Chapter 22 - Ginny
TWENTY-TWO
GINNY
Every sound felt like an axe cleaving my skull.
My sobs were no longer mine, tearing from me before becoming a twisted, mocking form of themselves.
The room stole them before throwing them back at me, multiplied into a thousand whispering jeers.
It felt like each one crawled beneath my skin and buried itself like a cockroach.
My limbs itched with the phantom sensations of them.
I clapped my hands over my ears to block it out, pursing my lips until they ached. Useless. The noises kept coming. The chamber was alive. It breathed in my ears and whispered down the back of my neck. My whimpers turned into wails. My gasps into shrieks.
The walls throbbed. I swore they moved behind me, stilling only when I turned to face them. Damp spread like cracks across the ceiling, splintering like veins on weathered skin. Dark and uneven, like Pops’ arms.
The air itself buzzed, the phantom cockroaches swarming at me with their incessant cries. My name. My sins. Words crawled out of the din and slid across the floor and clawed up my legs.
Bad girl…ugly girl…heinous child.
Mama’s voice rose loudest of all. Why, Ginny? How could you be such a terrible child? Why do you keep letting him put them in you? I hate you.
I tried to rock away the noises, wrapping myself in the smallest ball I could manage with my swollen tummy.
My toes grew scuffed and bloody against the floor.
Fingertip-sized bruises covered my upper arms from my own punishing grip.
My nightdress clung to my sweat-soaked skin as I clawed at my skin to abate the itching beneath.
‘They’re going to drive me mad,’ I whispered against my knees.
The chamber latched onto my words like a greedy monster.
DRIVE ME MAD.
DRIVE ME MAD.
DRIVE ME MAD.
The words battered against my head until I was sure they were ricocheting from the walls of my skull.
I screamed. My voice in raw tatters. The chamber snatched it up and threw it back at me, wrapping me in the screeching mayhem.
Then the whispers beneath it changed.
Elijah.
I choked.
No. No. No.
But the sound swelled, attacking me from all sides.
Elijah, Elijah, Elijah, Elijah.
And then his voice cutting through the racket. You’re mine, Ginny-girl. Don’t you run. You know what happens when you run. They gave you to me. You’ll always be mine.
The memory surged up like oil, blackening my mind.
The woods. So often he found me in the woods in the early years.
Before Mama had started letting him in the house.
In case the neighbours saw. Bark rough against my back, the stink of damp earth and his sweat.
Later, when he’d become my Elijah, he’d force my wrists against the cold iron bed frame at home, his aftershave filling my nose.
He wasn’t as rough, then. He’d touch me differently.
Make me moan his name before filling me with his babies.
Be still, sweet girl. It feels better this way, doesn’t it?
Let me make you sigh before you grow me a baby.
And he had made me feel good. I grew to long for his visits. To wile away the days until he’d come back to me. Those short minutes in my bed, surrounded by his peppery smell and with him telling me how good I was. Long after Mama and Pops had decided I was a devil.
‘Stop!’ I screamed, clawing at my hair as Elijah’s words changed to the awful ones he’s thrown at me in the woods after my hair had been taken. My hair came away in tufts between my gripping fingers at the memory of his mocking. I slammed my head back against the wall, trying to silence him.
Cow. Heifer. Ugly. Worth nothing but breeding. That’s all you are. Might as well put a bucket under you.
I bit my lip until blood filled my mouth. Rocked harder. My spine crunched against the wall with each tip. The sound amplified until it sounded like bones broke all around me.
But the chamber gave no mercy. The voices layered on top of each other, echoing like an angry rabble around me.
Elijah’s. Mine. Mama’s.
I lost track of time. The sweat running down my face might have been tears.
I tried to whisper, to beg for it to stop, but even the smallest sound was seized, twisted, and screamed back at me in a monstrous chorus.
Ugly girl. Bad girl. Dirty girl. You’ll always be mine.
I tore at my arm until long red streaks marked my skin. For a moment the pain cut through the din with a moment of euphoria. Until the chamber stole my sobs and doubled them back. Cries circling me like vultures.
My voice was no longer my own, taken by the chamber. My body wasn’t mine either, just an emptiness for Elijah to fill.
I rocked until the world narrowed to two bloody footprints on the floor. Something to focus on.
And then hands came for me.
Strong and urgent, dragging me from the torrent of noise.
The iron door slammed behind me as Nancy pulled me out the Chamber.
Quiet enveloped me. Almost. The mocking jeers clung like cobwebs, fuzzing my head.
‘Shh, I’ve got you,’ Nurse Nancy whispered. I couldn’t decide if I was imagining her voice amongst all the others. Did I dare believe she came for me?
Nancy gathered me against her, wrapping me in her warmth. Rocking me the way I’d tried to rock myself. I buried my face in her starched uniform and sobbed until my breath shuddered.
Her hand stroked down my back in slow, delicate strokes.
Then lower.
Over the curve of my hip…
Settling against my bump.
She held me like she could shield the baby and me from Wellard.
And the whispers died.
For a moment, the world quieted enough that it felt safe.