Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I slept nearly twelve hours. From the lack of sleep, my body had to make up for it in some way. It felt more like a punishment.
I dialed the number to the front desk at St. Agnes that evening.
If Ethan answered, I might throw up.
“St. Agnes front desk,” greeted a low voice.
I sighed with relief. “John, you’re back.”
“Ms. Eve…I am. Got back last night. How can I help you?”
I moved over to the window to look out at the island, at the clock tower of St. Agnes staring back. “I know this is a late notice, but I need to see Emery.”
There was a pause. “I’m sorry, Eve, but that can’t happen.”
“Why not?” I started to pace. Had Ethan talked to someone already?
“We don’t allow visitors after eight on weekends,” John replied. “And since it’s almost eight now…”
“Not even for an emergency?”
I heard him shift around. “What kind of an emergency?”
“I…” I couldn’t exactly explain. Because it was really only important to me. “I just really need to talk to Emery.”
“If it’s serious I can take a message to Dr. Thomas. Or to Dr. Langley but he won’t be in until tomorrow afternoon.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “Can I just come in tomorrow? As early as you will allow?”
He paused again as if thinking it over. “Dawn. At seven. He gets outside time around then, but we can make it work.”
“Thank you, John,” I said in a breath. I let him go, then clutched at my stomach grimacing. I didn’t have an appetite in the least, but I forced myself to eat something anyway. After, I rifled through the rest of the files.
I opened Nina’s record and read the whole thing. Dad hadn’t lied about one thing at least. According to the record, she had died in the hospital just like they had told Emery. She passed from a collapsed lung and blood clots. Not mentioning she was malnourished or anything else. I wanted to cry all over again reading her file, noticing this time the notes were signed by my brother. When I watched her videos, it was my brother there watching her. Like father, like son.
She spoke in a whisper. It was so heartbreaking. They’d shaved her head because she had kept ripping out her hair. It was astounding she had lasted as long as she did.
The rest of the night, I went through the other folders of the remaining children. Learning their names, their birthdays, where they had been taken from, and where some had died. Most were from the States, but a couple came from South America and another from the South Pacific. Most who died hadn’t made it past their eleventh birthday. Nowhere did they say where the others had gone, but I wrote their names down thinking maybe somehow, I could find them. Someday.
I went through each video, disturbed, but unable to stop watching, knowing if I fell asleep, I would have nightmares.
Before I knew it, light was beginning to show over the water. I looked at the time and readied to leave.
It took me longer than usual to pass through the gates as the guards weren’t expecting me. I parked in my normal spot, seeing some of the patients walking across the yard with workers around them.
Now that I was here, it was hard to walk up the steps to the entrance, knowing what I was about to do. Knowing I would have to see the hurt in Emery’s eyes, the disappointment, the anger.
As I opened the door, I was greeted by John on the other side.
“I’ll need you to fill out this form before I have you see him,” he said in greeting, “as well as sign in so the doctors know you were here. We’ll chalk it up to an extra session.”
While I signed in, John made the call to those out in the gardens, letting them know to secure Emery in the courtyard.
I followed John out to the yard and around back to the gardens. The lone, gated courtyard was situated next to the gardens and the kitchens; a small, bare cobbled stone space with an oak to one side and a bench underneath it. Emery stood alone, his feet and hands chained as usual, only this time, they were tied to a pole at the center which he could walk around. His back was to me looking at the wall covered in ivy and the oak tree whose red leaves glowed like fire in the rising sun and fell every so often onto the ground to join the other dead leaves scattered at his feet.
Jittery, my hands were clammy, as I approached him.
“Emery, you’ve got a visitor,” John called. “You’ll be happy to see this one.”
Emery turned his head, and when he saw me, his eyes lit up. “Evee?”
He turned to face me, and from the look in his eyes, I knew he was smiling behind his skull mask. With long strides he moved toward us, the chain connected to the pole sliding across the ground like a snake, only to be pulled taut as he reached the max distance, several feet from us, enough to keep him in the center of the courtyard.
“Stay behind the line, Ms. Eve.” John pointed to the red line painted on the ground. “Emery, be polite. I’ll have one of my guys close by.” He left us alone, left me to stand there with Emery who was towering before me. Seeing him sitting most of the time, I rarely noticed how massive he was until he stood. With him being so close, it made him even more intimidating.
He tilted his head, his fingers playing with the chains on his wrist as if he was uncertain what to do with his hands. I had this all played out in my head, but I was too scared to speak.
“Hi, Emery…” I said softly. Why did this have to be so difficult?
“They didn’t tell me you were coming…Is it my birthday or something?”
I smiled, remembering his date of birth from his record. It was in the spring. “No, sorry.”
He shrugged. “That’s okay.” He waited for me to respond and when I didn’t, he said, “I took the meds yesterday and didn’t get sick. I think it’s getting easier now. At least a little.” He shifted on his feet. “Is that why you’re here?” He laughed softly. “Didn't think I’d have the balls to take them on my own?”
“I knew you had the strength to do it without me,” I said. “I didn’t have a doubt.” I took a step closer, choosing my next words carefully. “And I know you will have the strength to keep going still even with me gone.”
Confused, he kept staring at me, then the realization came. His eyes hooded as he went perfectly still. “You're leaving…”
I winced at the pain in his voice. “I’m sorry, Emery.”
His gaze never left mine as he searched my face as if he could find the reason in my expression. When he couldn’t, he croaked, “Why?”
The truth was so hard to accept. “I learned so much from our sessions, and you did so well. You overcame your troubles and surprised me. I’m thankful for them now.” I took a breath. “But they’ve become too personal for me. My past makes it…too difficult to be around you now.”
He turned his head on instinct to listen to the ghost of his sister at his ear, then shook her away. “Tell me,” he said. “Tell me what makes it difficult.”
I shook my head slowly. “I can’t. I’m sorry; it’s too much.”
I saw the panic in his gaze and his composure beginning to slip. “No, I…I need you, Evee. I can’t do this alone. I can’t…”
“You can. I know you can,” I said, my throat tightening. “Just keep doing everything I taught you. Keep taking the medicine and I promise I’ll come visit one day.”
He tried to move closer but couldn’t. I heard the pole straining behind him. Unable to reach me, he bent forward and dropped to his knees before me.
“Tell me what I can do to make you stay?” he said in a low voice. “Just a little longer. Even if only for a week. Just don’t leave me now. Please, Eve.” I heard the fear in his voice, his shoulders shaking. “Not like this.”
Tears stung my eyes. I went to open my mouth and heard a slow clap behind me. I whirled around and saw Ethan there by the gate, a bright, excited look in his eyes and an awful smirk on his face.
“Wow, Eve,” he said. “You really know how to work a guy up, huh? Got this poor bastard wrapped around your finger. This was the revenge you were really after? Making him beg like that for you. Don’t you think the guy got what he deserved already after what he did?”
“Ethan,” I said, fear laced in my voice. “What are you doing?”
“Just stopping you from playing this guy any longer, Eve,” he answered, walking toward me.
I turned around. Emery was now standing again, his head bent as he fixed Ethan with a cold, murderous glare. “What the hell did you say?”
“She’s been playing you,” he repeated.
“Ethan—”
“No,” he snapped. “You’re done, Eve. I let you drag this out, feeling sorry for you, for what he did to you, but you clearly aren’t right in the head either. What you're doing is wrong. We both know it. I think it’s time you let this go.”
I shook my head in disbelief. I turned to Emery, horrified.
“What I did…?” Emery said softly, confused.
“It’s nothing, Emery,” I tried to pacify him.
“I don’t think killing your dad and brother is nothing, Eve,” Ethan mused, shaking his head as if he was disappointed.
The silence was deafening. I could hear the birds out in the trees and the dull clatter of pans in the kitchen nearby. A chill breeze picked up, but it wasn’t responsible for the cold now setting in my bones.
I stared at Ethan, too shocked and furious to move. “You bastard,” I said.
“No need for name calling, Eve,” Ethan said. “If anything, he’s the bastard for what he did, right? Slicing your dad up like he did?” He tried to put a hand on me, and I smacked it away. Offended, he glared. “Relax, Eve, he should know. That’s the revenge you wanted. Letting him think you cared at all. Well, there you go. You got what you came for. Now it’s time to go.”
My face twisted. “You have no right to—”
“ Martel ,” said a soft, venomous voice, cutting me off. A voice like a knife’s blade across metal.
I froze and turned to Emery, who was staring dead at me. Eyes that saw straight through me, that burned me. “Martel,” he repeated slowly, as if coming to terms with that name. “No, that’s not—that’s not possible.” He shook his head slowly back and forth. “That night…”
I could barely hold his terrifying glare. “Emery...”
“This is a test, you're testing me,” he said as if any other answer was impossible. “Did she put you up to this? Tell me.”
I didn’t have to ask who she was. I wouldn’t doubt Dr. Hannah would try to test Emery’s will in some screwed-up way.
But I couldn’t lie to him any longer. “No, it’s not a test.” Pain hit me like a blow at having to confess it. And having to see that look of devastation.
“You…you weren’t there.”
“Emery, I couldn’t tell you, I’m sorry,” I said, wishing I could make him understand.
“No…you weren’t there,” he said as if not hearing me. “It was only them…a daughter, she wasn’t there. She wasn’t…” He bent forward as if in pain, shaking his head. “No…no…no…” he repeated, as if trying to stop the inevitable. He bent his head so that his hands covered his mask.
“Fuck,” Ethan cursed beside me. He drew back to the gate and took up his walkie, speaking into it quickly.
I got closer, my foot on the line. “Emery, listen to me, it’s in the past. But we can get through this.”
He made a sound, and the noise made the blood rush from my face.
I thought he was crying, but it took me a moment to realize he was laughing. “Emery, look at me, please.”
He pressed the palms of his hands to his head. “Evee. Evee, why? Why would you do this?”
I wanted to touch him, to comfort him. As I reached out, he lashed out.
If not for the chains keeping him back, he would have grabbed me. I stumbled back and yelped, almost losing my footing. The pole behind him bent, the chain straining.
I covered my mouth as he reached for me but couldn’t. He started speaking incoherently, his hands covering his mask again. “You said I could trust her. I saw her in my dream, and she was good. She was a good girl. You… lied .”
“Please, Emery, fight it,” I pleaded, trying to keep him with me.
He bent forward and groaned. His shoulders shook with cries or laughter or both. “You did a bad thing, didn’t you, Evee?” he said in a tone of laughter. “Bad…bad…little… rabbit ,” he growled.
I backed away, afraid. “Emery,” I said, in my last effort to reach him. To have him look at me.
He did. And I gasped as he peered back at me from between his fingers.
He had changed. A wicked darkness stood before me. Emery was no longer there. Only a demon stared back.
He straightened to his full height, then tipped his head back as he stared at me with his skull face smiling, more sinister than ever. In one hand, he wrapped the chain around his knuckles. Then with all his strength, he pulled.
The pole bent forward, the stone beneath it cracking.
I cowered away. Hands drew around me, forcing me back. The guards swarmed past me.
I watched in horror as they moved on him. But even as they brought out their rods and dug them into his side, as they laid their hands on him, to try and get him to submit, Emery hardly budged. He tilted his head at me, only seeing me.
And it was like seeing a stranger.
“Get her out of here!” John called.
A hand grabbed my arm, and I wrenched it away. “Please, I can talk—I can talk to him,” I said weakly, uncertainly.
The stone cracked more under the pole, and I knew if Emery got free, no one was going to be able to stop him from getting to me.
They tased him, and he barely made a sound. But he could only take so many of the jabs before he was forced to one knee. Then, they tried to wrestle him down onto his stomach.
Blow by blow, he slowly submitted. But his eyes never left mine. Only until the chain finally went slack in his hand and he went limp on the ground, going unconscious from the constant electricity filling his veins did his gaze leave mine.
So this was our goodbye.
No, not like this. Not like this .
Someone grabbed me and pulled me away. It took me a second to realize it was Ethan, pulling me past the gate into the garden.
“Don’t touch me.” I took a few steps of my own into the garden, then stopped and bent over with my hands on my knees.
“Eve…hey, I’m sorry, okay?” he said beside me. “You weren’t in your right mind. You were only making things worse for yourself and for him acting like you were…friends. He was bound to find out sooner or later. Maybe I got a little carried away back there, but you should have just let it go.”
Tears welled up in my eyes. I straightened and wiped them away before looking back at him. “You did that out of spite. You honestly think I’m going to believe you meant well? You’re fucking fooling yourself.”
“Hey now,” Ethan said, frowning. “Just calm down, okay? Why don’t I walk you back to your car.”
“Fuck you.” I turned from him, but he followed me.
“You’re being unprofessional. This whole time you’ve been out of line,” he said. “You're not supposed to have a relationship with a patient. Not like that and you know it. You used him, trying to gain back what you lost. But it was no use, Eve. You're lucky I won’t make a report about this.”
“Go to hell.”
He tugged my arm and twisted, making me gasp. Making me halt and turn on him. “You're really testing me, sweetheart,” he said through clenched teeth.
I wrenched my arm from him again, rubbing it. I looked at him like he was crazy. Then I started to laugh. “Wow, I get it now.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“You hate that I want nothing to do with your sorry ass. That I would rather spend my time with the killer of my family than with you. And you know what?” I stepped closer, getting in his face. “It’s true. I would rather be with Emery. I would have him a thousand times over than ever touch you. Even now when he wants to murder me because of you. I would still take him. You know why? Because you’re pathetic. Always were ever since high school, and always will be. That’s why no one wants you.”
He glared. Then he smiled. A mean, nasty smile.
For a moment, I thought he might actually hit me. Then someone called to him from across the garden.
“We need you,” said the lone guard whose name I couldn’t recall. He looked between us, waiting.
Ethan’s smile widened into a grin. “See you around, Eve, huh?” he said, backing away from me.
I stood alone in the garden for a moment, then slowly turned away, returning to my car.
I pulled out of the lot, driving past the gates and over the bridge back on to mainland. Then I let myself go. I wept.