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.