“Preston, it’s all I can give you right now,” I say as Lily waves and then fades away into the sunlight. “So if you want to answer me then go head, if not, then drop it.”
He taps the pen on the desk, thinking over what I said carefully. “Insomnia can cause hallucinations, but other things can, too, as well.”
“Like what?”
“Lots of things. There are a ton of mental disorders that can cause people to see things that don’t exist.” He pauses and his penetrating gaze makes me squirm. “If you aren’t sleeping well, then I can give you some sleeping pills to help with it.”
“No.” I practically shout and then quickly lower my voice. “No pills. I hate pills.”
He sets the pen on the desk. “Since when?”
“Since now,” I say then add, “Since I found out that I had rufi’s in my system that night of the accident.”
He stares at me quizzically. “Where did you hear that?”
“Not from you or my mother,” I say bitterly. “But I’m guessing you both knew about it.”
“I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about.” He shakes his head, baffled. “Maybe if you told me where you heard it from, I could figure out what you were talking about.”
“A cop told me.”
Either Preston really doesn’t know what I’m talking about or he’s a damn good liar, because he maintains his sheer perplexity. “I’m shocked… this is the first time that I’m hearing about this... But if what you say’s true, then I need to look into it.”
I’m not buying it. “Sure you will.”
He frowns and then we fall right back into our rhythm. The one where we play cat and mouse, although I’m not exactly sure who’s the cat and who’s the mouse anymore. The game goes on and on, me being evasive and him desperately trying to crack me open. And when he eventually gets tired of it, he suggests we jump in to some more hypnotherapy.
“I’m really not in the mood,” I say after he suggests it, but still get up and wander over to the chair because deep down I’m curious what I’ll see. All these memories are resurfacing and maybe if I see enough, I can figure out the entire thing—my entire past.
“You’ve said that a lot today,” Preston says, slipping his suit jacket off and hanging it on the back of the chair. “Maybe we could talk about why. Or perhaps how you’re feeling about the thing with the detectives.” He puts the file back into the cabinet, locks it, and then drops the keys in the desk drawer. “I didn’t know you knew Sydney Rawlington and your mother thought it’d be a good idea to talk about it with you. Maybe you could talk about your feelings… about being questioned by the police over it.”
“My feelings?” I rest my arms on my stomach and arch a brow at him. “Really Preston? I thought you knew me better than that.”
“I know that it’s hard for you to talk about them, especially when you’re so confused by them,” he says, pulling up a chair next to mine. He lights the candles with his matches then sits down and rests his foot on his knee. “But it might help to get some things off your mind and talk to me about it.”
I fix my eyes on the ceiling, trying to get off the Sydney subject as quickly as possible. “Look, if we’re going to do this, can we get it over with? I have somewhere I have to be soon.”
A sea of confusion fills his eyes. “Where?”
“Somewhere.” I squeeze my eyes and wish I had the superpower to disappear. I’d vanish up to the cabin with Ryland again. I never should have left.
Seconds later the sound of rain flows from the speakers as he clicks on the iPod. Pitter patter… pitter patter…
“Just relax.”
Pitter… patter… pitter… patter… The rain is falling… my cheek is pressed against the cold concrete. My hair is wet, my bones aching. I don’t want to be a prisoner anymore. I want to be free… please, someone help me.
The rain gets quieter and is replaced by an eerie calm. I can smell smoke, feel the heat of flames. My skin feels like it’s melting. I can’t breathe. I need to help them, but I can’t see them. I can only here him. I don’t want to hear him. I want him to die in the flames.
“Wake up. Open your eyes. Now.”
“I can’t… I don’t want to…”
“Maddie, wake up. We need to get out.” It’s a girl’s voice pleading with me as she tugs on my arm. “We have to go. I started the place on fire.”
“Lily?” I try to lift my eyelids. Try to see and breathe through the smoke, but it’s blinding me, searing at my skin. Metal scorches my body. The building is caving in around me. Boards land on my body, tear at my side, rip flesh from my body. Where is Evan? I need to see Evan. Help him. But he’s saying run, leave him behind. He’s going to die. And I’m going to let him.
“Maddie, wake up. Open your eyes.”
Fire. Blazing. Flames. Smoldering Smoke. Smothering. I’m going to die. He’s going to die. Watch him burn. Feel his pain. The pain you inflicted on him. I didn’t save him. I just ran and left Evan with him. The man who hates us. Tortures us. Does God awful things. The man I could kill and not care. He says I’m bad all the time and maybe I am.
“Jesus, Maddie. Open your eyes.”
Evan is gone and he’s chasing us, through the flames and the smoke as we race through the house, Lily pulling me along with her, my feet fighting to keep up with her. She’s faster than me, stronger than me. She is everything I want to be. And he wants to hurt both of us. Wants to punish us for trying to escape. For being bad. Like he punished all of those people that used to own the buttons scattered all over the basement floor. I wonder if he catches us if he’ll scatter mine along with them.
“He’ll kill us if he catches us,” I call out to Lily as we head for the front door of the house, coughing against the smoke.
She pauses, fumbling around through the smoke for the doorknob. “You go,” she says and suddenly she has something in her other hand… something silver… a gun? “I’ll take care of him. I’m better at this stuff anyway.”
It makes something deep inside me twinge and I find myself shaking my head, my eyes skimming to the flames and the smoke. “No. Not this time.”
Her grip on my arm tightens, her nails pierce into my skin, split open my flesh. “Just go. You’ll never be able to do it.”
Her words are painfully right. “But what about Evan—” There’s a thud and before I even know what I’m doing, I snatch the gun from her hand. I’m not even sure what comes over me. If I really am bad or if her words have finally gotten to me, but at the moment I don’t feel like myself. I feel like Lily.
When I see him walking through the fire and smoke toward me, I aim it at him. Flames engulf the wood, beams crash to the floor. Ashes spill all over my skin, singe my clothes, grey smoke swirls around, but even through it I can see him smiling at me.
“Do it!” Lily cries as the man grows closer and closer
I start to squeeze the trigger, but when I see his eyes, his face, his life, I can’t do it. I may hate him, but at the same time I love him. I may want to kill him, but at the same time I’m not a killer.
Flames ignite, roaring brightly, and smothering everything with smoke. I can’t breathe and I fall to the ground on my knees, choking for air. “I can’t do it.”
“Maddie.”
“Well, I sure as hell can.” Lily points the gun at him, smiling as she pulls the trigger, and when his blood splatters, it feels like it’s on my hands too. Like we’re one and the same.
“Maybe we are,” she whispers. “Then again, you might be too weak to be me.”
I look up at her and for the briefest moment, I think about taking the gun and aiming it at her, but then the fire ignites, a gun fires, and then everything smothers in flames
The fire shifts… fades… sucks us both away… I’m being carried... I move somewhere else. I can’ move… I claw at the ground. My flesh. Four white walls surround me… the number 14 brands in my mind, just on the other side. I have to get out. The smoke and
rain is gone and all I can see is the florescent lighting and feel the cold air.
I’m alone.
No you’re not. We’re in this together.
They tell me I’m crazy.
But I’m not!
I see her.
She’s real.
She didn’t leave me to die.
“I’m not crazy! Let me out!” I pound on the door. Scream at the top of my lungs, but no one hears me. My fingernails dig in to the door and I scrape at the metal until my fingers bleed, until some of my fingernails rip off.
Calm down. Everything’s going to be okay. I’ll take care of you. I always do. After all, you’re too weak without me.
“You keep saying that,” I say, continue to bang at the door, panting and trembling with fear. I haven’t seen sunlight in days. Haven’t breathed fresh air in ages. I need out. “But it’s never okay. My weakness has won.”
It will, though. But you need to calm down. Panicking’s not going to get us anywhere.
“But I want out. I want to breathe the fresh air again. Want to be out of this place.”
“You will be,” she promises as I turn around and sit down on the cement floor with my head resting against the door, tucking my damp blond hair behind my ears. I stare at the scribbling on the wall. The sentence that I wrote over and over again: I’m not a killer. I’m not a killer. I’m not a killer. “Just trust me. I know a way to get us out, but it’s going to have to be me.”
“Why?”
“Because you don’t have it in you to escape—you never have. Remember what happened last time.” As she says it, she shows me images of the things she could do to get us out. They make me sick. Disgust me. But a lot of the things I’ve done here make me feel the same way.
So I make a choice, but it doesn’t even feel like a choice. It feels like it’s the only thing left to do. So I shut my eyes and let her take control over me. Seconds later, the place is on fire and I’m running through the forest, barefoot, cold. But finally free.
Chapter 27
Maddie
Someone stabs me in the arm and I’m jerked awake, my eyelids shooting open. I quickly sit up, backing away from Preston, like a cornered cat hovering against the wall. My hair stands on end and my pulse is racing as the room spins round and round in magical colors. “Don’t touch me,” I snap, aware that my face is covered in tears. I’ve been crying. I’m shaking. I’m terrified. “Don’t you fucking dare touch me!” My voice sounds like an echo that bounces off the walls and slams back against me.
Preston’s eyes are wide and full of concern as he tosses something aside… I squint and try to see what it is, but my vision is blurry. He elevates his hands in front of him. “I’m sorry. But you were screaming and crying and I couldn’t wake you up…. “What happened? Please, tell me what you saw.” He’s too close. I can’t breathe. Can’t process if I’m in reality now or if I was just a minute ago.
It takes me a minute to catch my breath. Takes me a minute to realize I’m not locked behind that door or shooting someone or running in the woods. In a burning building, letting Lily shoot a man… or me shoot a man and blaming it on Lily.
“I have to go,” I slur as I attempt to climb off the lounge chair but end up stumbling and Preston has to catch me in his arms. We crash into the wall and his framed degree falls to the floor and the glass breaks. “I need to go.. get out of here...”
“Maddie, please just wait a minute.” Preston holds me in his arms as I blink and blink and blink, trying to get the room to stop twirling like a merry-go-round on crack. “We need to talk about what just happened.”
“Nothing… happened.” I wiggle out of his hold and stumble over to the chair. I pick up my bag and sling it over my shoulder before staggering over to the door.
“Maddie, would you please—”
I stumble into the hallway and slam the door closed before he can say anything else. Then I take off, but only make it a few steps before I have to brace my hand on the wall. I hear Preston coming up behind me and he says something in my ear.
“What did you do to me?” I mutter, my skin dripping with sweat as I reach the exit door and burst through it out beneath the clouds and the trees. My mother’s already rushing toward me with her phone in her hand. Preston probably already called her.
I fall to my knees on the sidewalk, feel the skin split open, feel blood gush out, saturate my skin, like so much other blood has.
“What did you do to her?’ My mom asks furiously as she storms across the parking lot toward us.
“She had an episode,” Preston says, his shadow casting over me. “I had to give her a sedative to calm her down.”
“No…” I fight to keep my eyes open as I put my hand on the concrete and hunch over. “Sedative… was it… you?”
They exchange words, but I can barely comprehend anything they say. Then somehow they get me to my feet and into the car. My mother buckles me in, gently pushing me down while I try to get out. Then she shuts the door and talks to Preston for a while in front of the car as my surroundings fade in and out.
By the time she gets in, I can hardly keep my eyes open. “Mother… who’s… Evan…” I turn my head toward her, examining her reaction the best that I can.
Her eyes widen as she stops pressing on the gas and the car gradually keeps rolling forward toward the curb. She shakes her head about a hundred times. “I have no idea.”
I touch my side where the scar is and try to say something about the tattoo, but I can’t find my voice. My head slumps back and I’m jerked back into dreamland, unsure who I’ll be when I open my eyes again.
Chapter 28
Lily
Her eyes shut for only a few minutes, exhausted from fighting the crap that they injected into her veins, along with the shit she saw while she was under. She never was good at the emotional stuff and that’s why she had me to help her out. I’ve always been there for her—I’m slowly remembering now. She’s growing weaker, but maybe that’s because she’s seeing the truth more and letting the strength within her rise. The strength being me. It’s why she chose to create me, after her sister, the stronger of the two.
It takes me a while to shake off the drugs, but I’m stronger and wake up sooner. The second I get control, I get to my feet. I need to get out of here. Now. I can’t take being imprisoned again by anyone. It’s time for me to take matters into my own hands and figure out some stuff. Like what Preston and her mother are hiding from her. Who Evan is. Why there’s so much fire in our memories. Why I was running through the trees that night and in front of a car. Whatever it was, has something to do with the driver. He knew me, knew me enough to know my protective instincts are to kill. But somehow he knew I wouldn’t kill him, even though I was acting like it.
I get up from the floor and make my way out of the room, picking up the key Maddie found in her mother’s room on my way out and slipping it into my pocket. It’s dark, only a few lights on in the house. I can hear the television on in my mother’s room. She’s awake. Good.
I rap my hand on the door, deciding how to go about this. Should I just pretend or fuck with her head. I’ve never liked her much and am pretty sure she knows about my existence. I’m not really sure why she won’t admit it. I wish I could find out what she doesn’t want me to find out. And hey, maybe one day I’ll torture it out of her. It could be therapeutic.
The television turns down and moments later my mother opens the door, tying her robe. Her hair is up in a messy bun and without any makeup on she looks aged.
“Are you okay?” she asks with concern in her eyes. “I’m sorry Preston had to use a sedative on you today, but he’s just worried about you and so am I. You haven’t been sleeping very well and he said you had a little episode when he put you under hypnotherapy today.” She squints at my face. “You look like you feel a lot better, though.”
“Oh, I am,” I assure her.
“Good.” She seems thrown off by my indifference.
??
?I need to leave the house,” I say calmly with my arms resting at my side. “And need you to come unlock the alarm so we don’t draw the police here.”
She shakes her head, her face reddening with anger. “You’re not allowed out when it’s so late, especially when you were so upset earlier and you’re probably still going to feel a little groggy from the sedative.”
Patience, I tell myself. “There’s somewhere I need to be.”
She steps forward, to intimidate me, but she’s scared of what I’ll do to her. Maddie doesn’t see it clearly, but I do. She’s afraid I’ll hurt her and I’m guessing I have once in the past. I’m guessing that’s why she kept who I used to be hidden. The blond in the photo, the girl who was once me, not her sister. I understand that, can see past the blindness unlike Maddie sometimes.