. “Dad… we need to step outside.”

He raised a hand toward her cheek, as if she were eight again. She stepped back.

He let the hand fall.

“You came home,” he said quietly. “That’s what matters. The rest will make sense soon.”

Sara glanced once more at the figures in the room. They stood still again, but she sensed attention behind their glassy eyes. Weight. Not presence—something colder than that.

Behind her, one of them exhaled.

Not breath.
Just the sound that comes when air is pushed through something hollow.

She didn’t turn around.

“Ray,” she said, voice low. “We’re leaving. Now.”

Edwin’s smile returned, patient and wrong.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “You’ll see them again tonight.”

As they stepped back from the workshop, Sara felt dozens of unmoving eyes follow her until the door finally closed.

Part III

The evening light had gone flat by the time Sara and Colling stepped out of the workshop. The air outside felt cleaner, but not enough to shake the sensation she’d brought something out with her. Edwin stayed inside, door half-closed, humming tunelessly as though they hadn’t just found evidence tying him to two disappearances.

Colling walked ahead down the path, jaw tight. Once they reached the gravel drive, he stopped and ran a hand over his face.

“Jesus,” he said quietly. “What did he do?”

Sara didn’t answer. She was watching the windows.

One of the shapes behind the cloudy glass had shifted seats since they’d entered the shop. She could make out the silhouette—long-limbed, child-height—standing closer to the door now.

She turned her back to it.

“We need a warrant,” she said.

Colling nodded. “We’re close. But we need clean confirmation of human remains or evidence of a violent crime. What we saw… we can argue it, but it’s borderline until we document it.”

“You want pictures?”

“I’d rather wait for backup,” he said. “Edwin’s unpredictable. And those things—” He stopped, shook his head. “I don’t like the way they sit in my mind.”

“Then we go now,” Sara said. “Before he realizes how much we saw.”

Colling hesitated, reading her expression. “You’re thinking about the cellar.”

“He didn’t show us the whole place,” she said. “You saw that hatch under the rug.”

“You saw it,” Colling corrected. “I was too busy not stepping on any of his… projects.”

“Something’s down there,” she said. “Something he didn’t want us to find.”

He studied her for a long moment. “If we go back inside and he locks that door behind us, we’re alone out here.”

“We’re alone already,” she said.

Colling let out a slow breath. “All right. But we document everything. And if he shows even a hint of aggression, we back out.”

Sara nodded. They walked back toward the shop.

When she reached the porch steps, she felt the boards under her foot give a soft groan. A moment later, she noticed something she’d missed earlier: scratches around the lower edge of the doorframe. Not animal scratches. These were made by something scraping outward.

Colling noticed her stare. “Something coming out?”

“Or trying to,” she said.

He swallowed whatever reply he’d been about to make.

Sara knocked once, opened the door before her father could answer, and stepped inside with Colling close behind.

The shop looked the same, but the atmosphere had shifted. The bulb over the counter flickered, shadows jumping across the walls. Nothing moved overtly, but she sensed misplacement—objects at different angles, a stool a few inches from where it had been earlier.

Edwin was nowhere in sight.

“Dad?” she called.

Silence.

Colling whispered, “He didn’t walk past us. He’s still in here.”

Sara was already moving toward the workshop, eyes scanning the floor, corners, places someone could stand or hide. The burlap-covered table remained still. The figures in the workshop hadn’t moved—at least in ways she could see.

Colling nudged her arm and pointed toward the main room’s rug.

“Let’s check it,” he said.

They lifted the rug together, revealing a square hatch cut into the floorboards. The wood around the edges was worn smooth by frequent use. A thin line of reddish dust—sawdust mixed with something darker—circled the seam.

Sara gripped the metal ring and pulled. The hatch lifted with a quiet, sticky sound, like old glue giving way. A cold draft rose from the darkness below, carrying the faint smell of decayed leather and old antiseptic.

A narrow wooden staircase descended into shadow.

Colling clicked on his flashlight.

“I’ll go first,” he said.

“No,” Sara said. “I know the layout better.”

He hesitated, then nodded and handed her the light.

She descended one step at a time. The wood creaked under her weight, each sound too loud in the close air. The staircase barely had room for one person; Colling followed close behind, hand near his holster.

At the bottom, the cellar opened into a long room with stone walls and a cement floor. Metal tables lined the left side, each covered with tools, jars, trays, and bits of fabric. The overhead bulbs were dim, giving the whole space a yellow haze.

Sara swept the flashlight across the tables.

Human teeth glinted in a small dish.

A pair of metal clamps held something stretched taut—skin, but wrong in texture and color.

On another table lay an incomplete figure. The torso was stitched from thick hide, the limbs from something thinner. The hands were unmistakably human.

Colling’s breath caught. “That’s enough,” he said. “We’re calling this in.”

Sara didn’t respond. Her attention had shifted to the back wall.

There was a second room beyond the cellar, visible through a narrow archway. She moved toward it, beam steady.

Behind her, something scuffed lightly against the floorboards upstairs.

Colling froze. “Did you hear—”

“Yes,” Sara said.

A faint dragging sound traveled along the ceiling above them, slow and uneven.

Colling’s hand finally touched the grip of his gun. “We need to move fast.”

Sara stepped through the archway.

This back room was colder, almost frigid. The overhead light buzzed weakly, barely illuminating the four figures standing along the wall.

These weren’t like the ones upstairs. They were more advanced. More… finished.

One had the stance of a small boy, head tilted, mismatched fur stitched over a too-thin frame. Another looked like a tall deer from the waist up, but below that, its legs ended in jointed human feet.

The third—a lanky shape with a fox’s face but arms too long, elbows bent backwards—seemed poised to crouch or leap.

The fourth had its back turned. Taller than the others. Draped in delicate pieces of fabric that looked like someone had tried to reconstruct clothing from memory alone.

As Sara approached, Colling’s flashlight beam jittered slightly on the wall beside her.

“These are his ‘children,’” he whispered. “He wasn’t speaking figuratively.”

Before Sara could answer, a sound broke the hush of the room.

Footsteps at the top of the cellar stairs. Slow. Heavy. Too heavy for Edwin.

The cellar door thudded shut.

Then a voice drifted down—not Edwin’s.

A soft, uncertain imitation of a child calling out:

“Daddy?”

Colling’s face went pale.

Sara swallowed. “That came from one of them,” she said.

A second voice answered from farther back in the cellar, thin and breathy.

“No. Daddy’s busy.”

Sara turned toward the archway in time to see a silhouette moving at the top of the stairs. Not entering—just standing there. Watching.

Then she heard a third voice.
This one she recognized.

“Sara?” it called quietly.

Her limbs went rigid.

The voice sounded almost human. Almost familiar.

Edwin’s voice followed a moment later, drifting from somewhere in the dark.

“You shouldn’t have come down here,” he said. “They get excited when company arrives.”

Colling grabbed Sara’s shoulder. “We’re leaving. Now.”

But the staircase above them creaked as something began descending—slow, deliberate steps, not human in cadence.

And behind Sara, one of the “children” shifted its weight, preparing to move.

Part IV

The thing on the stairs descended one careful step at a time, the rhythm uneven, the weight distribution wrong. Each footfall landed too softly for something of its size, followed by a faint scrape, as if its joints protested the movement.

Sara lifted the flashlight.

The beam shook only once before she steadied it.

The figure stopped halfway down—a shape caught between silhouettes. Part man, part something assembled from pieces that didn’t match. Fur and cloth and bone. A face that might once have been a raccoon’s, grafted crudely onto a skull too large for it. Glass eyes glinted in the beam, reflecting two separate points of light.

It tilted its head in a jerky, curious motion.

“Sara?” it whispered again.

Her throat closed. That voice—its inflection didn’t belong to the creature standing there. It belonged to someone who used to sit on the edge of her bed at night, brushing tangles from her hair with a soft-bristled brush.

Her mother.

Colling stepped in front of her, his hand finally drawing the weapon. “Stay behind me.”

“No,” Sara said. “If you startle it—”

But the thing didn’t move toward them. It remained on the stairs, blocking the exit, its breath whistling faintly through seams not meant to hold breath at all.

A sound stirred behind them.

The fourth figure at the back of the room—the one turned toward the wall—shifted.

Not a twitch. Not a settling of weight.

A deliberate turn, slow and liquid-smooth, as if its joints had been oiled. The overhead bulb flickered as it rotated, revealing more of its shape with each stuttering interval of light.

It was taller than any of the others. Shoulders too broad beneath mismatched skin. Its face was obscured by hair—long, dark, matted—but the jaw beneath it was a familiar shape, one Sara had seen in the mirror during her teenage years.

Her mother’s jaw.

The bulb steadied at the moment it finished turning.

Sara froze.

Where the face should have been, Edwin had placed a delicate assembly of preserved skin patches—stitched with thread so fine it nearly vanished into the seams. It wasn’t a face. It was the idea of one, an attempted memory carved into flesh, the bones beneath mismatched, the eyes set too widely apart, the mouth too small and crooked at its corners.

But it was close.

Close enough for Sara’s lungs to stall for a heartbeat.

Colling took one quiet step backward. “Don’t move,” he murmured.

The creature—the mother-creature, because what else could she call it now—lifted its head slightly, hair falling aside in thin strands.

And then it spoke.

Not with clarity. Not with breath meant for speech. The sound came wet and soft, as though forced through a throat packed with cotton.

“Sara… sweet girl…”

Sara’s vision swam. She grabbed the nearest table for balance, her fingers brushing a tray of tools. They rattled softly, breaking the moment’s stillness.

The mother-creature reacted. Its head twitched toward the sound, too quickly.

Colling stepped forward, gun raised. “Don’t come any closer.”

“Sara.” The voice again—pleading, fragile. “Stay with us. Don’t leave…”

She heard footsteps behind her. Edwin’s shape emerged from the shadows near the archway, his face slack with exhaustion and pride.

“You see?” he whispered. “I told you. She remembers you.”

Sara turned on him. “What did you do?”

“What I had to,” Edwin said softly. “What life refused. What death stole.” His expression tightened. “She wasn’t gone. Not really. Not the part that mattered. It only needed a vessel. I made one.”

Colling’s grip locked tighter around the handle of his gun. “Edwin, step away from them.”

But Edwin didn’t move. His eyes were fixed on Sara, bright with the conviction of a man who had long stopped questioning himself.

“I started with Helen,” he said. “After the accident. But she was incomplete. She needed more. That’s why I searched. That’s why I chose those people.”

“The missing kids,” Colling said.

“They weren’t kids,” Edwin snapped. “They were parts. Pieces. Materials. The world wastes so much. I used what no one else valued.”

Sara clenched her jaw. “You killed them.”

“I finished them,” Edwin said. “Gave them purpose. My family needed them.”

The creature on the stairs shifted its stance, lifting its mismatched hands toward Edwin in a crude reaching gesture.

“Daddy?” it croaked.

Edwin reached back instinctively, as though the monstrosity were a toddler waking from a nightmare.

Colling stepped forward sharply. “Stop. Don’t move any closer.”

But the mother-creature moved suddenly, lurching toward Sara.

Not aggressively.

Desperately.

Its arms outstretched as though reaching for an embrace.

“Sara,” it begged. “Come home…”

The voice tore something open inside her—something she’d spent decades sealing off.

Colling fired a warning shot into the floor between them.

The creature recoiled with a sound halfway between a moan and a hiss, stumbling back against the wall.

Edwin screamed. “NO!”

Two other figures in the room awakened at the sound—jerking rigid, heads snapping toward Colling in unnatural angles. Their limbs trembled as though readying to move.

Colling took a step back. “We’re done here,” he said. “Move, Sara. We’re getting out now.”

But Edwin blocked the archway.

He held a scalpel in one shaking hand, lifted not in threat but in trembling devotion.

“You don’t understand,” he whispered. “We’re whole again. She’s whole again. And now you’re here. It’s all coming together.”

Sara tightened her grip on the flashlight, her heartbeat thudding in her temples.

“No,” she said. “You lost her. You lost her a long time ago.”

The mother-creature swayed gently, hands still reaching toward her.

“Sara…” it repeated.

Behind Sara, one of the other “children” took a stumbling step forward, tractionless feet scraping the cement.

Then another step.

Colling raised his gun to fire—

—but movement behind him cut him off.

The creature from the stairs leaped the last few steps in a jerking, lopsided motion and lunged toward him, its weight carrying them both back through the archway.

Sara spun as Colling crashed to the floor, his gun skidding across the cement.

Edwin gasped, startled—not at Colling’s fall, but at the possibility of losing his “child” in the melee.

“NO—careful! You’re hurting him!” he cried.

As he moved toward the creature, Sara grabbed the scalpel from his hand and shoved him aside.

Edwin stumbled, shock widening his eyes. “Sara—”

She didn’t wait for him to finish.

She darted toward Colling.

The cellar erupted behind her—shuffling limbs, scraping claws, whisper-voices muddled with broken tenderness. The mother-creature’s voice rose above them all:

“Sara… stay.”

The plea followed her like a hand gripping the back of her shirt as she reached the fallen deputy.

“Ray,” she said, grabbing his shoulder. “Get up—now.”

The creature pinning him lifted its head toward her at the sound of her voice.

Edwin shouted behind them. “Come back! Sara—come back! They need you!”

But Sara didn’t look back.

Her voice was steady, quiet, final:

“No. I’m not yours. And she isn’t my mother.”

The mother-creature let out a broken, keening call.

The other figures answered.

And in that instant—Clinging to Colling’s arm, hauling him to his feet—Sara understood they had seconds before the cellar became a cage they couldn’t escape.

Part V

Colling staggered upright with Sara’s help, ribs hitching as he regained his footing. The creature that had knocked him down writhed on the floor for a moment, confused by the hard impact and the noise it had made. Its limbs moved independently of one another, as though controlled by impulses that didn’t travel the same path.

It turned toward them again.

Sara tightened her grip on the scalpel. “Move,” she whispered.

Colling nodded once, jaw set, and began edging toward the stairs. The gun lay several feet away—too far to grab without giving one of the creatures an opening.

Behind them, Edwin’s workshop children stirred in rising dissonance, their movements clumsy but purposeful. The mother-creature lifted its head toward the sound of their retreat, hair slipping forward to hide the face Edwin had tried so hard to resurrect.

“Sara…” it whispered, the sound thin and uneven.

She didn’t turn toward it. Not yet.

A figure near the wall—a hybrid with a fox’s face and elongated arms—placed its hands on the cement and pushed itself upright. Its legs buckled once before it found a stance that worked, though every bend in its posture looked painful.

Edwin scrambled forward, reaching for it as if afraid it might fall again. “Easy,” he murmured. “You’re all right. You’re better now. Just listen to me.”

But the creature ignored him.

Instead, its glass eyes locked onto Sara.

She lifted the scalpel slightly.

“Ray, get to the stairs,” she said.

“I’m not leaving you,” he said.

“You’re not,” she replied. “You’re clearing the way.”

He hesitated only a moment before pushing past the creature that had tackled him. It reached for his ankle with a jerky swipe, but he managed to kick free and lunge for the stairs. The boards creaked under him as he climbed, slow and unsteady at first, then faster as he gained balance.

Sara backed away from the advancing creatures, staying between them and the exit.

Edwin watched her with an expression that broke something in her chest—not pity, not grief, but a blurred mixture of devotion and delusion.

“You belong down here,” he said softly. “This is where we can be a family again.”

“You destroyed our family,” Sara said.

Edwin flinched. “I fixed it.”

The mother-creature stepped forward. Its movements were unsteady but intentional, guided by some memory Edwin had stitched into its structure.

It reached for her.

Sara’s breath stuttered once at the gesture, not because she wanted to go to it, but because her body remembered the shape of that reach—her mother leaning down with arms open, a faded memory of warmth.

But nothing in this room was warmth.

She stepped back, toward the stairs. Edwin followed her with wide, wounded eyes.

“You can’t leave them,” he said. “Not again. They’ve waited for you.”

“That isn’t them,” she said.

The creature nearest her—something built from deer-hide and human hands—lunged. She sidestepped, turning its momentum into a stumble that drove it into a metal table. Tools scattered across the floor.

In the same motion, she grabbed a large glass jar and hurled it at the far wall. It shattered loudly, the sudden crack echoing through the cellar like a gunshot.

The creatures recoiled at the noise, flinching as if overloaded by it.

Sara used the moment to run.

She climbed the stairs two at a time, boots striking the wood with hurried force. Halfway up, she heard the creatures regroup behind her—scrapes, shuffles, the uneven slap of feet not built for balance.

At the top, Colling stood at the doorway, pale and breathing hard but ready. He grabbed her arm and pulled her through.

“Out,” he said. “Now.”

She slammed the hatch shut before anything reached the stairs, and Colling dragged a heavy display case across the floor, wedging it atop the boards.

A thud struck the underside of the hatch.

Then another.

More voices rose from below, some childish, some rasping, all dissonant.

Edwin’s voice threaded through them. “Sara! Let them out! They’re scared!”

Another impact rattled the hatch.

Sara didn’t wait to see if the boards would hold.

She grabbed Colling’s arm. “The workshop.”

The generator hummed outside the shop, connected by a thick cord running through a cracked window. They ran out into the night as the cellar hatch shook behind them.

The generator sat beside a stack of fuel cans.

Colling saw what she was thinking. “You want to burn it?”

“There’s no saving anything down there.”

Another heavy thud echoed from inside. A crack sounded—wood under strain.

Colling swallowed. “This’ll bring half the county. And if they’re still alive when the fire starts—”

“They aren’t alive,” Sara said. “Not in a way that matters.”

She grabbed one of the fuel cans. Colling grabbed another.

They doused the outside walls first. The fuel soaked quickly into the dried, weather-worn boards. The smell of gasoline flooded the air.

A window shattered behind them as something inside collided with it. Sara didn’t look. If she did, she knew her resolve might falter.

Colling flicked his lighter, shielding the flame with his hand. “Ready?”

Sara nodded.

He touched the flame to the soaked wall.

Fire raced across the surface with startling speed, climbing into the eaves, rolling along the edge of the workshop roof. The old wood caught instantly, flames curling upward in a rising swirl.

Inside, voices rose in a confused, collective cry—fear, anger, longing, and something else altogether. Sara’s stomach twisted.

Edwin’s voice broke through, frantic. “Sara! Don’t—don’t do this! They need you! Your mother needs you!”

Sara stepped back as heat pushed outward. Her eyes stung, not from the smoke.

“They’re not her,” she said quietly.

The flames reached the back of the building. A deep creak came from inside—timbers beginning to drop. Sparks shot upward, carried into the night sky.

A high-pitched voice rose suddenly from the cellar, one she knew too well.

“Sara… stay…”

The sound tightened her chest, but she didn’t move.

Colling placed a hand on her shoulder—steady, grounding. “We’re done,” he said.

The fire consumed the shop with a groan that seemed almost like a breath expelling, then a shudder that ran through the building before the roof caved inward.

Sara waited until the structure was fully engulfed. Until the voices dwindled into crackling embers.

Only then did she turn away.

* * * * * *

Three weeks later, she sat on the couch in her small apartment two counties over, every light off except the glow from the streetlamps forcing their way through the blinds.

The night was quiet.

Too quiet.

She stood, walked to the window, and pulled the blinds aside.

Nothing stood outside.

No shapes. No movement.

Just the street, washed in the sodium glow of the lamps.

She let the blinds fall back into place.

Then she heard it.
Faint.
Close to the glass.
A whisper drawn through a throat not made to speak.

“Sara… sweet girl…”

Her hand clenched involuntarily.

She didn’t look out the window again.