15. Laszlo
At my side, my hand tightened into a fist. My jaw clenched. I sucked in a deep breath and forced myself to see the room as it was in the present. There were no tapestries, no elegant drapery. No upper echelon of society, cosplaying as fallen Russian nobles.
I was alone, and my memories could not hurt me.
That was what I’d told myself for decades.
Why should I expect I could believe it now?
The secret entrance was obvious without the wall coverings. The dark chamber. My hand brushed against the false wall, and I recoiled, as if it burned. Jabbing my finger into the old wound was one thing. Going further required me to rip my body open and die to get back to that moment.
It had been years since I last needed to retrace those steps, and relive my past.
I paused, trying to steady my breathing.
Slowly in…
Slower out.
There was nothing down there that could be worse than what I did last night.
I pushed the door open. Stale air. Damp. Cold. The hewn tunnel descended into the earth, beneath the old mansion. It was smaller than I remembered.
No.
I was taller than I’d been, all those years ago.
It was just as long as it had felt that first time, though.
Minutes passed, the outside world fading away.
No sounds outside of my breathing, the thud of my shoes on the rough floor.
An unpleasant scent grew stronger, and several more times, I steeled myself.
This ritual had to be complete.
This place was my touchstone.
My compass.
Sounds echoed further down the tunnel, into the mine beyond, but the strange chamber opened around me, the heart of the evil old building. My hand trembled as I raised my cellphone’s light, casting shadows over the dark rock.
On a pillar were some carvings, symbols I didn’t know the meaning of. Some of them had been tattooed on me, covered up by fresher ink.
I took photos. A few videos. It helped me distance myself from the torrential storm that being back here brewed in me.
Every time I returned of my volition, it was empty. Bereft of anything but old signs carved into the stone columns, channels in the floors, etchings on the wooden walls. They took everything, except the things that couldn’t be taken.
They’d tried to convince me it was all a hallucination.
That Lilien wasn’t real.
But I knew.
Dr. Schaefer, my psychiatrist back at the psychiatric ward, was a fraud. How could a therapist believe I wanted to live in a world where this happened to me? Where I was abused and tortured, every ounce of innocence wrenched from me? I was a child.
I wished this were all a fucking psychotic episode.
The room’s existence and a hazy photograph was the only evidence I had that I wasn’t crazy.
My feet, which had been echoing loudly on the stone floor, stopped making noise. I was walking between times, between past and present. The rug beneath me was as soft as I remembered it.
Bending down, I touched it.
It wasn’t a memory.
It was real.
It wasn’t there the last time I visited.
Fear froze me in place. My willpower, as great as it was, could not triumph over it.
My legs didn’t move. My arms were held stiff against my sides.
In the shadows were glimpses of things I had blurry memory fragments of.
Ornate wooden tables, with marble slabs on top.
My heart was going to burst out of my chest.
No. No. No!
I screamed, but the sound died in my throat. My face burned as my breathing constricted.
I couldn’t tell the difference between reality and memory. Everything was bleeding together.
I wanted to look away, but I forced myself to confront it.
The leather straps at the side of the slab, small enough to hold children down.
My mind broke.
It was everything I had ever wanted since escaping.
My father had beaten me for insisting something awful had happened that night.
That I had a sister.
Broke my limbs, my jaw, my nose, and still I wouldn’t let Lilien go.
That was when he’d given up and had me committed at fifteen.
I never stopped knowing the truth, but I learned to lie.
I told the doctors that I didn’t have a sister, that she was an imaginary friend, and I was just acting out to get my parent’s attention.
Sometimes, I could pretend it wasn’t real. Maybe I had a psychotic break, came up with an elaborate story. Maybe I’d seen something I couldn’t explain, the adult faces warping into ungodly monsters, and my brain filled in the gaps with something from a movie or a book I’d read.
But I wasn’t a child any longer.
I was a grown man, and my knees failed me, sending me to the ground.
The crushing weight of the truth bore down upon me.
It was all real.
I sprinted back out the way I came. The tunnel stretched, elongated, trapping me in its cavernous maw. The sour smell grew stronger.
It wasn’t this long earlier. I’d been walking before, but I had been running for hours.
It was a direct path, but I doubted my reality.
When I finally broke out into that side room, I didn’t waste a moment to pause, to suck in the fresh air. Instead, I tore out into the large ballroom, and back towards the servant’s entrance.
It was shut.
I hadn’t shut it.
The wind?
No.
This place was supposed to be a monument to the past, a mausoleum. A dead relic.
I’d not been as cautious as I should have been. I sprinted out the door, onto the soggy ground.
Panic was in my veins, but my mind, my rational mind, took over.
It wasn’t a harsh winter that had culled the brush. It had been cut. Maintained.
Signs of life.
I hadn’t thought it possible that they would return to this cursed place, and I dropped my guard.
The black heart, hidden beneath the mansion, was being prepared for something.
I pushed through the secret entry point in the fence. Ran across the street, my heart struggling against my ribcage. Fucking careless of me to be driving around in a limited-edition Aston Martin Valour. It was the only one in New England. If anyone glimpsed it, I’d be done for.
I pressed the ignition, threw the gear stick and tore off down the street. The V12-engine spooled up beneath me, and I resisted the urge to speed away. I couldn’t afford to draw any more attention to myself.
I hit the console and glanced in the rear-view camera.
No sign of anything.
I saved the dashcam file to examine later and hit the speed dial.
It rang twice.
“Python? What is it, man? Do you have any fuckin’ idea how early it is? And you know how much I hate doing phone calls. Fuckin’ message me, man.” My associate was groggy, gravel in his throat from sleep despite it being almost dusk.
“Scorpion, shut up. I’m sending you some location data. I need to know if there’s any active camera network there. If there is, harvest and wipe. No time for any shit, this is serious. Pop a pill, snort some coke, whatever you gotta do to get your head in the game right now.”