I screamed.
Cerny clawed at his neck, but it was useless. The tie had cut into his skin and blood was seeping into it. Changing the brown silk to black.
I leapt up from the chair and yanked at the door, but it still wouldn’t budge.
I turned back to the mirror, just in time to see Heath pull Cerny back by the tie, then slam his head into the mirror again. It cracked—on their side, not mine—and the doctor’s cheek split open. Heath jerked the doctor around by the tie and smashed the other side of his head against the mirror. Again and again, he bashed Cerny’s head against the glass until I heard a sickening crunch—either the layers of thick glass or the man’s skull—and Heath finally released him. Cerny hit the sideboard, then slid to the floor with a thud.
Heath backed up a few steps, panting and looking down. I couldn’t see the doctor, but I knew he was dead. There was no way he wasn’t after that beating. Heath lifted his blood-speckled face, and although I knew it was impossible, it seemed like his eyes were looking directly into mine. And then he calmly walked into the next room.
I took a couple of steps back. I hit the wall—no, it was the door—and, like a needle finding the groove on a vinyl record, my mind switched into flight mode. Maybe the mirror was weakened enough that I could break it out with the chair. Or maybe the table would do the trick. If that didn’t work, there might be an air vent—
The door slammed open and I screamed. Heath was still breathing hard, and blood was spattered across his shirt. I moved away, the repelling pole of a magnet. My breathing had shallowed, matching his. My heart was beating so hard it hurt.
“No,” I said. “Stay away from me.”
Heath held out a hand. “Please.”
I heard a low groaning sound—half crying, half protest—and realized it was me. “You killed the birds. You killed the doctor. And Glenys.”
“Please, Daphne,” he said. “Please don’t be afraid of me. I can’t take it if you’re afraid of me.”
I couldn’t say anything—there were no words to reassure him—and I couldn’t stop myself from making the strange wailing sound. I was shattered. Broken into a million pieces.
“I had to do it,” he said. “Don’t you understand? To be free.”
I clasped my hands together to keep them from shaking and pressed them to my face. It was wet with tears. I didn’t even know I’d been crying.
“He kept me prisoner here, for twelve years. He abused me emotionally, mentally, even physically. It was torture. Real, honest-to-God torture. I can’t—” His voice broke, and he swiped at his eyes with one bloodstained sleeve. “I didn’t kill Cecelia. He did. He lured her back here. He let us see each other again because he knew how to twist the knife—and then he killed her.” I noticed he was crying too. Tears had tracked through the blood.
Do psychopaths cry?
“So it was all about Baskens, then—the nightmares? That was why you came here? Because you wanted to kill Cerny?”
“The nightmares were about more than just this place. They were about other things—thoughts I couldn’t stop, thoughts I couldn’t make sense of.”
“What does that mean?” I said.
“You know,” he said. “You know.”
“No, I don’t!” I shouted.
“I loved Cecelia,” he said. His voice was calm now. Level. “She was the only mother I ever really knew. I could never hurt her, just like I would never hurt you. She and Cerny had some kind of sick obsession with each other. In addition to the obsession they had with me.”
He moved to the chair and sat, his arms resting on his knees. For one crazy second, I imagined I had inadvertently been swept up in an elaborate stage play. Now it was over, time for the curtain call and the bows. Time for us to get in our car and drive home and get back to real life.
“I may be a psychopath,” he said tiredly. “But it takes one to know one. Cerny was antisocial too. He was a warped man who manipulated us so he could inflict his abusive fantasies on us. Science may say I have a disorder—they may call me antisocial or oppositional—but that doesn’t make me any less deserving of love. I didn’t deserve to live in this torture chamber.”
“No. You didn’t,” I said.
“He told me, when I turned eighteen, he would publish his brilliant paper. He would be the first to achieve the impossible—identifying, treating, and curing a psychopath. He would be showered with awards. And I would too.” He shook his head. Laughed. “But you can’t grow empathy in someone, like a kidney in a petri dish. If he was any kind of doctor, he would’ve known that. Matthew Cerny never wanted me to get well. He wanted to entertain himself.”
My throat constricted. “So—”
He lifted his eyes to meet mine. “You know what you want to say. Say it.”
“You weren’t cured.” The words fell out of my mouth like broken glass all around me. And now I couldn’t step without slicing myself open.
“I told myself I was. I wanted to be. I ran away. Even though I did everything to forget. This place—his existence—was a thorn in my side that I could never dig out. That just festered and infected everything. The nightmares. The fantasies. I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to face it.”
I felt a weight in my chest, hot and crushing. It was becoming increasingly difficult to breathe. “You could’ve reported him to the authorities.”
“But they would’ve blamed Cecelia too. Maybe put her away forever. I couldn’t do that to her. She was as much a victim as me.”
Heath stood and limped toward me. I let him get close enough that the air between us fairly hummed with electricity. More than just my hands were trembling now. He took a lock of my hair and wound it around his fingers. Brought it to his nose and inhaled. His eyes shuttered closed, and his face lowered to mine. His skin was rough. Slicked with blood.
“Please say you understand why I had to do what I did,” he whispered into my ear. “Please say you won’t leave me.”
I pictured Cerny’s blood smearing from Heath’s skin onto mine. He took hold of my arms, his touch sending a series of shocks zinging through me.
“Everything you told me about Chantal and Mr. Al and Omega—it meant so much to me.”
He was holding me so tightly now, I couldn’t move.
“When you told me, I knew that finally there was someone who understood what I’d been through. What I had to do. We’re the same, Daphne, and it helps me so much to know you’re with me now. That we’re together.”
He wrapped his arms around me, and I closed my eyes. Inhaled his scent—woody, animal scent and copper tang of blood. A brief moment passed, images flashing in my head: Heath whispering in my ear at the photo shoot. His lips on mine. Us at home, in bed, sunlight slanting in from the blinds. The light catching on my ring, the diamond band that he’d taken from Cecelia’s finger, casting rainbows on the wall.
In the frozen moment, my senses telescoped to a mere pinpoint, my brain slowing.
This is your fate, it said, where your life has been leading all along.
You are both damaged. Both beyond repair. But together, you make something whole.
And then, Heath’s arm encircled my back, and he lowered his face and kissed me. Like with every kiss before, I felt the softness of his lips, tasted him, breathed him in. Then, just like it always happened in fairy tales, when the handsome prince’s kiss breaks the spell, my heart woke up.
Friday, October 19
Night
“It wasn’t that she was beautiful—or plain or ugly. As a matter of fact, I don’t remember what she looked like. That wasn’t the point.”
“What was the point, Heath?”
“Connection, I suppose.”
“But that isn’t possible for you, Heath. Isn’t that what this is all about?”
“I’ve found a way, I think. I just don’t believe it’s sustainable. I need you to help me adapt it.”