“What?” Desdemona asked. Receiving no response, she turned back in her seat and followed her sister’s gaze, to the heavy draperies that were now haloed in burning light. What she saw there stirred in her feelings that were far removed from Celeste’s puckish amusement; hers were feelings of raw terror.

Staring out from the gap between the curtains was a lone eye, bulbous and milky with lifelessness and hanging too low on the withered cheek of the face. There may have been a hint of a nose, perhaps even hair, but little else to see. The mouth hung open like a cavern. Brilliant light shone through the flaking lips. Was this merely a mask hung upon the window frame? How else could the sun seem to radiating from inside the head itself?

But masks do not speak. What filled Desdemona’s mind was a voice, as raspy as raked gravel, its tone overwhelmingly mournful. There were words, but only in the broadest sense; grunts of a nascent language, too new to fathom or too ancient to recall.

It came and it went.

For Celeste the apparition was a delicious thing, a miraculous thing, and its vanishing restored the room’s heat and brightness.

For Desdemona the vision was an ordeal, one that ceased not with the return of the light but with a flood of darkness. She did not even feel her body sliding limp from the dining chair.

*

Celeste roused Desdemona by using far too much water that was far too cold. Desdemona sat up on the dining hall floor, sputtering, coughing. She pushed the dripping hair from her face.

“I did it! I brought you back from beyond!”

“I only fainted, you fool,” Desdemona gasped.

“Are you okay?”

“I…I think so. I’ll be fine, just help me up.”

Celeste did what she could to help her sister to the sitting room, where she stretched out on the plush settee.

“Can you unlace my boots?” she asked. “I didn’t realise how muddy they are. I don’t want to stain the furniture.” After Celeste knotted the laces rather than loosen them, Desdemona simply wrenched the boots from her feet. She laid down until her senses felt relatively restored. “Celeste…what do you think that was?”

“What?”

“The face in the curtains.”

When the only reply was silence, Desdemona propped herself up on one elbow and gave her sister an interrogating gaze. The child was grinning, her delight verging on giddiness.

“You’re not going to play this off as a joke, are you?”

“Well…not exactly,” she returned.

“Then what exactly was it?”

Celeste shrugged her shoulders. “I dunno.”

Desdemona sat up fully. “Celeste, you saw something. I know you did. It was written all over your face.”

“I didn’t see anything.”

She reached out and gripped her sister’s bicep, much too firmly. Celeste winced. “Are you responsible for this? Was this some kind of trick?”