> The prayers are no longer voices.
They are bodies.
And they're crawling up through the floor to become whole—
inside her.
---
The house moaned.
Not from the walls, not from the pipes or wind or age.
It moaned like something in pain, and something waking.
And beneath the kitchen floor, the crawlspace, the attic beams, even the basement…
They moved.
Not spirits.
Bodies.
Sewn ones.
I pressed my ear to the wall and heard it clear as church bells:
> "Fiat corpus.
Fiat vocem.
Fiat ecclesia."
Let the body be made.
Let the voice be born.
Let the church rise.
---
I ran to the living room and stopped cold.
The floor was breathing.
Every board rose and fell like lungs. Every nail popped upward like splinters from a skin ready to shed.
And in the center of the room—where I had once burned the doll—something was pushing from beneath.
Something round.
Wet.
Pale.
A face.
But not mine.
---
My mother was in the hallway, praying in reverse.
I don't mean she was saying Latin backwards. I mean she was un-saying it. Like every prayer she'd ever whispered was being unthreaded, pulled from her throat word by word until her voice broke.
She saw me and screamed.
> "Get out—get out of the house! She's using you to anchor! You're her altar now!"
But I couldn't move.
Because I realized something…
I wasn't just hearing the voices anymore.
I was responding.
---
My mouth opened on its own.
And in a tone I'd never heard myself use, I said:
> "Ecclesia vocat.
Ecclesia surgit."
(The church calls.
The church rises.)
And all around me, the shadows stood up.
From closets.
From under furniture.
From behind the eyes of broken dolls.
They had no shape at first—just draped skin, fragments of porcelain, tongues stitched into rosaries—but they were forming.
The prayers were building themselves bodies.
Each one shaped by a sin.
Each one shaped by a secret.
---
The one crawling through the floor was Leora.
But not the doll.
Not the child.
This was the church's version of her.
Seven mouths across her chest.
Seven rosaries embedded in her arms.
Her eyes sealed shut—until she opened one—
And I saw every sin my grandmother ever confessed.
I saw fire.
Drowning.
Infants buried with Latin on their lips.
Altars soaked in ink and blood.
Priests weeping into dolls.
And over it all—
My voice, layered over theirs.
The chant was mine now.
---
I fell to my knees as Leora stood.
She didn't walk.
She rose—like incense smoke in reverse.
Her body was lightless, and yet she cast shadows on every wall.
My mother cried out:
> "Finish what she started! You still have the final stitch!"
> "What stitch?!"
> "Her eyes!" she screamed. "Your grandmother sealed her eyes with your blood when you were born! That's why she could never fully awaken!"
> "You were the seal!"
---
Then I felt it—
The burn.
A scar on my wrist, small, always assumed to be a birthmark, now glowed red like molten wax.
It pulsed in rhythm with Leora's movements.
And then—
I saw the needle.
On the floor.
The one my grandmother used to sew her mouth shut.
Still threaded.
Still wet.
With my blood.
---
Somewhere in the walls, the dolls began to chant together.
All in sync.
All layered.
All inside me.
And I knew—
If I didn't finish the stitch, she would open her final eye.
And the choir would become flesh.
---
I grabbed the needle.
Hand trembling. Heart racing.
I stepped forward.
Leora turned to me. Smiling with all her mouths. Her fingers opened wide in invitation.
She wanted me to do it.
Because she knew I couldn't.
Because I was her.
---
But then—
I remembered something.
One of the recordings.
The final phrase my grandmother ever said:
> "She becomes whole when you give her your name."
> "If you keep your name… she stays blind."
I stared at Leora.
And whispered:
> "I am not yours."
I plunged the needle not into her—
But into my own tongue.
The pain was white-hot.
Blood sprayed.
And with it—
The chant broke.
---
She screamed.
A thousand voices tore free at once, shattering glass, breaking mirrors, ripping dolls apart from within.
The altar collapsed inward.
The walls curled back like paper burning in reverse.
And for one second—
I saw the true church.
Not of stone.
Of memory.
Of every person who ever silenced their sins.
A cathedral made of secrets.
And at its pulpit…
Was me.
---
Then the world snapped.
Light.
Dark.
Silence.
---
I woke in my bed.
Floorboards intact.
House quiet.
Mirror clean.
The doll?
Gone.
The coffins?
Sealed.
The tongues?
Still.
---
But sometimes, at night—
When I close my eyes, I hear a single line in Latin:
> "Adhuc oculos habemus."
(We still have eyes.)