Summary: Sixteen-year-old Margaret "Marr" Campbell has grown up in a family full of secrets. Memories of death, encounters with talking vermin, and flight through dark, dark caves haunt her dreams at night, memories her family insist are made up by her colourful imagination. When her brother and sister mysteriously disappear one night, leaving nothing but an open vent and a swarm of roaches behind, she runs away to find them - and to prove her memories were real.


"Uh, nope. Busy on Thursday as well. I have to go to the dress fitting."

She listened for a moment to the confused, upset sounds coming out of her phone.

"No, Ben, you cannot go with me. As bridesmaid, I have to spend some quality alone time with my sister. And besides, if you come with me then I won't be able to complain about that lovey-dovey Edison wannabe tagging along everywhere anymore." Margaret clamped her phone firmly between her ear and shoulder, rolling her eyes as she flipped through yet another section of the florist's magazine-type thing. She hated daisies. She hated daisies, why did they have to be put so liberally through the brochure? Could they not just dedicate one or two pages to those horrid flowers and just be done with it?

"LIZZIE!" she yelled, dog-earing a page containing several shades of pink wild roses.

Her sister emerged from the bathroom at long-last, wrapped in a white towel. "God, Marr, I thought you were dying in here."

"No, sorry – Ben, stop listing days, I'm literally busy for the whole month. Wha – oh, I'm busy on Saturday. We're meeting the photographer." She nodded animatedly and gave her sister the thumbs-up. "What? No! Lizzie, you need me for that, don't you? " Marr shot her sister the biggest puppy eyes she could muster.

"Marr, the only day you're not free is Thursday. You don't have to go try out cakes or choose the flowers or, well, anything else." Lizzie said matter-of-factly.

Shut up, Marr mouthed angrily to her older sister, cringing, baring her teeth. Lizzie grinned and went into their shared bedroom to change.

"No, no, she was just telling me that I absolutely have to be there. Ben, they won't be able to do anything without me. Lizzie's a maths freak and Jed is an Edison wannabe who drools. Well, I think he drools. He definitely looks like the drooling type. Oh, what's that, Lizzie? You need me to go grocery shopping? Right now? Ben, I have to go." Marr completed unceremoniously, hanging up without waiting for her boyfriend of five months to respond just as Lizzie walked in, dressed in jeans and a large, faded red t-shirt, her damp hair loose.

"God, what did he do to you? You're so rude." Her tone was mocking, and she hadn't lost the grin.

"I'm just getting sick of him. Too clingy. I always tell myself I'm gonna dump 'im the next time I see him, but them his face makes me feel sad and I put it off, so now I'm just avoiding seeing him."

"But he's the one who you were crying about two months ago, because you could never be together? The one you were calling 'my love'?"

"Um, no. That was actually a Vampire Diaries character, but thanks for the attention."

"Damn, Marr, if you ever have a meaningful relationship, I'll be expecting a talking rat at my wedding." Lizzie laughed, clearly meaning her statement as a joke, but there was something in her tone that made her sound wistful – almost.

"Well, at least we know that your wedding will be pest-free?" Marr offered, falling back onto the cushions.

"I guess." Lizzie lost the grin. "Pests."

She said nothing more for at least an hour. An hour - that was the extent of her silences. She never did have it as bad as Gregor.


Later that day, Marr went to visit the graveyard – like she did every Tuesday. Specifically, she visited her family's plot. There rested her grandmother and her father, both of whom she did not remember, both of whom she greatly wished to know. They had both died at around the same time - when she had been a little over three. Her grandma due to extensive heart problems – that, at least, she knew. When she thought of her grandmother, she glimpsed a blur of memories. A sick woman who used to wrap her up in a patchwork quilt and sing her songs.

She did not remember many songs from her childhood.

Her father, on the other hand, was a bit of a mystery to her. All she could remember was the smell of drop biscuits with grape jelly, a man with white, white hair - Santa Claus had begun to unnerve her after his passing, but it was all the same to her. Christmas was not a very happy time for her or for her family.

The first long word she had ever learned was 'medicine'. That was because her father had had some, a jar of it, which he needed to stay lucid and healthy. When the medicine ran out, well. That was when the memories of the smell of drop biscuits ended.

There, sandwiched between the graves of her grandmother and her father, was an empty plot. Her mother had purchased it shortly after her father had died. She never did mention who she thought would need it. It would have been pointless - it was rather obvious.


As she was leaving the graveyard, by sundown, she saw the familiar shape of her brother approaching. He was still in his uniform, gun gleaming in its holster. Marr speed-walked the few paces between them, heels clicking on the pavement, and threw her arms around his neck, an affectionate gesture that she reserved for only her brother.

"Boots. I knew I'd find you here." Gregor said, once Marr had broken her embrace. The name of Boots was another exception she made for Gregor. She had even forbidden Lizzie from calling her that, claiming that it was a much too a childish name for her. But really, she felt like her brother had deserved the right to call her by her toddler nickname, even well into her teenage years. As for her mother...her mother didn't have much to say to her these days.

Maybe it was because he had earned it.

Maybe it was because Marr hoped he would, one day, share of his secrets with her.

God knew her brother had more secrets than anyone in her family. Scars covered his entire body – he tried to hide them, wearing long sleeves and long pants even in the hottest of summers, but Marr had seen them often, running into his room as a child while he was changing – she never had any regard for others' privacy before entering puberty herself. He had rows of round scars winding across his arms, five large gashes on his chest, long scars wrapping around his legs and forearms, and she wouldn't even get started on the deep cuts, practically everywhere. The deepest by far were on both his palms. Whenever Marr asked what had caused the scars, he would tell her that he had been in a car crash.

Of course, of course she would never believe that; never accept it as the truth. Something had happened, while she had still been in diapers, which had traumatized her mother and siblings terribly, both physically and mentally.

And, determined as she was, her faith that she would one day find out was starting to waver. Perhaps they'd forgotten themselves.

"You were looking for me? Is something wrong?"

Gregor gulped, unconsciously, at the question. "No, no. You just left your phone back home, and Lizzie's been trying to reach you. You left without telling her and she was getting worried."

"I come here every Tuesday. You'd think she'd stop panicking. I'm not going to be kidnapped."

Another nervous, likely unconscious gulp.

"Don't say that."

Marr was about to ask why, but quickly changed her mind. Questions, she had learned, were never good. Not in her family. "All right. It's getting late, we should go home."


If there was one consistent thing In Marr's memory, it was the apartment building.

Not the actual rooms themselves – their mom had cracked after their father had died and announced they were moving out. But due to the lack of reasonably-priced apartments in New York City, they were forced to relocate in the same apartment building – only two floors up. It was just as well. They were now on the same floor as Mrs. Cormaci, a seventy-something year-old woman with cholesterol and a bad leg. Despite her incredible nosiness, Marr liked her. She was the closest thing she had to a grandmother, and her cooking was a thing of wonder. Plus, she was good for stories. Both for listening to Marr's naratives and for telling them herself, and sometimes Marr thought that Mrs. Cormaci knew more than she was letting on – about what had traumatized Gregor and Lizzie so badly.

Gregor didn't live with them anymore. Sure, he still had his old room and stayed two nights a week, but he had his own place now – moved out once he'd earned his police officer's badge.

Marr missed him although she saw him every day, and it would become worse now, because soon Lizzie would get married and move out, too, leaving her all alone with her erratic, overworked mother.

Marr wasn't very easily scared, but truly, she was terrified of what their mother had become. She still worked two jobs - wouldn't let Gregor help pay the rent no matter how many times he insisted (Lizzie was still in college, working on her bachelor's degree in mathematics) - and was only home for a few brief hours in the night and early morning, wandering and wandering and either crying with mournful shrieks that had the neighbours knocking on the walls or making no noise at all, just lying there with damp, open eyes, sometimes making Marr believe that she had finally passed away, because at fifty years old, Grace looked older and sicker than Mrs. Cormaci ever could.

And there were the scars – when their mom wasn't sleeping, working or crying, she would be religiously covering up her blue, bulging, bruise-like scars with a wide array of cheap makeup products.

Marr had learned not to ask what they were.

Indeed, crying was how they found her that evening, too. Lizzie was kneeling at her head, beside the couch, crooning "Mama, don't cry, it's okay," and stroking her cheek, carefully avoiding the purple disfigurement.

Marr then made a beeline for the bathroom, planning to lock herself in for a long shower, until her mother had definitely fallen asleep. She never did know what do to when others were crying – it made her feel panicked and uncomfortable – and she always figured it was best to allow Lizzie and Gregor to comfort her.

Once she'd locked the door with a resounding click, Marr promptly discarded her clothes – short white sundress, lace undergarments of the same snowy colouring – and kicked off her black heeled sandals. She released her brown locks from their high ponytail and stepped into the tiny, steaming shower, praying that there was enough hot water to last her at least a half-hour.

Over the comforting thrumming of the water, she could hear voices - Lizzie and Gregor's, arguing loudly. She tried to make out the words, frowning slightly – her brother and sister never fought.

"…have doctors, can treat her better…..don't even know…..wrong….worse…."

"…..going, you know….place is like…..make her worse…haven't…down there…..years…"

Marr stopped the shower just in time to hear what was definitely her sister sighing.

"Fine. I'm not going. But remember – it's your fault when she dies."

There were no more voices after that. Marr tried turning the water on again, but it had suddenly gone freezing and she yelped and swore and turned the knob off with a slam, jumping out immediately to wrap a towel around herself.

There was no noise that night.