Chapter 2: The Welcome Mat of Lies

Chapter 2: The Welcome Mat of Lies

The doorbell chimed, a cheerful, two-note sound that was utterly at odds with the frantic drumming in Dahlia’s ears. For a heartbeat, she considered turning and running. Vanishing back into the life she’d known, a life of books and quiet grief, and pretending Shelby’s last letter was the product of a mind ravaged by illness. But the cold, rhythmic thrumming in her sternum was a constant reminder, a metronome counting down to a deadline she couldn't afford to miss. The alien weight of the dental plate against the roof of her mouth was a second, sharper truth.

The blue door swung open.

The man standing there was exactly as handsome as a father from a storybook. He was in his late forties, with a warm, easy smile that seemed to invite trust. His hair was perfectly styled, his clothes expensive but casual. He looked like the kind of man who sold luxury cars or high-end real estate, someone who could convince you of anything. But his eyes… his eyes were cold. They were chips of ice in an otherwise welcoming face, and as they swept over Dahlia, they held not the shock of a long-lost father, but the quiet satisfaction of an investor checking on his asset.

“Hello?” he said, his voice a smooth, practiced baritone.

“I… I’m looking for John Thorne,” Dahlia managed, her own voice sounding thin and reedy.

The man’s smile widened, but it didn’t reach those calculating eyes. “You’ve found him.” He paused, a flicker of something predatory in his gaze. “And you, I suspect, are Dahlia.”

Before she could process how he knew her name, a woman appeared at his side, moving with an unnerving, fluid grace. Shelby’s letter had said Mary was granted eternal youth, but the words didn’t capture the sheer wrongness of it. She didn’t look like a well-preserved woman in her late forties. She looked like a twenty-eight-year-old, frozen in time. Her skin was flawless, her eyes wide and luminous. She was beautiful, but it was the beauty of a porcelain doll, perfect and utterly devoid of warmth.

“Oh, John,” Mary breathed, her hand flying to her perfect mouth. “It’s her. After all these years. It’s really her.”

This was the moment of truth. Dahlia’s deepest, most desperate desire was for Shelby to have been wrong. She wanted this to be a tragic misunderstanding, a chance for a reunion, however painful. The scene playing out before her was a perfect imitation of that wish. They ushered her inside, their words a torrent of soft-spoken regret and astonished joy.

“We never thought… we never dared to hope you’d find us,” John said, guiding her into a living room that looked like it had been lifted from a magazine. Everything was cream and beige, sterile and untouchable.

“We’ve dreamed of this day,” Mary added, her eyes gleaming with what could have been unshed tears. “Your aunt… she took you, and we never knew where. We were devastated.”

The obstacle was their performance. It was flawless. They offered her tea, asked about her studies, mourned Shelby’s passing with carefully pitched sadness. They spun a tale of youthful mistakes, of being overwhelmed and making a terrible choice they’d regretted every single day. For a terrifying twenty minutes, Dahlia felt her resolve crumbling. The ticking in her chest seemed to quiet, replaced by a confusing ache of what-if. The sharp points of the eyeteeth pressed against her lower lip, feeling like a monstrous accusation. Was she here to murder two grieving parents who had made a mistake two decades ago?

She clutched the silver locket beneath her sweater, its familiar coolness a desperate anchor to Shelby’s warning. She forced herself to play along, to answer their questions with half-truths, her mind racing to analyze every word, every gesture. She was an English Lit student, after all. She knew how to dissect a text, how to find the subtext beneath the surface. And here, the subtext was screaming.

They never asked how she found them. They never asked why she’d come today, on the eve of her twentieth birthday. Their grief was a performance, their love a script.

The turning point came when John leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his charming smile firmly in place. The friendly interrogation was over; the real one was beginning.

“Shelby,” he said, his voice laced with synthetic sympathy. “She must have been a wonderful woman to raise such a poised young lady. Did she ever speak of us?”

Here it was. A direct question. Dahlia’s heart hammered against her ribs. Lying to a stranger was one thing. Lying to this man felt different, more dangerous. She thought of Shelby’s words: the ability to know a lie when he hears one. This was a test.

“No,” Dahlia said, the lie tasting like ash in her mouth. “She never mentioned you. She told me my parents died in a car crash.”

The air in the room changed. It was subtle, almost imperceptible. John’s smile didn’t falter. Mary didn’t move. But a switch had been flipped. The mask of the warm, regretful salesman dropped from John’s eyes, replaced by the cold, flat certainty of a predator that has just confirmed the nature of its prey.

He chuckled, a soft, chilling sound that held no humor. “A car crash. How dramatic of her.” He didn’t challenge the lie. He didn’t have to. The way he looked at her, the sudden, absolute confidence in his posture, told her everything. He knew. He knew she was lying, and he knew that she knew he knew.

The proof, the first terrifying confirmation of Shelby’s insane story, sent a jolt of ice through Dahlia’s veins. The ticking in her chest roared back to life, loud and urgent.

The surprise came from Mary. Her doll-like face, which had been a mask of maternal longing, sharpened into something else entirely. Something hungry. Her bright, intense eyes dropped from Dahlia’s face and fixed, with unnerving focus, on her mouth.

“You have a lovely smile, dear,” Mary said, her voice a silken purr. “But there’s a little… gap. Right there.” She gestured vaguely towards her own canine tooth. “Did you ever get that fixed?”

Dahlia’s blood ran cold. She felt a phantom pressure on her gums, as if Mary’s gaze were a physical touch, probing the empty spaces Shelby had designed. The spaces now filled with her aunt’s prepared bone.

“No time for orthodontics, I suppose,” Dahlia mumbled, trying to keep her smile from looking like a snarl.

The trap was no longer hidden. The welcome mat of lies had been pulled away, and she was standing on the precipice. John stood up, his charisma now feeling like a physical pressure in the room.

“Enough of this sad talk,” he announced, his voice booming with false cheer. “We’ve been waiting for you for twenty years, Dahlia. We even kept your room for you. Come, let us show you. We prepared it just for you.”

He gestured down a hallway off the living room. Dahlia froze. She had been watching them, observing the house, since she arrived. That hallway hadn’t been there a minute ago. Where there had been a solid, cream-colored wall decorated with a bland landscape painting, there was now a dark, open doorway, beckoning her into a deepening shadow.