> "The doll wasn't born.
She was assembled—on top of bones.
And now the church she remembers is waking beneath the house."
---
There were things I'd always wondered about my grandmother's house.
The odd slant of the back hallway. The draft that came from nowhere and always smelled faintly of incense. The tiles in the kitchen that echoed like a chapel floor when you walked barefoot at night.
But I never thought I'd find a map.
Not like this.
It was taped to the underside of the doll's cracked wooden box. A brittle, browned diagram drawn in charcoal and faded red ink. My grandmother's script labeled every part in tight, shaking cursive:
Sanctum Vox – "The Voice Room"
Altare Subterra – "Underground Altar"
Inferiorum Hostium – "Chamber of the Bound Mouths"
Beneath it all, one line was circled in dark red, carved so deeply into the page it nearly tore:
> "THEY NEVER LEFT. THEY ONLY SLEPT."
---
The next day, I tore up the floorboards in the kitchen.
My mother screamed when she saw me—until I showed her what I found.
Under the linoleum was stone.
Not foundation. Not concrete.
Headstones.
Small, flat, unmarked stones, laid like tiles. Each one worn smooth except for a single letter carved deep into the center. We uncovered seven in total. When we placed them in order, they spelled one word:
> RELICTA.
Latin for "the abandoned."
I fell silent.
Because deep beneath the last stone…
was a hollow knock.
---
We didn't call the police.
What would we say? "Hi, we found a forgotten crypt under the house built by a grieving exorcist nun who may have stuffed the souls of her dead children into a porcelain priest-doll that speaks Latin in our dreams?"
Instead, we borrowed Father Reuben's keys.
Not to his car.
To the original church.
Because I remembered something.
At the funeral, he never looked anyone in the eye. Never touched her coffin. But when I mentioned the doll, his hand had shaken. He dropped his bible. And whispered, "It was never burned?"
He knew.
---
The old chapel was three miles from the house. Overgrown. Fenced off with chain-link and old rusted signs that read: "UNSTABLE FOUNDATION – KEEP OUT."
It hadn't been unstable when it was active. It had been sealed.
By her.
We broke the lock at midnight.
The first thing that hit me was the smell.
Like hot iron.
Like a mouth that had screamed so long it started bleeding rust.
And then the silence—complete, suffocating.
It was the kind of silence that had to be enforced.
Like a punishment.
We made our way through collapsed pews, shredded hymnals, and finally reached the altar.
It was scorched black.
Melted wax and dried roses surrounded it in uneven circles. And nailed to the altar with four bent crucifixes—was another doll.
Identical to mine.
Except this one had no face at all.
And burned into the wood beneath it, barely legible:
> LEORA. FIRST OF SEVEN.
DO NOT AWAKEN THE OTHERS.
THEIR NAMES ARE KEPT IN HER MOUTH.
---
We fled home without speaking.
Not until we were back in the house, doors locked, daylight bleeding through the windows, did I finally ask:
> "How many children did Grandma lose?"
My mother didn't answer.
She didn't have to.
Because the doll—my doll—was waiting on the kitchen table.
Not where we left her.
And she was sitting on the map.
Her head tilted to the side.
Mouth still wired shut.
But something new—
Her hand was open.
Inside it:
Seven tiny teeth.
---
That night, I felt her inside me again.
The second tongue had grown stronger. I could feel it tracing the roof of my mouth, as if practicing the syllables of some forbidden word.
In my sleep, I heard whispers:
> "Altare subterra…
Vox…
Vox mortis…"
And when I woke—
I had written something in my sleep.
On the wall.
With a crayon I hadn't seen in years.
Three words.
> DIG
THE
CHOIR.
---
I didn't remember doing it.
But my hands were covered in dirt.
And the sound coming from under the kitchen floor…
was no longer silence.
It was a choir.
Muffled. Dozens of them.
Children.
Praying in Latin.