1-4

It had no face.

The eyes had been smoothed over like empty leather pockets, and where the mouth should’ve been was only smooth skin. Though the hair was wild and unkempt, Reba could see that the ears were also missing. All it had was a nose for which to breathe violent hisses. It had no voice, but when it grabbed Reba, she felt the being's cold, silent wails. The skin had been stretched so thin that the brittle outline of her bones sharpened its touch. The faceless creature’s hands erratically paced across Reba’s face like two giant spiders gripping her skin.

Reba screamed.

Her fear had pounded through her chest like a rapid crashing into a fallen tree.

The candlelight was cut off from its flaming tsunami, leaving the room nearly pitch black. Reba’s body was awash with ferocious tingles—tingles shouting at her to get away. In one motion, she pushed herself from the bed and landed hard on her back, shocking the rest of her body to move again. Ignoring the pain or not noticing it at all, she backed into the closest wall—the closest bearing of comfort and control or anything at all.

She couldn’t tell if the creature had a sight on her when it had no eyes. But its hands remained locked in a clawed frozen frame where they once lay on Reba’s face. There was no expression. Not the slightest hint of anger or evil. Just emptiness. Nothing. Like a blank wall painted a flat white. But how could she expect it to emote? It had no face. If it did, it would surely be gnashing its teeth in hunger or flashing evil smiles with demonic eyes. But instead, it stood still. And Reba was mortified all the same.

The faceless woman had turned to shadow once more. Reba could only barely make out its movements by the shallow light of the window. It turned, reaching out its hand, mocking the sweet embrace of a mother, and the room began to rattle. The metal door had closed, and it shook with a panic far worse than Reba’s own. Something behind her began to rumble like a hungry beast clamoring for food in its cage.

With nothing but instinct to force her into motion, Reba thrashed at it. She threw everything she had in its direction, wild slaps and childish punches. It was hard. A hard metal the likes of which she’d never felt before, and its very touch forced a stinging in her hands.

“Someone, please. Mother. Father. Help me!” she yelled.

A glint of white-yellow light peered from the thing’s outline, but it hadn’t ceased its stuttering. It inched towards her as the rattles got louder. The nasal breathing cracked through the room, and the light had abandoned her. In some last act of desperation, Reba gave one last yell.

Her father burst into the room after a long fight with the steel door, his hefty body nearly shaking. Light flooded in, and he searched for an explanation for what he had heard and felt, first finding the being on the bed with its hands stretched out, then his petrified daughter, and finally the rattling statue next to her. Reba, at the first sight of her father, flung herself into his arms.

“Dad! It's a spirit.” She said the word as if it were a curse she had never said before. Or if she had, she had never meant its true meaning before today. “I thought it was Mama, and it attacked me.”

The tears were draining from her eyes. Her father lifted her, and she felt like a toddler again. As gently as he could, he carried her to the other room, shushing her calm. He put her down and closed the door behind him, letting it lock and sealing away the darkness that it hid.

Koji hardly reacted. He seemed beaten, but at the same time, a striking resemblance of relief was on him. Not like a man whose daughter had found the skeleton hidden in his closet, but as a man who grew less afraid of the secret.

“Dad,” she said, still frantic, “What is that thing? And why does it look like Mama? Did it eat her?”

Koji pulled her into him, doing his best to mimic the sweet and apologetic embrace of the child’s mother. His heart murmured, and Reba felt a low rumble of uncertainty in that embrace. “That thing is not your mother, okay. This is just a bad dream. There’s nothing there,” he said.

“But I saw it. There was something there.”

He shushed her again. “It's nothing, Reba. Really. Go back to bed. It will... It will be better tomorrow.”

“But… why is it here? Is it hurting you? Is it what’s making you act like this? Is it because you’re afraid of it?”

Her father sighed. “It is what’s making me act this way. And once it's gone, everything will be happy again. So go to sleep so you can wake from this dream.”

“You promise? That you’ll be better? And it isn’t hurting us?”

“I promise,” Koji said. This time, his smile seemed genuine, and Reba trusted him. She always trusted him. The might of her father was still something of legends in her mind. A strong man who never showed any hint of insincerity when it was his turn to answer a question. Why would he lie? He was her father. And fathers don’t lie. They keep secrets, but they don’t lie.

But as soon as she turned from his sight, her trust wavered. And she thought of what a dream truly was. A mysterious fable told by the mind and contained in the darkness behind the eyelids. It wasn’t real. It should be forgotten. She should move on and pretend like nothing ever happened. It was only a dream.

She wondered if the All-Mother’s dream was a similar feeling. The legends told that she created each of her twelve godly children in magnificent ways to form a great dream. A dream of perfect people living on a perfect land. Reba thought that she must’ve forgotten that dream, just as she was being asked to forget now.

 She crept back to her bed, where her siblings surprisingly still slept. They were always heavy sleepers. But they seemed to sleep even heavier this night. She eased into the bed and covered her head with pillows.

“He’s still lying,” she thought and felt like the thought itself was a betrayal of her father.

She tried to force her eyes closed, but sleep failed her. The image of the faceless woman was glued to the back of her eyelids. A person with no face in the outline of her mother. What was it? Why did it exist? Why was he protecting it? Suddenly, Reba began thinking about the greed spirit—spirit that stole a girl’s body to turn it to gold. She wondered if there was a spirit that stole faces. She no longer wanted to sleep after that. Instead, choosing to listen to the silence of the night until, at some point, the metal door opened and closed again.

She felt alone. She wanted someone. She would settle for her Uncle Kreo if she had to, but she hated that she was alone. The silence, met with stillness, poisoned her mind. For hours, she fought the pull of gravity on her eyes, but it fought her back, stronger than she was. For she was still a little girl and could not hold her strength for long.

And that night, she dreamed of spirits.

More days passed. The door had acquired a new chain lock. Though her father was now outside his room, the joy did not return to his face. If it weren’t for his big-bellied breathing, the kids would’ve hardly been able to tell that he was alive. He had looked somehow even worse than the nights before. The bags under his eyes had doubled in size, and the clumps of his hair were merging together like they were covered in sap. Worst of all, there was a smell about him. It was hard not to tell that he hadn’t properly bathed in a while. The entire house smelled of must and rot.

Reba couldn’t bear looking at him any longer, and so she made an excuse to go outside.

“I think the kids are thirsty. I’m gonna go out and get some water,” she said.

Koji nodded. “Thank you.”

Kayleb and Krisa were playing in their bed, though without much of the vigor they usually moved with. Everything in the house was sluggish. And by the looks on their faces, they could’ve used the change in scenery as well, if only for a moment.

“You guys up for a walk to the well?”

Without any argument, they were put in the kiddie wagon. It was only brought out for special occasions, when Reba was their sole escort. They would be the riders, and Reba would be the horse hauling them through the street. With the wagon in one hand and an empty pail in the other, she pulled them out the door, without looking back at her father’s soulless body.

She lingered in front of her home a minute more than she needed to take in the air. It was a cloudy afternoon with a windy chill to prove it. That was a rare cold day for the Mother’s Moon, which usually made everything rich and full of warmth. But today was different. The atmosphere was infused with the builder’s grey—the stiff, cold grey of metal.

“It's cold…” Kayleb pouted. “Krisa’s gonna start whining.”

“Nothing I haven’t heard before. You two have been whining for days.”

“That’s cuz we’re hungry… When’s mama coming back?”

“I don’t know.” Reba faked a smile and patted him on his fluffy frizzled hair. “But don’t worry. I’ll take care of both of you. And things will get better… someday.”

She didn’t know when someday was, but knew things couldn’t go on like this. She felt the rumble in her own stomach and the weakness in her body creeping on her. Her father was out of the room, but that didn’t mean things had gotten better.

There were more Havi outside her home. Four of them that she could see. They gathered like they were forming a homeless camp. They held matching gems on their foreheads and matching bare feet, despite the jagged, rusted streets of the Scrappers’ District.

They communed, talked only with each other, and stood by waiting. At least one of them had been in that spot for almost a week now. Though no one else around seemed to care, Reba saw them every time she looked outside her home. And it was like they never left, surviving only on the food they could carry. And then another would come with more food to join the eerie waiting for… something. And on cue, when Reba noticed them, they noticed her.

All four of them bowed with a synergy most full-time performers couldn’t match. Reba reared back a bit and quickly turned her head towards the well. Every few steps, she would hit a double-take to see if they were still watching her.

They were. Every time.

She tried to ignore them, but then she remembered what they were for and what her mother used to tell her about the Havi. “Never mind them. They live by the sole purpose to undo harm. They have a direct connection to the Mother of all gods that allows them to know where someone is in pain.”

She remembered how many times she had been roughhousing with Romy. The boy was twice her size and always willing to wrestle. Reba would never back down, which sometimes ended with a bruise and an unintended bloody nose. Her mother would grab her by the arm, scold her, and take her outside. Within ten minutes or so, a Havi would miraculously appear from around a corner. They prayed and waved their hand over her bloodied nose, and moments later, it didn’t hurt anymore. Then they’d leave as quickly as they came.

Most other people regarded Reba politely as they walked up the alleyway. The Kotters were somewhat of a pinnacle of the Scrappers’ District, and her parents were friendly to everyone. So every neighbor of theirs knew her and her siblings by name. A few of them waved, but Reba focused on pulling the wagon so she didn’t have to wave back.

But some people weren’t ones to be ignored. She was made to stop her pulling when someone stood in her path. It was an old man whose name she didn’t remember. But she knew he worked at the same factory as her father.

“Ay, if it isn’t young Reba and the babies,” the man said through a roughly shaven beard and a harsh old voice. She squinted her eyes at him, hoping it wasn’t someone trying to tell her how cute she was or how big she had gotten. She just wanted water.

But the man seemed to carefully examine all the kids, like they were rare items in a shop.

“Umm… hello,” Reba said softly.

“The Kotters are doing well, ay? I feel like I ain’t seen none of you since the Kinship Festival. Your papa ain’t been to work bout a week. I’s fixin to think he struck it rich somehow and moved up to one of them classy districts.”

“No,” she answered flatly. The man took a closer look at her. It would’ve been plain to see that Reba looked more gaunt than usual. Eyes shaded dark by lack of proper sleep, and face thinning by lack of proper nutrition. It brought a hint of worry to the old man’s face, and that made Reba feel the need to defend herself. “He hasn’t been working at all or doing much of anything. I’ve been doing everything since our mother went out and that weird monster lady moved into his room.”

“Monster lady?” The man raised an eyebrow with a stark seriousness. The seriousness her mother used to get when she knew Reba wasn’t telling her the whole truth. She partly regretted revealing too much to the man. But then she heard a whiny squeal from her little sister, and a thought crossed her mind.

Ever since the Kinship Festival, everything in the Kotter house had been tossed into silent chaos. She felt like they needed help. If someone didn’t step in, she and her siblings would likely starve before things got better. But there was still so much she didn’t understand and wouldn’t know where to begin or end if she had told someone the truth—a truth her father didn’t want her to know. But she did know. And if he wasn’t going to fix it, then maybe she could.

A knight could help. A knight like Osher Strongbow. If she said something, he would come to ram her father’s door down and kill the thing that's been haunting him. Then he could organize a search party to go and look for her mother and brother. Then everything would be better. It would all be over.

“Yes. He locked it in his room. It’s still in there. I know it is. I saw it. It has no eyes, not even a mouth. It’s a monster. I wish someone would take it away already. Far, far away where it can’t hurt him anymore. I know it's hurting him. He just won’t say that is… I.. I..”

“Whoa… It's alright now, ay.” The man stopped her. She was talking so fast that she ran out of breath. “Ain’t nothing to worry about, little one. Go run along then. I’m sure everything will be better soon. I’ll talk to your father.”

She faintly smiled at the answer but was confused when the man pushed her along and said nothing else. She must have expected too much. He wasn’t even heading towards her home to do as he said. Disappointed and with a wagon full of children, she continued up the road.

She used a rope to summon the bucket of water out of the well. But when she tried to pull it over the barrier, she toppled over, spilling the water in the streets. Birds and frogs flocked to enjoy their new pool as Reba lay on her face, and her siblings laughed at her misfortune. She didn’t even have the strength to snap at them. Her body felt skinny, but at the same time, she felt the weight of hunger in her.

When she rose, she saw that her Uncle Kreo had grabbed the bucket and inspected it, as if it had intentionally stuck its leg out to trip Reba. The handle disconnected from the bucket in his hand, causing the pail to fall once again. It must’ve loosened when she dropped it.

Reba groaned. “You could’ve helped me up instead of the bucket,” she said, dusting herself off. “Where have you been?”

“Sorry for my absence. My business took me longer than expected. You needed water?”

“Why else would I be getting some?”

“Understood. Allow me to help. In the meantime, take this.” He handed Reba an iron basket of assorted goods: Cooked meat, fresh milk, fruits, and grain. Reba grew ravenous. It all looked so expensive. 

“Where did you get all this?” she asked.

“It’s food. I purchased it. Take it home and break your fast if you have not already,” he said. “I’ll fetch the water and be shortly behind.”

What occurred next was like an attack of starving hounds on a carcass. The children stuffed most of what was in front of them into their gullets without rest, hardly thinking that the food was for their father, too.

When Reba finally did realize, she nodded at Kreo’s concerned expression and headed down the street, excited to show her father her new treasure. But she stopped short.

The area around her home had grown ravenous itself. A mob of Selplians was gathering in front of her door. Some were angry. Some were sad. Some indifferent. A few of them had hastily conjured weapons in their hands. All were aimed at her home.

And the number of Havi had grown to ten.

Reba was close enough to hear them yelling.

“It’s for your own good, Koji!”

“Bring it out here now!”

They all looked like they were trying to break in.

“Reba, what’s happening?” Kayleb asked, stopping Krisa from crawling over the walls of the cart.

He was estranged to find his sister smiling. “They’ve come to take it away.” Reba said.

This was no mighty knight come to save them, but the people of the town had miraculously gathered to slay the demon. The sight filled her up with a manic energy. After all these days, something was finally being done about the THING.

She puffed herself up enough to stomp closer to them, barely realizing she was leaping away from the wagon. She wanted to shout with them, pretending to be a soldier storming the gates of the enemy. All they had to do was get past its gate.

They couldn’t figure out her father’s lock, no matter how many people thrashed at it. It was made of solid silver, which would take some work to cut down, so their only choice was to blast through the door. Someone was conjuring a hammer, and Reba jumped for joy, not thinking of what they were doing to her own house.

But one of the mob men pushed her over when she got too close to him. He spat on the ground in front of her. “Wrath spawn.”

Reba retracted like the man was ready to hit her, but before he said anything else, Kreo stepped between them, and a fresh bucket of water dropped to the ground. He didn’t say anything to the man but pierced him with a warning gaze that stopped him in his tracks. The man sucked through his teeth and went back to join the mob.

Looking up at Kreo, Reba saw an expression that she hadn’t ever seen on her uncle.

Anger.

Despite Kreo never showing it before, there was an air of danger with him whenever he was serious. But his expression was silenced when he flashed a look at the children, all scared at what was happening in front of them. The mob was getting louder as more and more people started to join in outside the Kotter home.

Kreo placed a twenty-sina coin in Reba’s hand. “You all should go to the bathhouse and clean yourselves up. That should cover it for all of you.”

“Really. But…”

“Go, Reba.”

Reba almost flinched at the command. But she did as she was told, collecting the wagon and going in the opposite direction from the mob. Her siblings cried and complained, but she was steadfast.

She was sure when they were done, it’d all be over and life would go back to normal. Blessed be the Mother. No more monsters. No more messy home. And their mother would be back soon. So she would just take her father's advice and do what the adults said. This coin would provide the best bath she had ever taken. She only hoped Kreo had extra for her father when this was done.

The mob shouted behind her, and the Havi watched her go.