A slender girl sat in the shade of a large oak tree, quietly flipping through the worn pages of a novel. Surrounding her were adventurous children playing a game of tag while a purple-eyed lady, referred to as "Mom" by the rest of the children, watched over them.

The children lived in a small orphanage where Mom was the sole caretaker of all fifty-two children who resided there. The orphanage consisted of a cluster of old houses surrounded by lush green forests that continued for miles on end. The children were almost completely isolated from the outside world, but once they reached the age of eighteen, they would go and live their own lives.

"Caitlin, can you fetch a storybook from the library?" called Mom. The slender girl, Caitlin, dusted herself off and headed inside a nearby old building. She pushed past the double doors to reveal a dusty yet cozy complex of bookshelves and wasted no time making her way to the children's section.

Caitlin brushed her delicate hands along the sides of the books, skimming through their titles before promptly pulling one out titled "Snow White." She had almost made her way to the library door before something caught her eye. The bookshelf she had pulled the book from had moved slightly to the right. She glanced through the gap made by the bookshelf but couldn’t make anything out. This was so strange. Mom never mentioned anything like this. Did anyone know about it? Tugging it to the right, the bookshelf slid away to reveal a secret room. It was furnished with a fine leather chair and an old portrait of a family with two daughters and a son. Caitlin, being the curious child that she was, glanced at the age-old bookshelves that were in the vintage room. One particular book caught her eye. It was a crimson leather journal nestled between two large encyclopedias. Plucking it from the shelves, she opened it to the cover. Written in neat cursive loops was the name, Annalise Erling. Flipping it to a random page, she spotted a messy diagram of the orphanage along with the words "purple, eighteen, and question marks written messily in red ink." Puzzled, she placed the journal in her pocket to read later.

Suddenly, she remembered she was supposed to get the storybook and give it to Mom quickly. Otherwise, she would be scolded. Hurrying out of the library, she made her way back out onto the grassy field where Mom was standing. Caitlin handed Mom the book she had picked up from the library. 

"What took you so long?" asked Mom.

"I had a hard time picking out which book to read because there were so many options," Caitlin would respond sweetly, trying to disguise the fact that she was lying. Mom nodded her head, still slightly confused, and walked up to the children to gather them. With Caitlin being seventeen, she didn’t have to stay and listen to the story. She hurried back to her room to read the journal. Caitlin was nervous yet excited to read Annalise’s diary in her room, and she opened the creaky door with a forceful push that caused the door to slam against her wall. She jumped into her bed and took out the diary. Comfortably resting underneath her warm covers, she opened the journal to the first page.

The diary chronicled the life of orphan Annalise Erling, who lived in the orphanage in the 1910s. Curiously, it appeared Annalise stopped writing in her journal when she turned eighteen, likely because she had moved on from the orphanage to live her own life. Still, the red-inked messages and diagram on the last page had left an unsettling feeling in her stomach, as if there was a message someone had wanted her to see. She didn’t know why, but the lives of those who had come and gone had simply enamored her since she was born. She rushed to the library building to return the diary since she finished reading it.

"What are you doing in such a hurry, Caitlin?" asked Mom as she placed a hand gently on Caitlin’s shoulder, stopping her from going to the library.

"Oh, I’m just going to the library to grab another book in the series I’m really into," she fibbed weakly.

"Is there anything interesting that you found in there?" Mom inquired.

"Uh no, not besides the book series," Caitlin said a little too quickly.

"Okay. . . don’t stay too long. Dinner’s soon," Mom said with a raised eyebrow as she walked out of the library quietly.

Caitlin pretended to be looking for a book before checking to see that her mom was nowhere near and grabbing Snow White off the shelves. The gap between the shelves revealed itself, and Caitlin pulled the bookshelf to the side and made her way into the secret room. She breathed in its dusty air before turning and flicking on an old lamp sitting on a wooden desk. Suddenly, the dusty bookshelf let out a loud thud and slammed shut behind her. The sound reverberated throughout the darkly lit room, and the silence that followed seemed to last for an eternity. The realization that she was trapped finally kicked in.

Panicked, she tried to silently slide the bookshelf and find her way to the main library, but the door wouldn’t budge. Oddly enough, she felt the presence of something watching her but shrugged it off anyway. Caitlin decided she might as well do what she came here for and put the book back in its place between the two encyclopedias. Pacing around the room, she thought, "What am I going to do now? How will I get out of here? Is there something in the room I can use? Maybe I can just brute force my way out of here."

She heard something fall onto the floor and instantly thought about her earlier premonition of something being in here with her. Caitlin walked over to where the noise had come from and found the red journal sitting on the floor open to a blank page. Before her eyes, a perfectly sized print popped up promptly, writing to her.

"Hello, Caitlin."

Was she going crazy now?

Perhaps this was the result of tiredness and stress from being trapped in. Cautiously, Caitlin picked up an ink pen from the wooden desk and wrote a message back.

"Hello, who are you?" She knew it was probably stupid and no one would respond. Written in loopy cursive letters, the initials "A.E." appeared on the page in front of her.

A.E. Annalise Erling. Of course! The owner of the diary.

"Can you help me get out of here?" Caitlin wrote begging that Annalise wasn’t some vengeful spirit sent out to kill her.

"Yes. I will help you get out of the room, but I need to tell you something before you go," Annalise wrote back.

"What?" Caitlin replied in quick response.

"I must warn you. Mom is going to try to kill you. It sounds crazy, but it’s true. After all, that’s how I died. She kills everyone once they turn eighteen when they’re supposed to leave."

"What? That can’t be true!"

"Don’t believe me? Open up the top drawer of the desk." Caitlin walked over and gently pulled the rusty handle of the wooden drawer open. Inside, there were two framed pictures. One was a black-and-white photo of the children at the orphanage, presumably including Annalise, along with Mom, who looked exactly the same as she did now, which, unless she had never aged, meant she couldn’t possibly be human.

"I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe it!"

The second photograph was a blurry image. She could only make out what looked like human remains and a pair of bright amethyst eyes.

"That looks just like the exact color of Mom’s eyes!" Caitlin had always thought it was strange that Mom had purple eyes. It just wasn’t natural.

"Do with that what you will," Annalise wrote. The tattered journal slammed shut and reclaimed its spot on the shelf. Caitlin scrambled over to grab it from its place and tucked it securely into her pocket.

With a thump, the bookshelf opened itself, revealing the light of the main library. Hurriedly, Caitlin rushed out of the library towards the main house where dinner would be served. The rich scent of freshly baked goods had already reached her before she stepped foot inside the house. But its once comforting feeling had vanished now that she had learned an unsettling truth. When she arrived, everyone was already dipping freshly baked parcels of fluffy bread into steaming bowls of tomato soup. Caitlin plopped herself down into her seat at the table, which was adjacent to Mom’s as they were arranged in age order.

Perhaps it was because of what she had just learned from Annalise, but Caitlin swore there was a different look in Mom’s eyes.

"So Caitlin, did you find all the books you wanted to read?" Mom inquired.

"Yup," Caitlin answered, placing a spoonful of soup into her mouth.

"What’s the book about?" Mom asked.

"It’s about a girl who was alive during the 1800s and her normal life," Caitlin said.

"What’s the title of the book? It seems familiar," Mom asked with curiosity. 

"The Crimson Journal," Caitlin said suspiciously. She hadn’t had time to think of an answer. She had glanced at her mom a moment earlier, who now had a knowing look on her face. Alarm bells rang in Caitlin’s head. What had she been thinking? It became too obvious now. Act natural, she told herself. 

Caitlin focused on finishing her soup in order to escape her awkward situation. The soup was creamy and buttery. It satisfied her palette but left a strangely bitter aftertaste in her mouth after her encounter with Annalise. She scooped the last bit of soup from her bowl and excused herself from the table. She strolled through the familiar wooden hallway that now wasn’t as innocent as she had remembered.

Everything was different now.

"Caitlin, can you read me a bedtime story?" a little kid named Tommy asked.

"Sure," Caitlin replied warmly. Taking him by the shoulder, she guided him into his room and started thinking of a story to tell him. She remembered a story from one of the entries Annalise had written. A story about a girl and a tower who wasn’t allowed to leave and her mother kept her there, never letting her leave, until one day the girl managed to leave on a full moon night and "lived happily ever after," Caitlin finished, patting the boy on the head lightly.

"I’m gonna miss you, Caitlin. When you leave in two months?" Tommy lamented woefully.

"I’m gonna miss you too. And Abby, and Suzie, and Clara, and everyone else," Caitlin said with a sigh.

"I miss Mason too. I wish he’d written a letter back to us like he promised once he left," Tommy added regretfully.

Oh, Tommy. One day, he’d learn about what really happened to Mason and all the others. Hopefully, it won’t be too late for him. "Well," Caitlin replied, "I’m sure he’s doing well now. Sleep tight, okay?" She smiled and walked out of the room, gently closing the door behind her.

Caitlin was sad. She was going to have to say goodbye to everyone one way or another. She walked back to her room and jumped into her bed. She shoved the journal into its spot underneath her pillow and pulled her covers over her. Tucked into her bed, Caitlin drifted off to sleep thinking about the implications of what she had just learned and what she should do next.

Caitlin blinked the sleep from her eyes. It was morning. She started her day and took a walk around the orphanage to clear her mind.

"What should I do? I can’t just wait out the rest of my life until I’m eighteen and then die. Should I escape? I can’t just kick the can down the road until I’m eighteen, but where will I go? I don’t know anything about the outside. The forest outside goes on forever, though. . Is that even true? Annalise is a ghost after all. . .Should I trust her? Should I spill the beans to the rest of the kids?. . No, too risky. . ." Caitlin decided she would try to escape even if Annalise was lying. She wanted to explore what was beyond the forest. She would have to begin planning.

Caitlin walked back to her room to write down her plans in the journal when she noticed that her bedframe lay bare. Today was a Thursday, laundry day, and her bedsheets were getting washed. Realizing her mistake, she was panicking, wondering if her mom had found the journal. Her mom appeared in the doorway.

"Are you alright? Did you lose anything?" she replied, smiling widely.

"Nope! Everything’s all good!" 

Her mom smiled back at her in a creepy sort of way before walking down the hallway. Immediately, she wanted to go die in a hole as tears threatened to spill onto her cheeks, and dread filled her stomach. What if she saw the conversation between her and Annalise? She felt a pit in her stomach and she knew she had messed up really badly this time.

At that moment, Caitlin believed what Annalise said. Why would mom take it if she didn’t know? I messed up. She didn’t know what to do. She wished that everything had been a dream and that this nightmare would finally stop.

Caitlin was disoriented, so she pretended as if everything was fine. She faked a smile and pretended to be the happy-go-lucky bookworm she had been before this. Distressed, she found herself at the center of the meadow and lay down, plucking pieces of grass and flowers in frustration. The sharp blades of the green grass glade grazed her graceful fingers with their cold, dewy touch as storm clouds formed above her, and their cool droplets pelted her freezing skin.

The splish splash of the rain was the cloud’s tears, mourning Caitlin’s approaching death. She spent the entire day like that as if she were spending her last days before being executed. The day was neverending, dragging on to prolong the internal torture. Caitlin went through the motions of her day, wishing Annalise hadn’t dragged her into this and that she could return to her blissful ignorance.

Caitlin knew that her mom knew and her mom knew that she knew. Whatever hope she had of her paying no mind to the journal was wiped away. The world disappeared into darkness as she fell asleep, hoping that when she woke up, everything would be better.

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Caitlin woke up, but not in her bed, strangely enough. She took in her surroundings and saw that she was propped up against a towering tree as tall as a skyscraper in the orphanage’s surrounding forest. Caitlin looked above her and noticed that the sky was still sleeping. Disoriented, she got back on her feet, wobbling. Her surroundings were blurry, and psychedelic colors danced across her vision. All at once, her vision cleared, and there was a sharp pain in her chest.

A monster appeared from the shadows. It was cloaked in darkness, though the outline of its body was still visible along with its piercing amethyst eyes. It looked like a human silhouette. The only thing not human about it was its lashers, twin tails with sharp edges that glow with icy-hot purple fire.

It was Mom. Annalise wasn’t lying. 

Caitlin tried to run, taking off immediately, but Mom was inhumanly fast. She was a hunter, hunting her prey. Before she knew it, the monster had caught up to her. Caitlin turned to face the monster. She peered into the murky depths of the monster’s eyes, but she couldn’t find a single hint of remorse or the warmth she had remembered so dearly as a child. It was all a lie.

Her eyes glowed with hatred, and she had a twisted, gleeful smile plastered on her dark face—a sight that Caitlin would never forget.

The monster jumped upwards, slashing her bright purple lashers in an arc as Caitlin awaited her impending doom, a child’s laughter emanating from the monster. Hopeless, hazy, and lost, Caitlin would offer a few gentle thoughts before she’d take the attack head-on and face her supposed and eventual death. "Well, I guess this is the end of my sad and sorrowful life," she thought. So much for all the laughs before the two words, Annalise Erling would escape her lips.

And that would make all the difference.

A ghostly hand would sweep across the sky, breaking the purple, fluorescent arc as the projectiles sent themselves off past a brush of trees, never to return, and Mother would be thrown against The Giving Tree that wouldn’t give as her spiny back crashed against the bark before being forcefully dragged down its entirety—its surface—by the ghostly hand, destroying her spines and damaging her lashers far beyond repair. A constant thumping sound could be heard as if a bowling ball were rolling across a path of pebbles, and a painful screech could be heard in the echoes of sirens, that of brutal pain. Laughter could be heard no more, and Caitlin could only watch in awe as she slowly found her footing, propping herself up by her two hands, palms against the grassy floor.

With the repeated pounding of outs and ins, the body, now seemingly nothing more than a carcass, appeared to be no longer human and nothing more than an insect. A squashed, mangled, and bloodied body that still gasped fighting breaths as the hand swirled and twirled the now nearly dead body in the air, the moonlight glowing behind it as the wispy, gentle yellow-green hands pounded the body to the floor as it collapsed brutally beside Caitlin’s awaiting body.

To say the least, she was in shock.

"What. . .what. . what was that? What happened?" she’d say as her senses faded in and out. The dying sect or battered mix of a human mixture would try to mutter its last dying words, but it would be no better than the clear fading effort for life as seen through her flashing amethyst eyes. The mother Caitlin once knew was truly gone.

"Screw. . screw you!" the monster would say. "This isn’t the last of me! For you haven’t seen the last of. . ." as a clenched fist from the ghostly spirit of two hands came down upon Mother’s altered face, crushing it. As if death were truly so escapable, a vibrating exhale could be heard. "Ughhhh," as if one were screaming through a rigid tunnel.

To reconnect, the hands would form a clasp resembling that of thanks and gratitude, as well as one of appraisal. Despite not having the notebook on her, seemingly lost, Annalise had saved her. The two hands would twirl as if they were butterflies as they’d spin faster and faster into a ball of glowing light before dispersing, revealing a ghostly and fading figure that Caitlin assumed was Annalise. Ghostly butterflies fluttered in all directions, emitting a glow similar to that of dragonflies.

"I’m Annalise," the girl would come to say in a cheerful manner, as if they had finally met for the first time. Her hair ran straight downward and was shoulder-length, with its ends in an organized and rounded fashion like that of a rainbow’s arc. She wore what Caitlin assumed to be a pink-black plaid skirt and creme white cardigan given her entire figure was half faded and a glowing iridescent green. It wouldn’t be long before her time was up as well. She was no longer alive, after all. Caitlin, on the other hand, had given her this chance to exact revenge and seek redemption, allowing her to finally rest and settle in peace.

Caitlin would be left standing, unable to cry as she collapsed to her knees. She couldn’t believe it. It had only been a few minutes since she should have died. Death had appeared inevitable, yet here she was, breathing. Besides the blood that ran, the voices of those deceased, killed by the hands of Mother, could be heard gently seeping out from her not-so-forgivable body. Her amethyst eyes had finally gone dark.

Annalise and Caitlin would walk hand in hand, side by side, as they stood over the deceased and dismembered body in silence.

"I sure hope she never comes back," Caitlin would say, shivering.

"I wouldn’t wish otherwise," Annalise would agree in succession. "May this painful door and memory finally close." Annalise would begin to flicker, fading in and out, her speech slowly becoming evidently more unclear before making for an embrace with Caitlin as she whispered her final words, "Thank you" and "Goodbye," both of which Caitlin understood with clarity.

Annalise was gone.

Caitlin would return to her sorrowful sobs as time passed, and she'd find herself with dry and sticky tears on her cheeks, seeping from beneath her eyes as she gazed at the setting moon, thankful to be alive. She’d close her eyes in a short prayer before closing it off with the words, "Annalise. . .I hope you hear me. . . Goodbye."

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Caitlin would muster enough strength as she stood up from the ground, where she'd sat after deciding to return to the orphanage. She was damaged, bruised, and injured; she'd be limping, but she'd be alive.

"Where is Mom?" the youngsters would ask, but she was nowhere to be seen or found. Caitlin would refuse to make a comment or give a response to such a question, panting as Tommy would be the first to run up to her and ask whether she was okay.

"Tommy!"

"Where were you?" he'd ask, concerned, as he offered to lend her a shoulder. She'd refuse at first, but due to her injury, she'd be forced to accept his offer.

She would come to smile at him as she looked up and said, "I’m fine. I’m fine" before proceeding with his favorite phrase, "Would you like to hear a story?"

"Yup!" he’d say in bright glee, but upon a moment’s passing, he'd start to look down without much of a response, speechless and in shock.

"But wait," breaking the silence. "I have something for you!" Caitlin would pull out a letter ever so slowly from her back pocket, revealing a solid yellow-orange envelope. "It’s from Mason! Here. Take it!" as she gently shook it before him.

Tommy would come to take the letter as he began to look down at the envelope. In clear, bold, and written words, it said, "For Tommy." Tommy would come to shed a tear before hugging Caitlin, causing her to collapse to the floor on her knees as she let out a gentle laugh. 

"Alas. We’re free. Free from the walls and the fears that once bound us. Now let’s go home, shall we?" and with the help of Tommy, they followed. "Now who wants breakfast?"

"Me. Me. Me!" they’d all say in succession. And they'd set off into the land of the rising sun.