Текст книги "The Forgotten Girl"
Автор книги: Jessica Sorensen
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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 15 страниц)
Chapter 31
Lily
She releases control easily this time, but that might be because she’s been drugged. I’m not sure who did it to her, but I recognize the over-drunk state I’ve been thrown into with just one shot. I’d think it might have been the waitress since she poured the shot, but I can’t be certain since the glass sat on the counter for a few moments. Really, anyone could have done it. Besides, I’m starting to think the random call from Bella wasn’t random, but a set up. And I don’t think this is the first time it’s happened.
I’m a hell of a lot tougher than Maddie, though, and this fucker is about to pay for his assault on me. I slowly lift my slumped head up and meet his dark eyes that I’m sure match mine. He’s got his hand up my shirt, cupping one of my breasts, his other hand down my pants and inside me as he watches in lust as he violates a woman he clearly knows is out of it.
Maddie would flip if she found herself in this condition and maybe that’s why she turned everything over to me without a battle. She did it a lot back when she first started creating me, at least from what I read in the files she seemed to embrace me more back then, probably a defense mechanism from all the shit she’d been through. The pain. The things she said. The guilt she felt for the things she’d done. The choices she made. The pain she caused. But it wasn’t just her fault. There’s so much more to it than she can even begin to understand.
I get ready to clean up this mess the only way I know how and even though Maddie will never admit it, she’ll be grateful for it. “Do you fucking like that?” I say to the pervert, having to work real hard to make my voice even, the anger subdued.
“God yes,” he moans, shoving his fingers inside me.
“Good, I’m glad you like it,” I say numbly, leaning forward and putting my lips up to his ear. “It’s going to make this a hell of a lot easier.”
He chuckles against my neck. “Oh yeah, what are you going to do to me?”
I lean back and let a slow grin expand across my face. It throws him off a little, but then he smiles back. “Suck my dick,” he commands.
I shake my head. “Oh I’m going to do a hell of a lot more to your dick than suck it,” I tell him, then shift my knee, slamming it into his balls and bulging cock without any warning. His face twists in pain and now I’m the one getting sick pleasure off vulnerability. I knee him again and again until he finally gets enough energy to slap me across the face. It stings and my ears ring, but I’m an expert at being hit. I jump off his lap, almost losing my balance but manage to keep my feet under me as I pick up an empty beer glass on the floor near one of the chairs. By the time I stand up straight, he’s running at me, growling.
“This wasn’t part of the deal, God dammit,” he shouts, his head down, veins bulging. “Fuck them for lying to me!”
I freeze. “What deal?”
“Fuck you,” he says, ignoring my question. “You’re going to pay for this.”
When he gets close enough, I take swing at him and bash the glass against his head. A fire explodes inside me. I want to hurt him like he hurt me. Make him pay. The glass doesn’t break, but it makes a weird noise against his head. He collapses to the floor and I hit him over and over again, not sure when I’ll stop, the fire burning brighter and brighter with every swing.
From the midst of the bashing, I hear someone move up behind me. Hands touch me. A whisper feels my head from a voice I’ve heard before. The only voice in the world that can instill fear in me and make me curl within myself.
“I thought you were dead,” I whisper before I crumple to the ground.
Chapter 32
Maddie
I wake up with my face pressed against a moist surface, cold, sick to my stomach, and disoriented. At first I think I’m in the freezer again, but when I push up, I’m blinded by the sunlight. My body groans in protest and I instantly collapse back onto the muddy ground covered in dead leaves. I just lie there, refusing to believe what’s around me. Trees, the sky, the sound of a river flowing.
I’m dreaming. I have to be dreaming.
“A forest. How…” I trail off with my eyes shut. “I can’t… I don’t even…” I try to let my mind travel back to last night, but all I can remember is going into the back room, the guy coming in after me, then blacking out as if I were wasted. It makes no sense since I only had one shot of tequila. I have a way higher tolerance for alcohol than that, which makes me instantly want to point my finger at the one thing that has made me blackout before.
“You’re getting stronger,” I say to Lily. “You took over when I was awake.”
I don’t move for a very long time, waiting for Lily to say something to me, but she doesn’t. Finally, I sit up, relieved to see that at least this time I don’t have blood on me. Although, I do have a few bruises forming on my hips and scratches on my arm. For a minute, I wonder if maybe the guy raped me then dumped me out here to die. The thought makes my mind race, my adrenaline soar, but from somewhere inside me, there’s a sense of peace, telling me not to worry. I try to remember what happened. But all I can see is darkness and once again I’m left trying to conjure up a reason on my own as to what happened during my lost time.
After sitting for a while, I manage to get to my feet and check my pocket for my phone, but it’s gone so I stagger through the trees and mud. I don’t even know where I’m going, what woods I’m in, how deep I am in the trees. I could walk for miles and be going in a circle and never know it, but I’m not worried about that. There’s a spark of recognition in my mind and it feels like my feet are following an invisible path, like they’re my compass, guiding me toward wherever it is I need to go. Maybe I subconsciously remember hiking out here last night. And I luck out. After walking for about five minutes, I hear the sounds of cars. There’s a road nearby. Even though it hurts, I pick up my pace, tripping over my feet and bumping into trees. I’m getting closer, the sound of the cars becoming more defined, when suddenly it happens. A split second before it occurs, my mind registers that it’s going to happen but before I can respond, I trip over something solid and fly to the ground face first in the dirt, my nose slamming against a rock. Blood drips out of my nostrils and runs down my chin as I roll over, terrified to look, because I know what it is
A dead body.
Lying in the dirt. Face up. Eyes open. Wavy hair matted with dirt and smothered with blood, along with his polo shirt, missing the top button. The man from the bar that got rough with me is dead by my feet. And I can’t remember last night. Again. I can’t do anything, but check. Putting my hand into my pocket, my fingers brush a small, smooth object. I don’t take it out, already knowing what it is. Tears burn at my eyes, my heart thuds violently.
Run!
I get up with zero hesitation and run like hell through the forest, but moments later I stumble over something unexpected. Another body. Oh God no. I know him, too, by the tattoo of the dragon breathing fire on his wrist.
Don’t look back. Don’t scream. I let my legs carry me through the trees until I stumble out of them and into the street. The sight of it sends a chill up my spine, a jolt of recollection up my body, as cars zoom up and down the street and I almost run straight into traffic. There’s a water tower in the distance and I can almost feel the key in my hand.
Pitter-patter… pitter-patter… I can feel the rain falling… if I don’t get up and run fast, I’ll never escape it, the place hidden in the trees.
I walk like a zombie in a trance across the street, step by step, my eyes fixed on the water tower that I’ve seen before when I was lying in the street six years ago. A couple of cars honk their horn but I don’t so much as flinch, stepping into forest on the other side. I let my sub-conscious be my guide, hiking through trees and bushes for what feels like hours, robotically, my mind and feet numb, until finally the trees open up, then I stop and look up at the white building, shielded by half-dead trees, the roof caved in, some of the siding charred, just like the cabin where Ryland lives.
Only this isn’t a cabin.
This is the Beleview’s Mental Institution. Or it used to be anyway. Until I burnt it down. The memory comes to me, hot and fiery like the flames that burned half the building down. I lit a match.
I lit a match.
“You did it because I let you—because I wanted to escape this place,” I say, stepping out of the shelter of the trees and crossing the open toward the building. I can see some of the images in my mind. The screams. The shouting. The way the ground burned my bare feet and how I ran through the forest, trying to escape the doctor who chased me down... the blond haired doctor wearing a white coat. I ran for hours until I reached the road… then the car hit me… I lay in the road, the man leaning over me, unafraid, even though I was trying to hurt him, like he understood what I needed, what I was on the inside. How he struck a match to light his cigarette… just like Preston does every time he lights candles…
“Jesus, he was there.” I pause at the entrance of the building. It’s boarded up with a No Trespassing sign on it, which I disregard and step inside. There’s debris on the floor, papers sticking to everything, several doors lining the walls… the last one was mine… I can remember… yet I can’t… “I was here.” I walk down the entrance, tracing my hand on the walls, remembering. “I was locked up here… and I found a way out… I got a hold of a match… from my therapist… Preston… he was my therapist back then.”
The memories move over me in waves, Lily silent, giving me time to put it all together. I burned this place down with Preston’s matches, because he was my therapist back then, had me locked up in here, and it was the only way to get out. I let Lily do it—let her take control and escape because I was too afraid to. Preston was the one in the road… I can almost see his face. The way he lit a match, smoked his cigarette, let me strangle him. “Why, though? Why was I here to begin with? And why are they trying to keep all of this hidden?”
That is the million dollar question.
“You know why,” I say, stopping in front of a door, my fingers brushing the pocket of my pants where I keep the key I found, and thankfully it’s still there. Room 14. My Room 14, where I lived, day to day, for two years. God, I can practically hear the screams… smell the tranquilizers… feel the pain… “This wasn’t a normal mental institution, was it?” I ask, pressing my hand to the door as I take out the key. As my mind flashes back, I swear the steel burns my hand and I jerk back. “This was something different.”
Do you really want to know? What they did to you? What you are?
My hand trembles as I turn the key and it unlocks. With a deep breath, I push it open, and a wave of emotions hit me. Written all over the charred walls are Lily, Maddie, Lily, Maddie. Help me. Help me. Help me get out of here. Over and over again. God, how I hated this door, when it was shut and when it was opened too.
“Yes, I do. I want to know now. I’m ready.”
Then let me show you.
Chapter 33
Maddie
Finding out the truth is painful, but not as painful as it probably would be if I didn’t let Lily be a part of it, let her show me instead of discovering for myself. As I read over the papers, she had shoved under the bed the night she dyed my hair, I let her partially control me, half in control over my emotions so it’s not quite as excruciating. I think I’ve done this many times before—let her take some of my emotional pain like this.
I haven’t showered since I left the forest. I’m tired, filthy, I had to hitchhike home which ended up being over two hours away. I should clean myself up, get rid of the evidence that will link me to the body, but there’s worse evidence right in front of me. Preston’s files. Lily stole the file that night I passed out, after Preston tranquilized me. Apparently he did that a lot in my past, at least according to my notes. It’s why I had the rufi’s in my system that night. He’d given them to me during a “session” to try and subdue the rage inside me and then made a note about it.
His notes are actually pretty straight forward. I was admitted to the hospital when I was fourteen because I beat up my mother during a very heated argument in a fit of rage, which apparently happened a lot due to childhood trauma. It was my mother who had me admitted, not wanting to get the cops involved, so she took me to the institution which I’m still not sure was a legal place of practice. Guessing by the methods, I’d say no. Shock treatment. Questionable medication. There’s some note about some sort of torture treatment Preston did because he believed that when I felt like I was being bad or around bad, I’d run to Lily, my alter ego. Being her was a mechanism I established during my traumatized childhood of being locked up in a basement for three and a half years, from the ages of around nine to thirteen. But there was more to it than that. Whenever I did anything bad, I would become her, because apparently I couldn’t bear to think of myself as bad. Preston had believed that this had something to due with what happened to me while I was kidnapped, that my capturers were on some sort of mission to rid the bad from the world and that they were trying to teach me and so I created Lily to carry the guilt and put blame on her for whenever I did something bad. The worst part, my capture was Markels Wellfordton.
My father.
There’s a picture in the file of him that matches the picture that I burned. I think I’d know who he was even then. The man who beat me, made me watch horrible things, told me I was bad, who gave me buttons to play with while I was locked up. And the man who I hallucinate about all the time whenever I hear the word whore, something my mom and Preston know about and are still trying to cure with hypnotherapy.
I’m about to read another page, but freeze when I hear a door open from inside the house, footsteps, then comes a knock on my door. “Maddie, are you in there?”
The alarm was off when I came back. I could hear the television on so I knew she was home. She didn’t even leave her room when I walked into the house earlier. I was kind of hoping she’d stay in there while I read over all these papers and got as much information as I can. “Go away,” I say.
I hear her try the doorknob, but I locked the door. “Listen, we really need to talk… I thought maybe we could go to Preston’s office and have sort of a group meeting.”
“Why? So he can drug me again?” I call back, reaching for another paper.
Silence.
I don’t think she’s left, though, but I ignore her, going back to the papers. Evidently, my mother knew of my alter ego even before she admitted me. In one of the papers she filled out, she stated that I had blackouts for a year where I would become someone else, who I referred to as Lily. That when I was her I was difficult to deal with and that I reminded her so much of my sister that it frightened her.
The longer I read, the angrier I get. Why would my mother let them do some of the stuff they did to me? Why not tell me now about my past? Why I’m not in a mental institution anymore if she clearly still thinks I need help?
Why?
Why?
Why?
“I’m going to make her tell me,” I say, getting to my feet. There are papers everywhere, some that are so professional and with medical terminology that I have no idea what they really say. “I’m not going to let her lie to me anymore.”
You really think she’s going to tell you? Lily laughs at the absurdity. Have you learned nothing?
“I’m going to make her.” I march toward the door, hearing the floorboards squeak on the other side, my mother retreating I’m sure. “Maybe I’ll just be you.” I pull open the door.
My mother is heading back to her room, but turns around as I exit my room. She starts to say something, but then sees something in my eyes and stops herself. Her eyes take a good look at my blond hair and dirty clothes. “What did you do to her?” she finally manages to ask, backing away from me toward the living room.
“With who?” I match her steps. Could I hurt my own mother if she pushes me that far? Could I hurt her like I did Sydney and the guy in the woods? All the evidence says yes, but the idea of actually doing it makes me feel sick to my stomach.
“With my daughter?” my mother stammers as she bumps into the chair. “With my Maddie.”
“Oh you think I’m Lily,” I say and her face whitens like she’s seen a ghost. I stop just short of her, arms folded, head tipped to the side. “Nope. No Lily here. Just your daughter Maddie. Although, technically Lily was your daughter once too, for quite a few years.” I lean the slightest bit forward to get in her face. “But who I’d really like to talk about right now is my father.”
She instantly shakes her head, hurrying around the chair so it’s between us. “No you don’t, Maddie. It’s for your own good that you never remember him.”
“How about Beleview Mental Institution? Should I remember that?” I ask. She’s silent, taking in raspy breaths as I continue. “No. Okay then. How about my traumatized childhood? Because Preston kept a lot of notes about that.” I cross my arms and watch her closely. “I’m guessing it has to do with my father and what he did to me.”
We stand there in the living room for what feels like an eternity but I’m guessing it’s only a few minutes. The clock on the wall ticks and ticks and ticks and finally she says, “How long have you been able to remember?” She sounds choked.
“A while,” I lie. If she thinks I know, then she’s less likely to lie herself. I hope.
The images of being forced to do things against my will by my father flood my head, how he believed the bad needed to punished, how he told me I was bad, how he told my sister and the boy in the basement the same thing. Then there’s the voice of the woman in the background and I can only pray that it wasn’t my mother—that she didn’t know what was going on… I feel like I’m going to throw up. “Why have you been keeping so much from me?”
“Because.” She shakes her head several times, growing frustrated. “You forgetting… it was like a clean slate for you. An opportunity to start over. You were such a wreck when you came out of the cabin. Even though you were alive, it was like you died… and then you took on the identity of Lily and it made things even worse. I thought with the amnesia that you could start over and be Maddie again… and I think part of you wanted to too—that maybe that’s why you got amnesia in the first place.”
“That’s not what happened.” But I’m not so sure about that. Part of me right now would love to forget that Lily exists inside me and where she came from.
I point my finger at myself. “Do you really think that losing some of my memories would heal me? That it’d make everything that happened not exist anymore?”
Tears dot the corners of her eyes as she stares out the window. “It seemed to be working for a while... you forgetting… and you were finally my Maddie again. The good daughter you were, before all this stuff happened… You were always the good one…” She sinks down on the arm of the chair, still not looking at me, and I wonder what the fuck she’s talking about. I was the good one? Then who was the bad one? My sister? “When Preston found you in the road that night… after you escaped the mental institution, he thought maybe we could look at it as a clean slate for you… thought if you forgot the timeframe when… when all the stuff happened and just remember the good parts, like when you were a little girl… like in those photos I put up all over your wall…” She twists a strand of her hair around her finger, dazing off. “That maybe you could just be the little girl who used to play and have fun and smile. Who didn’t talk to herself, who didn’t have to remember all that horrible stuff that happened in that place… who had violent outbursts like her… God, you acted so much like her toward the end… So we… we did things that were… questionable.” She can’t even look at me.
“Who’s her?” I step in her line of vision and make her look at me. “And what do you mean questionable?”
She swallows hard, still not looking at me. “Starting fires. Getting into fights.” She’s avoiding my first question and I want to press her about it but she keeps rambling. “You would get so violent every time anyone tried to make you do something you didn’t want to do… and then there was Evan.” She shakes her head and sighs with remorse. “You wouldn’t let him go either… and the hallucinations all the time…”
I absentmindedly touch the scar on my side and say softly, “Evan... Evan Ryan Wellings…” I’m starting to remember some more. The boy in the cabin, that I counted buttons with, buttons that belonged to the man upstairs who kept us trapped. The boy who told me to pretend to be someone else… the boy who made me feel safe when everything else felt so wrong…
“You refused to let him go, Maddie. It wasn’t healthy talking to a person who wasn’t there like that… who didn’t exist but you wanted to exist because you were afraid to accept what really happened.”
“I don’t understand?” I ask. “I thought I talked to Lily.”
“And Evan.” She pauses. “You don’t remember Evan at all?”
“Evan Ryan Wellings…” I say his name again. It sounds so familiar. “Tell me about him,” I demand, inching closer to her, feeling Lily scratch her way to the surface. I think she might remember him and she doesn’t like it.
“I don’t want to,” she whispers, her fingers going to the base of her neck. “It’s good you can’t remember him… I wish you couldn’t remember Lily either.”
“My sister?” I ask in horror and she nods, sobbing. “Why?”
She shakes her head. “Because she wasn’t good.”
Again I think of the woman upstairs and wonder if it was her.
I want to run, yet at the same time Lily forces me forward, making me stay strong and get answers. I get in my mother’s face, ready to do whatever it takes to get her to tell me. “Tell. Me. Who. Evan. Is.” I demand.
She flinches back and almost falls out of the chair. I see the fear in her eyes. She probably thinks I’m Lily at the moment and maybe I am. “Evan’s the little boy that was in the cabin with you and Lily,” she says.
“And where were we exactly, mother?” I pause. “Did my father… did he do something to me, Lily, and this boy?”
She touches the base of her neck, tears slipping down her cheeks. “Your father… he was such a nice man when I met him. A little wild, but he seemed nice… but sometimes people aren’t what they seem… And he… well, he ended up having all these crazy beliefs about right and wrong, good and bad, and then he started hanging around these people who sort of pushed out these beliefs but to an extreme extent.” She chokes back a sob. “I should have never let it go on for as long as it did… I should have left him sooner… maybe then he wouldn’t have taken you and Lily and that boy…”
“Evan.”
“He was the next door neighbor’s son.” More tears pour out of her eyes. “Your father had something going on with his mother and they took off with all of you… hid out in the forest…” She starts to sob. “Hid out in a cabin in the woods for years. I thought I’d never see you two again, but then you burned it down… but Evan he didn’t make it out and you blamed yourself for that.”
Pitter-patter… I can hear the rain falling.
“Maddie, please wake up. You need to get out of here. Go get help.”
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, trapped in the cabin to die.
We left him trapped in the cabin to die.
“No…” I trip back, slam my elbow against the wall. Hard. Tears well into my eyes, but not from the pain. “No. No. No. No. No.”
“Maddie, I’m sorry,” my mother stands up and reaches for me, but I step away from her. “See this is why we didn’t want you to remember. The pain in your eyes—it nearly killed me to look at every day.”
“I have to go,” I say, my voice sounding so hollow as I stare at the wall in front of me. All this time and I think I always knew. “I have to go,” I repeat, then go to my room to grab my jacket and wallet.
“Where are you going?” she asks demandingly as I pick up her car keys. “Maddie, you’re not going anywhere until we talk about this. We need to go see Preston.”
“You and Preston have done enough,” I snap, my voice so angry, so dark. But I know I’ll hurt her if she tries to take the keys from me, so hopefully the anger in my voice will scare her off.
She calls out to me, this time chasing me down the driveway, shouting for me to stop. The neighbors outside stand there, watching in horror, but I don’t stop, hopping in the car and locking the doors.
She bangs on the window. “Maddie Asherford, you will open this door. Now!” She wiggles the handle as I start up the engine. “I won’t let you drive off when you’re this upset.”
I buckle my seatbelt and put the car into reverse, feeling like I’m going to puke. The one thing in my life that made me feel whole wasn’t even real. It was more fake than Lily. And as soon as I drive down that road, I’m choosing to let all that go. What do I want? Fake peace? Or the painful truth?
I take a deep breath and give my mother one last look, thinking about how much she’s lied to me over the years, and how I hated every moment of it. Then I back away, heading to my secret spot, heading to Ryland.
To Evan.
