It had Lily’s hair—that bright, coppery red that I used to brush every morning before school. It had Lily’s small, upturned nose.
But where her eyes should have been, there were only smooth, unbroken expanses of pinkish skin. No lids, no lashes, no sockets. Just a seamless, blank brow that stretched down to the bridge of her nose. And her mouth was too wide, splitting her jaw all the way back to the ears, lined with tiny, translucent ridges that looked less like teeth and more like the baleen of a whale.
The thing smiled at me.
"Hi, Mommy," it whispered through those translucent ridges. "Nana forgot to feed me before she went to the box."
My father moved past me then, his heavy boots crunching on the shattered glass of the portrait. He didn't look into the hole. He kept his eyes fixed on the ceiling as he reached down, shoved his arm into the vent cavity, and felt along the interior limestone wall for a lock mechanism that only he knew existed.
"Don't," I whispered, but the strength had gone from my limbs. I fell back against the opposite wall, sliding down until my jeans scraped against the baseboard.
"She’s been down there since the day after the mall," my father said, his voice trembling as his fingers found the hidden iron latch within the stone. "Mother didn't kidnap her to hurt her. She kidnapped her because the thing that lives under this town—the thing that gave our family the timber mills, the land, the longevity—it demanded a replacement. Mother was getting old. Her skin was starting to thin. She needed someone with our blood to sit in the dark and hold the corners down."