Covering her face was a human skull mask that cast grotesque shadows in the flickering light. She was wearing the man’s clothes—the same man from my flashback. The fine suit hung on her like a costume, tattered, bloodstained, rotted from years of storage in some basement hellhole. But it was his suit. I knew it.
Was she dead?
Her silver hair spread around her head in tangled waves. I wanted to see if she was breathing. I had to.
But what if she woke up?
What if she came at me again?
I risked it.
Dropping beside her, I fastened the chains around her limbs. Wrists first, then ankles.
It felt awful.
Even after what she’d just done, I still felt awful chaining her in a basement.
But I had no choice.
I didn’t let my mind wander back to what all of this meant. The flashback. Cynthia. Me calling herMom.
I just had to get the hell out of here.
But first, I checked her pulse. It was faint. Slow but steady.
A heavy breath escaped my lips. I wasn’t a murderer.
I grabbed the candle and rushed over to the old wooden door. The handle stuck for a second before it creaked open.
Then I froze.
The room beyond was almost worse than this Winthrop torture chamber.
It was a shrine.
Fabric and red silk curtains hung around a makeshift bed, like someone had tried to make it sacred. On top lay a skeleton, dried and yellowing, dressed in a filthy white undershirt and sagging underwear.
The head was missing. Cynthia had used it for her mask.
It didn’t take long to add it all up.
This was the man from the flashback. The one from the library. The one who looked just like Daniel. And the one Cynthia shot.
Old flowers surrounded the body. Clusters of sparkling shells had been carefully arranged around it, like twisted offerings.
My stomach twisted. Bile surged up my throat. I felt violently ill.
Staggering back, I stumbled out of the room and into a narrow hallway. At the end of it, a wall made of bricks loomed ahead.
It was the same wall I’d seen blocking one of the basement hallways before.
Only now, I was on the other side.
I rushed toward it and pressed a hand against the bricks. Some of them had to be loose. How else would Cynthia have gotten me in here?
A few of the larger stones shifted the second I pushed. I set the candle down on the cold floor and shoved harder. One by one, the bricks fell free with a heavy drop. Soon, I’d carved out a hole big enough to crawl through.
So that was how she did it. Cynthia must have dragged me through here, into her shrine. Into that nightmare of a room filled with memories and bones.
