Chapter Fourteen
D ays pass, and then weeks. Ezra continues to lead me through the endless hall of memories inside of my mind. I remember more of Dorian, both inside of the MRF and outside of it. I begin to put together the puzzle pieces of our past.
The more I remember about our friendship and his protectiveness over me, the lonelier I am every night I climb into bed alone. I stay awake, listening to the creaks and groans of the house and wishing he were here. Sometimes I think I hear the sound of music as I’m drifting to sleep. Sometimes it’s footsteps pacing up and down the hall, or the scrape of something metal dragging against the floorboards. Nightmares plague my sleep, but every time I wake up sweating and gasping, I can’t remember what I dreamed about.
Dorian’s presence in the cell is fleeting, evanescent. Occasionally, he plays a song on the radio, usually “Daisy Bell,” or sometimes flickers through stations. I always strain to hear a whisper of his voice or some hidden message, but I can’t.
Once or twice, I catch a glimpse of him through the window, always out of the corner of my eyes, and he’s gone when I turn my head.
Ezra assures me it’s good news, that the EMF spikes and the temperature drops whenever I’m present and talking. But Dorian is nowhere near as strong as he was in my memories. All I can do is press forward, hoping that something hidden in my mind will help me figure out why .
Yet I still haven’t found the courage to open that hatch to the attic in my mind, the one that frightens me so badly. And I can’t stop thinking about Dorian’s one clear message to me: his warning to run .
There must be more to the story that I haven’t remembered yet. The answer must be somewhere in my memories. And I know that eventually I’m going to have to open that hatch.
The next time I’m in the MRF, I’m still not brave enough to do it. But when I reach for the next door to a memory, that fear lingers in my mind. It curls around my heart as I turn the knob, and—
* * *
In this memory, I’m in my late teens, treating myself to a mini spa day, using the clawfoot porcelain tub in my bathroom, the room lit only by candles. I hum to myself as I stretch out in the warm water, lavender-scented bubbles covering me from the neck down.
When the door creaks open, it doesn’t frighten me. I open my eyes just long enough to see that there’s nobody standing there and then shut them again. “I’m in the bath, Dorian.”
Footsteps pad toward the tub. Heat rushes to my face, and I sink lower into the bubbles to hide myself. I’m still embarrassed at the thought of him seeing me naked like this, even though it wouldn’t exactly be the first time.
“ Dorian ,” I chide, but I’m smiling despite it. It’s still new , this thing between us, but… I’m eighteen now, and my parents are gone for the weekend, so maybe it’s finally time.
Self-consciousness melts away as he pushes my wet hair to the side and caresses my neck, sending shivers through my body despite the warm water. When cool hands run down over my shoulders, massaging the muscles there, I lean into his touch.
I sigh, leaning my head back against the side of the tub. “That feels nice.” The grip on my shoulders tightens. Thumbs dig into my skin hard enough to make me wince. “Less nice.”
The fingers dig in harder. Bruising. My eyes fly open just as the candles in the room flicker out at once, dousing the room in darkness. The steam in the air is suddenly thick, choking. A coppery stink floods my nose, my throat. The water becomes viscous and sticky against my skin, and when I look down, I gasp. The tub is filled to the brim with blood. “Wait, this isn’t—”
The hands shove me under the surface. I scream out a stream of bubbles, fighting and thrashing to no avail. I claw at the hands holding me, but their grip only tightens. Hard as steel, impossibly strong. I try to cry out and choke on a mouthful of coppery liquid. It rushes into my nose, my throat, my lungs—
* * *
I cough out a mouthful of liquid and gasp for air. When my eyes flutter open, I’m no longer in the bathroom. I’m in the MRF, on the floor, with Ezra leaning over me. Static is blaring through the intercom from Dorian’s cell, the lights flickering. My eyes roll toward the observation window, and Dorian is there, all four hands pressed to the window and his eyes locked on me.
When our gazes meet, I find the faintest flicker of relief in his eyes before he disappears. The static cuts off and the lights steady.
I turn over and choke up another mouthful of liquid. It’s only water, thank God—but then a drip of blood falls, tinging it pink. I wipe at my face; my nose is bleeding again.
“What—” I’m shivering, struggling to get the words out through chattering teeth. “What happened?”
Ezra thumps a hand against my back, making sure the water is done coming up. “I-I don’t know,” he says. “You went catatonic on me again. And then you started—” He shakes his head. His hands tremble where he holds me. “Just, choking. Drowning. On nothing but air. I thought you were—” He cuts off as his voice breaks.
I cling to him. “It’s okay. I’m okay.”
“Are you?” He searches my face. “What was that? What happened? Was it a memory that did that?”
I stare up at him. “I don’t know,” I whisper. “Is that possible?” But I know, even as I ask it, that he doesn’t have any more answers than I do.
This whole time, we’ve been operating under the assumptions that my memories can’t actually hurt me, but today might have shown us how very wrong we were.
“What happened in the memory?” Ezra asks. “I heard you say Dorian’s name. Did he…hurt you?”
“No,” I say quickly.
Too quickly.
Ezra pulls away, his expression guarded. “Daisy, I’m trying to help you, but you have to be honest with me.”
“I am being honest,” I insist, even as I wonder if it’s the truth. “It wasn’t him. I’m not sure it was even a real memory. Maybe it started as one, but then something… I don’t know, something went wrong. It’s like my memories are tainted. I don’t know what’s real and what’s not.” I run shaky fingers through my hair. My body is dry, but I’m freezing like I was plunged into water.
Ezra shrugs off his blazer and drapes it over my shoulders. When his fingers nearly brush mine, I flinch back.
He pauses. “I want to help Dorian too,” he says. “But not if it’s going to get you hurt. If Dorian is dangerous, I need to know so we can progress safely.”
“He isn’t dangerous!” Not to me, at least. I’m sure of that, regardless of that memory.
“Even if that’s true, your memories clearly are,” he says. “If they can hurt you like they did today, what’s going to happen to you if you go back to that night?”
I think of that locked attic hatch in the hallway of my memories. The way it shook. My bone-deep terror at the thought of opening it.
Ezra’s expression mirrors my own fear. “We can’t keep doing this,” he says. He takes a deep breath, blows it out, and walks to the observation desk.
“But I saw him,” I say hoarsely. “It’s working.”
Ezra looks at the readings on his devices and sighs. “It is,” he admits. “The temperature plummeted and the EMF showed the strongest reading yet.” He looks at me. “But that means Dorian is stronger than ever. He’ll be fine if we take a break.”
Still shivering, throat raw from choking up water, I can’t bring myself to argue.
* * *
I spend most of my two days off sleeping, yet I stumble into the MRF again feeling like I’ve barely slept at all.
When I step into the observation room, the radio sputters to life in Dorian’s cell—playing “Run, Rabbit, Run!”—and my nose immediately spurts blood. I swoon on the spot.
Ezra catches me before I hit the floor and sends me home again, which is both a frustration and a relief. He promises to do more research into hypnosis and scour the MRF files for anything useful. He sounds doubtful, though, and I feel the same. We’re the only psychics who have tried this, to our knowledge. It’s new territory.
As eager as I am to reunite with Dorian, I have to admit it’s a relief not to venture back into my memories for a little while.
But stuck at home, the days crawl past. Now that I’ve uncovered some of the holes in my memory, it’s like a constant, nagging itch in the back of my consciousness. Without hypnosis to rely on, I return to the old-fashioned way of snooping around my childhood home. I rummage through my bedroom in the hope that I’ll find something that will spark a memory.
Most of what I find is mundane. A hairbrush makes me recall how Dorian would tug on the end of my braid to tease me when we were children. A pearl necklace has me smiling as I remember him helping me clasp it around the back of my neck, his invisible fingers brushing my skin. God, I miss him.
It couldn’t have been him pushing me under the water in that memory. I refuse to accept it.
When the ache in my chest becomes too much to bear, I crawl under my bed and lie there on the floorboards. This was the first place I saw Dorian, and I remember hiding here with him when he was too frightened to come out. I trace my fingertips over the letters of my name carved into the bedpost.
Then I notice a piece of paper crumpled between the mattress and the bedsprings. I tug it free and smooth it out. I expect to find one of the pictures I loved to draw when I was a kid, but instead it’s a list, written in black crayon in my own childish handwriting.
The rules
Don’t look at him
Don’t say his name
Don’t think about him!
My brow furrows as I mouth the words. What was this? Some kind of game? Yet it feels important, since I tucked it away here, beneath my mattress, like some kind of secret treasure.
A floorboard creaks in the hallway outside my room.
My head whips in that direction and my heart skips a beat. I hold my breath, listening. Was that a footstep? It sure sounded like it, but the house is quiet now.
Don’t look .
I can almost hear the words, like they’re being whispered right in my ear. In a flash, I remember hiding under the bed, peering out at the doorway just like I am right now. My hands clenched and my heart pounding. Don’t look don’t look don’t look—
A blink. A drip. And I’m back in the present, blood trickling from my nose. I sigh and crawl out from under the bed, reaching for a tissue. These nosebleeds are such a pain. It felt like I was on the verge of remembering something important, but now my concentration is broken and the moment is gone.
Still, as I staunch the bleeding, my eyes keep drifting back to the doorway, and I keep somehow expecting to see someone, or something, there, watching me.
* * *
My ringtone jolts me awake in the middle of the night. I fumble for my phone on the nightstand, squint at Ezra’s name, and hastily answer.
“What happened?” I ask. My heartbeat is already rising. A weekend phone call in the middle of the night can’t be good news.
“It’s Dorian,” Ezra says. “I was concerned about how little activity I’ve seen over the past couple of days, so I came in today to check on him, and…” His breath hitches. “I’m not seeing any sign of him. Nothing’s registering on the EMF, the temperature sensor—nothing.”
I’m already scrambling out of bed. “I’m on my way.”
“Daisy.” His voice is gentle in a way that threatens to tear me apart. “It might be too late already. I don’t know—”
I hang up before he can finish the sentence. No . I can’t let myself believe it’s over. Not when we finally seemed to be making progress. Not when I’m so close to figuring out the truth. Not when I haven’t even had a chance to say goodbye.
I throw a coat over my nightgown and race out to my car, oblivious to the chill in the air. The streets of Ash Valley are dark and empty at this time of night, so there’s nothing to slow me down as I race to the MRF. But once I reach the gate, I’m forced to stop. Of course, there’s still a guard on duty, and he peers at me with obvious suspicion. I clench the wheel, trying to calm myself down before I say or do something stupid. Power sizzles beneath my skin, searching for an escape. To let it out here and now would be an abysmal mistake.
“I-I forgot my ID, but I’m here to assist Ezra Bradford,” I tell the guard. “It’s an emergency.”
“He didn’t say anything about—”
“Call him,” I snap. The guard’s brow furrows, and I realize that the wheel is vibrating under my hands, the car radio flickering through different stations. I remember how important it is to contain my anger. I shut my eyes, breathe, and push the overflow of energy down, deep down. “Please,” I say, when I’m sure I can keep my voice steady.
The man turns away from me and grabs his radio. His words are too quiet for me to overhear. I watch through the window, well aware how easy it would be for Ezra to have me turned away. But the guard waves me through the gate.
I park and then race into the building, pulling my coat tighter around me as the winter night bites at my bare legs. Ezra’s in the lobby when I arrive, holding out his hands as if to placate me.
“Let me see him,” I demand.
“Daisy, I told you…”
“I know what you told me.” My voice trembles despite my best efforts to stay calm. Now that I’m here, seeing the sorrow on Ezra’s face, reality is threatening to crash down on me. “I’m not going to believe it until I see it for myself. I need to see. To try. To…to say goodbye, if nothing else.” I try to blink back my tears, but they overflow anyway, trekking down my face. “Please, Ezra.”
Ezra scrubs a hand across his face. “You can try to talk to him,” he says. “Maybe he’ll hear you, if it’s not too late…” The doubt in his voice is obvious, but I can tell that he wants this to work almost as badly as I do.
We both hurry down the hallway to the observation chamber. Once inside, I rush to the window and press both hands against the glass. The intercom is already active; Ezra must have been trying to speak to Dorian before I arrived.
“It’s me,” I say. “Can you hear me? Please, show me that you’re still there.”
But there’s no movement in the room, no noise. The radio sits silent. The cell stays empty. I shut my eyes and try to reach out, to feel some hint of his presence, but there’s nothing but an empty room.
“No,” I whisper.
Ezra stands behind me. A beep draws my attention, and I turn to see the EMF reader in his hands, sitting at a steady green. No activity.
We both stare at the meter, waiting, but there’s no change.
My hope is withering. Ezra is sensitive to spirits, and I am sensitive to Dorian. I trust both of us more than any device, but if neither of us can sense him anymore…
“But it was working,” I say, my voice thick with tears. “You said he was getting stronger.”
“He was ,” Ezra says, his shoulders slumping. “Hearing his name, his memories, seeing you…that’s how ghosts get stronger. I’m certain it helped. But maybe it was a temporary burst of strength. Maybe he held on just a little longer for a chance to say goodbye to you.”
I press a hand to my mouth, choke back a sob. “But I didn’t get to say goodbye,” I say. “You didn’t let me see him. If you had just let me in…”
Ezra stares at the floor, emotions warring on his face. “I had to protect you, too,” he says.
Fury wells up inside, filling the empty ache in my chest. It is easier to have someone to blame, and Ezra is right in front of me.
“You were protecting yourself ,” I snap. “And your job.”
The pity in his face only makes me angrier. “All ghosts pass on eventually, Daisy. It’s what they do. They’re just echoes of the past. I was hoping to offer Dorian a chance to speak with you and resolve things before that happened, to give you a chance at closure, but it was always going to go this way eventually. He’s at peace now.”
I shake my head, furious tears spilling over. “No,” I whisper. “No, Dorian is different. He wasn’t supposed to go.”
I shut my eyes. I’m furious with Ezra, but also at myself. For my cowardice, my refusal to face the hard memories that might’ve told me something valuable about my history with Dorian. Instead, he’s gone before I had a chance to find the truth.
“It’s not your fault,” Ezra says. I’m not sure if he’s reading my emotions or if they’re written all over my face. “We did our best.”
He reaches for me, but I pull away. I don’t want to be comforted. If this terrible emptiness—this all-consuming grief—is what I have left of Dorian, then I hope I feel it every day of my life.
“I want to say goodbye,” I say.
Ezra nods, looking away. “I can leave the room and let you…”
“Not here.” I press my hand to the glass. “In there. If I can’t see him again for a real goodbye, at least let me be where he was. Maybe I can…” My voice trembles again, and I stop, swallowing hard. “Maybe there’s some hint of his presence left behind.”
Ezra looks between my face and the empty cell. He’s silent for a long moment. And then, finally, he nods. “Okay,” he says. “I can… I’ll cover the camera. Give you a few minutes. That’s all I can do without someone getting suspicious.”
It’s not much. Barely anything at all, really. But I know he’s already taking a risk, so I don’t dare ask for more.
* * *
A few minutes later, Ezra leads me into the cell where Dorian was. All this time it’s been just on the other side of the glass, so close yet so out of reach, locked behind two iron doors to keep him from escaping. Now, Ezra shuts the door behind me, and I’m alone in the space that Dorian used to occupy.
This place is terrifyingly reminiscent of the time I spent institutionalized. When I think of being strapped down in bed, drugs turning my thoughts to sludge, it feels like the walls are closing in on me. But the fear oozes away as quickly as it hit me. I thought that was the worst thing that could happen to me, but this proves me wrong. The true horror is a life without Dorian in it.
I stand in the center of the room and look around, wishing I could feel anything other than a hollow ache my chest. I look at the cot set up in the corner, the table with the radio sitting on top. White walls, white floor. The viewing panel is shuttered from the other side to grant me privacy, making the room nothing more than a closed box. For years, Dorian was trapped in this room. Alone. Abandoned by me when I fled Ash Valley.
And now, just when I’ve come back for him, he’s gone.
Something inside of me crumbles. I fall to my knees on the floor, a cry ripping out of my throat. When it breaks through the numbness, the sadness is unimaginable. Like a physical blow to the stomach. I’m drowning in the loss, like I will never feel anything other than grief ever again.
But not just grief. Anger . Anger that Dorian was torn from me in the first place, that he was trapped here for years without me knowing how to reach him. Anger at myself for not being able to conquer my memories for his sake. Anger at the unfairness of it all.
I scream into my hands, letting out everything I’ve been bottling up for so many years. The room trembles around me; the table and the bed shake, only remaining grounded because they’re secured to the floor. The radio lifts off the table, floating. The air pulses, brimming with overflowing energy. I have so much anger and no way to let it out.
I wonder if I could bring this building crumbling down. If I could tear apart the walls that kept me separated from Dorian until it was too late. It might be worth it, even if I bury myself in the wreckage…
A hand grasps my shoulder.
A gentle squeeze coaxing me back from the brink. Dragging me up from the whirlpool of my emotions. The room stops shaking; the radio clatters to the table. I tilt my head back and look up into a blank white mask.
My heart stops. For a moment, I can only gape. And then I say, voice trembling, “Dorian?”