“Stupid girl, who says you get to be free?” A different voice. Another one she couldn’t shake from the inner workings of her mind no matter how hard she tried. Darker, more terrifying than the first. She’d only heard it a couple of times outside her own imagination, but it carried so much power she would never forget it.
The devil that had driven her mother, Rose, to insanity. He’d called himself Sylous. He’d lured her, toyed with her heart, called her special, and Rose had believed every word. She’d carried out unspeakable things in his name, things the world had punished her for. Things that had stained her children, and they had been punished as well. The sins of the parents.
Zoe snapped her eyes open because she didn’t want to see Sylous. It was more than enough to just feel him. Like he had actually entered the room. The hissing of his tongue lapped inside her ears. “Like mother, like daughter.”
She hated him. Hated her mother for believing his lies. Hated herself for not being born different. The thought struck a chord deep in her gut, the idea of hating oneself so entirely. She couldn’t budge from the idea. It held her tightly as it sank into her bones.
Her thoughts turned to Stephen. The sweet, innocent little brother she’d failed. After the only world they’d ever known ended and their mother was taken from them, it was just her and Stephen. Wide-eyed and optimistic, he’d always given Zoe hope. Of course, she was Evelyn then, before she listened to the lies of someone else and abandoned her brother.
The foster system was cruel, more so to two children with their history. For a while they bounced from place to place together, but as they put more distance between them and Haven Valley, Zoe started to realize that the world would never be good to them if they didn’t follow the rules. Blend in. Their crazy stories about monsters, angels, and demons had to stop.
Dr. Holbert agreed. He helped Zoe become the teen who believed it was better to look after herself and let her brother make his own terrible choices. Because Stephen refused to stop believing in their fantasy.
He became harder and harder to care for. With everyone telling him he was crazy, he started to believe it. And when another boy came along, older and sinister, Stephen followed him to the ends of the earth. Zoe couldn’t persuade him to stop. Couldn’t get him to listen.
So she did as instructed by those who claimed to have her best interests at heart. She stopped trying. She even transferred to another home, leaving him behind when he refused to join her. And that sinister boy stole Stephen’s goodness and drove her sweet brother into hell with him.
Because Zoe let it happen. Because she hadn’t been there to save him. It all came flooding back like a tidal wave. One failure into the next as she felt the cold floor beneath her. Her tears soaked into the stone, grief and guilt draining from her bones.
First she’d failed her mother, then Stephen, now Lucy. That was her story. Cycles of failing people she loved.
His dark voice returned. The one that chilled her beyond her skin. “There is no freedom from your failure,” he whispered. “Like I said, you don’t get to be free.”
Whatever was left of her strength broke, and Zoe began to sob. As it carried on, it grew in volume and pain until she was bawling her eyes out, curled up on the cold ground and wishing for it all to end.
TWENTY-SIX
THERE I STOOD, unopenable doors to my front, the sound of Zoe screaming overhead, my heart assaulting the inside of my chest. My soul was ripped in half as the tortured pain of the only person I really cared about pierced the barricade that kept me from being able to stop her suffering.
I dropped to my knees, sweat running down my face, my fingers bloody on the ground, my nails mangled and peeling back. I should feel the pain racing up my arms, but I felt nothing.
Because they aren’t really my fingers. A small voice had started talking to me, one I knew was my own. It whispered through the chaos. Right, I agreed with the voice, because this is in my mind. When I wake up, my fingers won’t be bloody.
I knew there was truth there that might help me break down these doors, but I couldn’t focus on it long enough to figure out how. I tried blocking out Zoe’s screams, but even when I succeeded, sounds of my past rushed in to assault me again.
Another thing I’d discovered: the hundreds of sounds, playing all at once on full volume, were from the past. I wasn’t sure how I knew that, but I did. As if the sounds themselves had a familiar signature that felt comfortable and known.
But it didn’t help me get through the blockages that kept me from seeing what I needed. If I could just get one door open.
Open the doors, Number Nine.
I gritted my teeth. My throat burned from spitting at the doctor, and it was getting me nowhere. She was running the show. Zoe and I were just pawns. Powerless pawns.
Not true, the small voice said. The doctor can’t open the doors.
“Neither can I!” I slammed both fists against the black ground, another wave of screams rippling above. There was no solution. I couldn’t go under the doors, I couldn’t go around them. I tried going over to no avail. I was stuck, and Zoe was paying for it.
Remember, Lucy, this is your mind. You’re in control.
Those words were familiar because Zoe had said them to me over and over. Had I believed them once? Was that how I had broken out of the glass box?
What if the water is air—remember?
“You don’t think I’ve been trying that?” I wanted the voice to stop. It seemed to mock me now. “Don’t you think I’ve tried everything?”
Stop trying, the tiny voice hummed. Just be.
Now the voice was crazy. Frustration and terror in equal amounts yanked at my chest.
What if the water is air? The voice rushed through my gathered emotions, unfazed by the way it was making me feel.
I took deep breaths, tried to control the welling of tears threatening to engulf me. I stood, looking at the wall of doors. Thick, solid, locked doors. I could hear Zoe’s cries, feel her pain in my bones, Dr. Loveless’s voice always directing and eating away at my brain.
What if the water is air? The small voice, relentless.
I exhaled, stepped forward, and placed both my hands on the nearest door. I closed my eyes and tried to picture it as malleable. Something other than what I knew it was. I stood, whole seconds passing. Let it be an archway, a tunnel, a cloud, anything I could pass through.
I opened my eyes. It was a door. I swore. The stillness around me popped like a balloon, with the thunderous sounds of my past rushing over me in waves. I dropped my forehead against the wooden surface and cupped my palms over my ears to wait it out. The sounds always washed away nearly as quickly as they came. As soon as they passed, the reminder of what was being done to Zoe reentered.
“Please,” I cried out to whoever was listening. “God, please leave her alone. I can’t get through. I can’t!” The tears I was holding back pushed through and found paths down my cheeks.
Open the doors, Number Nine.
I lifted my head off the door, anger my only sensation. I yanked with all my might at the knob, kicked and pummeled the door with my feet. Pounded with balled fists, screamed my lungs out, then returned to the place I had started, with my forehead resting against the surface, crying through my hopelessness.
Stop trying, just be. The small voice was back.