An ocean landscape with its sands and its endless salty waters, its vast potential for mystery and storm and respite and heat stretched side to side no more. There were trees, now—evergreens thick and snow frosted, hoary trunks and branches peeking through blue bristles and mounds of white. The light was soft, here, playing hide and seek amongst the upper layers but touching less and less of the inner forest down to the undergrowth, where the hibernating life forms were too dense, too layered upon one another and within themselves in their fur and fragment and fold. Perhaps some animal blood stirred at the sound of a passing engine, but no sign of life appeared in these telluric depths, in spite of the cornflower blue skies and white-gold sunlight peeping through the triangles of space allowed by the branches clustering above.

Most of the northward drive had been marked by contemplative and introspective silence. A somber mood draped throughout the vehicle's innards as if the car were a hearse, transporting bodies who'd half-a-year earlier lost what'd qualified them as "alive." The boys listened to music, mostly, scrolled their socials, tried to take themselves back to who they'd been before their summer vacation. For the most part, they'd mercifully retained little of what'd actually happened up until nearly a week before the accident, and of the accident itself, they recalled absolutely nothing. Their memories were those of adolescent boys whose whole worlds were presumptuously yet rather innocently self-centered, the stuff of blithe instant gratification and adrenaline-inducing impulsivity. More liminal than absolute, their heads and hearts were malleable enough, still, to make enough sense of the past summer's happenings that they were able to fit the events neatly enough into their understanding of the world. If in the future either boy suffered a shudder when shadows crossed in certain patterns, or if he wondered at the tingling in his fingertips or woke with fleeting nightmares, these states would be only temporary . . . hardly worth discussing, especially with one another. Whether their interior lives would be somehow shaped by one bizarre summer that may or may not have actually ever happened and which they might for better or worse never entirely remember—who could tell? In fact, if it hadn't been for the accident, neither would've thought much of the summer of their fifteenth year at all.

As it was . . .

Everything had changed, now.

That last morning at their South Carolina summer destination had dawned idyllic, beach grasses slow-dancing in a warm breeze, pastels painting sea and sky in sugar-sweet colors. Coming-to amidst a derelict pile of rubble in a vast, meadowy expanse off a two-lane road physically no worse for the wear, the twins had put aside their clouded, bewildered thoughts to embrace one another. There'd been almost no conversation before Oliver spotted Ramona's doll, Bloomy, sitting primly atop a particular pile of debris. They'd dug, tossed aside clumps of earth and mortar and broken bits of colorful wares, and within moments reached a dark pocket of air and space, where they'd found the child curled up like a mudskipper. There'd been hugs and disbelief, though no talk about what might've happened, disorientation and some degree of amnesia at work in their minds. Before much of anything else could be uncovered or discovered, sirens had come wailing down the road, bringing with them emergency medical and rescue services no doubt drawn by whatever had formed the massive smoking hole in the ground, which the trio of young people hadn't even realized they'd been standing inside of.

"We're almost there, kids," their driver called. "It's damned cold today, so make sure you've got your mittens and hats. I don't need anyone losing fingers or ears, you got that?"

Ivan, who sat in the passenger seat, nodded and began to pull on his fingerless mittens, noticing the side-eye Rudy gave him. "I need to be able to text, still," Ivan shrugged.

Rudy shook his head, tapped the steering wheel. "Teenagers. I'm still trying to understand you!"

Laughing quietly, Ivan warmed a bit. Rudy wasn't so bad, really, and Charleston was a million times better than Chicago, he thought. Oliver wasn't in total agreement, but then, they'd been at odds a lot, lately.

In the back seat, Oliver stared out his window at the trees, which had begun to grow sparser. The sunlight dappled more fleetingly, flickered at his eyes in an almost playful manner, and some black, darting image of a hollow, a watery hollow, full of light-play and echo and yellow mucousy orifices flashed through the boy's brain—

He closed his eyes and turned aside, focused on his breathing. Such notions seldom overwhelmed him. He was unsure why they came, but they were less and less frequent. The therapist Rudy had him and his siblings seeing was helping, at least, and being in a new school had helped, too. He didn't play basketball anymore, was focusing more on his academics; Rudy had gotten him interested in biology, specifically in animals that work together in communities or almost as one living thing. They'd had a big conversation about the rat king one night, that gross freak of nature that'd brought them to the beach that summer. Rudy had explained that he'd taken the specimen to meet with a collector, brought along his assistant Jonah, and somehow Oliver's dad, Arthur, had missed them, thought something had happened to them . . . but nevermind that part. Rudy's research had been focused on the rat king's potential as an evolutionarily purposeful act, a blundering one no doubt but an attempt at a form of modularity, when many creatures acted together as one; few actually became one, but some sea creatures, such as siphonophores, were close if not already so. The conversation had fascinated Oliver, and Rudy had been only too happy to supplement the interest with reading materials.

Oliver wished his father knew, though. His dad would've been proud to know one of his sons was gaining interest in something sciency. There was still a possibility! Oliver hoped every day something would turn up. He and Ivan talked about it all the time. Without any living family, they'd been fortunate their father's friend Rudy had not only offered to take them in but also been a great guy. Normal, anyway, and kind, even. Understanding.

Still, it wasn't the same.

"We're here, kids," Rudy stated, turning off the rural road and pulling the car across a snow-plowed drive through an open gate, part of a fence with Private Property and Do Not Trespass signs along its extending arms. Beyond that rather unwelcoming entryway lay a silent, respectable looking house and some other snow-capped buildings, the Canadian winter having dropped its full blanket of isolationism across the place. As Rudy directed the car toward the house, a bluff, congenial older man with vaguely reminiscent features exited through a side door bundled up like a lumberjack and waved.

Car parked, all four out, snow boots crunching, introductions made in voices strange against the snow-muffled world—but the moment the gentleman named himself as Martin Quaxton, Ramona Curry balked.

As the gentleman offered hot drinks and a warm fireside to any who followed, the girl tugged at her guardian's elbow. Rudy glanced down at the child, who bundled in her red hooded coat and scarf and mittens, dark hair and snow-white skin, looked something like Little Red Riding Hood wide-eyed and fearful of a wolf. "What is it, Ramona? You going to be all right?"

The girl bit her lower lip, watched her brothers follow the stranger toward his house. Unlike Ivan and Oliver, she retained every detail of the summer they'd spent in a town that didn't exist. While everyone else seemed to think their beach home had inexplicably been the exploded building (for where else could they have possibly been living all that time?) Ramona knew. And so she understood, too, that her fear of this man named Quaxton was irrational. The thing that had tormented her family had not been named Quaxton. That name was the name of a man whose property her aunt had lived on. This entirely innocent man. She knew it, and yet hearing the name again from this person's own mouth had startled her.

"I'm fine, Rudy. I'm sorry," she whispered, taking small steps in her brothers' prints.

Rudy frowned. He wasn't sure that girl was ever going to be fine. For one thing, she wouldn't stop carrying that doll with her everywhere. Everywhere. Wouldn't let it out of her sight. Of course that was understandable, considering. It wasn't her most concerning behavior . . . no. And he hoped this trip would be good for her as well as her brothers.

The children hadn't even known they'd had an aunt, apparently. They'd not known their mother had a sister, a twin, no less, so when word had arrived from this Quaxton man that he'd heard of the family's plight and had found a trove of their recently deceased aunt's belongings, thought the children might want to have knowledge and memory of her, Rudy had thought long and hard about the potential benefits and risks before hauling them up to Ottawa on this road trip. He knew that the more time that passed, the less likely it was the childrens' parents would be found. In his mind, anyway, Lilia and Arthur were dead. No human remains had been located in the debris of the explosion that had claimed the family's rental, and though the investigation was technically ongoing, Rudy'd had enough private conversation with his connections to know the authorities had no fucking clue what'd caused it and were chalking it up to a gas leak. Not only that, but they had no possible explanation for how the children had survived let alone sustained nothing more than a few scratches. Everything else would've been absolutely incinerated by such a blast, so unless the two adults hadn't been in the building when it'd occurred, they were surely long gone.

So any connections to any relatives dead or alive, Rudy had rationalized, would have to in some way hearten the children.

After warming themselves with cocoa and coffee and a fireside, Quaxton got down to the business for which they'd arrived. He led the travelers back into the wintry world and toward the far end of his property, where a small shed at length came into view near the bank of a glassy frozen pond. "I forgot about this shack myself," their guide told them, scraping a bit of frost off one of the windows. "Bunch of plant life and rubbish grown up around it. Couldn't even see the thing til winter came and the leaves fell. All too happy to let you collect your family's belongings." He pushed the shed door to loosen it, fumbled to find the right key, and unlocked it. "I've got a trailer. Think I can hook it up to my ATV; it's tracked and all. Somewhere in the barn, I think. I'll get it hooked up and over here so you can collect what you want."

"Tell you what," Rudy hastened, "Ivan and I will give you a hand, Mr. Quaxton while we let the other two start taking a look."

"All right then, come on," the gruff fellow acquiesced, waving Ivan and Rudy off with him toward the barn.

Before walking away, Rudy met Oliver's eye. He nodded, knowingly, as if to say watch your sister, and the boy in turn looked down at Ramona. He took hold of the girl's mittened hand, and she squeezed, smiled, then pushed open the croaking old door, sending a snow-shower down atop their heads.

Dust motes and unidentifiable rustlings flickered about in the poor light. There was no switch or bulb in sight, and so the contents of the storage area were swathed in dusky shadows. Nevertheless, the two stepped inside and shivered when the interior of the place reminded them (subconsciously or consciously) of kuntskammers and underwater playrooms. It was filled with piles of indiscriminate items and shelves of junk and knicknacks, boxes and empty easels, trash bags and shopping bags. Though they moved slowly while they explored, unsure as they were what exactly they should look for, Ramona more than once in the corner of her eye thought she'd seen a little girl near her age with dark curled hair peeping at her from ashen shadows only to turn and find some mundane artifact had tricked her.

What exactly was in that shed? The strange remnants of a sad woman's existence. Much of what was there made little impression upon the children, old clothing and music collections, uninteresting books and boxes of photographs of people long forgotten or never known, outdated magazines and dried-up paints, notebooks filled with scribbles and poetry and random artifacts like plates and plastic cups, flower pots and pencils, coasters and empty bottles, glass pipes and old makeup, souvenirs from boring locations and other such meaningless memorabilia. But beneath a blanket with characters from Alice in Wonderland embroidered in psychedelic patterns across it, Oliver unearthed a giant box, a refrigerator box, painted to look like a puppet theater. Black and white, no lights, too well-constructed to be an original, this replica nevertheless read L.I.L.I.'s Circus! in bold painted letters across the side.

Approaching the theater with a swift-beating heart, Ramona traced the L's and I's. "For Lilia and Ibane," she mentioned more to herself than to Oliver, though he watched his sister in curiosity. "Mom and her sister used to do little shows."

"What kind of shows?"

Ramona glanced at her brother as if through a glass of water, as if she'd almost forgotten he was there. "Puppet shows," she said hesitantly.

Oliver smiled, shrugged, thought nothing of the comment and began to sift through a nearby pile of paintings. Ramona would've turned back to the theater, then, had not the boy suddenly cried, "Look! What about these? These are actually pretty good!"

Elmer the Elephant Man read an oil-painted ribbon beneath a colorful image of an enormous fellow whose top buttons were nearly bursting though he little noticed as he grinned a jolly grin. Another image Oliver produced from the pile showed an eerily flawless woman wrapped in a nest of indigo tentacles that sprouted from her head—Clio the Sea Siren, her title read. And another of a dark, frightening man covered in black markings, knives in his hands—Jaska the Painted Man. There were over two dozen such images, so many paintings, many unfinished, many more half-destroyed, but all crafted with a dexterous hand, a gifted hand.

"The circus," Ramona sighed, turning Bloomy toward herself and looking the doll in its prim white face. She narrowed her eyes at it, watched her breath come out in trembly little clouds and wondered. "You love the circus," she said so quietly her brother didn't hear her. Then she wrapped her mittened hands around the back of Bloomy's oval-shaped head and pressed her thumbs against the black-stitched eyes, hard. So hard her shoulders shook, so hard she could feel her thumbs meet her forefingers at the back of the yarn-and-fabric head through the stuffing.

"You ready to start piling up what you want?" Rudy's voice from the doorway startled Ramona so much that she nearly dropped Bloomy.

"Yeah, sure," Oliver answered for the two of them. "Not most of it, probably. Some of the art is cool, though. Ivan can help me look."

Golden light suddenly illuminated the space; Quaxton apologized for forgetting to set up his lantern first thing. He hooked up a couple of space heaters, got them running nicely, and said he'd leave them to it.

For nearly an hour, the four worked their way through the materials in the shed and, as Oliver had predicted, ended up wanting very little of it. Much of what was there was literal trash, and what wasn't trash was of no value to two teenage boys and an eleven-year-old girl, especially because it lacked obvious or lasting connection to the person to whom it'd belonged, this aunt whom they'd never known, anyway. The paintings they'd decided to hang onto were originals, and Rudy agreed when Ivan suggested they may be worth something to someone, some day. But there was, of course, a truer reason for keeping those artworks, though none of the the three spoke of it with one another: Ivan and Oliver and Ramona—each of them felt something when laying eyes upon those surreal swirls of colorful and freakish characters, those delightful and grotesque artifacts painted in striking and somehow familiar detail. What tugged at them, those places behind their hearts, deep in the dark of their bellies? What invisible strings hooked them to those artworks? They could only assume the feelings had something to do with their supposed aunt, the fact that she'd painted them, and this being the closest connection to her, the paintings were the only real things the children knew they must keep.

Beyond those, however, only a select few artifacts made their way into the trailer, and by late afternoon, Rudy had packed the trunk and was ready to head back to the hotel with his wards. The boys returned to their seats in the car, but as Ramona climbed up into her own, Bloomy under her arm, she stumbled when her boot slipped against some ice. Fortunately Quaxton, who'd come to see them off, caught the girl just before a nasty fall. As he helped her regain her footing, propped her up in her seat, handed her the somber doll she'd dropped in the snow, the man suddenly caught his breath quick, swallowed his saliva the wrong way, and began to cough.

"Everything all right?" Rudy looked up from brushing fresh-fallen snow from the hood.

Quaxton shut Ramona's door, brought his coughing to a controllable level, and nodded.

But Rudy called his bluff. He rounded the front of the vehicle, approached Quaxton. All three Currys sealed safely in the heating car, he offered a grim expression. "You saw them, huh?" He pursed his mouth, looked askance, felt the need to explain though no one had asked for it. "The girl. She—she's attached to them. Can't say why but . . . she's not well, you understand."

Quaxton raised a bare hand, no mittens necessary for a man used to such weather. "No need. She's been through a lot, if I've heard it true, so it's only normal—"

"No, it's weird. I know it, and you know it. They're the freakiest fucking things I've ever seen in my life. We can't go anywhere without looks and—" Rudy cut himself off. "Well. It's not about me. It's about her." He turned toward the house, the barn, the pristine, pure white silence of the fluffy flakes falling around them. He sniffed. "You know, what you don't read on the internet or hear on the news," he added quietly, "is that when the boys found the girl, she was lying half-awake, eating a . . . eating the head off a still moving fish. Some weird type of fish never seen this far up on—" He stopped once more, rubbed his forehead, sighed. "Those were with her, those two. Whatever she . . . whatever she experienced . . . somehow . . ." Rudy gazed through the window at the melancholy child staring absently at the doll on her lap, and a familiar knot formed within his gut. "Well." He clapped a hand on Quaxton's shoulder, looked right at the man. "I'd be all right with it, after all," he admitted, "if I could only get her to stop calling them mom and dad."

Resigned, Rudy muttered his thanks and goodbye, and then he left Quaxton standing in confusion, got in his car, reminded the kids to buckle up, and took off. As he pulled the car out of the gates leading onto Quaxton's property, Rudy adjusted his rearview mirror in order to better keep an eye on Ramona and the two hideously frightening marionette puppets she'd strapped into the middle seat between her and Oliver, each nearly life-sized, one a half-nude female form covered in bristles and tangled black ribbons, the other a crowned male with a huge gut, twisted limbs, and a weird rat that occasionally tried to move across it. Worst of all, though, were the things' eyes, dilated and popping, often almost seeping at the edges . . . as if somewhere within those heads . . . calliope music played . . .