by Tara Sivec
He rests his elbows on top of the counter to lean closer to the glass between us, and my hand grips tightly to the receiver. His words make it hard to sit still, filling me with excitement and validation.
“Why did you kill your parents when you were eighteen? What made you kill all those other people you didn’t even know?” I ask, unable to hide the eagerness in my voice.
“They tried to say I was insane,” he replies with a shrug. “That I wasn’t of sound mind, and some even said the devil made me do it.”
I hang on his every word, knowing he couldn’t possibly be insane. Even after years of living behind bars, he’s more articulate and composed than my parents ever were.
“The devil can’t make you do something when he lives inside of you, and you welcome his thoughts,” Tobias says, his voice low. “I killed them because they made me angry. I didn’t like their rules, and they didn’t like it that I didn’t follow them. Once I got the taste of it, once I finally found something that made me feel alive, I never wanted it to end. The man at the gas station pissed me off when he wouldn’t let me use the bathroom. The woman walking her dog gave me a dirty look, and the teenager at the Food Mart made fun of the blood stains on my shirt, assuming I dripped ketchup on myself.”
He chuckles to himself as he relives his kills, his explanation sounding more like a simple chat about the weather than about taking lives. I have so many questions, so much more I want to know. Did he stare into their eyes as they died and smile when they took their last breath? Did he sleep soundly that night because the thoughts in his head had finally been quieted? Did the first pound of the hammer into his father’s skull sound like music to his ears, music that he still hears to this day?
“Tanner was a fool for thinking that keeping me away would stop what was inside of you,” Tobias says with a smile. “I see it in your eyes, little girl. I can feel it in the air. You like the way it makes you feel, don’t you? You need it just to breathe, and you want it just to feel alive.”
My heart beats faster with every word he says, and my head nods slowly in response.
“Don’t fight it, girl. Fighting it will only make it worse. Let it live and breathe inside of you until you can’t hold it in any longer.”
I feel the corner of my mouth tipping up into a smile, matching the one currently on the man seated across from me. My father, the cold-blooded killer.
The door suddenly opens behind Tobias, and the guard rushes back in and pulls him up from the chair. I’m not ready for our visit to be over, and I want to pound on the glass, beg the guard not to take him away. I need his voice. I need his words. I need to savor this feeling of belonging.
“You have my eyes,” Tobias suddenly tells me right before the phone is snatched from his hand and slammed down onto the receiver.
I keep the phone pressed to my ear and watch him dragged away. Smiling, he stares at me over his shoulder the entire way, until he disappears from sight.
Slowly lowering the phone and hanging it up, I rise from my chair and walk wordlessly away from the booth. I hear the scrape of Nolan’s chair against the tile, and he rushes to catch up with me as the guard standing next to the door holds it open for us.
“What did he say? Did he confirm that he’s your real father?” Nolan asks as I walk in a daze down the long hallway, back the way we came earlier.
“His eyes gave me chills. They were so cold and dead,” he adds, grabbing the keys from the guard we left them with and moving on.
We drop our badges onto the front desk and head outside where the rain continues to fall. Running to the car, Nolan quickly opens my door and I wipe the wetness from my face when I get inside.
“My name is Ravenna Duskin. I’m eighteen years old, I live in a prison, and I have my father’s eyes.”
Chapter 19
Nolan dropped me off at Gallow’s Hill with a promise to come back once he checked on his mother. I’m happy for the solitude after an hour of him asking me every few minutes if I was okay. Am I okay knowing my real father is a psychotic killer with no remorse for what he did? Am I okay knowing my parents lied to me about who my father is? Am I okay that I suddenly feel normal, like the things I feel and think make sense and have a purpose?
I’m more than okay. I’m giddy with excitement and wish I’d had more time with Tobias. He saw something in me. Something I’ve kept hidden, but that is such a huge part of who I am that I’m choking with the need to talk to someone about it, someone who could listen without judgment. Someone who could understand.
I told Nolan I was fine and just needed time to process things, but I’d already processed them the moment Tobias opened his mouth, and I heard his voice. Now I have a reason for never feeling like I fit in with my average, boring family, other than the clothes, the hair, and the constant perfection. I have Tobias Duskin’s blood flowing through my veins, and it all makes sense now.
Kicking aside one of the empty bottles of whiskey that still litter the floor outside my father’s office, I walk into the spare bedroom, stopping at the edge of the bed. Lying in the middle, folded in half is a single piece of paper I don’t remember being there earlier.
Snatching up he paper, I flop down on the bed and unfold it above me, resting my head on a pillow. The handwriting is immediately recognizable, and I realize it’s one of the ripped-out pages from my journal.
I rush to read the words, once again feeling like I’m seeing them for the first time, having no memory of thinking them or writing them down.
It’s been two weeks of this nonsense, and I’ve had enough. Not only was my life flipped upside down when finding out my parents had lied to me all these years, now I have to face the product of their dishonesty everywhere I turn. I don’t understand the constant questions about my daily life, my family, and the prison. So many questions that I feel as if I’m going insane, reliving everything from the last eighteen years.
Why is all of this information so important? Is it jealousy because I had a normal, happy childhood? I want to feel sympathy that I obviously had such a better life, but it’s so hard to do this. It’s not my fault I had it better. It’s not my fault this house is filled with photos of happy times and happy memories. My parents won’t stop hovering, and it’s driving me insane. I know they feel bad for lying, but I can’t forgive them. I’m so angry that everything in those happy photos and wonderful memories has been tainted by a secret they kept hidden.
They want me to be polite and accommodating, just as they raised me to be. Show that I’m the bigger person and make the best of this situation. It’s the only reason I’ve agreed to go exploring in the basement when my parents leave for dinner. I hate going down there, but I’ll do it if it finally stops all the questions. I’ll go down into the basement and fight through my fears. I refuse to be called a chicken or accused of being afraid to take chances. Just because I wear nice dresses, keep my hair perfectly neat, and behave like a proper young lady should, doesn’t mean I’m scared to be adventurous. I will go down into the basement, not because I was teased into it, but because I’m tired of always being labeled as the good girl. I’m going to prove I can be bad too.
Crumbling the journal page in my fist, I toss it across the room in frustration. Why was I so cryptic when I wrote in that stupid journal? I mention how my life suddenly changed and lies my parents told, but I never say what the lies were. Did I find out about Tobias before I lost my memory? Is that why I ran out into the woods and someone tried to hurt me? Has my mother been the guilty party this entire time? She admitted to pushing me into the lake and apologized for her sins and weaknesses. When I found out about Tobias, I assumed all of that talk was about her affair with him all those years ago and never telling me he could be my real father. Maybe her sins went beyond that. Maybe I found out about Tobias before that night, and she was afraid I’d tell my father. It would explain how differently I started acting a few weeks before. It would explain my sudden interest in Nolan, the change in clothes and hairsty
le, and the fighting with Trudy.
Maybe my mind started fracturing before I even ran into the woods that night. According to the journal page I just read, my life had been turned upside down by something. If I was still a normal, good girl when I found out the man who raised me for eighteen years wasn’t really my father, I’m guessing that would have changed everything for me. Especially if I knew about Tobias’s past and the type of person he was.
“Are you okay, Ravenna? I can’t even remember the last time you were in one of the cell blocks.”
My father’s voice suddenly fills my head, and I think back to those first few days after the accident and the day I went to see him in the cell block while he prepared for a tour. Even then, so early on, when I was still covered in scratches and bruises and still had a bandage covering the gash on my head, nothing felt right, and the things he said to me felt like lies. I pushed those feelings aside, though, and blamed them on my jumbled brain.
I run out of my room and down the stairs, holding tightly to the banister when I get to the bottom as I swing around and head to the back of the first floor. Racing through the halls, I pass by the secretary’s office, and then the storage room filled with boxes of shirts, coffee cups, and other items to restock the gift shop, and I don’t stop until I get to the fork in the hallway. To the left is the west cell block and to the right is the east. I turn to the right, moving past the old guard station where new prisoners were checked in before being led to their cells, and through the alcove leading right into the east cell block.
“I can’t even remember the last time you were in one of the cell blocks.”
I hear my father’s words again, and I move silently across the cement floor, like I did that day I decided I was tired of being cooped up in my room and decided to go on a walk around the prison. I remember feeling like his words didn’t make sense because this area felt so familiar to me, especially one cell in particular. That day in this cavernous room, five stories tall of row after row of tiny rooms where killers and rapists and other dregs of society lived out their days, I glanced inside each dilapidated cell just like I do now, looking at mangled bed frames, cracked and stained toilets, and stone walls that are crumbling, leaving behind piles of rocks and dust on the floor.
Just like that day when my father told me I’d never been in this area, a particular cell halfway down the row calls to me. It beckons me closer and I have no choice but to go to it. My feet automatically stop in front of cell number sixty-six, the number etched into the top middle of the steel frame around the cell door.
“Tobias was in cell number sixty-six. Only one more six and your father would have lived in a room with the mark of the devil on it. You’re lucky I’m here to make sure you never turn into him.”
My vision blurs and my body sways, forcing me to hold onto the open cell door as I remember someone telling me about Tobias. I don’t remember who it was but it’s a male voice, and I remember hating him for speaking about my father so cruelly. I remember telling him that I had already turned into my father and there was nothing he could do about it. A sharp pain suddenly shoots through my head as I try to remember more, try to see whom I’m talking to and who told me about Tobias.
I wince, squinting my eyes as the knives stab through my skull, and blood rushes through my ears, the pounding of my heart so loud that it’s a wonder it doesn’t rattle the whole building. I take a few deep, calming breaths, refusing to let the pain stop me or deter me from remembering. I can’t keep allowing this brick wall in my mind to slam down each time I’m right on the verge of remembering something I know is important.
Moving slowly into the dark cell, the setting sun’s orange glow that shines through the huge windows behind me lights up the shadows in the small room just enough for me to see what I’m looking for—the thing that drew me to cell number sixty-six that day I was down here with my father and what pulls me forward now.
I barely register the rocks and uneven stone floor beneath my bare feet as I move deeper into the cell, until I’m standing next to the broken toilet, right in front of the back wall. The pain in my head disappears and I open my eyes all the way, my hand coming up in front of me. My fingers gently trace over the crude drawing on the wall, careful not to press too hard and chip away any of the stone and ruin it.
“The devil can’t make you do something when he lives inside of you, and you welcome his thoughts,” I speak aloud softly, my voice echoing around the stone walls as I recite the words my father said to me today, and run my fingers over the satanic image he carved into the stone when he was imprisoned here.
I repeat the words like a chant, over and over, while my fingers move away from the carving of the horned figure with the forked tongue, up to the words he engraved in the stone above it.
“You will pay for your sins,” I read aloud softly.
I close my eyes and turn away from the wall, pressing my back against the cold stone and then sliding to the floor. Pulling my knees up to my chest, I wrap my arms around them and feel like I’m home.
My memories no longer make me feel like they are playing tricks on me. I know they speak the truth because as I sit here, in the cell where my father spent most of his life, I know I’ve been here several times before. The dampness of this space, the smell of musty stone, and the coldness of the floor seeping through my shorts pushes several moments forward in my mind where I can see myself so clearly sitting in this same spot, just so I could feel closer to him.
The words I remembered being spoken to me about Tobias and his cell number prove that I knew about him long before I found his file in…my father’s office. My brain stumbles over calling Tanner my father, but that’s how I’ve always known him, and it’s hard to make myself call him by anything else right now.
I want to believe that my mother was the one chasing me into the woods because it’s the only thing that makes sense. It fills in most of my unanswered questions, and it gives me a plausible reason for why it happened, especially after seeing her completely lose her mind and then kill herself right in front of me.
It would be so easy to just accept it as the truth, but I can’t. As I sit in Tobias’s cell and revel in the familiarity of being here, that explanation still doesn’t make everything click together in my head like it should. If that was the final piece of the puzzle, if that was the one thing my mind was still keeping from me, I think I would feel it, wouldn’t I? Finally figuring out the truth should make every moment from that night perfectly clear in my head, but when I try to remember who I was running from, I still see nothing but a faceless figure. I still hear a voice yelling at me, but it’s neither male nor female, just threats being yelled through the woods while thunder rumbled all around me.
Letting my head thump back gently against the wall, I remember the words I read in the missing journal page and know there’s only one thing left for me to do. The one thing I’ve always known I need to do, but kept getting interrupted before it could happen. Just like this cell, it calls to me, even stronger than before now that I’ve read the words I wrote.
It’s time for me to get into the basement, even if I have to break down the door.
Giving myself a few more minutes of quiet, I think about Tobias’s voice and how good it made me feel that he saw right through me.
“My name is Ravenna Duskin. I’m eighteen years old, I live in a prison, and the devil is inside of me.”
Chapter 20
I spent so long down in cell number sixty-six that by the time I made it back to the main hallway, Nolan had returned from checking on his mother and was knocking on the door. Something has been screaming in my head ever since I let him in that he shouldn’t be here, and I shouldn’t let him go down into the basement with me, but I’ve pushed those thoughts aside for now. I wasn’t able to get the door unlocked the last time I tried, and I need him to do it for me.
Standing over his shoulder, my body vibrating with excitement like it has the last few times I’ve tried to go
downstairs, I tap my foot impatiently against the floor, trying not to scream at him to hurry. It feels like Nolan is moving in slow motion as he uses the same hanger he used to open the spare bedroom and the one I used unsuccessfully on this door the day my father drunkenly stumbled down the stairs and interrupted me.
The click of the lock releasing almost makes me want to wrap my arms around Nolan’s shoulders and kiss his cheek, but even the thought of doing something like that makes my stomach churn.
He stands up and tosses the hanger to the floor, turns the knob, and opens the door.
“It’s fine if you need to go back to your mother; I can do this alone,” I tell him, trying not to come right out and tell him I don’t want him here, that his presence is threatening to kill my excitement. I might be a mean, twisted person deep down inside, but at least I’m not rude. He did just help me with something, no questions asked, and after everything he’s learned about me and helped me figure out, he still isn’t running in the opposite direction because it’s finally hit him that my life is entirely too messed up for him.
“My mom’s asleep right now, so I don’t have to be back to give her medicine for a few hours. I’m not going to leave your side, Ravenna, don’t worry,” he reassures me, leaning down and placing a kiss on my cheek.
Just like I figured when I thought about doing it myself, the feel of his warm lips against my skin makes me feel nauseous, but I’m completely surprised that it also calms me in some way. I’m so on edge right now that I feel like I’m going to jump out of my skin. The door is finally open, and I know with everything inside of me that going down these stairs will give me the answers to everything. I don’t even know how to explain what I’m feeling. I don’t know how I know the last of the secrets are down here—I just do. Nolan’s kiss, while almost vomit-inducing, slowed my heart down, so I no longer feel like it might explode. It also stopped me from screaming at him to get the hell away from me. I should be worrying that I’m growing more comfortable with him, but I don’t have time for those pointless thoughts right now. Just as I wrote, over and over, in my journal, the secrets are hidden in the walls of this prison, and I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that they are down those steps, beyond the darkness.
