> She doesn't speak with a tongue.
She speaks with the dead.
And now they want to crawl back out.
---
The first thing I did when I woke was check my tongue.
Normal.
Warm.
Human.
But when I pressed my fingers beneath it, just behind the soft ridge—
Something shifted.
It recoiled like it had been caught. I felt something wet and unfamiliar squirm deeper down into my throat. I gagged. Spat into the sink.
Nothing.
Except blood.
Not a cut—a puncture. From the inside.
I looked up and froze.
Because carved faintly into the mirror's surface were words I hadn't written:
> "SHE'S USING YOUR THROAT TO SING THEM BACK."
---
By afternoon, the prayers started.
Not from outside.
Not from the house.
From inside me.
Mouth closed. Ears ringing. And yet I could hear them—chanting in Latin, a mass of whispered voices that sounded like they were echoing from somewhere deep in my lungs.
One voice rose above the others:
> "Altare. Altare. Altare sub… terra…"
The altar beneath.
That was what they wanted me to dig.
---
I returned to the kitchen with a crowbar and a flashlight. My mother didn't stop me this time. She just sat at the table with her head in her hands, whispering to herself, holding one of Grandma's cracked rosaries.
> "We should've burned her," she murmured. "We should've burned all of them."
I pried up the floorboards.
Beneath them was dirt.
And under the dirt…
More dolls.
At least three, half-buried, crumbling with age. Their faces were featureless, mouths melted or bitten shut. Their porcelain bodies were wrapped in faded altar cloth, stitched with prayers that had been scratched out—as if something had tried to erase the Latin from memory itself.
And then—
A sound.
Scraping.
From inside the dirt.
I leaned closer.
And I swear to God, I heard breathing.
---
I ran.
I ran to the shed. Found a shovel. Returned and began digging without thinking. The dolls cracked beneath the metal. I didn't care. The dirt got warmer as I went down.
And then…
Wood.
Charred.
I cleared it.
A coffin.
Small. Child-sized.
And on the lid, carved into the blackened wood:
> "LEORA: MOUTH 1 OF 7."
I didn't open it.
I couldn't.
Because at that moment, something touched the back of my neck.
Cold. Small.
Porcelain fingers.
---
I spun around. Nothing.
No one.
Except the doll—my doll—standing upright at the edge of the hole.
She'd moved on her own again.
But now…
The wire over her mouth was gone.
Every stitch. Gone.
Her lips slightly parted.
And from inside, barely visible:
A wriggling mass of black tongues.
Each whispering in a different voice. Some cried. Some sang. One screamed in what sounded like a priest's voice:
> "CAVETE ORATIONEM—VOCEM MORTIS—CAVETE—"
(Beware the prayer—the voice of the dead—beware—)
And then I heard a word I hadn't heard in years:
> "Leora."
My name.
But spoken like a question.
By a child.
A child inside the doll.
---
That night, the chanting returned. But louder.
So loud it rattled the windows.
I collapsed on the floor, clutching my skull as the voices rose in perfect harmony—children singing in unison:
> "Altare sub terra,
Vox mortis,
Leorae corpus,
Fiat ecclesia."
> (Altar below the earth,
Voice of the dead,
Leora's body,
Let the church be reborn.)
My mother kicked open the door. Her eyes were wild, face pale.
> "They've chosen you!"
> "What?!"
> "You let her mouth open. You confessed. You're the seventh. You're not meant to bury her. You're meant to carry her!"
I screamed as something inside me moved again.
Down my throat.
Up.
I vomited black sludge across the floor.
Inside it:
A tooth.
Too small to be mine.
Too white to be human.
---
We burned the doll the next morning.
Gasoline. Salt. Fire.
It shrieked. Not like a scream—but like seven voices trying to pull apart one throat.
Its porcelain face cracked. The tongues withered.
We stood watching until only ash remained.
I thought it was over.
Until that night…
I found my grandmother's mirror turned backward.
And scratched into the back of the glass—
> "THE DOLL WAS NEVER HER PRISON.
SHE WAS YOURS."
And from the reflection in the dark window beside me…
I smiled.
But I wasn't smiling.