Page 60 of Molt

Lenora stops beside me. “What the fuck?”

Something is different about the jar.

The label.

There is writing beneath the date that wasn’t there before. Fresh black ink bleeding slowly through old paper.

I step closer and she grips my arm. Neither of us acknowledges it.

We read the words together.

YOU FOUND HER TOO EARLY.

Lenora’s fingers tighten around me. “August?”

I stare at the message. At the impossible fresh ink. At the preserved piece of her body floating behind the glass.

Then the specimen moves.

Once. A tiny twitch.

Lenora screams.

The skin inside the jar unfolds slowly. Like something waking from a very long sleep. And pressed into the preserved flesh, where no mark existed before, is the faint shape of a mouth…smiling at us.

Chapter 5- Lenora

The mouth in the jar has my teeth. Not the teeth I have now.

Different ones. Older ones.

One bottom tooth slightly overlaps the other. The left canine has the tiniest chip at the tip.

I know I’ve never seen that mouth before.

But my body knows it.

Something inside me twists with recognition so sharp it almost hurts.

August goes completely still beside me.

That scares me more than the mouth.

“What is it?”

He doesn’t answer.

“August.”

His eyes stay fixed on the jar.

Then the mouth opens.

Black liquid leaks between the teeth slowly.

Thick enough that it doesn’t dissolve into the preservative right away. It curls through the jar in dark ribbons while the skin inside twitches.

I grip August’s arm. “Tell me that’s not really a fucking mouth.”