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 hairstyle, 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.