Lyra was used to staying with her aunts while her mother was on tour. Her whole life was contained within a couple of suitcases since the day she started kindergarten. And she wouldn't have it any other way. Lyra loved being able to spend time with all her aunts, cousins and uncle. After so many years living like this she couldn't imagine having to stay in a single place and speaking with her family through phone.
Having said that, it was also true Lyra preferred staying with some of her aunts more than others. Lyra loved staying with Aunt Leni since she and Cousin Liena were the sweetest people she knew, and Lemy had Lyle to hang out with, so that was a plus. Uncle Lincoln was a good man, but since he had no children and was busy working most of the time, staying with him left her and Lemy with a lot of idle time. Aunt Lucy was...peculiar, to say the least. She gave them a lot of freedom, and while that was ok, Lyra thought that it may be too much. Also Lyra didn't like Lemy spending time with Lupa. Her brother was difficult to handle at times, but Lupa was straight up a wild child. The Christian teen seriously worried that her white haired cousin would lead Lemy down bad roads.
But out of all her aunts there was one in particular she didn't like staying with.
Aunt Lily.
Don't take Lyra wrong, Lily was her favorite aunt. Since she was the youngest of her siblings, Lily was more of an older sister for Lyra and Lemy than anything else. Back when they were younger they loved staying with their grandparents because Lily was there, and when she emancipated and got her own flat the two of them couldn't contain their excitement every time they had to stay with her.
The problem was another thing, something new in her aunt's house.
The problem was Aunt Lily's daughter, Lani, and how she made Lyra always feel on edge.
Lyra knew that was crazy, but it wasn't the first time she had felt like this about one of her baby cousins. She felt the same way the first time she met little Lulu, like there was something off with the baby girl, something weird. With time that weird feeling had transformed into an understanding and a somewhat healthy-but-cautionary respect for her little cousin.
That didn't happen with Lani.
With her it wasn't that something was weird or strange, it was something deeper, something that inspired in Lyra an acute uneasiness.
It was as if there was something bad about Lani.
Something evil.
Of course that was totally insane! The blonde baby girl wasn't even a year old!
This week Lyra and Lemy were staying in Aunt Lily's flat. A couple of minutes ago her aunt had left to buy some groceries and her brother had tagged along, which left Lyra to take care of the house... and Lani.
The teen and the baby were alone.
Any other time that would have unnerved Lyra, but for the last couple of weeks she had been anxiously working on an important assignment for the conservatory. As part of the evaluation in her Musical Theory class she had to compose a short piece, the central part of the exercise was that it had to maintain a stable harmony. Lyra could easily do it, the problem with it was that in her last evaluation his teacher gave her a far lower grade than she deserved (She suspected it was out of spite for calling him a "Godless dimwit obsessed with Nietzsche's schlong"). That meant this time she couldn't just do it, she needed to Ace it, and it was taking everything she had in her. Also the fact it was due next week only added more pressure to an already stressed out Lyra.
Right now the long haired brunette was in her aunt's guest room, her slender frame clad in a simple interior shirt and a pair of old shorts hunching over the little desk between her and Lemy's bed. Lyra's freckled face looked down at the half filled music sheet with a rictus of both concentration and irritation. She had been stuck for the better part of half an hour trying to force the creativity out of her and into the paper, and it was exhausting her, fast. Her violin lay on her bed beside her, and every time she got something she tested it only to feel that it wasn't good enough. She had also put her portable radio on the table to try ease her mind with some classical music, but the occasional static was just grating on her nerves.
Still, she couldn't stop now. Lyra lay back on her seat for a moment, trying both to clear her mind and create the next part. After a couple of minutes a chord came to her and she reached for the violin, but her hand only found the bed. Lyra quickly spun around and saw it wasn't there. She stood up in panic and began looking below the bed sheets, on the floor, behind the desk and between all the other instrument cases.
Lyra was about to have a seizure when she heard a violin rasp coming from the living room. She hurriedly ran off to find an unexpected situation. Lani sat there, surrounded by a bunch of her toys, with the bow in one of her tiny hands and the violin set diagonally in front of her. The baby girl rasped the violin with the bow as she chuckled, the painful sound of her instrument sounding like cries in the teen's hears.
"Wow wow hey there Lani! Be careful with that!" Lyra said in an anxious tone, slowly closing the distance between herself and the infant."Be a good girl and give me back the violin, ok? I could play it a little for you later. Would you like if big cousin Lyra played for you?"
Lani looked her cousin in the eyes, then the violin, her expression turning into one of baby concentration. Sticking out her tongue from the corner of her mouth the baby girl took hold of the violin's neck with her little hand, then carefully positioned the bow over the strings and gently caressed them.
Much to Lyra's surprise the baby in front of her just took out a good note from the instrument."...Wow Lani! That was pretty good!"
The little girl giggled at the praise and put the bow over the strings again, this time she played two notes. They were unconnected, but the fact that a baby could even play a single note out of a violin was an already amazing feat.
Lyra applauded the little girl and sat indian style in front of her "Lani that was amazing!" The teen told her little cousin, making her rock back and forth with joy for the praises she was being showered with.
Lyra felt relaxed, all her concerns about her assignment melting away as she saw the opportunity to bond over something with little Lani."Do you want me to teach you how to play it Lani?"
The little girl just looked up at Lyra with big curious eyes.
"Here" Lyra said taking the other end of the bow, guiding the baby girl to play a note, then another and lastly a little scale, making Lani laugh happily. "Do you think you can repeat that?" Lyra asked.
Lani smiled and clumsily moved the bow playing the scale Lyra had just shown her.
"Bravo Lani! God, I think you may be a prodigy!" Lyra said, utterly impressed by the capacity of such a young child. "Look at you! Still don't know how to walk but already giving Mozart a run for his money!" She said patting the little girl's head.
Lani, now beaming with joy, kept repeating the little scale to the delight of her smiling cousin."Why was I so paranoid about her?" Lyra thought."She's just a sweet baby girl. And look at her go! With that drive for music I could get her to play a short song in two years tops!"
Lost in her thoughts, Lyra didn't notice how Lani had been playing progressively longer scales by herself, the teen finally waking up from her thoughts when a melody began filling the room.
Lyra watched dumbstruck as the blonde baby played what sounded like a serenade "...Lani how are you doing that?"
Lani's grip on the instrument got firmer, the song changing as her little hands picked up a different pace. Lyras eyes were wide like saucers at this point. That Lani was able to play a note or a scale at her age wasn't normal, but this was just absurd, and kind of unnerving. Then her attention switched from the baby to the music. It was good, pretty good, and with every chord it just kept getting better.
A minute passed were Lyra just sat there, listening in silence. Her eyes started to water; the song was simply beautiful, no, more than beautiful. There was something in it, something...hypnotic, like the music was trying to put her on a trance.
Something clicked inside Lyra's head. She abruptly stood up and burst into a frenzied run back to the guest room. She immediately came back with a blank music sheet and pen and feverishly began writing down every note Lani played."This is it!" She exclaimed in a crazed voice."This is the best thing I have ever heard! This is exactly what I need! With this, that stupid assignment is nothing!" Lyra's hand moved at full speed trying to write down everything, but the tempo of the song just kept increasing."Come oooOON!" She grunted trying to keep the pace and failing, her hand suffering from the strain. "COME ON FOR GOD'S SAKE!" She shouted as she missed more and more notes, the song too fast and complex for her to put on paper.
The music stopped abruptly as Lyra's furious scribbling burst the head of the pen, staining most of the musical sheet."NOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
Lyra vainly wiped the sheet with her shirt trying to salvage it, but only made it worse. The hectic girl looked at Lani, the baby had left the instrument aside and watched her cousin with a blank expression."Lani!" Lyra said, crawling to the little girl and taking her by her tiny shoulders "You can play that again, right!? You will do it for cousin Lyra, right!?" The teen asked in an unsteady voice.
Lani looked into Lyra's desperate eyes and smiled sweetly. The baby freed herself from the older girl's grasp, grabbed a children drawing book, opened it in a certain page and handed it to Lyra. At first glance the page had what looked like a bunch of scribbles in crayon and a drawing of a girls face.
"This is nice Lani, but I really need you to-" Upon closer inspection Lyra noticed something. That was a drawing of her, and what looked like baby scribbles were actually some kind of badly written weird words."D-dabo anima me-mea ad...wait, is this...is this Latin?" Lyra asked, confused.
The baby, wearing a smile that reached from ear to ear, took off the safety pin of her diaper and offered it to Lyra while pointing at the big red X at the bottom of the page. An unexpected ripple of dread crawled up her spine as she took it, dissipating her confusion and making the gears inside her head spin at full speed. This situation reminded her of something, a song.
Lyra looked at the X.
Then at the pointy safety pin.
And finally at Lani's happy face.
As Lyra stared into those big joyous baby eyes, she finally remembered the old blues song this reminded her of. Suddenly the ripple of dread became a tremor of terror.
Lyra chucked the drawing book across the room and frantically crawled away from Lani until the wall stopped her with a sonorous *TUD*."GET AWAY FROM ME YOU HELL SPAWN!" Lyra howled while making the sing of the cross on herself.
Lani stared at the Christian girl, a little smile playing at the corner of her lips. She took again the violin and the bow in her small hands and started playing. This time the song was different, the pace quick, the sound angry. The faster and furious the song got, the bigger Lani´s grin grew, making Lyra break in a cold sweat.
The tempo became rabid; the music now resembling the scraping of knifes being dragged over a chalkboard. Lyra's blood froze as she looked at the thing's face. Lani's expression had twisted into a savage, sharp toothed smile crowned by a pair of hungry eyes. The scared teen saw a hellish glow in those eyes.
From outside a final rending note could be heard followed by a girl's bloodcurdling wail.
The front door's lock creaked. "Lyra we're home! I hope you like frozen sushi 'cos that's what I got us!" Shouted Lily as she and Lemy entered the apartment with the grocery bags.
"We could have got KFC in place of this fishy bullshit" Protested the young wannabe rocker.
"Kid, new KFC sucks ass and-wait, what the hell happened here?" The blonde woman said stalling at the door. Both of them looked at the chaos that was the living room.
"Did someone break in? Asked the worried boy.
"Lyra! Lyra where the h-Lani!" She found her little girl playing with her letter blocks in the hallway in front of the bathroom door, surrounded by Lyra's instruments and the little portable radio playing music. "Lani are you alright? The young mother said crouching at her daughter's side. The little girl seemed fine."Lani where's Lyra?" The child looked up at her mom with a little smile and pointed at the closed bathroom. Lily got up and began knocking at the door."Lyra are you there!? Open the door!"
"Wait, is that Crossroad playing?" The brunet boy said, picking up the radio."Man this song is older than grandpa. Fuck, is older than most of Royal Woods! What decrepit ass station is this?"
"Lyra!?" Lily placed an ear against the door. From the other side she could hear some unintelligible rambling. She checked the door knob, the door wasn't locked."Lyra I don't care what you're doing in there! I'm about to open this door and you're gonna tell me what the hell happened to my living room!" The blonde said opening the door.
Lyra was there, rocking back and forth on the toilet lid with her knees drawn to her chest, her hands covering her ears. Lily and Lemy stared at her in total confusion. The girl looked at her aunt, then at her brother and finally at that thing.
Lani stopped playing with her blocks to look back at Lyra, giving her a sweet smile, then started rotating the line of letter blocks one by one, her smile changing into a grin of satisfaction as Lyra's eyes grew wider and wider.
The blocks read: ILL GET U LATER