I scroll between his eyes, becoming impatient and bored. “Signs of what?”
“Of an abusive household,” he whispers. “I was there when Detective Burns talked to her parents. It was like they were expecting it, like they had memorised every answer from a script. He knows them so he didn’t think anything of it, but I saw through it. They tried to make you out to be some stalker, some abusive boyfriend that they were keeping her away from for her own safety, but that’s not what I saw that night.”
“You’re not making any sense.”
“The phone call,” he says. “We traced it to North Carolina and that was enough for them, but it wasn’t for me. When Elizabeth rang Detective Burns, her voice was off. It was her, but it didn’t sound right. So, I did some investigating. The number that Elizabeth called from wasn’t from a residential home, it was from this address.” He taps his finger onto the paper. “It’s a religious academy, operated by a one Duncan Devereaux and his wife, Katherine Devereaux. There’s conspiracies about this academy.”
“What kind of conspiracies?”
He shrugs. “That it’s a cult. That it’s government funded. That they’re undergoing human experimentation. These conspiracies have been around for decades since the academy first opened in nineteen forty-five.”
I stare down at the address, swallowing a lump so hard that I feel it slide down to my stomach. “And you think Elizabeth is there?”
“It’s a possibility,” he says.
“So, there was never a summer camp,” I whisper. “And she’s been…” I can’t even finish that, I scrunch the paper up and I hang my head low, chewing on my lips.
I wish that this could change something, I wish that it could ignite some spark inside of me to push me to fight—but I don’t have any fight left in me anymore. This could be a dead-end trail, I could get all the way there for her to slam the door in my face. She called them, she’s there willingly, she’s not mine anymore. She belongs to herself, like she always has, but in a different way now. I can’t keep doing this, I can’t keep going over theories and what ifs as though I’m actually going to find an answer.
The truth is, Elizabeth left me. She abandoned every memory we ever made together and destroyed every memory we were going to make. I could blame her parents all day long but if I had never got arrested that night, this wouldn’t be happening. Maybe, it’s my fault. Maybe, it’s no one’s fault.
It’s just a never-ending mystery, left to the call of the wind.
“I can’t say that she’s there for certain,” he says. “But I thought you had the right to know, seeing as though you seem to be the only person that cares for her enough to do all of this.”
I shake my head. “It’s too late.” I hand back over the piece of paper. “Even if it’s true, she’s choosing to remain there. She can’t even pick up the phone and call me. I’ve lost her, it’s useless.”
“But I—”
“Thank you for coming,” I say, backing up. “I know you’re trying to help but all I ever wanted to know was that she was alive and well. And she is. The rest is up to her.”
I turn around, leaving him standing awkwardly in my driveway. As I open the door and step inside, I hear his voice call from behind me.
“You know where I am if you change your mind.”
“I won’t,” I shout.
And I close the door, closing my heart with it.
Chapter 54
Elizabeth
“Am I doing this right?” I ask one of my teammates who doesn’t react in any way whatsoever to my voice.
I’m once again in the letter room, putting words to paper to send to people all over America. It’s a very important job, but I’m a little lost without a supervisor to help me write it, like they have been doing.
As the woman beside me once again ignores me and continues with writing her own letters, I lift my eyes to look across the room. Everyone has their heads down, their hands moving as fast as they can to meet the deadline given.
All that I have to guide me is a list of names that I’m writing as a list of names I’m writing to, with addresses and a brief description of what I should include. I don’t want to get it wrong, because they check over every letter and if I’ve missed anything out or included something I shouldn’t, then I’ll get the whip.
And it’s harder than it looks.
I stiffen, holding my breath, as a supervisor comes up behind me and I feel her eyes boring over my shoulder. With my eyes wide and cautious, I continue writing down the information given, in a format that I think is correct.
Only, she slams the whip onto the desk in front of me, making my body jolt. I glare at the thick, metal whip that she hovers upwards to my eye-level. I swallow as the blood begins to drain from my face.
All eyes are staring in this direction, but I’m too scared to dwell on that. The whip smacks back down onto the desk and my body jolts again. The supervisor walks around the desk, stopping opposite me and spreads her arms across it, her fingers tapping at my letter.
“Are you stupid or brave, girl?”
“I d-don’t—”
“Shut up!” she roars. “What does that say?”
She rubs her finger across a line of my letter and I look down slowly. “I’m pleased to inform you that your daughter is making great progress,” I spit out.
She slams the whip again, causing the entire desk to shake. “Idiot! What are the rules?”
“That I write as the daughter,” I respond fearfully, realising my mistake.
“So, what are you going to do about it?” she screams, unleashing a giant vein that pops out of her wrinkly forehead.
“Start again, ma’am,” I say.
“Start again!” she shouts, she slams the whip one last time, and as I flinch once again, she pulls it back and wanders away.
I take a deep breath, holding in the cry that is trembling out of me. I reach out and take another piece of paper, re-starting the entire letter which will set me back. As I look up for a moment, I notice the tall, black-haired male leader observing me with a frown against the far wall. He’s the same one that’s always watching me like that—like he’s sorry that it’s happening. His bright green eyes meet mine and I feel myself begin to melt into them. They’re amazing eyes. He’s a handsome man.
There’s something familiar about him.
Not just in the way that I know he’s there watching me, as all the leaders do, but in the sense that I know him from somewhere. He looks at me in a different way to anyone else, he looks at me as though he sees me. He looks past the rules, and the pain and the confusion, and he sees me.
Every time I look at him, little pieces of weird puzzles begin forming in my mind. It’s been like that for the past week. Sometimes I can’t sleep because all these faces of strangers are clouding my thoughts and when I do sleep, I’m dreaming of people that I have never met. There’s always a girl, a small raven-haired girl with a pretty face that is trying to speak to me, but I can never hear the words that she speaks.
And there’s a boy. A handsome brown-haired boy with sharp, grey eyes and a homely smile that I keep trying to follow to ask him who he is, but I can never catch him. I don’t want to tell anyone about these dreams because I’m not sure what they mean, but they keep re-occurring and I don’t think it’s normal.
The pen begins to tremble in my fingers as I pause it above the paper. I blink to myself harshly, reminding myself of who I am.
My name is Grace, I think to myself, even though it doesn’t sound right. I’m in a club. My name is Grace.
I drop the pen, my eyes going back up to meet the leader’s gaze. My name is Grace… my name is…
I trail off with my thoughts of my own name as the leader straightens, giving me a look of promise. And just that look, just that moment, brings something back indefinitely.
Elijah?
Chapter 55
When our work in the letter room is finished, we stand in six straight lines adjacent to
each other as we wait for authorisation to leave. My teammates in group A are very weird. They don’t talk, they don’t move, I’m not even sure that they breathe. As they stand as though they’re turning into wax, I sway a little, becoming too stiff.
“Dorm one, proceed,” the supervisor shouts from behind us.
The first line leaves the room.
As each line follows, I turn my attention to the male leader; Elijah. I think. I’m not sure, I’m not sure about anything, but this is an instinct. And it’s the first real instinct I’ve had in days. I have to trust it.
When my line is called, I slowly walk out of the letter room with my head held high, raking in the fresh air from the outside world. As the lines progress towards the drinking fountain, which is our usual daily routine, an excruciating noise thumps throughout the air. I cover my ears instinctively as the noise takes me by surprise, but everyone else just halts, staring onwards.
The noise that resembles a siren is playing throughout all the speakers around the academy, all the sounds blend together to create one mighty alarm. I uncover my ears as my subconscious takes over, passing along images that make me confused.
I’m standing in a field, the harvesting field; I’m hearing the siren for the first time and I’m just as confused as I am now.
“You know what the noise means, move!”
No one just shouted that, but I can hear it, in my mind; like a memory I never made.
The siren plays for around a minute before stopping all together, but it leaves an echoing presence in my eardrums.
“Emergency assembly!” Elijah roars, as he comes out of nowhere. “No dawdling.”
All the lines continue to move, except for mine, as Elijah talks with one of our leaders at the front.
“Pastor wants a word with Eliza—” he begins. “Grace.”
His eyes meet mine and I squint back at him.
“Pastor wants a word with Elizabeth.”
What is happening to me? Why am I getting some weird sense of familiarity?
I stare at Elijah, knowing his name is Elijah, but with no clue how I know that. The leader nods and Elijah comes for me, taking me by the arm and stirring me away from my group. His strong arm guides me towards a small building in the opposite direction of the chapel where assemblies are held at and all the while, I am glaring up at the side of his face in horror.
“Do you have a weird feeling right now?” he says, not looking at me.
I don’t respond, my body stiffens into stone as I suddenly feel dizzy. Elijah lets me go, turning to observe me as we pause beside a wall.
“It’s called deja vu,” he says. “I just replayed something that actually happened.” I stare into his beautiful green eyes and I take a breath to calm myself as he continues. “Before I took you to—”
“Medical,” I whisper.
He almost smiles, he reads my eyes for a better reaction, but all I can give him is blankness. “You remember?”
“What am I supposed to remember?”
“Who you are.”
I swallow, looking down at my feet.
“You know something isn’t right,” he says. “Memory or no memory, you know.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say. “I don’t know you.”
“Yes you do, Elizabeth!”
I narrow my eyes. “My name is Grace and I am not permitted to talk to you.”
He rolls his eyes, snorting. “Your name is Elizabeth. You see this wall.” He moves over to the wall opposite us. “This is where we kissed, weeks ago.”
I stare at the wall, my eyes widening. “No, we never. Please stop talking to me, you’ll get us into trouble.”
“You came to my dorm,” he continues. “I showed you those photographs, you were onto something!”
“What photographs?” I say. “What are you talking about?”
“The photographs, with my mother and your mother. I know you didn’t mention anything to Katherine about me having them but you must had said something to her for her to erase your entire mind!”
“M-my mind? Is that why I can’t remember anything?”
He falls against the wall with his arms crossed, clicking his tongue at the ground. “You are the most frustrating person on the planet.”
“Well, is it?”
“No,” he says. “The reason you can’t remember anything isn’t because your mind was erased at all.”
“Sarcasm?” I say, raising an eyebrow. “Lovely. Thanks for that.”
He snaps his eyes up. “See, that’s the Elizabeth that I know.”
“Why do you keep calling me Elizabeth?” I demand.
He brings a hand up to rub his eye, groaning into it. “Because that’s your name.”
“I think you’ve got the wrong person,” I say, trying to walk around him but he blocks me.
“Look, I’m not a magician, okay? I don’t know how I can bring back over two months’ worth of memories that you’ve clearly suppressed, but I’m trying here. You’re fighting it and I think I know why.”
“Please move,” I whisper. “I need to get to assembly.”
“The reason you don’t want to remember is because you’re afraid of everything that you’re remembering,” he says, making me stare at him. “The grief of losing Mary and Salome, the realisation that you’re still stuck here and you can’t get out. If I was you, I wouldn’t want to remember either. But you have to.”
After he says that, I delve into the parts of my subconscious that is forcing me to try. The dreams, the nightmares, the faces, the random images of memories that confuse me even more. Maybe, he’s right, maybe, it’s all coming back to me, but because I’m too scared to accept it, I’m fighting it. I’m not sure how the brain works, but it’s like my subconscious is its own person. What you erase from me, you can’t take from the other me. I’ve felt it for as long as I can remember, this tingling thing, this alarm bell that never stops ringing.
I’d like nothing more than to understand a word that he’s speaking to me, but I am afraid, because no matter who I am or what I am, I’ve still lost it. I’ve still lost who I am and I don’t know how to get her back.
I know that I have to try. I know that I have to fight past the new memories to join the puzzles together. But how?
“Mary and Salome,” I say. “What do you mean I lost them?”
“Mary died last week, you were beside her,” he says. “You held her hand and she slipped away.”
“Mary,” I breathe out her name, focusing on the image of the raven-haired girl from my dreams.
“Salome was there. She stabbed a leader and then she escaped. I spoke to you after, do you remember that?”
I pinch my eyes closed for a second as I shake my head and then I feel Elijah’s hand on my face. At first, his touch startles me, but opening my eyes to see his looking back, as though he’s searching for my soul within them, calms me down.
“Elizabeth,” he says. “I know you’re in there, I know it. You’re scared. You’re petrified. I can help you, just come back to me.”
“I don’t know how,” I say against his lips, glancing away.
“Look at me,” he commands. “Your name is Elizabeth Sanchez. You were raised in California; your parents were cruel and abusive. They left you here two months ago, you helped people stay strong, you gave people hope, especially young girls. You are smart and courageous and beautiful, and you showed people like me, that were lost and broken, a better way.”
I touch his hand that lingers on my jaw and I blink to myself as I take that in. I might not remember who I am, but I believe his words. Something must have happened to me, something really bad. And I owe him everything for making things clearer.
“Who did this to me?” I say.
He stares and then removes his hand gently, pulling it back to his chin to rub his stubble. “This place will destroy you if you let it, don’t let it.”
“You didn’t answer me.”
“You knew
too much, it was the only she could—”
“Katherine,” I mutter, remembering some of my encounters with her over the past few days. I wipe a fallen tear, glancing towards the quiet street. “She manipulated me into writing my own letter home. I just thought Elizabeth was another girl I was writing as.” I gasp out, choking on my own cries. “I called that detective! She gave me a script, she said that it was important that I said I was okay and living somewhere else, I lied to him.”
“You’re not the first person to have to do that,” he says. “And you won’t be the last. It means that someone out there has filed a missing report about you, someone… close to you.”
It all makes sense now. The boy, the boy in my dreams; the boy with homely grey eyes. They felt like home because he is home.
“Nathan,” I whisper, blinking at the sound of his name.
I can’t remember anything about him other than his eyes and his name, but the feeling inside of me is irreplaceable. The feeling of love, of a love so strong that it can’t be imaginary. I’m not going crazy, I’m not falling into darkness; Nathan is a real person, a real person that is searching for me in some way.
“Yeah,” Elijah says. “I guess. He’ll probably stop searching soon, they usually do after the three-month mark.”
I back away from him, still blinking at the dots around my vision. “This is too much.”
“But if you remember it all tomorrow, then it’s progress.”
“Does Pastor even want to see me?” I ask, desperately trying to focus on something else.
“No,” he says. “It was a risk I had to take. I couldn’t bear to see you like that anymore.”
I begin walking back to the street, wobbling all over the place. “I need to get to assembly, I need to—”
“Elizabeth,” he says, he reaches out and grabs my arm, halting my walk. “You don’t want to do that.”
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