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“Come on, Mom.”

The twins voices echo in the copse of trees, they are impatient with me and my limp and my cane. I have been slowing them down for the entire forty minute hike to what my sister and I always thought of as our secret place.

“Moooooooooooooom-“

“Can we go please?”

My Twins speak over and through each other and I call back finally, once I can see the tops of their Afro puffs through the foliage.

“Okay, go ahead. I’ll be there in a minute.”

I have to stop walking and rub my hip absently, it doesn’t really hurt all that much. I’m tired and nervous, so I rub and rub.  I wonder if my sister’s hip hurts too. She answers in my ear, her voice a watery echo. The dull pain makes me miss her more.

"You know it does Rabbit. Sort of."

I smile a little and whisper back.

“I know Bunny."

As I get moving the vision of my girls is a replica of a photo in my memory. Two little black girls, with deep smooth brown skin with their heads- our heads bent close to tell secrets. Tears fill my eyes so I avert my gaze. 
I look around and inhale deeply. It smells the same. Fertile green, dank moist soil and a breath of something foul and sweet, the smell of The Worlds. The chunks of concrete vaults and pipes still lay scattered as if thrown by some giant child. This is the place where the distinctions between our world and The Worlds is thin and draws . 
When Ayo laughs I look up to see her, cradling something in her cupped palms and offering it to her sister. Nailah gasps.

"Mom, Mom, come look."
I know it is something not of this world and dead. I picture something alien and wet, oozing pearlescent ichor reeking of rotting candy and fertile green death. I force a smile.

"Bring it to me, I have to sit down."

Concern wrinkles their brows.

"I'm fine, just a little wonky."

They gallop to me, reminding me for all the world like gangly baby giraffes gamboling across golden savanna land. The dread eases up, my sweet babies can't be coming to me with my nightmares in their hands. They stand close and open their palms. It is a mouse- just a young plump trembling mouse.

Ayo speaks first as always.

"Mom look. It's so cute. It licked my hand."

"Can we keep her, uh, him, them?"

Nailah's voice is hopeful. Of the two of them she is most like my sister. The little mother, the one to offer kisses for boo boos and magical elixirs made of juice and sparkling water. I feel my sister sigh. I look at them.

"No you can't keep a wild mouse. What if they have a family?"

Their heart shaped lips turn down at the corners. I think Ayo might cry, she is most like me. Sensitive as a fern turning her fronds away from the lightest touch. My sister whispers in my ear.

"Poor Rabbit, don't cry."

I answer silently while my daughters consult with each other.
"I won't Bunny."

The girls nod and make their way away carefully. I breathe easy, Mama was wrong. It is not in the blood. They are so gentle; they leave the mouse under a clump long grass where no predators will get it.

"Bye mouse."

"We'll light a candle for you."

Their soft well wishes lull me. I lean against the tree at my back. I pull out my phone ready to shoot photos and videos to send to their Daddy. By mutual consent they decide to build a little fairy place as they have named it. They gather white and yellow flowers; braid the long grass to weave into mats for the fairies to sleep on. I want to feel clear and safe. I don't want to think of my Mother sitting nearly in this same spot, her light brown eyes blazing as she watched my sister and I climb and make epic pretend.

I remember her rocking and muttering. They way her hot eyes jiggled in their sockets when she spoke of Them.
They have never been our Gods, the ones we all- all of us twin daughters of twin daughters- know their names and abysmal tongues.

We know the prayers of the Dread God who sleeps.

I shake off the memory before the bad one comes. I pray silently that neither of my girls to lose themselves or their sister. When Nailah deposits a crown of limp white flowers on my head it scatters the dark thoughts. While I was dreaming they had let down their hair. Their fluffed out Afros are full of flowers, I want to admonish them but I can't.

"Be you good fae or bad?"

I use the old crone voice that cracks them up. Squealing with laughter they dash around the clearing chanting,

"Bad fairies. We be the baddest fairies."

They freestyle and cackle, I have been blessed. I watch my wild feral babies dance and create their own little universe of fairies and booty shaking and rapping. I want this moment to stretch out forever.  As they pass one of the pipes they stop as one and their heads tilt to the left. Watching them, I know, I know what is happening.

My sister and I were no older, wild things, feral baby daemons as our Mother said mostly out of fondness. Our heads did not turn to that pipe, it was the other one. The vault with the mini-door carved out of it.  Different portal, same view.

We knew that antediluvian darkness. Our grandmother told us the story when we were babies and I will have to tell it to my own babies. My innocent girls with the stars and the reflection of The Elder God in their dark eyes, the dark words perch on their lips.

“Girls!”

I clap my hands and they are released easily from their first glimpse.

“Mom do you smell-“

“weird candy?”

They move away from the pipe and the smell I know so well, that strange blue raspberry sweet rot smell of The Worlds and Our Dead God.

They settle at my feet, their hair still huge and fluffy, full of flowers. I want to tell them a pretty story, I want to put them into the story as warrior princesses who save the world and marry the dragons. I want to but it would be irresponsible. If my own Mother had told the story to my sister and I this way, perhaps she would not be gone.

Ayo and Nailah hold hands, their four eyes big and round and black like their fathers. They have our heart shaped lips, our scattering of dark freckles. The air between us is thin, full of the tension that comes when I think of or tell the story. I’ve only told it one other time, once to my husband. He sat next to me on the ground in front of the pipe, staring into an abyss.

I don't know why he believed but he did. He promised that when the time came to test our girls he would not interfere.
Now here I am with them. My sister murmurs,

"Don't be afraid Rabbit. It's their story too."

I breathe and begin as our mother had.

"Girls, do you see? Can you hear?"

They nod in unison, their dark eyes wide and glittering. Ayo and Nailah hold hands and speak as one.

"We are all the twin daughters of twin daughters. He likes us that way. Two chances to keep the prayers. Two, it began with two on a ship. They were dying-"

Tears course down their cheeks, they already see too much.

"They called, they prayed and They heard."

I shudder. They have already begun to know. My voice is clearer and stronger than I feel. 

"Yes. She and her sister were born of Him, my Nana always said their souls had rested in R'Leyh until there was a way through. Do you know how?"

I watch them tip their heads together, their eyes turn away. Their one voice rings as sweet and clear as bells.

"We come through horror. Man's inhumanity to man. Where there is sorrow and tears, we come. We come through R'Leyh. We are the Dead God's dream. We are she who wakes  Eldritch terror in men. They will cry, they will cry..."

They already know so much. The pure conviction in their voices raises something in me, that feeling taken from me when the Crawling Chaos took my sister. For the first time in years when I turn to look towards home, our real ancestral home in Innsmouth I smile. My sister smiles and murmurs in my ear.

"Yes Rabbit. Take them home. Teach them. Make them strong."

My whispered answer rings like alarm bells in my own head. Part of me, wants to cry like any other mother. The other part, the one that whispers to my lost sister revels. The dark in me love the dark in them. Their blood, our blood is strength and might. 

"Yes, Bunny. They will be strong. The Crawling Chaos won't be able to touch them."

I watch the girls wander back to stare into the Other World, they murmur to each other about Them, their Fallen God. Their Dead and Dreaming God. My fear ebbs away. It is as our Mama always said.

"Girls, let's go now."

Their complaints are a relief, the hold the Other World had on them has eased up. It would be too easy for them to hold too tight and go mad before we've even begun. I watch my girls shake off the fugue and stand up, they hug and kiss each other tenderly. Ayo smiles at her mirror.

“Deer Mouse, braid my hair when we get home?”

Nailah smiles back.

“Okay Doe Mouse.”

They slip off, holding hands and singing with high sweet voices.

“Our God, he lay Dead and Dreaming. We are twin daughters of twin daughters of Dagon.”
I follow, limping along slowly as usual. As I step out of the clearing I can hear my sisters gibbering, cackling voice in my ear.

“Dead and dreaming. Dead and dreaming. Dead and dreaming…”

I answer with my most secret heart,

“I love you Rabbit.  I love you.”