Twisted

by Knight, Natasha

  “Am I all right?” I repeat. “I woke up to find you gone and those men…those men…” I wipe the back of my hand across my nose and eyes and it takes me a minute to continue. “They were inside the bedroom. I was…I wasn’t even dressed. I thought it was you and it was two men and no. No, I’m not all right. I’m not even a little all right. I…”

  He swerves off the road so fast that I let out a scream that’s drowned out only by the angry sound of cars horns.

  The tires screech as he hits the breaks and we come to a stop so fast along the side of the road that if it weren’t for the seatbelt, I’m sure my face would be smashed on the dashboard.

  He turns to me, takes my arms, my face.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t think. I should never have left you alone. I should never have left you unprotected.”

  His eyes are dark and intent on me but inside them, a storm is raging. Hurt and betrayal and loss and rage. So much rage.

  I reach out and touch his face and he lets me go and takes a deep breath in, pressing the back of his head into the seat and looking out into the night. A car passes too close, honks his horn.

  “Fuck you!” Gregory yells at the window.

  I shudder, wrap my arms around myself.

  He looks at me, pulls his sweater over his head and hands it to me. “Here.”

  I look at it stupidly.

  “Put it on. You’re cold.”

  I take it, slide it on, look at him in his black T-shirt and think how good the wool feels, still warm from him, still smelling like him.

  “He didn’t hurt me. He just took me to get to you.”

  “I know.”

  He pulls back out onto the road and I strap my seatbelt, and I think we’re both a little calmer.

  “What happened to you?” I ask. “Where were you?”

  “I went to see my mother.”

  “How did you find her?”

  “Sebastian.”

  “She took the ring from Stefan? This was all about a stupid ring?”

  “Not just any ring.”

  I reach out, touch his shoulder because there’s more. “What’s going on?”

  He shakes his head.

  “Gregory—”

  “Not now!” he snaps.

  I snatch my hand away and turn back to the window and remember what Stefan said about the catacombs and remember my dream, how the girl kept trying to lead me to that door.

  How did he get down there? When? That day he was at the house when we got there?

  And what’s down there?

  Every time I glance at Gregory, I see how his forehead is creased, how he’s deep in thought. And I can’t help but feel outside of that thought. We’re still separate. He has his secrets and I’m keeping Stefan’s and it all feels wrong.

  The drive to the house is long and quiet, the roads slippery once we exit the highway and head up the smaller roads to Villa de Rossi.

  “Can I call my sister?” I ask once he parks the car at the house.

  “What?” he asks, like he’s surprised at seeing me there beside him.

  “Can I have my phone to call Helena?”

  He nods once and we walk in. The door’s unlocked and a light is on in the living room and one upstairs in his bedroom. He left in a rush. He must have come back and found me gone and left.

  “How did you know I was at Stefan’s house?” I ask when we’re inside.

  “He left an invitation,” Gregory says. “Fucking arrogant bastard.”

  I follow him to his study. He unlocks it, and we enter. He takes my phone out of a desk drawer and hands it to me after putting the battery in.

  “You’ll have to charge it,” he says when it doesn’t go on. He hands me a charger, I guess it’s from his phone.

  “Thanks.”

  “Listen,” he says, standing there not quite looking at me, rubbing the back of his neck. He must change his mind though because he gives a shake of his head. “I need to make a call.”

  “Who will you call? It’s late.”

  “Throw that dress away,” is his reply.

  I bite the inside of my cheek. “Okay,” I say. Taking the phone and the charger, I walk out of his office, closing the door behind me.

  When I hear the lock turn is when I decide what I’m going to do and I rush up to the bedroom, plug the phone in and get the flashlight I saw in the bathroom drawer alongside the scissors. I take it and go back out to the hallway, slipping off the high-heels Stefan gave me to wear and leaving them at the top of the stairs and make my way back downstairs, down through the living room and past his closed office door, to the library.

  There, I switch on the flashlight and tell the voice inside my head that’s screaming for me to turn around, to go back upstairs and call Helena, to shut up and I make my way to the back of the room.

  I stand in front of that ancient looking wooden door for a long minute, thinking it looks like the entrance to hell. Dread fills me. I know what I’m going to find is going to be bad. I feel it. And some part of me hopes the door’s locked but when I try it, I see that the lock’s been broken off and I think it must have been Stefan or his men to have done that.

  Does Gregory even know he went down here?

  I push the door open and switch on the flashlight and shine it into the darkness before taking a deep breath in, inhaling the mix of earth and cold before stepping into the darkness.

  22

  Amelia

  The flashlight blinks in and out, the battery must be old, but it provides enough light that I can at least see where I’m going.

  Cobwebs catch in my hair and tickle my face. I don’t want to think about what’s crunching under my bare feet. I wish I’d thought to put on shoes or grab a pair of socks at least.

  I just follow the path and when I come to the corridor, I take the right one, like Stefan said, and I swear it’s darker here and even colder.

  I pass room after room without doors, and the darkness goes on forever. Like the deeper I go, the farther it stretches.

  Every time I glance over my shoulder, it seems like behind me, there are a hundred ways to choose from and I think if I turned around, I’d never find my way back. Not to the library. Not back to the house.

  Not back to the life I knew before the reaping.

  But then finally I come to a room with a door and I know this is the one Stefan meant.

  I think about what Gregory said. About ignorance being a gift. But I can’t not go inside. I have to see what’s here. I have to see what he’s hiding.

  Like the one upstairs, this door looks old and heavy, but it opens more easily than I think it will, as if the hinges have been oiled. I shine the flashlight around and in the dim light, I see candles, a lot of them on jutting stones along the walls like makeshift shelves, and sheets upon sheets of paper are stuck to the walls like posters.

  But it’s then that the flashlight blinks, goes out and no matter how much I slap or shake it, it won’t turn back on.

  I enter the room, put my hands out in front of me as I walk toward where I saw the candles. The door clicks closed behind me, making me jump, animating me to move faster. With my hands, I feel the rough, cold wall and then the smooth wax of a candle and there’s a box of matches beside it, but I fumble and they drop to the floor, matchsticks scattering.

  I crouch down and feel for them, blind in this solid dark, trying not to think about what I’m touching. Soon, I have the box and I light a match and it’s the smallest relief in all this darkness.

  My hand trembles as I bring the match to the candle, and the flame threatens to go out again when I exhale as the light takes.

  I peer at the dimly illuminated sheet hanging on the wall, trying to make out what’s on it. The match burns my fingertips, making me drop it and jump back.

  From inside the box, I take the last match that didn’t fall out, hold it to the flame of the lit candle and watch the match flare up. I light the next candle, then the one after that and the one after t
hat and I think there must be a hundred of them. Rows and rows on the protruding stones along each of the four walls. When the match burns down, I pick up one of the candles and concentrate on lighting each one, counting as I go because what I glimpse of the pages stuck to the walls, I can’t think about that. Not yet.

  Some of the candles are nothing but stubs. Some brand new. And there’s a box full of more shoved against one corner.

  One-hundred and eight candles and the room is bathed in soft, familiar light.

  Like the light in the library on the night of the reaping.

  And just like that night, I turn a circle and see it repeat all around me. See that night memorialized. Sketch after sketch, stuck one beside another, some touching, a second row of them along one wall.

  Some of them are mine.

  All the ones of that particular night are mine.

  The missing sketchbook. Here it is. Here are all the pages of my missing book.

  I walk to one of two bursts of color along these damp, black stone walls.

  It’s the red that marks Helena’s sheath.

  He must have used his finger to draw it.

  Red.

  Bright red.

  Pig’s blood. That’s what they’d used to mark her dress.

  I wonder if he used his own blood to mark the sketch.

  Did they require my parents to use pig’s blood? They could have easily used a smear of paint. Or did my mother choose to slaughter the pig? To use its blood to punish her further? Because I think she hated Helena. I just don’t understand why.

  My eyes fill with tears as I try to make sense of her, of my mother. I wonder if her distance from us all of our lives, if it was to prepare her for what she’d have to do.

  Or what she thought she’d have to do.

  The reaping.

  This insane contract between our families.

  All she had to do to stop it was choose us over the money, the house.

  I shake my head to clear it, because that’s not important anymore. It doesn’t matter at all because it’s done and Helena’s on that island and I’m here in the middle of this room.

  This memorial.

  His memorial.

  To her?

  I remember that night when I’d had the nightmare the first time, when he woke me and I saw him, I saw how his fingers were dirty.

  Charcoal.

  He was using it to draw.

  To modify my sketches. To draw his own. To make a monster out of himself.

  I think I’m going to be sick.

  It takes all I have to make my legs work, to walk slowly through the room from corner to corner, taking my time, studying each page that’s stuck to the wall, touching some, tracing some of the figures.

  This is what he’s been hiding.

  But this isn’t all.

  I know now why he won’t let me see his back. I know what I’ll find there once I do.

  Two bottles of half-drunk whiskey stand on the floor beside the cot. There’s a pillow and a blanket. This must be where he sleeps when he disappears at night.

  I go to the bed. Sit down and pick up the pillow. I bring it to my nose, and I smell him on it, and my heart twists and I think I hate him. I want to hate him.

  Because all this time, all the while that I’ve been here, he’s only been thinking of her.

  All of this has been about her.

  Am I just a replica of her?

  A sorry second-best?

  My eyes warm with tears I despise myself for and I pick up one of the bottles and open it, pull my knees up and hug my arms around them because it’s freezing down here, and I think I should have put shoes on.

  I drink two gulps of whiskey.

  His whiskey.

  His bed.

  His pillow.

  His blanket.

  The only thing not his is me.

  Does he think I’m her?

  Does he pretend I’m her when he’s touching me? When he’s fucking me?

  Hurt turns to anger, turns to a rage that makes my blood boil and I swallow down more of the burning liquor and I can’t drag my eyes from the goddamned sketches.

  I sit there for an eternity just looking. Just looking all around. And when I finally get to my feet, the room spins a little. Maybe that’s good though. Maybe if I pass out, I won’t have to see.

  I won’t have to know.

  “Were you in love with her?”

  I suck back tears and snot and think what an idiot I am. God. What a fool. What a stupid, stupid fool.

  Whiskey sloshes in the bottle, dripping over my chin, leaving its sticky sweet residue behind as some drops onto my sweater.

  No.

  Not mine.

  His.

  I put the bottle down, just for an instant, because I want the sweater off. I want it off me and I tug at the sleeves and pull it over my head and it’s so cold, but I don’t care.

  I pick up the bottle again, drink more of the whiskey.

  Being here surrounded by this, by all of this, it’s like going back in time to a night I can’t forget.

  To the night that changed everything.

  I force myself to take yet another turn, a slow circle around the room, bottle in hand. I study how he’s altered my sketches, just slight modifications. Like the shadows of the ghosts of past Willow Girls who clung to the corners of the library that night—did he see them too? Feel them? Because they’re more prominent now, in mine and his.

  I look at the other sketches, the scenes I don’t know, the ones he must have witnessed first-hand. The ones he drew.

  How well he hid this from me.

  How well he hid everything.

  I wipe the back of my hand over my face and make myself look because it’s time I see. It’s past time I see.

  Sebastian is holding Helena here and she’s naked in his arms and I know he loves her. I can see that Sebastian loves her.

  I don’t want to hate my sister.

  This isn’t her fault.

  I drink another swig of whiskey, the last of this bottle. There wasn’t much in it. A quarter of the bottle? I let it drop to the floor, don’t care that it shatters, don’t care that I step in those shards as I make my way to the second bottle to empty that too. To drink myself into oblivion.

  Her face. The detail of her face. He must have spent hours on just the details of her face.

  But then I see more.

  I see them.

  And I’ve known all along, haven’t I? Isn’t it the only thing that makes any sense?

  Helena and Sebastian and Gregory.

  Together.

  Helena between them.

  Between them both.

  Both brothers holding her.

  Both having her.

  I press my feet into the glass, wince at the pain of it cutting me. I drink.

  Jealousy is hot.

  Rage boils.

  But betrayal, it’s cold. Cold as ice.

  And I’m frozen.

  Betrayal makes me shudder and it makes it hard to swallow.

  To breathe.

  I stand before the one where Helena is in Sebastian’s arms looking back, looking out of the sketch. Her eyes meet mine. I assume it was Gregory who stood where I stand now. Who watched his brother carry her away.

  Watched his brother take her away from him.

  I study my sister’s face and the look in her eyes in this one, it’s strange. Almost sorry.

  I move to another and this one too, it has color. Not as bright as the red, but a deep orange. An angry, burning orange.

  Helena is bound to a post, back bared, fire nearby, fire raging all around.

  It’s going to consume her.

  It’s going to consume them all.

  Maybe it did.

  This one, it’s been ripped in two then taped back together badly. Gregory’s torn himself out then put himself back in.

  I can’t make out his face. He’s a blur.

  No, that’s not true. I brin
g the whiskey to my mouth and drink, ignoring the cold beneath my feet, ignoring the pain of glass embedded in the skin. I study this one because as important as they all are, this one, it’s haunting.

  He smeared the details of his face, like he took charcoal and tried to rub it out, but I can still see it. See him.

  And what I see is pain. Misery.

  What I feel when I look at this is an ache so consuming, so intense and hot and burning, it hurts. It hurts like the glass under my feet. Hurts like the fire is burning my own skin.

  That fire, it consumed him.

  And it all finally makes sense. His fascination. His obsession.

  I see clearly now for the first time since he took me. The glove too, it makes sense. I understand why he wears it, why he never takes it off.

  I take that one down off the wall and resume my seat on the cot and with my finger, trace his face. And then, a minute later, I tear it, tear it right along the line where he’d torn it. I take him away from them.

  And it’s like that fire, that rage, it burns inside me and I’m ripping the paper, shredding it into a hundred pieces. I let the scraps scatter along the ground and I get up and take another down, one of mine, the night of the reaping, and I do the same to that and to the next one and the one after and the one after that because I can’t look at them one more time. Not for one more second.

  I can’t see him like this.

  Can’t feel him like this.

  Rage bubbles over and I scream, and I don’t stop tearing, ripping, destroying. I don’t stop until the ground is littered with the remains of that night, the past just shreds on the floor at my feet, the walls bare.

  I don’t stop until the bottle is emptied and I can’t walk without stumbling and when I’ve finished, when I’m through, I remember where I am and remember the little girl and I think is this what she wanted to show me? Is this where she was leading me to?

  I want to leave.

  I want to get out of here. Get out of this room. This house.

  I want out.

  But the door, it’s flush to the wall, no doorknob, just a hole where it would be and no way to open it that I can see and when I try, I fail.

  Panic overwhelms me as I scan the room again, see where I am, know that I’m trapped.

  I stumble back to the cot, fall onto it when the backs of my knees hit it.