She shakes her head and I can see her pulse hammering in her neck. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. The police called me and I’ve never heard you call yourself Lily before, so I can’t help you with that one.”
“Are you sure about that?” I ask skeptically. “You seem nervous.”
“Yes, I’m sure,” she says, lowering her hand to her side and shuffling away from me. “Now stop acting crazy, go change, and come eat dinner with me.” With that, she turns on her heels and hurries out of the room.
I want to scream at her to tell me truth. But would there be a point, since I think I already know the answer. It’s one that I’ve been burying inside me since the moment I woke up in the hospital.
That I am crazy.
That I am Lily.
And that I might be a killer.
Maybe I started the fire that night.
Maybe I killed the man who hit me with his car.
Just like I probably did Sydney.
Chapter 12
Maddie
I thought things couldn’t get worse, but I was wrong. Bella won’t return any of my messages or phone calls, so I still have no insight to what I was up to on March 15, which leaves me overthinking everything, and coming up with the worse possible scenarios.
Then comes lockdown. Late one afternoon, my mother gets a phone call while we’re having dinner. She instantly leaves the room, her face draining of color as she glances at the screen. I hear her muttering something and when she returns, she seems shaken up, but won’t tell me why. The next day she installs a security alarm. Changes all the locks on the door. And tells me that I need to stay in the house as much as possible and that it might be best for me to stay home from work until the murderer is caught.
“To keep us safe,” my mother explains as she checks the locks on the front door and then crosses the room, me following at her heels.
“Safe from what exactly?” I ask, watching her mess around with the alarm system on the living room wall.
She sets the alarm and it beeps as it prepares for lock down. No going in or out any of the doors or windows without the siren shrieking like the devil himself. “Maddie, that poor girl was murdered only twenty minutes from here,” she says. “We need to be safer with all the craziness that’s out there.”
“Out there?” I lean against the wall with my arms folded as I stare out the window at the frosted grass, the grey sky, the trees, the “out there” she’s referring to. “You’re the one being crazy. You can’t just lock us in the house and expect us to stay here.”
“I’m being crazy,” she says unfathomably. She has dark circles under her eyes, her hair is pulled into a messy bun, and her clothes are wrinkled. She looks like a hot mess—a hot, stressed out mess. “You’re the one laughing about this. This isn’t funny, Maddie.”
I shake my head, aggravated. It’s not like I mind missing work—I’m worried about going there after the detective talks to River. But being locked up in the house. There’s no way I’ll survive. “Well, can I have the passcode in case I need to go somewhere?”
“No.” She closes the lid to the security box. “If you need to turn it off, you can have me do it.”
“Are you kidding me?” Anger burns venomously in my veins. This can’t be happening.
I can’t be a prisoner again.
“No, I’m not kidding you.” She breezes by me quickly, striding toward the hallway, calling over her shoulder, “It’s safer this way. I promise.”
I think there’s a hidden meaning in her words and I have to wonder whether she got the alarm to lock the bad out or to lock me inside—lock Lily inside.
***
Things only get progressively worse from there. My mom takes my car keys away while I’m getting something to eat one day. She actually goes into my room and gets them from my bag. While I’m looking for them, pretty much tearing my room apart, she walks into my room.
“What’s wrong?” she asks, watching me dig through my dresser drawers.
“I can’t find my car keys,” I say, searching the pockets of a pair of jeans.
“That’s because I took them,” she replies, leaning against the doorframe. She has a pair of slacks on a peach sweater that matches her shoes and her posture is portraying confidence, but there’s a lack of it in her eyes.
“What the hell for?” I ask, tossing the jeans onto the floor. I’m more testy than usual, but that’s because I haven’t slept in days, afraid once I shut my eyes, I’ll be relinquishing control to Lily, handing it over to the killer side in me.
“Because I don’t want you going anywhere,” my mother says simply. “Not until things have blown over with this Sydney thing and you quit dressing like a whore.”
You’re a whore!
You’re a whore!
I have to bury my instinct to slap her when she calls me that name. The good inside me tells me to respect her, but that part has been rapidly dying over the last few days and the bad easily takes control over my mouth. “I’m twenty-one years old, mother. I’ll go wherever I want whenever I want and be a whore if I want to.”
“You may be twenty-one,” she replies curtly. “But you have the maturity of a fifteen year-old and so I’m going to treat you like a fifteen year-old.”
“You have no idea how mature I am.” I kick some clothes out of the way and walk toward her. “Mom, please stop doing this. You can’t just keep me locked up in the house. It’s not right.”
Her eyes skim up my short skirt and tight shirt that barely covers anything. “Maybe you should take a good hard look at yourself before you say that.” She backs out of my room, almost if she’s afraid of me and I have to wonder if she knows what I am. Not Lily, but potentially a psychopath. “And I’m not giving you your keys back. Not until you can get your act together and be the daughter I used to know.”
“And who exactly would that be? Because I honestly don’t know.” I reach the doorway, my voice raising and filling with a silent warning. I grip onto the doorframe, fighting to hold myself in my room, because every muscle of mine is yanking me toward her. If she keeps it up, I might have to teach her a lesson. Chase her down and make her give me the keys.
My mother’s expression snaps cold, but there’s a hint of nervousness there beneath the surface. She hovers back, picking up her pace as she backs up the hallway. “This is for your own good. You’ll thank me one day for it,” she says, then turns around and goes into her bedroom, shutting the door.
As soon a she disappears, I calm down, like a fire simmering out. Prying my fingers away from the doorframe, I step back into my room and shut the door.
You’re going to get her back for this. You can’t let her control you like this.
“It might be for the better,” I say. “It keeps me from doing anything bad if I’m trapped here.”
That’s not entirely true. You’re worse than you want to admit, Maddie Asherford. You’re just afraid. And being bad isn’t necessarily bad in certain situations. You need to stop fearing yourself so much.
I don’t argue with her, because it feels too much like the truth.
I sit down on my bed and call Bella, but there’s still no response. I’m starting to worry that rumors are getting around that maybe I had something to do with Sydney’s murder and that maybe Bella’s afraid of me and that’s why she won’t answer. I also haven’t heard from River and other than that, I haven’t conversed with anyone for the last few days besides my mother. My next appointment with Preston is in a couple of days, but I’m concerned what will happen if he tries to pick my brain about stuff—what might spill out.
Finally, I can’t take it anymore. When my mom turns off the alarm to go outside and chat with the neighbor, I sneak out the backdoor and make a beeline for the bus stop at the end of the block. I need to go talk to Bella and hopefully she’ll give me some answers.
Answers that tell me I’m not a killer.
Chapter 13
Maddie
Bel
la lives in an apartment complex on the more rundown side of town. It’s still way too early for her to be at work, so I’m hoping that she’ll be there. But after knocking on the door for several minutes, I realize she’s not. I think about just waiting on the steps until she comes home, even if it’s tomorrow morning after she gets off work, but there’s a large Rottweiler barking at me from the window next door, a sketchy looking guy across the street smoking and drinking who hasn’t taken his eyes off of me this entire time, and two very large guys screaming at each other near the corner. It’s making even the inside of me nervous. I should leave, but instead I find myself wandering around the side of the complex and to the back door of Bella’s place. At first I just stand there, staring at the doorknob, wondering what I’m doing, but then I realize that I do know what I’m doing. I don’t know how I know, but I just do.
Without thinking, I pluck a hairpin from my hair and pick the lock on the door. It takes only seconds, as if I’m a pro, and I’m guessing that somewhere in my past I’ve done this before. Many times.
I open the door and step inside Bella’s home, noting that there’s a sink full of dirty dishes, stacks of mail on the counters, and takeout boxes all over the kitchen. There’s absolutely no kitchen table. No barstools. No furniture at all. And it’s the same in the living room. The only thing in there is a sleeping bag on the floor. The curtains are drawn shut, the air is musty. It’s as if she barely lives here.
I double check the address she gave me a while ago that I punched into the phone just to make sure I came to the correct house. It matches, but still, I wonder if she gave it to me wrong or something. Or maybe she just lives like this.
Deciding maybe breaking in wasn’t the best thing to do, I start to turn around to leave, but pause when I swear I hear a muffled cry coming from down the hallway. I’m not sure whether I should leave or run. Maddie wants to go. Lily wants to stay. You need to see what it is.
“I’m afraid,” I admit aloud and shudder at the truth. Not necessarily afraid of the danger the crying could lead to, but how much I like that it could. My thoughts drift to what the crying could be. Someone hurt? Someone upset? Someone locked up who I could hurt?
“What the fuck is wrong with me?” I ask as the last thought streams through my head. I start to back away, tugging at my hair, but invisible strings tug me forward, toward the crying. At this moment, I’m a puppet and Lily is my puppeteer and suddenly she’s in front of me, taking my hand and tugging me down the bare hallway. She leads me through the stale air until we reach the end where there’s a single shut door. Light is slipping through the cracks underneath and cries are flowing from the outside. Pain. Whoever’s in there is hurting.
“I don’t want to see,” I whisper in horror as my trembling hand reaches for the doorknob.
“You need to see,” Lily insists.
My fingers brush the brass knob. A jolt of heat shoots up my arm as I turn it and push it open. Light spills over me. Screams pierce my ears. Something flies at me that’s heavy and strong. Pain. Heat. Tears. Blood. My insides feel like they’re ripping out of my body.
Fire!
Fire!
Fire!
Burning!
Burning!
Burning!
Help me!
Help me!
Help me!
“You killed me.”
Chapter 14
Lily
I’m not sure where I am. Lost in Maddie’s mind? Perhaps, but I’m not sure. All I’m certain of is that I can’t see anything. I’m drowning in the yelling. The anguish. The darkness I’m accustomed to. So I think. A lot. Make up stories that feel more real than anything else in the world.
There once was a little girl who lived in a fictional world but the little girl didn’t know it. What was hidden under the blindness, the incredibility was ugly, raw torment. What she couldn’t see, couldn’t hurt her. What she couldn’t feel, couldn’t sting her. What she couldn’t remember, she could make up. She could be anything she wanted to be, not what she was taught to be.
But over time the girl forgot, what was real and what was made up.
She became lost.
Hiding in the darkness of her own fears.
Letting the real girl be forgotten. The one that changed her. The one that trapped her. The one that created her.
Chapter 15
Maddie
When I open my eyes again, I feel so cold. So empty. So disconnected. Nothing makes sense. Why I’m waking up at all. How did I even fall asleep to begin with. Where am I?
My eyelids flutter open, half expecting to discover that I’ve fallen asleep in my room. That everything was a dream. That maybe I’m even still young, then I remember everything. That I’m the good girl I’ve constantly been told that I was. But as the last thought crosses my mind, I don’t feel as calm as I should. I feel gross. Disgusted.
The disgust only increases when I fully open my eyes and take a look at my surroundings. At first I think that maybe this is a dream. Or that the red splatters are merely paint. That in another world, in another life, I was a painter and this repulsive creation before me was simply an illusion. But the longer I stare at it, the more I realize the red misshapen dots on the white wall, the lines running downward that look like crooked water, the large spots staining the carpet are blood. Blood everywhere. There’s so much around me that the air smells like pennies, so potent I can taste the vileness.
I immediately jump to my feet, trying to ignore how the carpet squishes beneath my fingers, the warmth of blood spills over the backs of my hands. Once I get upright, I nearly collapse to the floor as a spout of dizziness rushes through me. I refuse to buckle though and fall back into the blood again.
“It’s everywhere,” I whisper to myself as I turn in a circle. The bed. The sheets. The walls. The window. The closet doors. Splattered like raindrops. Frayed ropes are fastened to the headboard and a blindfold lies on the blood soaked pillow. There’s only one thing missing from the madness. A body, but the strange part is I can picture the body there, pallid skin, blood in her hair, her lips slightly apart, frozen from when she took her last breath. I’m not even sure who she is, but I think at some point in my life I’ve witnessed the scene before.
Swallowing the bile burning in the back of my throat, I make my way over to the closet door. There’s bloody fingerprints smeared on the handle and I try to ignore how well they match up to my own as I turn the knob and pull the door open. It’s empty inside. No body. No blood. I breathe in relief, although I don’t know why. Blood like this had to come from death—I can practically smell it in the air.
It takes me a moment, but I manage to get down on my knees and check under the bed. It’s the only place in the room where there could be a body. Again, it’s clean. Except for a single red button. Even though I know I shouldn’t, I have to pick it up. Collect it. A tiny little memory forgotten in the midst of sheer terror. My fingers clasp around it and I stand back up, trembling as I stare down at the oval shaped button that matches the one I have at home in my button collection. The mysterious one I found on me the day I found Sydney’s as well.
“No.” I shake my head, uncertain at what I’m even saying no to. The truth. But what is the truth.
I stand there for what seems like forever, trying to put the pieces together. What happened when I opened that door? I heard screaming, saw light, but that’s it. There doesn’t seem to be a bump on my head, just blood on my hands. Did I blackout and Lily took over? Did she kill someone? Did she kill Bella? But if so, where’s the body?
The longer I try to sift through my thoughts, the more confused I get. Something snaps within me and suddenly I lose it. I start tearing the room apart, throwing clothes out of the dresser and closet, scattering papers that are in the nightstand drawers. I tear the bloody sheets off the bed, leave my fingerprints everywhere. If the cops had their suspicions about me being a killer before, I just gave them all the evidence to convict me. That is, if there’s a
body.
Go. Before this gets worse.
I start to turn to leave and step on a white shirt. The pressure of my weight makes it press against the carpet and stain the innocent fabric with blood, along with the red, oval buttons, two of which are missing. I don’t even know why I do it. I’ve already left my fingerprints, DNA, and every other mark about me all over the place. Still, I pick up the shirt, let my fingers get stained with more blood as I examine it. It has to be Bella’s, but then why did I have the button in my pocket that night?