When I’d done this with Dr. Price, I’d felt his hands inside mine, as if he and I were spirits somehow sharing the same body. It had been almost pleasant. This time, it felt like a dead thing was settling inside me.
“Yeah, I see it,” I said, my voice sticking in my throat. I focused on it the way I had before, but it took longer to make it green, as if something inside of me was hesitant to open up the way it had without hesitation for Dr. Price.
“The green light expands as you breathe,” said Dr. Andrianakis, his voice droning in my ears. “It becomes a box that grows as you approach it until it fits perfectly in your hands.”
I’d been through all this before, but decided not to say that. I was impatient to be done, even though I’d been itching for the chance to have another go at my memories. Trying to focus, I reached for the box and opened it up as I’d done with the last, pausing before I could go inside. “What will it be this time?”
“Your worst memory,” Dr. Andrianakis said quietly, sounding like he was far, far away instead of in the same room.
I swallowed hard. That didn’t sound like the kind of thing I wanted to dive right into, especially since Dr. Price had said we’d be taking things slowly, but if he thought that was what it took to get my memories back, so be it.
Overcoming my hesitation, I stepped into the box and when I opened my eyes, I was once again in a physical body--or at least what felt like one--only this time, I wasn’t a child. Unlike the memory of my birthday, my surroundings were dark and cold. A sickly blue light streamed in from the sole window that seemed to be a hundred feet above me. I was laying on my back, and when I tried to move, I realized my body was bound to the hard surface beneath me.
I jerked my shoulders forward in an attempt to escape the tight bonds wrapped around my chest, keeping me chained to a table of stone.
What the fuck?
Panic overtook me as I realized I was bound from head to toe. The chains themselves burned my skin, like there was electricity crackling across the surface of them, even though they weren’t tight enough to dig in. My skin had turned raw wherever they touched, and a particularly deep wound was...smoking.
“Dr. Adrianakis?” I called, my voice strained. There was no one else in the room, as far as I could tell, but the foreboding sensation gripping my chest even tighter than the chains told me that was going to change any moment.
“Yes?” he replied, sounding further away than ever.
“Something’s wrong,” I insisted. Yeah, I was supposed to be accessing my worst memory, but this was a fucking horror show.
I waited for him to reply, but he didn’t. Shit.
Whether something had gone wrong or this was part of the process, I had the overwhelming dread of knowing I was in a nightmare with no hope of waking up. The more time that passed, the more it felt like reality, and the further away the world outside drifted.
A door opened, the sound echoing through the vast chamber. I strained in vain as a hooded figure entered the room, looking like a blood red rose against the dour stone around us. One followed after the other until twelve had gathered around the table I was chained to.
No…the altar.
The memories were coming back now, faint whispers of a truth better off forgotten. Dread seized me as one of the figures reached out with a chalky white hand, long fingers wrapping around my throat. Rather than squeeze, they ran their deathly cold fingertips down my throat, a sensation that made my skin crawl.
I couldn’t speak. The strangled cry building in my throat died out before it reached my lips, and I realized that whatever the cloaked figure had done, it had taken my voice.
Unable to scream or even move, all I could do was lay there frozen as the hooded figures formed a circle around me.
“Let us begin,” the one who’d silenced me said in a voice that was just barely masculine. He stepped back to take his place in the circle and they all began to chant something I couldn’t make out. At first, it was because the words were barely spoken above a whisper, but as the chanting grew louder, I realized they weren’t speaking in a language I understood.
Not consciously, at least. Something deep inside of me recognized the words as profane, and just hearing them seemed capable of tainting my soul.
Panic tightened the vice grip the cultist had on my throat, and as the incantation rose, the stone table began to quake. At first, it was just a faint sensation, easy to mistake for my own trembling, but when chunks of stone began to fall from the highest point of the moonlit tower, I realized it was an earthquake.
The people around me didn’t even seem phased.
Another took the lead, stepping forward and pulling a silvery dagger from his sleeve. The edge was serrated, flakes of dried blood clinging to its teeth as if it had already been used. My body tensed up even though there was nothing I could do to move away as he approached the altar and raised the blade over his head, holding it up in a stream of moonlight in a gesture of triumph.
“To Zoroath,” he called in a voice full of purpose and devoid of remorse. The other cultists echoed the name that hit my ears like a blasphemy even greater than the ones they’d uttered before. It took the place of their chanting, and the name seemed to carve itself into my skin as surely as if the blade had done it.
The moonlight glinted along the jagged edge and for a split second, I saw something. It was just a flicker of light, or maybe even a strange mist clinging to the blade, but it vanished too quickly to be sure.
The cultist closest to me placed both hands on the handle of the blade and held it directly above my heart, ready to plunge it in. His hood fell back just enough to reveal his face. He was young, no more than twenty, with handsome features much too pleasant for the twisted mind lurking beneath them. He had eyes the color of the moon glinting off the dark stone around us, and as they met mine, I was overwhelmed by a sense of familiarity so deep that it quaked me to the bone.
In that instant, I knew. I knewhim. The weight of betrayal settled on my chest, crushing what was left of my breath, but before he could plunge the blade down, I awoke with a scream that tore from my throat like flames.
I was yanked from the memory so violently that I landed on the floor on my hands and knees, my body trembling just like it had in the dream. I could hardly breathe, gripping my throat like the magical vice was still there. I recognized the familiar surroundings of Dr. Price’s office, but it didn’t feel real. I could still feel those stone gray eyes watching me, and it felt like part of me was still in that room.
