“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.
“Can you grab two flashlights?” I ask him, pointing distractedly to the small side table behind him and against the wall next to the basement door. “My father keeps a bunch there for tours since there’s only one light at the bottom of the stairs.”
I stare in a daze at the rickety wooden stairs that disappear into the blackness of the basement, so deep the lights from up here can’t reach. Nolan taps my arm with the end of a flashlight and I jump, realizing he’d been holding it out in front of me while I was busy staring.
“Come on, let’s go into the basement.”
“Are you crazy? It’s scary down there.”
“It’s not scary when you go with someone else. Come on, there’s something I want to show you.”
“I’ve been down there before, believe me, there’s nothing I haven’t seen.”
“You haven’t seen the bones…”
The conversation I remembered the last time I tried to go down into the basement floats through my mind, as well as the words I read from the journal page earlier. That page made it sound like someone else was making me go into the basement, but the memory of that conversation is perfectly clear in my head. I can see myself standing in this very spot, hands on my hips and a cocky smile on my face as I coerced whoever it was to come with me.
Taking the flashlight, I head down the stairs, hoping the rest of that memory will come to me when I get down there.
“Are you sure you’re okay, Ravenna? You’re breathing pretty hard and your hands are shaking,” Nolan says softly as he follows me down the stairs.
“It’s calling to me,” I whisper. “I can feel it. I need to go down there,” I whisper softly, not even caring if he hears me.
I sound crazy—I know I do—but I can’t stop the words from coming out of my mouth.
“Don’t go down there. You’ll never come up if you go down there.”
The warning my father gave me when he caught me picking the lock on the basement door suddenly feels like a bad omen, instead of the drunken nonsense of a man slowly losing his mind after the death of my mother. The words repeat on a loop in my head, getting louder and louder, until I have to press my hands against my ears to quiet them.
“Stop, stop, stop,” I chant under my breath as I make myself continue moving down the stairs, the old wood creaking beneath my feet.
I don’t want to hear his voice in my head. He’s a liar and a fool, staying with a woman who probably never wanted him and who lied to him about my paternity. I hate him for pushing me away every time I needed him. I needed him so much, and he threw me away like I meant nothing.
“Get her away from me; I can’t stand to look at her.”
“She’s just like him, Claudia. You can’t pretend anymore. I won’t let her ruin us like Tobias did.”
“Look what she did, Claudia! She’s only five years old, and look what she’s capable of! She has to go; she’ll only get worse.”
“Do whatever you need to do, Dr. Thomas, just don’t bring her anywhere near here again unless you can fix her.”
Words I overheard long ago rush through my mind so swiftly the farther I get to the bottom of the stairs that I can barely make sense of them. Even though I’ve come to terms with my father’s hatred toward me, it still takes my breath away to remember even more proof of that disgust and the realization that it didn’t start recently. He has always hated me. He’s wanted me gone since I was five years old.
“Ravenna, are you okay?” Nolan asked worriedly.