Chapter Eleven
T he next morning, Ezra meets me in the MRF lobby again. This time, he holds out a new ID card. “I got permission to take you on as a long-term consultant. This won’t give you access to the entire facility, but it will get you through the door without me coming to fetch you every time.”
I look down at the card, which has my face and my fake name: Gwen Bailey . “Thanks.”
I follow him deeper into the facility, into the usual observation room.
My eyes first go to the observation window—showing an empty cell, as usual—and then to the camera in the corner. I quickly look away, but Ezra notices.
“It’s all right,” he promises, his voice low. “We’re just talking. Nothing else. It will hardly be the strangest thing happening within these walls.”
I chew the inside of my cheek, unable to fight the fear of someone watching us. What if my powers go haywire again? “But if I say something I shouldn’t, or…if I do something…”
“I’ll handle it,” Ezra promises. “Trust me. We should be as careful as we can, but if the worst happens, I have some favors to cash in.”
I nod and turn to the table. An old-fashioned, wooden metronome sits atop it.
“Really?” I ask, shooting Ezra a skeptical look. “Will this actually do anything?”
He shrugs. “It can’t hurt.”
“I suppose not.” I force myself to sit still, folding one leg over the other and placing my hands on the table. “So how does this work?”
Ezra takes a seat across from me. “All you have to do is listen,” he says. “I’m going to start by inducing you into a state of heightened suggestion. Your conscious mind will grow quieter and more pliable. Then I’m going to try to walk you back through your memories. You may remember some things without even knowing it, and this could help you bring those memories to the surface.”
Fear shivers through me— maybe I forgot for a reason— but I quiet the doubt. I need to do this. For Dorian. I glance again toward the viewing panel and the seemingly empty cell beyond.
Ezra follows my look. “He’ll be listening to us. As you begin to remember, I hope Dorian will become stronger. Perhaps he’ll even be able to communicate with us again.” His gaze turns back to me, scrutinizing. “Are you ready?”
I nod again, my mouth dry.
“If you’re uncomfortable at any time, say the word and we’ll stop.”
He turns the key on the metronome, moves the pendulum to the right, and lets it go. It begins to swing back and forth, its beat slow and even.
“Start by watching the pendulum,” Ezra says. “Keep your eyes on it as it goes back and forth.”
I do as he says, my eyes following its steady movement. Tick, tick, tick. I imagine my heart beating in tune.
“Listen to its beat and listen to my voice. If you get lost, let those sounds pull you back to safety. Remember that your body is here, with me, in this room. Nothing you see or hear can hurt you.”
Tick, tick, tick.
“Now shut your eyes. Let the sound of the metronome fill your thoughts and everything else fade into the background. Let your breathing slow as your mind empties. One deep breath in…hold it…and let it out.”
I breathe with his instructions, and then again, slower than before. The steady ticking of the metronome seems to slow. Ezra’s voice, when he speaks again, sounds farther away.
“Breathe in, and let calmness enter… Breathe out, and release your tension. Your body is growing heavier, sinking into the chair. Each breath relaxes you further.”
My breathing slows, deepens. My head lolls forward, sinking toward my chest, and rests there. My body seems to fade away.
“Good,” Ezra says. “Now we’re going to dive into your memories. Imagine them as a void within your mind, filled with sights, sounds, smells…but this void is within you. Right now it is disorganized, floating…but it is all under your control, and you can organize it as you wish.”
I imagine myself floating in the darkness, aimless. Peaceful. Fragments of memories floating around me. Dorian’s white mask rises from the shadows, his gloved hand stretching toward me. But when I reach for him, he fades.
“Imagine your mind as a house.”
I think of my own house. The house I grew up in, with its many doors. I know every inch of it, every nook and portrait and hidden secret, yet its wide-open spaces are too big for me to fill alone.
“You’re standing in the hallway of this house, looking at a series of doors. Do you see them?”
The hallway forms around me. Wooden floorboards stretch beneath my feet, creaking when I shift in surprise; doors rise up on either side of me; the ceiling thumps into place overhead.
“Yes,” I whisper to the empty hallway. My voice is loud in the silence. “I’m here.”
“Behind each door is a memory.” Ezra’s voice seems to come from everywhere and nowhere at once, echoing off the walls. “Some of them are locked, but you have the key.”
I look down into my hands and see that he’s right. I do hold the key, a huge, antique brass thing. I can feel its weight, the faint chill of the metal against my skin, like I just picked it up. I run my thumb over its metal teeth.
“This is your house.” Ezra’s voice sounds fainter, but it’s still here with me. “There are no locked doors that you cannot open.”
I look down the hallway. There are so many doors, one after another, all wooden and identical and waiting for me. They stretch out endlessly. Every time my eyes wander farther down the hall, more appear.
My breath quickens as my eyes travel further, my chest tightening. “There are so many…”
“It’s your decision which ones to open, and when,” Ezra says.
His voice pulls me back from the brink of panic. But then my attention snags on the hatch in the ceiling. The attic . Just like the first time I saw it in reality, it sends a chill slithering down my spine.
The hatch rattles. I step back. The rattling turns to pounding, like something is throwing itself against the other side.
“I don’t want to open the attic,” I whisper, struck by a sudden fear that there is something terrible in there. Something better kept locked up.
“You don’t have to.” I’m grateful for Ezra’s voice here with me, calming me down. “It’s your house. Your choice. Only you can open the doors, and you don’t have to go inside if you don’t want to.”
I take a deep breath, and another. The rattling slows before stopping entirely. The hallway is quiet; the doors are locked, and I hold the key.
“Ignore the attic,” Ezra says. “Whatever is inside will wait for you to be ready. Look at one of the other doors, the closer ones. They hold good memories, ones you want to remember.”
I turn to the door on my right. Light spills out from underneath, and I can hear the sound of distant laughter. I recognize it as my own, pitched higher with youth.
“Are you ready to open the door and see?” Ezra asks.
I nod and step forward, sliding the key into the lock. The door creaks open slowly and reveals my childhood bedroom. Identical to now, except without the dust and the cobwebs.
A young version of me sits at my vanity table, carefully arranging my long blonde hair into a ponytail. An invisible hand grabs the end and lifts it, tugging playfully; the younger version of me laughs in delight.
Smiling to myself, I shut it and move to the next door. This version of me is younger still, sprawled across the floor and drawing on a piece of paper with crayons. A pair of eyes watch from underneath the bed while I hum and kick my feet. I step closer, taking a look at the drawing: a small blonde girl, holding hands with a dark figure wearing a mask, slightly larger than she is. The same drawing I showed to Ezra the other day.
“Dorian was always there,” I murmur. “He was my best friend. How could I forget…?” Tears prick my eyes, frustration and guilt welling up within me at the thought that I forgot all of this.
The child version of me picks up a black crayon and draws circles around the two figures in the drawing.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she says in a singsong voice.
I look back at the doorway, expecting to see someone walking in—one of my parents, maybe? But there’s no one, and when I turn back to her, she’s looking straight at me with an odd smile on her face. She keeps drawing circles while her eyes remain on me. Each movement of the crayon is faster and harder, till I fear it will snap in her tiny hand.
The girl in the drawing is starting to cry, black tears slipping down her cheeks. The masked figure next to her is growing taller and taller. Darkness is all around them.
“Are you talking to me?” I ask. It can’t be possible, can it? But…
“You really shouldn’t be here,” she says. Her eyes stay locked on me, her smile is rigor mortis rigid, and a single tear rolls down her cheek.
The lights flicker. When they come back, the drawing is gone; instead, the young version of me holds up a dead magpie.
Somewhere down the hallway, I hear music. Something is pounding on the other side of the attic hatch again.
“Ezra,” I say, my voice trembling. “Something’s wrong. I want to stop.”
“Okay,” he says, his voice quiet and muffled, as though through water. “All you have to do is walk back down the hallway—”
The lights go out, leaving me in darkness. My frantic breathing echoes in my ears. A floorboard creaks behind me.
“Ezra, get me out now !”
“You’re awake,” he says, suddenly clear, as if he’s speaking directly into my ear. “Open your eyes, Daisy.”
I sit up with a gasp. I’m back in the room at the MRF, in a chair at a metal table, a metronome ticking in front of me. Ezra is standing behind me, his hands braced on my shaking shoulders.
“You’re all right,” he says, and I realize I’m crying. “Daisy, hey. You’re here. It was just a memory.”
I remember my blank-eyed little-girl stare, the way she spoke to me. It didn’t seem like a memory. Something felt terribly, terribly wrong. But he’s right… Eerie or not, it’s not like anything in my own mind could hurt me.
“You went so deep so fast,” Ezra continues, sounding almost as shaken as I feel. “It caught me by surprise. It must’ve been…” He glances toward the camera, turns his back to it, and gestures between us. “One of our abilities, or some combination, I think.”
I nod shakily. “Did you see any of what happened?”
“I only heard what you said.” He lowers his voice. “But I felt what you felt.”
I try to quell my fear. The last thing I need is to give him doubts about our plan. This is the only way for me to get close to Dorian and the truth. I wipe my eyes and force my breathing to steady. The shakes gradually ease.
“I’m sorry,” I say, once I have regained some level of composure. “I don’t know what came over me. It’s just…the guilt of it all, the way I left Dorian behind all of these years…”
I look up at Ezra, letting myself be vulnerable. His own expression softens as he looks down at me. “I’m sure this is stirring up a lot of old feelings. It’s okay to be emotional about it.”
I bite my lip and nod, ignoring the prick of guilt as I swallow my fear.