"Beauty is a mask we wear to hide our scars but when the world falls in love with the mask, it will destroy anyone who dares to take it off."
- From the archives of Ghost Town
The road to Ghost Town twists differently this time through rows of tall, white houses with perfectly trimmed lawns, past storefronts that display gleaming jewelry and designer clothes, under streetlamps that cast light so bright it seems to bleach the world of color. At its end, the familiar wooden building stands waiting, its sign swaying in a wind that carries the faint scent of perfume and blood.
The door opens before the visitor can reach for it, swinging inward with a sound like silk sliding over stone. Standing in the doorway is Samantha her form now solid and bright, her yellow dress fresh as the day it was made. She looks at the woman who has arrived and nods slowly, recognizing the weight that hangs around her shoulders like a heavy cloak.
"Come in," Samantha says, her voice warm but steady. "Jhun is waiting for you."
The visitor steps inside, and her shoes high-heeled and black as pitch make no sound on the wooden floor. She is beautiful beyond measure: long black hair that falls like liquid night over her shoulders, eyes the color of emeralds, lips the shade of ripe cherries. Her dress is red silk, cut to show the curve of her neck and the line of her shoulders, and diamonds catch the light at her ears and wrists. But there is something cold in her beauty something sharp and hard, like ice carved into the shape of a flower.
"Jessa," she says, though no one has asked her name. "My name is Jessa. I have… so many stories to tell."
From behind the table, Jhun watches her. Tonight he takes the form of a man in his forties, dressed in a dark suit that makes him look like a lawyer or a judge someone who has spent his life listening to difficult truths. He gestures to the chair across from him, and a glass of glowing blue water appears on the table before her.
"Welcome, Jessa," he says. "I know. Please, sit. Drink. The truth is easier to speak when it is not tangled in lies we tell ourselves."
Jessa sits, her movements graceful and precise. She picks up the glass and drinks, and for a moment, her perfect features flicker showing something older, something tired, something marked by pain. Then the mask of beauty slides back into place, and she sets the glass down with careful hands.
"I have been married seven times," she begins, her voice smooth as velvet. "Each time, the man I married died within a year. The police investigated every death. The newspapers called me the 'Black Widow of San Miguel,' the 'Beautiful Killer,' the 'Bride of Death.' They said I killed for money, for jewelry, for freedom. They said I was a monster. But they never asked why."
The room around them shifts, the wooden walls fading to be replaced by the interior of a small house in a crowded neighborhood. The walls are painted pale blue, and there are pictures on every surface photos of a young girl with bright eyes and unruly hair, standing beside a woman with the same emerald eyes and black hair, though her beauty is worn thin by worry and work.
"I was born in 1982," Jessa says, looking at the young girl in the photos. "My mother was beautiful too everyone said so. She worked as a seamstress, sewing wedding dresses for the rich women in the city. She'd spend hours making sure every stitch was perfect, every bead was in place. She'd tell me that beauty was the only thing a woman could truly own that it was more valuable than gold, more powerful than any weapon. 'Men will give you anything for beauty,' she'd say, running her hand over my hair. 'But you must never let them see what lies beneath. They don't want to know.'"
The room changes again, to a market where the young Jessa stands beside her mother's stall, selling fabric and thread. Men walk past, their eyes lingering on her face, on the way her hair falls over her shoulders, on the shape of her body even at twelve years old. Her mother watches them, her jaw tight.
"By the time I was fourteen, men were already coming to my mother with offers," Jessa continues. "Old men, rich men, men who wanted a young wife to show off like a piece of furniture. My mother turned them all away at first. But then Father got sick. He had cancer, and the treatments cost more money than we had ever seen. We sold everything we owned the house, the sewing machine, even Mother's only piece of jewelry. But it wasn't enough."
The room shifts to a hospital room, where a thin man lies in bed, his face pale and drawn. A doctor stands beside him, speaking in low tones to Jessa's mother, who clutches her daughter's hand so tightly her knuckles are white.
"The doctor said Father needed a surgery that cost a million pesos," Jessa says, her voice growing tight. "We didn't have even a tenth of that. But that night, a man came to our door Don Roberto Mendez, one of the richest men in the city. He'd seen me at the market, he said. He wanted to marry me. He was sixty years old, and he already had three wives who had died under 'mysterious circumstances.' But he offered to pay for Father's surgery, to give us a house, to make sure we never wanted for anything again. Mother looked at me, at Father in his hospital bed, and she said yes."
The room transforms into a wedding chapel small and quiet, with only a few people in attendance. Jessa stands at the altar in a white dress her mother made, her face pale and still as a doll's. Don Roberto stands beside her, his hands thick and heavy as he places a diamond ring on her finger. She is fifteen years old.
"I was his fourth wife," Jessa says, looking at the scene with eyes that hold no emotion. "He kept me in a house with high walls and locked doors. He gave me everything money could buy dresses, jewelry, cars but he never let me leave. He said beautiful things were meant to be kept safe, to be looked at but not touched too roughly. But at night, he'd come to my room, and he'd touch me like I was something he owned, something he could use and discard when he was done. I'd lie there and think of Father, who died six months after the surgery anyway his body too weak to fight off the infection that set in. I'd think of Mother, who died a year later of a broken heart, leaving me alone with a man who saw me as nothing more than a pretty toy."
Jhun shifts into the soldier's form, his face hard with understanding. The quill in the book before him moves steadily, scratching out words that seem to bleed into the page.
"One night, Don Roberto came to my room drunk," Jessa continues. "He was angry about something one of his businesses had lost money, he said. He grabbed me by the hair and pulled me out of bed, screaming that I was a waste of money, that I was nothing but a pretty face with no brains, no heart, no soul. He threw me against the wall, and my head hit the edge of the dresser. For a moment, everything went black. When I came to my sense, he was standing over me, his hands wrapped around my throat, his eyes wild with rage. 'You're just like the others,' he was shouting. 'You think your beauty makes you special, but it doesn't. It just makes you easy to break.'"
The room shifts to the bedroom, where Jessa lies on the floor, her hand reaching for a heavy paperweight on the dresser a crystal sphere shaped like a globe. Don Roberto is leaning over her, his fingers tightening around her neck. With all her strength, Jessa grabs the paperweight and swings it, hitting him on the head. He falls to the floor with a sound like a sack of stones hitting wood, and blood spreads across the carpet like dark flowers.
"I didn't mean to kill him," Jessa says, her voice quiet now. "I was just trying to make him stop. But he hit his head on the corner of the bed as he fell, and by the time I could call for help, it was too late. The police came, and they asked questions. They looked at the marks on my neck, at the bruises on my arms and legs. But then they saw the diamond jewelry in my closet, the bank accounts in my name, the will that left everything to me. They said I'd planned it all—that I'd married him for his money and killed him to take it. They didn't care about the marks on my body, about the locked doors, about the things he'd done to me every night. They only saw a beautiful young woman who had married a rich old man and inherited his fortune."
She pauses, picking up the glass of water and drinking again. This time, the mask of beauty does not slide back into place immediately for a few seconds, Jessa looks like what she is: a woman who has been broken and remade into something hard and sharp.
"I was acquitted," she says. "There wasn't enough evidence to convict me. But the damage was done. The newspapers wrote stories about me lies, mostly, but they stuck to me like tar. Men looked at me with desire and fear. Women looked at me with jealousy and hatred. Everyone thought I was a killer, a gold digger, a monster. I tried to start over I moved to a new town, changed my name, got a job as a secretary. But it didn't matter. People found out who I was, and they treated me like I was contagious disease."
The room shifts to a small office, where Jessa sits at a desk, typing. Her boss a man in his thirties with kind eyes stands beside her, pointing to something on the screen. His name is Matthew, and he is the first man who has looked at her without seeing only her beauty or only the stories they'd read about her.
"Matthew was different," Jessa says, a faint smile touching her lips. "He didn't care about my past, didn't care about my beauty. He said he liked the way I thought, the way I laughed, the way I always knew exactly what to say to make people feel better. He was a teacher he taught history at the local high school and he spent his days trying to make the world a little better, a little kinder. We fell in love slowly, carefully. He asked me to marry him, and I said yes. I thought… I thought maybe this was it. Maybe I could finally be more than my beauty, more than the stories people told about me."
The room changes to their wedding day a small ceremony in a park, with only a few friends and family in attendance. Jessa wears a simple white dress, no jewelry except for the silver ring Matthew places on her finger. He looks at her with love in his eyes, and for a moment, Jessa allows herself to believe that everything will be all right.
"But then the stories started again," she says, her smile fading. "The local newspaper found out who I was, and they ran a story on the front page 'Black Widow Marries Local Teacher.' Parents started pulling their children out of Matthew's classes. The school board held meetings to decide if he should be fired. He told them he didn't care what they thought that he loved me, that he knew the truth about what had happened with Don Roberto. But it wore on him. He stopped smiling. He started coming home late, saying he had to work extra to make up for the students he'd lost. He started looking at me differently not with love, but with sadness, with worry. He'd say things like 'If only you weren't so beautiful' or 'If only people could see the real you.' As if my beauty was something I'd chosen, something I could take off like a dress."
The room shifts to their apartment, where Matthew sits at the kitchen table, his head in his hands. Jessa stands beside him, her hands on his shoulders. He looks up at her, and his eyes are full of pain.
"He told me he couldn't do it anymore," Jessa says. "He said the whispers, the stares, the way people crossed the street when they saw us together it was too much. He said he loved me, but he couldn't live with being known as the man who married the beautiful killer. He packed his things and left that night. A week later, I read in the paper that he'd married another woman a teacher at his school, a woman they called 'plain but kind.' They said she was 'the kind of wife a good man deserves.'"
She stops, looking at Jhun with eyes that are now hard and cold. The mask of beauty is back in place, but this time it seems thicker, heavier, more impossible to remove.
"I was angry," she says. "Not just at Matthew, but at all of them at the men who wanted me only for my beauty, at the women who hated me for it, at the world that had decided what I was before I'd ever had a chance to decide for myself. I started going to parties, to clubs, to places where rich men gathered. I let them look at me, let them buy me drinks, let them tell me how beautiful I was. And when they asked me to marry them, I said yes. Each time, I told myself it was different that this time, the man would see me for who I was. But each time, it was the same. They loved the mask, but they feared what was underneath. They'd start by telling me how perfect I was, then they'd get angry when I didn't act the way they thought a beautiful woman should. They'd accuse me of cheating, of spending too much money, of not loving them enough. They'd get drunk and violent, or they'd withdraw into themselves and treat me like I wasn't even there."
The room shifts again and again showing wedding after wedding, each one more lavish than the last. There is Carlos, the businessman who beat her when he found out she'd been talking to a male colleague. There is Reigo, the actor who made her get plastic surgery to make her face "more perfect." There is Roman, the politician who used her as a prop in his campaigns, then accused her of trying to steal his power. Each time, the marriage ends in death Carlos falling down the stairs after a fight, Riego overdosing on pills he said he took to "keep up with her beauty," Roman having a heart attack after finding out she'd been keeping track of all the money he'd stolen from his campaign fund.
"I didn't plan any of their deaths," Jessa says, her voice sharp now. "Carlos fell because he was drunk and angry, and he didn't see the step. Reigo took the pills because he was terrified of getting old, of losing his looks, of being left behind like he'd left me behind. Roman had a heart attack because he'd been living on stress and lies for years. But the police didn't care. The newspapers didn't care. They saw a beautiful woman who had married seven rich men, all of whom had died. They saw a monster. And after a while… I started to see myself the way they saw me."
She leans forward, her emerald eyes fixed on Jhun's face. The room around them has settled back into the familiar space of Ghost Town, the shelves of books stretching into darkness behind her.
"I started to think if they want me to be a monster, then I'll be a monster," she says. "I started to plan. I'd marry a man, find out what he was most afraid of, then make it look like an accident. I'd take their money, their jewelry, their houses, and I'd spend it on things that made me feel powerful cars, clothes, travel. I told myself I was getting even, that I was teaching them a lesson about what happens when you judge a person by their looks. But the truth is… I was just hurting. And every time I killed, the hurt got a little deeper, the mask got a little thicker, the real me got a little harder to find."
The quill in Jhun's book stops writing, and he closes the volume gently. He looks at Jessa not with judgement, not with pity, but with the steady gaze of someone who has heard countless stories of pain and anger and loss.
"You think your beauty is your sin," he says. "You think it's the reason for everything that has happened to you. But beauty is not a sin, Jessa. It is a gift a part of who you are, just like your intelligence, your kindness, your pain. The sin is in how the world has used it against you, how it has reduced you to nothing but a face, a body, a thing to be owned and controlled. The sin is in how you have let their perceptions define you, how you have let their hatred turn you into something you never wanted to be."
Jessa looks down at her hands perfectly manicured, covered in diamonds. For a long moment, she says nothing. Then, slowly, she begins to cry not the silent tears of a woman who is used to hiding her pain, but great, shuddering sobs that shake her whole body. As she cries, the mask of beauty begins to crack, then shatter, revealing the woman beneath older than her years, with lines around her eyes from crying and laughing, with scars on her neck and arms from the men who had hurt her, with a face that is not perfect but is real, and strong, and beautiful in a way that has nothing to do with looks.
"I just wanted to be seen," she whispers, her voice raw and broken. "I just wanted someone to look at me and see me not the beautiful woman, not the killer, just Jessa. Just me."
Samantha stands and moves to Jessa's side, placing a hand on her shoulder. "You are seen," she says softly. "We see you. And your story will make sure that others see too that they see how dangerous it is to judge people by their looks, how easy it is to turn someone into a monster when you refuse to see their pain. Your story will teach them that beauty is not a thing to be worshipped or feared it is just one part of what makes us human."
Jhun stands, shifting into the form of the woman with the bone-braided hair. She opens a new book and places it on the table before Jessa. The pages are blank, waiting.
"Your story is not over yet," she says. "There is more to tell more pain, more anger, more hope. Will you continue? Will you let us hear the rest of who you are?"
Jessa looks from Jhun to Samantha, then...