The pliers were beside her, cold in my hand when I took them from the ground.
I pried open her mouth.
“You justhaveto talk about your pretty teeth, don’t you?“ I whispered, giggling. “Let’s change that.”
Something inside me shifted, like a switch flipped, and everything turned dark. Thought disappeared. The feeling disappeared.
I clamped the pliers onto her front tooth and pulled.
Her head thudded against the dirt every time I yanked. She screamed herself awake, eyes wild with shock and pain.
“Shhh,” I told her.
But she wouldn’t stop.
So I made her stop.
I stabbed her. Over and over. The pliers slammed into her stomach, her chest. She writhed, choked, bled.
“Cut, cut, cut,” I shouted. “Chop, chop, chop.”
When she finally stopped moving, I went back to the teeth. One by one, I pulled them out, humming to myself. The same lullaby my mother used to sing to me at night.
“Hush now, darling, close your eyes,
The stars are whispering lullabies.
Moonlight paints your dreams in gold,
Safe and warm, though nights are cold…”
When the last tooth came free, I set her body back up on the stone like a puppet. I kept singing.
“Tiptoe shadows, don’t be scared,
Mommy’s gone but someone’s there.
Hearts can break but still beat on,
So sleep, my love, till the pain is gone.”
I wiped the blood from her face with my hands, just like my mother did to me.
“Roses bloom where no one sees,
Ghosts still hum beneath the trees.
So hush now, darling, time to rest,
With broken dreams against your chest.”
I scooped all her teeth into my hand, curled my fingers around them.
Then I picked up the phone from the ground and dialed Gloomsbury Manor.
“Daddy,” I cried, voice trembling, “I’m so, so scared.”
“Lenore?” my father said. “Where are you?”
