CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
RAVEN
The first thing I feel is the cold.
The kind that sinks into your bones—not the crisp kind from outside, but the heavy, damp kind that clings to walls. The kind that lives in basements.
My head throbs.
There’s something soft beneath me. Not a bed. A mattress. Thin. Stiff.
I try to move my arms. My wrists drag against fabric straps.
Panic spikes before memory.
I bolt upright—only to be yanked back down.
I’m not bound tight, just enough to remind me I’m not in control anymore.
My eyes adjust to the dark.
The walls are concrete.
Paint peeling in sheets and on the wall across from me?
Moths.
Not real. Paper. Hundreds of them, each one pinned in perfect rows, like trophies. Some drawn in pencil, others in ink, and still others with a darker substance I hope I’m wrong about.
Above them, in precise block lettering:
YOU REMEMBER NOW.
I shake because I do. Not everything but enough. The boy. The whistle. The wasps.
He used to hum to me when I cried. Said he was the only one who really saw me. That we were the same kind of broken and then one day, he vanished.
I thought he’d been expelled. Arrested. Dead.
But he wasn’t.
He was waiting.
Preparing.
Preserving.
A sound draws my attention—soft and rhythmic.
A camera shutter.
I whip my head toward the corner of the room.
A vintage camera sits mounted on a tripod, the kind you crank to wind the film.
It’s aimed directly at the bed.
My bed.
It clicks again.
There’s no flash.
No red light.
But it’s watching.
Like it always was.
A speaker crackles overhead. Not loud.
Just static. Then a single note.
A low whistle.
Then a voice.
Distorted. Soft.
“They said you forgot me, little moth. But I knew you’d remember… Once I peeled him off you.”
I freeze.
Him.
Damien.
He knows about Damien.
He’s the one who took me from him.
The voice continues, calm. Sweet.
“I let you play in the dark. Now it’s my turn again. Let’s see if you still taste like memory.”
The light flickers once and I scream.
The scream rips out of me before I can stop it but it doesn’t echo.
It’s like someone designed this place not to be heard from—the way sound is swallowed by padded walls, low ceiling, and suffocating air.
I yank at the straps on my wrists—rough canvas, tied in knots meant to feel escapable.
Almost.
I twist, panic making my limbs wild, desperate. The bed creaks but doesn’t move. Bolted to the floor.
This isn’t a room. It’s a recreation and I know exactly what it’s recreating.
The psych ward.
Not the real one—but the version I remember. When I was fifteen. When they locked me in that windowless room and told me the whistling wasn’t real. That the wasps were metaphors. That I needed rest and sedatives and quiet.
But he was already there.
And now I’m back.
Back in the room he built to mimic the one that tried to erase him.
The speaker crackles again. A breath. Then—
“I built this for you, you know.”
His voice is smooth now. Steady. No distortion.
He wants me to hear him.
He wants me to know him.
“While you were pretending to be whole.
While he touched you, you felt like you weren’t already broken.
While you called someone else’s name in your sleep—
I was here.
Waiting.
Finishing what I started.”
The light flickers again. Brighter this time.
Revealing more of the walls.
More drawings.
Not just of me.
Of us.
Hand in hand. Mouth to mouth.
Red string connecting our wrists.
Red ink smeared across our throats like matching cuts.
And in the centre of the far wall—
A mural.
Painted like blood.
Me. In a hospital gown. Eyes gouged out. Mouth sewn shut.
And above it, written in dripping black letters:
I TOOK HER BACK.
I press my hands to my ears. Shut my eyes. Rock.
But I can still hear him.
Still feel the camera clicking.
Still hear the sound of fabric sliding behind the wall—like someone stepping closer.
And then, beneath it all…
The whistle.
Low.
Sharp.
Coming from inside the vent.
Right behind the bed.
The whistle won’t stop.
It drags through the vent behind me like a blade across bone. Soft. Precise. Deliberate.
One long. Four short.
The same cadence he used when I was a child.
I force my body upright, breath shaking, throat raw from screaming.
The straps. I twist against them. Hard. The friction burns my skin, but I don’t care.
I yank once more—harder.
And the right strap gives.
My wrist slips free. I scramble to untie the other, fingers trembling too much to hold the knot—but panic is stronger than pain.
The second one rips loose.
I’m up. On my feet. Spinning.
The vent behind the bed is small—smaller than the one in Damien’s place—but wide enough for someone small to fit through.
And it’s open.
Something moved it.
From the inside.
I stare into the darkness beyond the slats.
Silence now.
No more whistling.
No sound at all.
Which means he’s not in the vent anymore.
He’s behind me.
I spin, knife clutched in my hand.
The door has cracked open.
It wasn’t before.
I step toward it slowly, blood rushing in my ears. My pulse louder than the buzz of the light. My bare feet stick slightly to the cold floor, every step too loud.
The door groans wider as I reach for it.
And then—
a whisper.
So close it feels like it’s inside my ear.
“Don’t you want to see what I built for you downstairs?”
I scream and lash out, the knife slicing air—But there’s no one there.
The hallway beyond the door is empty.
Dim.
And at the end—
stairs.
Leading down.
The walls are painted pale yellow. Childhood yellow. And lined with—
Photos.
Of me.
Age five. Age ten. Age fourteen.
Sleeping. Crying. Bleeding.
I back away—but the door behind me slams shut.
Locks.
I’m trapped again.
But this time, I’m not waiting to be caught.
I grip the knife tighter and take a step down the stairs.
Then another.
And another.
Until I reach the landing.
There’s a mirror on the wall.
Cracked.
A moth pinned in each corner.
And in the reflection—
a figure.
Standing behind me.
Wearing Damien’s face but smiling with his teeth.