Just from a quick scan of the first page I could see that there were at least five names that had been erased.
“This is just one page,” he said. “There are a lot more.”
I looked up at him. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” he said, flipping the page so that I could read the next one. “Some have more, some have less, but there are a lot of names that have been erased.”
“How many, off the top of your head?”
“At least a dozen or two,” he replied as he flipped through the rest of the pages. “See?”
“Can you make out what those names are?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “Not from here.”
He walked over to where the window was and held the paper up. “Lily, will you try and hold up the curtain?”
“Sure,” I said. I did as he asked, pushing the curtain up with the palm of my hand, and the folder that had been holding it up stumbled down toward the floor. I didn’t pay any attention to it and neither did he as he tried to position himself in the right way, so that the little bit of sunlight that was left would shine on the paper and make it so that he could see the names behind the white-out.
He groaned as he kept moving, twisting his torso slightly while I held my arm up. It had been minutes in the same uncomfortable position and I didn’t know how long I could keep it up for.
“This is getting too much,” I said.
He groaned, moving around again. “Sorry,” he said. “I can’t see shit yet.”
I didn’t say anything. I watched him move to the side, and then he stumbled onto the side a little bit, his foot catching the folder on the floor. I looked at it. “Wait,” I said. “Hand me that.”
He leaned down and handed it to me, depositing it into my free hand.
“Do you think this has something to do with it?”
“There’s every chance,” I said. “Can I let go of the blinds now?”
He nodded. “Sure,” he said.
I opened the folder and started flipping through pages of what looked like personnel files, but each page seemed to be dedicated to a particular person. Each one also included a grainy black and white headshot, and from how their hair was styled, I could see that they were from the seventies or eighties.
Elias was also looking at the folder in my hands, his brow furrowed. “I didn’t see this name,” he said. “This woman, Anabel Anderson, I didn’t see her.”
“What do you mean?”
“She should be in the files,” he said. “At the very top of the personnel file, because it is organized by alphabetical order.”
“So she’s one of the crossed out names?”
“She could be,” he said. “Here, let’s crosscheck.”
He grabbed the document again and we began to flip through the pages. One by one, every single person who was in the folder had been clearly and deliberately erased from those records.
With every single name that wasn’t in the sheet, my dread grew. Something was definitely wrong, and it seemed like we had finally managed to crack it.
But cracking it also didn’t make that much of a difference when we didn’t know what had happened to these people, I thought.
Isn’t it obvious? They’re all dead.
The thought belonged to me, but it also didn’t belong to me. I knew that it was a message, and a shiver went down my spine. It never got easier, but when it was a surprise, when it came out of nowhere, it was particularly difficult.
“What?” Elias said, looking into my face.
“What do you mean, what?”
“You have this expression on your face,” he said. “Like there’s something, I don’t know, like you know something. Do you know something?”
“They’re dead,” I said after it had sunk in. “They’re all dead.”
He blinked a few times, then nodded, biting his lower lip. “Yeah. That makes sense.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ELIAS
2019
I leaned against the desk, not saying anything, and Lily didn’t say much herself. Neither one of us appeared to be in the mood to talk.
The mood had turned sober and I felt bad for her, because only a few seconds ago, it felt like we had managed to find our way out. It didn’t anymore. It felt like we were stuck there now and like the sadness and reality of what she said had happened was seeping into our bones.
Because I wasn’t questioning her anymore.
I understood now—whatever Lily said, with authority, like this, was bound to be true. I might not understand it, but it was true. How I felt about it, whatever my experiences had been before arriving at this castle, they no longer seemed relevant.
“Lily,” I said, putting my hand on her shoulder. “Are you okay?”
She looked like she was about to faint. “Yes,” she said, flashing me a weak smile. “I’m fine. I just…”
“What?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “It always feels a bit weird when something first communicates with you. It feels like it takes a little piece of you every time. And every time, it’s so exhausting.”
I nodded. She sounded exhausted. “What I don’t understand is why it hasn’t let us out,” I said. “If it has shown us everything it wanted to show us, then…”
“It clearly hasn’t, if it still won’t let us out,” she replied, matter-of-factly. “Whatever it wants or needs, we haven’t given it to it yet.”
“What is it?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “It’s hard to say. It doesn’t feel benevolent, but it doesn’t feel evil either. I think if it wanted to hurt us, it would have hurt us.”
I squeezed her shoulder. “You might have rabies,” I said. “Whatever is keeping us in here might still hurt us.”
She looked at my hand, then up at my face, smiling at me. “Okay, but you have to admit that the chances that I have rabies are small. Right?”
“It’s not a risk you should take.”
“It’s not a risk I am trying to take. This is happening. We’re stuck here, and there’s no way out.”
I shook my head. “What do we do?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “I suggest we keep investigating. We’re bound to find something that’s going to let us out of here.”
I nodded. The urgency felt like it was increasing for me, because it was clear that she was not concerned about her own health, not as concerned as I was. We had a few hours to go before things became dire, but I didn’t know if the cat was infected or not.
There was no way to know. We needed access to a medical facility, and we needed it fast.
But this was what we were going to do. Whether we wanted to or not, it was what we were stuck doing. I sat down on the floor, and she sat down in front of me, cross legged. I noticed a large run in her stocking on the back of her legs, where her shorts ended.
I told myself to stop looking, though it was hard not to look at her. She was so gorgeous, and there was something so magnetic about her. I wanted to keep staring at her for as long as possible, take the curve of her body in, the way she was sitting down, one leg on top of another, her head tilted down, her eyes closed, her hands on top of her legs.
She looked so peaceful, it was a little disturbing.
I didn’t feel peaceful at all. I felt like I was going to throw up and like the nausea was only getting worse.
I needed to get her to a doctor. As soon as possible, we needed to get her to a doctor.
But things were clearly not that simple, and as we continued poring over papers, it became exceedingly clear to me that there was absolutely no way we were going to get out of that office before night fell.
I was concerned about her, but I said nothing. If there was one thing I had learned while I had spent even just a few hours with her, it had been that I needed to let her work.
She wasn’t making claims, not all the time, and though she seemed affected, she didn’t seem to me like she was trying to influence things or run any scams
. She just seemed like a person who was doing her best and that scared me.
Because if that was what she was, then she had access to information that I didn’t have access to.
Then maybe she had spoken to my dead fiancée after all.
She looked up at me, her eyes wide. “What?” she asked, her voice soft.
“Meredith,” I said, only vaguely aware I was playing with my necklace. “Did you really know her name because she told you her name?”
“Yes,” she said. “But she didn’t exactly tell me.”
“How did it work, then?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s hard to explain, but I felt it. Like she was my friend, and I knew her.”
“And what did she say to you, exactly?” I asked her, feeling myself get misty-eyed. I hadn’t wanted to get bowled over by this, but every time I thought about Meredith, it was hard not to.
She cocked her head. “Just that it wasn’t your fault,” she said. “That you should stop blaming yourself.”
I closed my eyes. When I spoke again, my voice was trembling. “That’s so hard,” I replied. “And it’s hard to think that’s what she would actually say, you know, if she was here. She wasn’t exactly the forgiving type.”
I heard Lily laugh quietly. “We’re all a work in progress, Elias,” she said. “Your fiancée certainly was.”
“Do you know what happened?” I asked, opening my eyes again.
I could feel her gaze on me, the way she was staring at me, never quite letting me escape her magnetic grip.
“No,” she said. “I only know what she told me, and she didn’t tell me much. Except for what I told you.”
“Do you want to hear it?”
She nodded. “Sure.”
I laughed dryly. “I have never told this story sober,” I said.
“Guess there’s a first time for everything,” she said quietly. “But don’t feel pressured. Share if you want and don’t if you don’t.”
I looked her up and down. “I’ll never see you again after this, right?”
“Hmm?”
“After this whole thing is done,” I said. “After we solve the mystery of the killer castle, I’m never going to see you again, right?”
She thought for a second. “I mean, I doubt it,” she said. “Why would we see each other again?”
“Okay. Then I guess I’ll tell you,” I said. “So… Meredith and I were college sweethearts. She used to work as a waitress at this restaurant I went to every Sunday without fail. She asked me out after five months, basically sat down in front of me and asked if I wanted company. I said that wasn’t a problem. Then she asked if it was a date. I told her I was studying to be a doctor and didn’t have a lot of time to date. She said it was perfect, since she already worked there, so clearly our schedules lined up.”
Lily laughed. “Sounds romantic.”
“It was,” I said, shaking my head. “It sounds like it was pragmatic to a fault, but it genuinely was romantic. She never had a problem working around my schedule or understanding that I was busy. If anything, she seemed happy for me, you know? With every milestone, she seemed a little happier. I couldn’t give her a lot of me, and that suited her just fine.”
“What about her?”
I cocked my head. “What do you mean?”
“How much of herself did she give you?”
“As much as I was ready to take, I guess,” I replied quietly, feeling my cheeks redden.
“Sorry,” Lily said, waving her hand in front of her face. “That was not meant to be judgmental. Did it come across as judgmental?”
I shook my head. “No,” I said. “Just, no one has ever asked me that before.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t have asked.”
“It’s a fair question,” I said. “It was an arrangement more than a relationship, but in a way, I think we loved each other.”
“In a way?”
I nodded. “Yeah. Just in a way. Which makes the whole thing feel so much weirder.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like, when she died, I felt like I should be devastated. And I was, to an extent, but… it wasn’t just that. I don’t want to say it was relief, because that would be horrible. It wasn’t. It was just this sort of factual ‘oh, this is how things are now’.”
“That sounds more like shock than anything else.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I guess. But it never really wore off. I just… it just sort of became guilt and shame. Because of what happened the night she died.”
She looked at me, not saying anything.
“She called me, asking if I could pick her up. She’d had a bad night at work, but it was the middle of my exams, and I didn’t want to pick her up.”
“Right.”
“We had an argument. It wasn’t really an argument, I just told her that she knew I wasn’t available, and that she should have planned for this. She kept saying her night was awful, that there was no way she could have planned for what was going to happen, but I didn’t want to hear it. I told her if she was that upset, she could get a taxi or something.”
She stared at me, saying nothing.
I swallowed before I continued talking. “But that’s not what happened,” I said. “She decided that she would drive herself home, and I can’t exactly blame her for that. But there was an accident, her SUV flipped over, and they couldn’t get her out in time. It was on the highway, and it was dark, so it was a while before they called the police.”
“Was anyone else hurt?” she asked, her eyes narrow.
“No,” I said. “No one else. No one really knows what happened, she lost control of her car and it veered off the road. It was because she was upset or something. I don’t know. All I know was that, if I had been there, I don’t think it would have happened.”
“You think she wouldn’t have veered off the road?”
“I think I wouldn’t have been upset,” I said. “And there would have been no accident.”
She shook her head. “No,” she said. “That’s not the way it works. When it is someone’s time, it’s their time, and there’s no way to get away from it.”
I licked my teeth. “How do you know that?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know,” she said. “I just do. You should try to stop feeling bad about it, it really isn’t your fault.”
“Thanks,” I replied, closing my eyes and leaning against the hard desk.
“I mean it,” she said. “It really wasn’t your fault.”
I opened one eye. “You weren’t there. You can’t know if it was my fault or not.”
She nodded. “Sure,” she said. “But Meredith was there, and she doesn’t think that it was your fault.”
“Is she here now?”
She smiled at that before she licked her lips, containing herself. “No,” she said. “And that’s not the way it works. They decide when to show up, I don’t just call on them.”
“But could you, if you really needed to?”
She furrowed her brow. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve never had to.”
“Maybe if you do it now, someone will get us out of this pickle.”
She laughed. “I think we might just live here now,” she said.
I smiled. “You’re taking this so well,” I said. I didn’t have to mention the rabies, I knew she knew that was what I was thinking about.
She stood up and went over to where I was sitting down. She put her hand on my forearm when she sat down next to me. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I don’t feel sick. I mean, it’s a little stuffy in here and everything, but I’m probably not going to die.”
I stared at her.
“Well, any time soon.”
I continued staring at her.
“From rabies,” she said.
When she laughed, I couldn’t help but laugh with her.
***
I didn’t know when it happened, or how, but we fell asleep. When I woke up, it was e
arly in the morning. I could tell because the room felt cooler and the sun had moved from its position right before dusk, the only light coming into the room soft and diffused from the blinds.
It took me a second to realize that Lily had her head on my shoulder and that she was breathing deeply. There was something about her sleeping on my shoulder that felt right and I didn’t want to wake her up.
It felt like her head perfectly fit on my shoulder, and there was something blissfully domestic about it. It was as if I was under a spell and I didn’t want to break it.
I smiled as I looked down at her, at the way the sunlight caught her raven black hair, at how relaxed she seemed.
She must have felt me stir, because her eyes fluttered open and she looked up at me.
It was as if I was under a spell, because when she opened her eyes, her face slowly began to get closer to mine. There was a second where she set her gaze on me, her eyes half open and still coated with sleep, but then she approached me and her lips met mine, softly, until her eyes opened completely.
“What… what was that?” she asked.
I laughed. “I don’t know,” I said. “You were the one who kissed me.”
She blinked, moving away from me as if I had splashed her with boiling water. “What?”
“You woke up and kissed me,” I said. “Don’t you remember?”
She shook her head, slightly, but then looked up at me. “I mean, uh…”
“It’s okay,” I said, looking right into her brown eyes. “I liked it.”
She opened her mouth. “I, I guess, I just—”
We heard the click of a lock and turned to look at the door, which had opened a crack.
“It’s letting us out,” she said. “We better go.”
She stood up and extended her hand to me. I grabbed it, noticing how soft and smooth her skin was, and let her help me up until I was on my feet, a little wobbly.
As we approached the door, both of us practically running, she spoke under her breath. “We should go check on the cat.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
LILY
2019
The Healing Process Page 9