> The church was not destroyed.
It was buried—inside a name.
And now someone's trying to speak it again.
---
The silence didn't last.
Not long.
It lulled me into false safety.
No whispers.
No moving shadows.
No doll.
Even the house felt… light. Like whatever had clawed through its walls had finally exhaled and left.
But three days later, something arrived in the mail.
No address.
No stamp.
Just a box.
Inside it: a sealed envelope.
My name handwritten on the front.
But not my name.
Leora.
---
I almost threw it in the fire.
But curiosity has always been the flaw that finishes the horror.
I opened it.
Inside:
A single piece of vellum parchment. Old. Yellowed. Smelling like candle soot and salt.
A prayer written in ink that shimmered when the light touched it wrong.
> "O she who wears the voice of seven,
Hold now the eighth unspoken,
Do not let it leave your lips.
For the eighth name unseals the throat of God."
At the bottom:
> Name the eighth, and the body returns.
---
I didn't sleep that night.
Because I knew the truth now.
There had only ever been seven mouths—
But eight names.
One had been hidden.
Not buried. Not sealed.
Given.
And the person who carried it…
Was me.
---
I asked my mother.
At first, she pretended not to hear me.
Then she cried.
Then she opened a tin box from the back of the hallway closet. One I had never seen her touch in twenty years.
Inside:
My birth certificate.
Baptism photos.
A rosary twisted into a knot.
A blackened porcelain tooth.
And a folded paper, fragile as a spiderweb.
On it: a single name.
> "Lioratheia."
I couldn't breathe.
Because I remembered the whispers.
> "Leora…"
"Leora Theia…"
"Lioratheia…"
Not a name.
A chant.
A name meant to be broken in two—so the body could never fully form.
---
I stared at the paper for hours.
The name bled into my thoughts, burrowed behind my teeth.
Every time I tried to think of myself, that name spoke louder.
Not from my mind.
From beneath my ribs.
And that night, in the reflection of the TV screen—I saw myself blink with eight eyes.
---
I fled.
Back to the ruined chapel.
Back to the altar where I had first heard the breath behind the walls.
Everything was still blackened with ash. Burned. Torn.
Except one thing—
A mirror standing where the pulpit used to be.
New.
Polished.
Not broken.
It hummed.
I stood before it.
And my reflection?
Smiled.
And said:
> "Say the name.
Finish the body.
Let the voice wear you."
---
I screamed and shattered the mirror.
Glass cut deep into my palm.
I bled across the altar, choking on my own panic, and then—
The wound sealed.
Instantly.
No scar.
No mark.
The blood had been accepted.
---
And then came the final sign.
The attic.
I hadn't been back since that night.
But I felt it—pulling me. Like something remembering where it used to be buried.
At the top of the attic stairs—
A doll.
Not porcelain.
Flesh.
She was built in my image.
Seven mouths across her chest. Eight eyes stitched shut.
In her hands:
A needle.
Threaded with my grandmother's hair.
And carved into the attic floor, in my own handwriting:
> "If you speak it…
She finishes."
---
I backed away, shaking.
But I heard it again.
Whispered in reverse.
From the corners.
From the mirror shards.
From inside my lungs:
> "Lioratheia…
Lioratheia…
Lioratheia…"
And then the mouths on the doll began to open.
One by one.
Until only one remained.
The final mouth.
Mine.