Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
Five days.
Not even a week had passed, yet it felt like weeks longer. The days blurred together, somehow managing to be the slowest of my life. Maybe it was the lack of sleep—the hours spent staring out the window at night or wandering the halls. I barely got four hours of sleep a night before the nightmares woke me. And they were almost always the same: staring down into a deep, dark current and seeing Emery’s corpse staring back.
The dream would fade, leaving me with the suffocating sensation of being held down, a crushing weight on my chest, and then a sharp pain in my stomach. I’d wake sometime later, and the dripping shadow—some odd hallucination lingering in the corner of my room—would eventually unnerve me enough to force me out into the halls. I’d walk aimlessly until I could calm down again.
Sometimes, I would return to my room; other times, in the garden, sitting by the fountain, watching the morning light from the glass canopy.
The mornings were the worst. If the nights kept me up with my thoughts, the mornings had a choke hold on my emotions. I suspected it was when the pills wore off— Lulladex , the nurses called it. I’d never heard of it but they assured me it was state approved, whatever that meant.
“It’s a unique type of medicine,” Jackie had said. “Only the doctors here can prescribe it.”
She’d mentioned that before.
I could feel myself becoming more reliant on it already. Every morning, I’d wake up shaky, the panic beginning to swell. Like a starving person, I anxiously waited for breakfast, knowing the little pill would be there. I could barely take a bite of food before popping the med into my mouth and chugging water to wash it down.
Afterward, I’d take a shower and come out feeling fucking spectacular—like I could actually come out of all this stronger, like I could conquer my fears. But as the hours passed, the daze would start to fade, and the tension would creep in, slow and insidious, like dripping poison. My thoughts would spiral late into the night until I finally collapsed into sleep, only to wake sometime later in a cold sweat.
And the cycle would continue.
“It takes time to get into a healthy routine,” Leo had said when I told him how everyday went at one of our sessions. “Eventually the meds will balance out and you’ll be able to focus on getting back to a more productive pattern. But if you want to speed the process, I can still prescribe you a sleeping agent.”
I almost took the offer. But something in me felt uncertain about taking more drugs to mask my symptoms.
I tried to take my mind off things and utilize Severfalls to the best of my ability. I’d take a walk after breakfast, then read a little from the books Jamie gave me, and sometimes those offered in the library. I tried to stay out of my room whenever I caught myself just staring at the wall, out the window, anywhere. I started going to the sunroom, where every wall was lined with windows and there were comfy chairs placed in all corners along with various plants. It was there I met the other women including Rebecca, the blonde-haired, brown-eyed girl who had smiled at me on that first day.
There were five altogether: Rebecca, Jonsei, Adrien, Maria, and Sasha. Maria was the oldest, while Rebecca was the youngest. Every day they got together around the same time in the sunroom to hang out. I rescheduled my sessions with Leo so I could join them. We didn’t talk about anything important. Sometimes, we did nothing more than play board games and gossip but something about seeing how content they looked, how they laughed together, and their general uplifting mood, soothed me. It didn’t dawn on me till later how out of place they looked in a facility like Severfalls, not some washed up celeb or rich degenerate but normal, everyday women.
The only thing odd was the whole pregnancy thing. Some were more along than others. In the back of my mind, I wondered if they were carrying bastard children of some “well-to-do” politician or elitist who wanted them monitored but kept hidden for the benefit of their reputation. But I learned that wasn’t the case at all.
“I don’t remember it all that well, thankfully,” Adrien said when I got the courage to ask them why they were all here as expecting mothers. “I just know I woke up all sore and bruised. He picked the lock apparently.” She shrugged as if it was more an annoyance than a traumatic event. “We’d been in the same half-way house together. I even got to know him.” She shook her head, her thick black curls bouncing from side to side. “I found out I was pregnant a week later. I was pretty desperate after that and saw an ad for this place looking for single women in the early trimester for some new study. The pay was low, but they offered full housing here and full service. Not just for the baby either but with any recovery service we needed. I applied, seeing as I figured it would be better than being on the streets. Now, I’ve never felt better. Too bad I only have a few weeks left.” She rubbed her swollen belly. “But by then I’ll have financial aid, and a safer place set up to stay in until I can get a job.”
“We're gonna miss you, Adrien,” Maria said. “But you’ll be on your feet and with your little guy in no time, just like the rest.”
“The rest?” I asked.
Maria brushed a hand along her shaved head, then tugged on one of her hooped earrings in a sort of absent-minded gesture. “We're not the first in the study. Several other women have come and gone already.”
Rebecca brought her knees up as she curled in her chair. “Still miss Tonya so bad. Wish she’d text me back.”
“I’m sure she’s got a lot going on. She’ll come around,” Maria assured.
“What’s the study about?” I asked, curious.
They’d looked at each other, a few smirking like it was some big secret. Then Sasha piped up from the book she was reading in the corner with, “It’s confidential.”
“Oh, we can talk about it, we're all part of Severfalls in some way,” Jonsei remarked. She looked dazedly at one window. One of her eyelids was a little puffed up as if she’d banged it against something, but neither she nor the others mentioned it. Her red hair glinted in the sunlight streaming through the window, glowing like dark fire.
“It’s something to do with the growth of the baby they are monitoring,” Adrien said after Jonsei went quiet as something outside the window caught her eye. “We did sign some contracts not to go into full detail. But really, all you need to know is that.”
I couldn’t get much else out of them about the study, only that it had to do with the growth and development of the baby. They also told me they were taking Lulladex, which struck me as bizarre at first—until I heard their backstories. Each of them had endured something similarly harrowing, just like Adrien. All traumatic. All heartbreaking. All dark.
Maria and Sasha had been sex trafficked at a young age and were now recovering from addiction. Jonsei had fled her home after years of abuse by her father and brother. Rebecca’s mother had passed her around to family friends. These were women who had been left in the shadows, abandoned to face unimaginable horrors, all alone, with no support.
Severfalls had taken them in, offering a place to safely carry their pregnancies to term in exchange for participation in a study that, at least on the surface, seemed harmless. Still, I had my doubts. I understood why they might need the medication, though. According to Jackie, it was perfectly safe—aside from a few pesky side effects, like any other drug.
“So I have a new theory about who's upstairs,” Rebecca said one day as we played a game of monopoly. By we, I meant me, Maria, Rebecca, and Jonsei. Sasha read her comic book, and Adrien played a game on her phone.
I hadn’t been the only one who noticed the third floor was off limits and that someone was definitely staying up there. We’d all seen the carts full of trays being taken up. The group liked to make guesses on who it was, assuming it was some high-profile individual.
“I swear the last cart I saw had a cigar tray on it,” Rebecca said as she moved to pass go. “It’s someone older, like an ex-president or something.”
Adrien rolled her eyes from across the room. “That is the laziest guess you’ve given all week. And not just older people smoke cigars.”
Rebecca shrugged. “Only kind of people I’ve seen.”
“Still too good to come down and hang with the likes of us whoever it is,” Sasha commented, flipping through her book.
“Okay, but is anyone going to consider why they’d let anyone here have a cigar? In a recovery ward?” Maria asked.
“Maybe they aren’t here to recover,” I added. “Maybe they aren’t a patient at all.”
It was never something they thought seriously about. I could care less, but I knew they were trying to find something to talk about that didn’t involve their babies kicking or being nauseous. Or having bad sleep.
They were good people despite it all. Survivors. It was good to be in their presence even if I still felt lonely and depressed. I didn’t talk to them about my story and funny enough they never asked. I wasn’t sure if it was because they really didn’t keep up on current events and didn’t know who I was or, if they did, they were just trying to be polite, to let me feel accepted, knowing what I’d been through. Either way I was grateful they never asked.
The only person I could bring myself to talk to about any of the things from the last few weeks was Leo. Not everything, though, I started to open up more and more with each session if only a little. He didn’t pry but he was a good listener—something every therapist should be good at regardless—and I felt like I could speak to him without judgment and not expect him to have an answer which I didn’t need. It made it easier to talk to him as time went on. And easier to answer his questions.
“Do you feel guilty for what happened?” he asked one evening. We sat in his office, a lush little suite with leather chairs, a wall of bookshelves, red lamps, and even a little fireplace. Pretty pictures of mountains lined one wall and a huge portrait of a lion hung over the fireplace. Through the window, I could hear the small patter of sleet and rain on the glass and the creek of wood from the wind.
“Yes,” I said after a while. I still had trouble telling him exactly how I felt about the whole thing, especially with Emery. And I realized there was that inkling of guilt because what we had, had been…unconventional, to say the least. And no one was going to understand it.
“Survivor’s guilt is common,” he said, one leg resting over the other as he sat across from me, his notepad next to him.
I turned my gaze to his. “That’s not what it was.”
He studied me closely, tapping his pen on his pad. “What was it?”
I wrung my hands as if suddenly nervous. “I feel guilty because…” I took a deep breath, remembering by law, he wasn’t allowed to say a word. It wasn’t so much the fear of what he would think. I had been ready to run away with Emery. In fact, the police would have already seen the letters on my laptop. No, it was saying it out loud and knowing it was going to sound crazy in my own ears that scared me. The rose-colored glasses about me and Emery’s relationship would slip off and I’d have to face reality. I focused on my chipped nails. “I feel guilty because I wanted to stay with him.”
There was a brief pause, then he said, “Care to elaborate?”
I licked my lips and swallowed. “I was going to leave with him. We were going to take my dad’s boat and sail down the Mississippi to the gulf and disappear. And I wanted to.” I clenched my hands. “He hurt my friends and scared the shit out of me. Yet I felt things for him I shouldn’t have…Even if he’s…”
Leo shifted in his seat. When I looked up, I was surprised to see that his eyes weren’t wide with shock. Instead, he looked contemplative. “Stockholm syndrome is also a common thing to happen…but something tells me that’s not the case for you, is it?”
I shook my head.
“I read your file. You were…treating him at St. Agnes, weren’t you?”
“Yes, that’s right,” I said quietly.
He tapped his pen some more then leaned forward. “You started to develop feelings for him there?”
“Yes.”
He nodded. “And he loved you back?”
My eyelids fluttered. “I think so. Yes.”
“You tried to help him. But he still hurt you.”
A sharp ache hit my chest again. “He was…damaged. He saw his dead sister and a monster who got into his head and made him do…bad things. At first, he gave in to them but eventually he fought them.”
“Good for him and good for you for helping him. But that doesn’t make what he did to you okay.”
The statement was like a hit to the gut. I tensed, ready to get defensive. “No, it doesn’t,” I said. “But like I said, it wasn’t all him.”
“Still, he could have killed you. They say he hunted you down, hellbent on just that.”
“He changed his mind.”
“Did he?”
First, I was shocked. Then, I was pissed off. “You weren’t there.”
He put up a hand. “You're right, but just hear me out. Someone with violent tendencies and mental illness like you’ve mentioned is highly unpredictable. Their thoughts sway easily. Domestic abuse is one of the highest forms of violence in this country.”
“He wouldn’t have—”
“Are you sure?”
I opened my mouth, ready to say yes without question. Then memories of those nights in the house came swarming back.
Emery locking me away. Emery angry about the necklace. Emery ready to blow a bunch of cops away to keep me. Emery contemplating setting the house on fire with us in it. Emery being threatening in the woods.
It had all been from the bad thoughts in his head.
But it had still been him.
I wanted to fight that thought. I wanted to get up and tell Leo he was wrong and that he could fuck right off. I didn’t want to think about this now. I didn’t want to see the reality of it.
Emery had been a dangerous man. I wasn’t going to defend that. But I had gotten through to him, I had helped him beat his demons. He could have changed. He had been changing.
But I knew the question on Leo’s mind.
How long?
How long before he relapsed? How long before he slipped? He had still refused to take his medicine, and I realized now I had no way of knowing that he ever would once we made it out of the country. He would have still been fighting and who knows what the smiling woman would have convinced him of, what lies she would have told him. I might have been fighting all our lives to convince him I loved and only wanted him.
Wasn’t that the sad story for so many women? Convincing themselves and their partners that everything was okay. Even after their partners hurt them the first time.
I refused to believe Emery would have been one of those men. But refusing to believe it didn’t mean it wasn’t possible.
I said he never hurt me like that. And yet he had hunted me down. He had hurt me then.
I wanted to run, to shut myself away and not think about it.
“I’m sorry, Eve,” Leo said. “I’m just trying to challenge you. To think about your situation.”
I rose from my seat. “Well, you certainly succeeded,” I spat. “But the funny thing is, it doesn’t matter anyway, does it? He’s gone, so why the fuck does it matter? He can’t hurt me anymore, right?”
“Eve…”
I turned and started to leave.
“It doesn’t mean your feelings aren't real.”
I looked back. He was standing now, his hands in his pockets. “It doesn’t mean they aren’t true.”
“I know.”
Lena had made a good point about Severfalls. During the day, it felt normal—if not a little old-world—with its blue carpets patterned in art deco designs, arched windows, and dark wood-panelled walls. It carried a beautiful, otherworldly charm, like stepping back into the past.
But at night, something about it felt distinctly off. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Maybe it was the darkened halls with their dim lighting, the hushed voices of attendants echoing faintly through the passageways, or the creaks and groans all old buildings seem to make, especially after sunset. But it was more than that—it was the unsettling feeling of being watched.
Despite the unease, I continued wandering the halls. Once, I found a corridor almost completely black, with a single chair sitting ominously at one end. I turned away—it creeped me out too much to continue. Another time, I discovered a staircase leading down into pitch darkness, where every creaking step felt deafening, like a gunshot breaking the silence.
I decided I felt the safest in the garden so that’s where I was headed as a clock somewhere struck midnight. As I got to the main landing, I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I slowed down, then halted and listened.
Someone was crying.
Not just crying, but rambling as if begging someone to stop.
Curious, I headed toward the voice. I crept past the garden and turned down a hallway, only to see Jonsei standing some feet away with her back turned, swaying softly, her head lolling to one side.
Carefully, I made my way toward her. When I got close enough, I called to her softly.
“Jonsei?”
She didn’t turn.
“Please stop…let me go,” she pleaded. “Don’t hurt me.”
I reached out a hand for her. I touched her shoulder, and she turned.
I gasped, jerking my hand away to cover my mouth. Her eye was swollen and a little drop of blood was falling down her cheek. Her eyes were half-lidded, her head tilted to one side.
“Don’t…” she slurred. “Don’t, you're hurting her. She’s screaming…screaming.”
It took me a second to finally realize she was sleepwalking. Her voice grew louder, more frantic as she stared at me.
I went to reach for her again, uncertain if I should shake her awake, when someone grabbed me from behind.
“It’s okay, it’s just me,” Nurse Jackie whispered. I looked around and there were two attendants with her. She nodded to them and they gently guided Jonsei back to her room. “Poor thing,” Jackie said as she led me the opposite way. “Bad night terrors. Can I get you anything? Something to drink or eat?”
I shook my head. “Does she have them every night?”
“Oh, no, no, it’s just every so often, it will pass.”
“Her eye. It was…”
“Nothing to worry about, we’ll have her fixed up.” Jackie was trying to lead me back to my room, but I refused.
“I don’t want to go to sleep,” I said, yanking my arm away when she tried to hold it.
“Of course, if you need anything, let me know.” She smiled and then left for the main lobby.
What the hell?
I stood there for a moment, looking back toward where they took Jonsei. I hoped she was okay.
I went back toward the main lobby as well, trying to understand what just occurred, then stopped again when I saw Tyler in the art gallery, with Jackie saying something to him. He nodded, and she left. He turned and saw me and the somber look on his face lifted immediately.
“Hello, Eve,” he said as he approached me. He was still in a fine suit except I noticed it was unbuttoned at the collar. “I didn’t think you’d be out. How ‘s everything going so far?”
“It’s fine,” I said, not sure how else to answer.
He looked me over. “I’m glad I ran into you actually.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“It’s something that needs to be done. The FBI needs your statement. They’ve been bugging me about it for some days now but I wanted to give you time.”
I looked away from him, hoping he didn’t see how annoyed I was. Already I was sick of cops.
“I know it sucks. But the longer you wait, the more you won’t remember. Trust me, they are a pain in the ass, but they need something for their records. So they can be clear about everything.”
I wanted to say, “Too bad, so sad. They can go fuck themselves.” But I knew that wasn’t going to get me out of it. Then it dawned on me—if I had to recount those days, I could also tell them about the weeks that followed. The discoveries I had made about Emery’s past. About the warehouse. I could give them my full statement. And if it meant being tortured through the memories to seek that justice for those victims once again, then so be it.
“All right,” I said. “When?”
“The day after tomorrow, so you can prepare. I’m going to take you myself. And your uncle’s lawyer will be there as well.”
“They aren’t coming here?”
“We have a policy that law enforcement can’t enter the premises unless it’s an emergency or they are bringing in a patient. If it’s for questioning, they need to give us an advanced notice. They don’t want to wait that long.”
Great. “So people will have to see me?”
“It will be very brief and I’ll have my own personal security to escort you. Will make it as easy as we can.”
Anxiously, I nodded.
“Will go after breakfast in the morning. Hopefully, it won’t take all day.” He put a hand on my shoulder, and I flinched. “We’ll get through this, Eve, don’t worry. Just one step at a time.”