First, Mrs. Brown could no longer keep her illness in check.
She could still maintain a respectable facade in front of outsiders and was at least somewhat kind to the children, but whenever she was alone with her husband, she revealed an abnormal need for control.
Mr. Brown was a painter, and she demanded that he paint only her and the children. Angel and Alex disliked this, so Susan and Mrs. Brown herself were the ones most often painted on his canvases.
After that, Angel began to succumb to the illness too.
She had always been very restrained, unwilling to become a monster and lose her humanity. That period was agonizing for her. She fought herself every day, while Alex encouraged her and kept her company as she made dolls to help focus her mind.
Later came the incident in which Mr. Brown could no longer endure his wife's control, accidentally killed her, and was driven mad by the ghost of his wife.
That day, everyone in the villa discovered that they couldn't leave.
Mrs. Brown's ghost could just barely reach the front gate. The others were trapped inside the villa and couldn't even go into the garden.
Regardless of their personalities or where they stood, being imprisoned and then having Mrs. Brown return after her death dealt them all a heavy blow. They cried, broke down in hysterics, and despaired, until at last they grew calm.
Alex's gaze turned a little sorrowful as he spoke.
"So you didn't refuse to go out—you just couldn't..." Masha sighed. If her family had grounded her at home and cut off her internet, she would have cried, thrown a tantrum, threatened to kill herself, and then climbed out the window under cover of night.
But the Brown family hadn't even had the