The springs creaked as they took her weight. Margot climbed across the space until she reached the shallow bump between her parents’ indents, then lay down, her head next to where their heads had once been.

The bed was stiff and smelled of must and age. The mattress, its springs soft, rocked under her with every small movement.

Kant said they were on their backs when he found them.

Margot rolled to face the ceiling. The plaster, a dull shade of white, stretched across the space, interrupted by the molding for the hanging ceiling lights.

Directly above the bed was a crack. It started over Margot’s torso and spread out in jagged fissures. And at its center was a stain.

The discoloration was dark, the shade of fetid water and fungal decay. It bloomed like a flower, its overlapping petals showing where it had seeped and dried multiple times.

Its center still looked fresh. Moist. Margot stared at it, her eyes unblinking and her breath whistling between tightly pressed teeth. The fading light through the window seemed to catch on the dampness. She felt certain that, if she lay there long enough, a drop of sour, greasy water would land on her.

She sat up. Her heart ran fast.

It’s nothing. A leak. This house is old enough to have more than a few of those.

It was immediately above the bed, though. And according to what Kant had said, her parents both slept on their backs. They must have been staring at it every night as they tried to fall asleep. And they hadn’t tried to repair it.

It could be fresh. Maybe it only formed in the last few days, after they passed.

That was impossible, though. She’d seen the countryside on her drive to the house. It was parched. The spitting shower that morning was the first rainfall for some time.

She suddenly hated the idea of being on the mattress. She’d thought it would be an intimate moment, a way to draw closer to her parents. Now it just felt macabre. Margot crawled toward the bed’s edge. Before she could reach it, motion made her look up.

The standing mirror had caught her reflection again. Its frame matched the rest of the room’s furniture: solid and sturdy. The glass had aged, though. Tarnish spread in from the edges. The reflection was just faintly blurred—not enough to say the mirror no longer worked, but enough that, when looking at a reflection, it wasn’t possible to say you were really seeing yourself. The reflection was an imitation, an inch off, a convincing replica that distorted around the edges.

Margot looked at herself then, and her heart turned to ice.

The mirror showed her crouched on the bed, one arm reaching toward the edge. The black coat clung to her form. Her hair, dense and dark and just starting to frizz at the edges, framed her face.

And her face…