> The last thing sealing the ritual is sight.
Once her eyes open, every buried thing will rise.
And the mirror will no longer show your reflection—
It will show her truth.
---
I covered every mirror in the house.
Taped curtains to the bathroom one. Painted over the hallway glass. Shattered the antique hand mirror with a hammer. And still—
I saw myself blinking where I shouldn't.
In the TV screen when it was off.
In puddles.
In the black of my own pupils.
Every reflection was watching me now.
And the eyes?
They weren't mine.
---
The dolls under the floor had begun moving.
Even the ones I thought I'd crushed.
Even the ones with no legs.
Every night, I heard them crawling.
Dragging themselves over wood.
Scratching beneath my bed.
I left a phone recording on the floor one night.
Listened back.
Hours of silence—until 3:00 AM.
Then:
> Scrape.
Drag.
A whisper in chorus:
> "Oculos eius aperi…"
(Open her eyes…)
---
There was one mirror left.
I had forgotten it completely.
It wasn't even glass anymore. It was a piece of polished obsidian, buried in the attic beneath her prayer chair—something my grandmother had called the Watching Stone.
I found it during another nightmare.
Woke with dirt under my nails again, blood in my gums, and the sound of a thousand breaths filling the walls like lungs made of plaster.
Something whispered into my ear from the closet:
> "She's ready."
---
The Watching Stone was already humming when I touched it.
Not audibly. But through the bones of my fingers.
Like it was purring.
And when I angled it just right—
I saw her.
Not a reflection.
Not me.
Her.
The doll. But not porcelain anymore.
Flesh.
White. Stretched. Sewn.
Seven eyes across the forehead, each sealed shut. One mouth in the stomach. A rosary embedded in her spine like a centipede of crosses.
And worst of all—
My voice came from her lips.
> "Let them see."
"Let the veil tear."
"Let the mouths open."
---
I dropped the stone.
But the reflection stayed.
It hovered in the air like smoke caught between two panes of glass.
And the eyes began to tremble.
The seams began to pull.
And one, just one, began to open.
---
The moment that eye slit fully—
I saw every death she remembered.
Not in order. Not like a story.
Like a flood.
Images:
My grandmother screaming in a ruined chapel, surrounded by kneeling nuns with mouths sewn shut.
A priest dragging a doll toward a baptismal font filled with ash.
Children—seven of them—locked in mirrored rooms underground, each whispering different sins.
A porcelain mold lowered into a pit full of tongues, each one licking its surface clean.
And then—
I saw myself.
On the altar.
Naked.
Eyes open.
Mouth closed.
Chest split open.
And the seven voices chanting from inside me.
---
I snapped out of it, choking on the air, blood in my throat.
My mother burst into the attic, clutching a crucifix, screaming.
> "You opened her eye! You let her see!"
> "What is she?! What did you do?!"
She dropped to her knees, sobbing.
> "Your grandmother didn't make her. She was her. Piece by piece. Every child she lost, every prayer she stitched, every demon she bound—she wove them into that doll. And when she died, she left it unfinished."
> "You're finishing it now."
> "You were always meant to be the eighth."
---
Then the floorboards split.
Just cracked open, as if the house had exhaled too hard.
From below: whispers.
So loud now.
So layered.
Latin, yes—but also names.
Real names.
Mine.
My mother's.
And dozens of others I'd never heard but somehow knew.
Because they were the names of the people she'd confessed about.
Every sin my grandmother had buried… was speaking again.
---
Then the Watching Stone shattered.
And as the shards fell, each piece reflected a different face.
Some were mine.
Some were dolls.
Some had no eyes at all.
But every one of them opened their mouths.
And spoke in unison:
> "Let her see.
Let her open.
Let the choir wear skin."