I had a bad feeling.
I couldn't explain it. Just that gut-deep instinct—the one that whispers when something is off. Maybe it was the dry air. Or maybe the overwhelming scent of dust, wood polish, and something... older, like antique breath held too long.
"Bonjour, Madame Horloge!" Jean-Baptiste called out as he stepped inside. His voice echoed too far, like the room was trying to swallow it. "Is anybody here?!"
The shop was much larger on the inside. Impossible large. The kind of wrong geometry that your brain tries to unsee. Angles bent like they were learning new geometry. Distances folded in on themselves. The walls breathed silence.
Basim entered just behind him. His shoes squeaked against the tiles. His breathing was loud. Not panicked, but not calm, either.
I don't know why, but I pulled out my phone.
I texted my mother. Just a simple question. I didn't even think about it—just wanted... confirmation.
I slid the phone back into my pocket.
Then I froze.
Something touched the back of my neck.
It wasn't pressure, exactly. More like awareness. A warmth brushing over the hairs on my scalp. Fingers not quite fingers. Like the shadow of a hand. Like a ghost. Or a demon. I couldn't turn to look at the source of the sensation, no matter how much I strained, no matter how hard I struggled. My body was no longer mine.
Madame Horloge's reflection—only her reflection—stood behind me in the glass cabinet, silver eyes glimmering beneath a lace veil. The real Madame glided in from the right, as though she had stepped out of a different frame of reality entirely. Two versions of her, stitched to the angles of the room like mismatched clock hands.
Stitched, just like her face was, the scars running across the seams in her cheeks. Stitched and sutured and seamed together. Her smile was wide and thin and sharp as the edge of a blade. In the mirror, the stitches on her face were moving. Thread unraveling, fraying at the ends, pulling at the corners of her mouth to expose a wet red darkness underneath.
The old lady in the real world didn't move, or speak. Didn't breathe, or blink. She was watching the version of her in the mirror with an intense curiosity, as if she was studying an insect trapped in amber. I couldn't feel her breath on the nape of my neck, nor her heartbeat.
My throat tightened, and I was cold and hot at the same time. Panic rose from a dark well in the depths of me, and my pulse was the sound of the bucket clattering in the empty space below, a rattling, broken rhythm that echoed through my skull.
"My, my, mon chéri. Aren't you a special case." She reached for my face in the glass. I flinched away from her, but it wasn't my face in the mirror that moved—it was something else. Someone. Her raven hair was wild, and her skin was bone-white, her eyes were sunken holes of golden fire. And her lips. Oh, god, her lips. She looked oddly familiar to the drawing I found earlier.
A sigh of resignation escaped my lips.
"Madame Horloge?"
"Who is—" Jean-Baptiste began, turning towards me. The woman cut him off, her gaze never leaving the image of the girl reflected in the mirror, who stared back at her with an intensity that made the temperature drop a few degrees.
No, rather...She commanded authority, demanded respect, and the very presence of her in the reflection seemed enough to bend the rules of nature, forcing the light and air to accommodate her every wish, even if only in a limited sense.
Madame Horloge put her hand on my hair and softly ruffled them. I really liked that woman for some reasons, I felt like she was one of the few people I could consider family, a close friend. "You are the last one standing." Her tone was melancholic, sad. As if, the fact that I am here is painful to her. And, the other her in the mirror. She looked equally displeased.
"What does that mean?" I asked.
"— — — — — — —...My, my, my...Your name, where did it go?" I did not answer. How could I possibly have explained what happened to me, when I myself didn't have a clue?
The woman in the mirror mouthed it. I could see the shape of it—but heard only static.
I always thought she was a fraud. Now, not so much. Still, a part of me doubted her abilities, her skills. But, the bigger portion was intriguing. And, in the mood, to test her. If I had the chance to, at least.
"You...know?"
"Of course, child." She chuckled, and turned to address the entity in the mirror, "You've been causing quite the trouble, little one."
The girl in the mirror bowed. Though, the motion wasn't respectful. Rather, the movement of her upper-body was more of a mockery of the action, a parody of the gesture itself, meant to ridicule Madame, and not to show genuine reverence to the elderly.
"A name is an identity. And, the erasure of that, the removal of that concept from existence is a cruel fate indeed. One that will lead to a loss of self, a fragmentation of the soul. And, I cannot, in good faith, allow such a thing. Thus, before the damage becomes irreversible...I'll have to perform a sin. A grave offense. Do forgive this foolish crone. Afterall, a crime done in love is still a crime." With that said, her wrinkled fingers traced my left cheek, and the contact was electrifying. Energy flowed from her and into my flesh.
She turned, skirts rustling like dry pages, and gestured toward a corridor that hadn't existed a heartbeat earlier. Seven doorways lined it; the last bore an iron plaque etched with a single, impossible numeral:
X I I I
The grandfather clock at the shop's entrance chimed twelve. A final gear groaned, wrenched itself forward—
—and struck Thirteen.
Every lamp died. Every flame snuffed out in a gasp of smoke and shadow. There was a scream, a cry of pain and fear that came from somewhere in the darkness. It was followed by another. And another. Until the screams became a chorus, echoing around us in the endless, impenetrable black.
"Do you remember what I told the two of you the first time we met?" Her voice carried a weight to it. An age that was ancient, an age beyond measure.
"Never open a closed door." I repeated her words verbatim.
She snapped her fingers and out of nowhere, Basim and Jean-Baptiste reappeared next to me, their asses kissing the ground. Both of them were pale in the face and sweating profusely, their breaths ragged, their bodies shaking. What the hell had happened to these guys?
"Precisely, child. You are the smartest of the bunch." Madame grinned. "Alas, your two companions...Well, the little devil Basim...couldn't help himself, could he now? Truly, Basim..." She tsked. "...you have the courage to rival the greatest warriors, and the wit of a dead monkey." The old woman continued. He gulped. JB had his eyes fixed on his own legs.
"The same can be said to our artist in the making. Ah, yes. Little Jean-Baptiste. Such an artistic boy. Such talent. Such vision. Such creativity. And finally, ———————, my favourite customer. A boy of borrowed masks and flickering truths." Her grin grew wider, her eyes brighter.
In an elegant flourish, the hems of her dress swept aside, she pointed to the hallway.
Madame Horloge raised one withered finger. "First Lesson: Insight is an invitation. Know too much and monsters come calling. They'll claw at your thoughts. Tear the memories out of your heart. Eat the secrets that make you real." In her eyes were galaxies, whole worlds waiting to be born, or destroyed, or remade. She spoke softly, almost lovingly, as if she were speaking to a small child who had just awoken from a terrible nightmare, or a loved one, perhaps.
"Now, walk." I glanced at her and at the hall. "Run."
So, we did. We ran.
We raced down that winding, endless passage. Doors sprang open. Things crawled. Some slithered, or crept. Others flew on leathern wings. Some things were merely human in their ugliness, but no less horrifying. Ghouls and ghosts, and worse, oh, so much worse. There was no order to their horror. No rhyme or reason. They were nightmares plucked from a hundred fever dreams.
And they were after us.
Hissing, scuttling, laughing. Calling out in tongues that sounded almost like voices from the darkest edges of sleep, where nothing was quite sane and everything hurt. Screaming names and curses and promises and begging all at once.
X I I I
Through the mass of creatures, Madame Horloge flicked her wrist. A deck of tarot cards soared in slow arc. I caught them. No instructions needed.
Together, we kicked open the XIIIth Door—and stepped into the unwriteable.