Chapter Nadine Haikal El Agamy, Alexandria 2013
The black gates scraped open as Nadine approached. Behind them, her childhood home sprawled out in all its sullied glory.
Nadine stood for a moment, taking it in. She never thought she’d be back here. For years, she’d dreamt of this villa. In those dreams, she’d walked these grounds as she once had, its ruler and purveyor. The monster at its helm.
Shadows hadn’t stalked her then. If they tried to follow, Nadine would cast them aside without a second glance.
When you don’t question your own soul, Nadine had discovered, shadows have nothing to anchor to. What regrets can they become, when the world is as you will it? What hopes can they manipulate, if no dream is beyond your reach?
That was the trouble with having a daughter like Mina and a husband like Hatem. Their love shined a bright light on all the gaping holes of Nadine’s soul. It forced her to reckon with the rot inside of her.
The minute she began to doubt, the shadows found her.
Nadine climbed the wide marble steps, pausing at the front door.
The Haikal grounds had fallen into disrepair in Nadine’s absence. Ravens perched at the top of the pillars, ruffling their wings in the evening breeze. Branches snapped beneath her shoes, shed from the overgrown date trees swaying high above her.
Someone had left the gate ajar.
Irga’y. Janna’s warning circled, scraping around Nadine’s skull.
She shouldered the iron-wrought door open.
Her footfalls fell like claps of thunder against the marble.
From her purse, Nadine extracted the taser and knife tucked into her purse.
Acquiring a gun in Masr was extremely difficult under the best of circumstances, and Nadine didn’t have the time to find people who’d sell one to her.
As she walked, the memories assaulted her.
Eager children, following Nadine up the stairs, never to return.
Children from struggling families. The ones police wouldn’t dig too deep for, whose parents would feel the loss most acutely.
For those who had nothing, children were their greatest gift. Their loss fed the curse best.
Nadine’s grip on the banister spasmed. She couldn’t let herself get lost in the past. She was a different woman now. The lives she’d taken could never be returned. The least she could do was make sure no more were lost to the Haikal debt.
On the second floor, Nadine found Safa lounging on an armchair, a book balanced on her lap.
“My beloved big sister,” Safa said without glancing up from her book. The only light was a single lamp by her elbow. “Welcome home.”
Nadine ran her finger along a shelf and inspected the dust. “So it isn’t just the outside of the villa falling apart. Can’t hack it on your own, Safa?”
Safa tutted, slinging the book aside. In her late twenties, Safa radiated an untamed beauty.
The long, black curls Nadine and her daughter shared tumbled down her sister’s back, much sleeker than the last time Nadine had seen her.
Nimble, deceptively delicate hands folded over Safa’s knee.
“Surely you didn’t come back just to ask ridiculous questions? ”
“I saw the newsletter those women started. ‘Mothers for Missing Children’,” Nadine mused. “You never did know how to cover your tracks.”
Safa stood, flicking her fingers dismissively over her shoulders as she pulled on a cardigan.
“We both know it’ll lead nowhere. Let them have their fun.
Tell me, how is America? Your daughter would be nine now, right?
” Safa trailed her hand over the high-backed chairs in the sitting room. “Was she worth our mother?”
Nadine kept her gaze fixed on Safa, avoiding the whispering shadows snaking over the walls.
She could never predict what she would witness by looking directly into one.
In this moment, she had a feeling it would be her mother, blood dripping from the end of her robe and pooling around her bare feet.
A pair of scissors protruding from her chest.
“Our mother made her choice,” Nadine said. She should end this pointless conversation before it went any further. Safa was sneaky, manipulative, and Nadine was out of practice. She moved toward Safa slowly, rounding the empty armchair.
“It might have spared your daughter, you know. If she had failed the test, Mama would have let you leave with her. If she had passed, we could have been a family.” Safa neared Nadine, the hatred in her green eyes tainted by a sorrow Nadine understood too well.
Nadine pictured Mina climbing up the stairs, a child trailing behind her. Doomed to feed the curse until her dying days.
Her grip on the knife tightened.
“I made my choice, too,” Nadine said. She swung the knife toward Safa.
In a flash, the second floor pitched into darkness. Safa’s light laugh rang out in the empty. “You’ve been gone too long, Nadine.”
The shadows grew louder, whorls of black dancing in the night. Nadine heard snatches of Mina’s voice, Hatem’s, her mother’s, Janna’s. Calling her name. She left the knife raised, edging back slowly. If she could get the wall behind her, it would be easier to anticipate an attack.
“My daughter is nothing like us,” Nadine snarled. “She would never pay our debt with the blood of others.”
“Are you sure about that?”
In the center of the floor, a staircase appeared.
One of the shadows darted close to the banister, and as Nadine watched, a girl took shape. It took Nadine a minute to place her, and when she did, terror raked its claws across her spine.
It was the same curly-haired girl in slippers Nadine had seen the night she’d escaped.
The girl glanced over her shoulder, and Nadine gasped at the freckles on her temple. They were—but it couldn’t be—
“Mina?”
The teenage version of the child Nadine had left at home climbed the stairs. Nadine forgot about Safa, about the shadows. Her daughter was heading for the door. The same door Nadine had narrowly saved her from nine years ago.
Nadine ran for the stairs. The banister burned under her touch, and she recoiled with a cry.
The shiny marble steps wavered, a mirage undulating in the dark.
Filthy water poured down the steps, a murky tide pounding against Nadine’s legs.
She held her breath against the dizzyingly foul odor and climbed a step.
Her foot slipped. With a splash, she tumbled into the stairs.
Small, gray hands shot out of the filth, grabbing at Nadine. “Mina!” she shouted. The girl didn’t turn around. Nadine threw her knife aside and slapped away the hands. She grabbed the banister, gritting her teeth against the agony sizzling from her burning flesh. Mina couldn’t open the door.
Nadine reached the top of the stairs. She grabbed the girl’s shoulder, but her hand passed straight through her. Panic choked Nadine. “Mina, listen to me. Hear me, somehow. Do not open this door. Turn around.”
The girl reached for the handle. Orange light crept from the bottom of the door.
“Ya umri, please,” Nadine pleaded. She beat her raw fist against the door. “Don’t take my daughter!“
The girl disappeared. Nadine whirled around. Where was Mina? Had she opened the door?
Behind her, Safa leaned against the banister. She kicked aside Nadine’s knife and withdrew a small pistol from the inside of her cardigan. “Mama warned you. Wherever you go, whatever new identity you build, it will follow.”
“It won’t follow Mina,” Nadine said fiercely. “It never touched her. She’s safe.”
“It hasn’t touched her yet.” Safa raised the gun almost lazily, aiming for Nadine’s forehead. “Open the door, sister.”
Nadine balked. “What?”
“Go on. It’s time to face your mistakes.” When Nadine didn’t budge, Safa smiled. “Or I can shoot you where you stand and have a flight booked to Ward, California, before your blood’s gone cold.”
Not a drop of compassion tainted the clear pools of cruelty in Safa’s eyes. Nadine had underestimated her sister. Experience and time had sharpened Safa’s brute savagery into a deadly art, imbued her with Nadine’s skills of deception and their mother’s ruthlessness.
“How do I know you won’t go to Ward even if I open the door?”
“Because your daughter will come to me. The worst I can do in Ward is kill her. If I wait, your Yasmina will find her way to this door. To the test.” Safa shook her head, gazing at Nadine with amazement.
“You don’t see the irony, do you? You fed this curse well, Nadine, and you never thought twice about the lives you devastated.
Why do you think your daughter deserves to be spared when theirs weren’t?
That girl is your debt, and fate will always come to collect what it is owed. ”
“She’s innocent.”
Safa offered her an inscrutable smile. “Aren’t they all?”
Her sister gestured with the gun. “On with it, now.”
Nadine had fed dozens of children to the door behind her. Watched as unadulterated horror tore across their faces, breaking their young minds in two. Between getting shot and opening the door, Nadine would die by gun a million times over.
But she also knew Safa would make good on her promise. If the vision of the curly-haired girl was just a trick, then Mina would be safe in Ward. At least for a while.
It wasn’t much of a choice. Safa had her gun, and the house wasn’t on Nadine’s side. It wouldn’t let her escape a second time.
Nadine took one last, long look at Safa.
The baby sister she’d held in her arms the night Mama laid her at this exact threshold.
It spared Safa, and Nadine remembered feeling a mixture of relief and despair.
Despair, because another Haikal would be consigned to repay Bamba’s debt.
But at least Nadine wouldn’t be expected to shoulder the burden alone.
She turned around. The white door shone, gold hinges gleaming. An invitation. A handle appeared from the door’s frame, round and untarnished.
Nadine’s hand closed around the handle. Her corrupted soul shuddered, shrinking away at the nearness of such a consuming evil.
She would never get to see Mina grow up.
Hatem was like a stone in a river: reliable and steady, but averse to any kind of forward movement.
He wouldn’t bring Mina to Masr out of fear of confronting their families.
He might never even speak of Nadine again, shying away from the pain of her memory.
As for Nadine, this was what she deserved. The doomed tapestry she had sewn for herself with each grieving parent and broken family, now settling over her like a corpse shroud.
Nadine twisted the handle and pulled the door open.
A bright, searing orange light blinded her.
She blinked, adjusting, and what she saw made every horror, every pain and tragedy she had ever encountered seem like a paltry sentence in the page of a children’s book.
Nadine’s careful, calculating mind unraveled.
Spools of her sanity curdled like hair brushed against an open flame.
Nadine Haikal screamed, and screamed, and screamed.
The door slammed shut behind her.