It wasn’t all organic, though. Keys hung from it, interspersed with old, rusted spoons. They would have caused most of what Margot heard when she removed the cloth. Small pouches, some leather and some fabric, were hidden behind larger objects.

The whole shape had been held together with wires. They looped through and around each element, tying into incomprehensible knots, turning it from a scavenger-hunt collection into one solid form. Smooth river stones were dotted across it, clamped down by the fine, sharp metal.

A deer’s skull formed the figure’s head. It loomed over Margot, all empty eye sockets and yellowed, elongated teeth. More wire threaded through it, tiny rivers of bronze sprouting out from gaps in the bone and stretching across its bleached form.

Margot tried to swallow, but her mouth was dry. Everything she’d seen about the house up to that point had suggested a comfortable, if mundane, life. She couldn’t fathom why the couple who had been content with an aging kitchen and sagging couches might want something like this in their home.

When she’d first tried to categorize it in her mind, she’d called it modern art. But that wasn’t true. It was the opposite of modern—like a regression to a wilder, older world. Some arcane figure dragged forcibly out from history, powerful and patient and not quite dead.

Gooseflesh rose on the back of her arms, and Margot grabbed for the fabric. The embroidered threads prickled at her palms as she hurled it high, casting it back over the macabre figure. The material was heavy, and her aim was poor, and she ended up with a gap near the floor where parts of the effigy were still visible. She didn’t want to fiddle with it, though. The structure was old and, even woven through with wire, looked liable to break if she tried to pull on the cloth. And she didn’t want to break it—partially because it must have been in some way important for her parents to keep it in their living room for so many years, and partially because she felt as though damaging the form would invite some kind of horrific misfortune.

You’re being superstitious. It’s a decoration. Maybe a gift from someone my parents didn’t want to upset. Maybe a misguided crafting project by a now-gone relative. My parents didn’t seem to like looking at it any more than I do if it was always covered.

She’d have to decide what to do with it eventually. Margot doubted she could let it stay in such a visible location. That meant breaking it up and throwing it out or hiding it somewhere less intrusive, like a shed.

But that would be a problem for another day.