Ilse reached the shore first. She saw the scissors. Grabbed them.

Her sister couldn’t see much of anything. Blood poured from her eyes, spreading out like a root system beneath the trees.

“Stop!” Ilse yelled, desperately.

Her sister just kept coming. Heidi blinked, gasping, only shifting last moment as if catching something out of the corner of her eye. She angled toward Ilse again, hands extended, surging forward.

Ilse held the scissors, pointing them at her sister. “Don’t—”

Heidi charged. She’d killed seven already. She wanted to kill another.

Ilse didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know—

They both went down hard. A root struck the back of Ilse’s head. Stars danced across her vision. She groaned, aching, bloodied and exhausted.

For a moment, she half expected her sister’s hands to be around her throat again.

Except they weren’t.

It took her a moment to recover her senses, struggling against the blow. But as her eyes fluttered, as she tried to sit up, slowly, gradually, she realized her sister had gone limp.

Struggling, Ilse extricated her legs, rolling her sister off her where she sat amidst the roots of the tree.

Heidi fell limply, one arm hitting the ground with a dull thump.

The purple-handled scissors were buried in her sister’s neck.

Heidi give a shuddering little gasp, her throat emitting an odd, off-putting wheezing sound. She tried to choke out a word, but then broke into a fit of coughing, her hands limp at her side, her eyes fluttering.

“Heidi!” Ilse said, her voice shrill. “Hang on. Just hold on!”

Her sister’s eyes fluttered again, then closed. Ilse yelled in despair, hurrying over. But as she neared, her sister’s eyes snapped open again. Heidi smiled, blood showing along her teeth, her eyes like pale and broken moons in the dark.

Ilse breathed heavily, desperately. Then, with trembling fingers, in agony and pain, she pushed off the leaf-strewn ground. She pulled the scissors from Heidi’s neck and placed her hand around her sister’s throat.

“Hang on,” she said, desperately. “I told you not to. I told you.” She finally managed to draw breath long enough to scream. “Help!” she yelled. “Please, someone, help!”

“Father wasn’t alone,” Heidi said, gasping and choking out the words. “Not…” She tried to swallow, but then just winced and wheezed instead. Her words were weak as if it took every last ounce of breath to simply utter them. “Not alone upstairs.”

Ilse blinked, stunned, but kept her hands held to her sister’s throat, holding back the blood as best she could. Her own blood fell from her fingers, from the cuts on her arms and elbow and shoulder. From the gouge marks in her face. Their blood mingled, intermixed. It fell to the ground, amidst the dirt, creating mud.

“Help, please, someone!” She looked back at her sister, whose devastated eyes had rolled back. She lowered her voice for the faintest moment, whispering. “What do you mean he wasn’t alone?”

Heidi was still now, though. Her chest no longer rising and falling, her eyes sealed. She let out a final little croaking breath, letting loose a sound like a puff of vapor to the sky. With it, hidden in the strangled sound of gasping pain, Ilse thought she heard a word… A single, resonant word. “…upstairs…”