“Tell me what? Just say it. What does he want to say to me?” My eyes dart between them.
“He’s asking you to trust me.” Valdemar holds my gaze as time is called, and I want to punch the guard. Just like before, I’m not ready to leave. I want to talk to my brother. I want to stay with him.
“I’m sorry, angel.” Valdemar stands as the guard arrives behind him.
Is he sorry I can’t talk to my brother like he can? Is he sorry that the only time I can see my brother is when I see him? Or is he sorry my brother is dead in the first place?
He’s led to the door at the back of the room, and I stare, dumbfounded by what I’ve learned today. In the span of fifty-four minutes, my world has been ambushed and ransacked. Everything I thought I knew, I didn’t. My world feels different, and I don’t know whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. It’s a known fact that sometimes the truth hurts, but what about when it numbs you? What about when the truth turns you inside out so you don’t recognise yourself anymore?
Ten years is a long time to wait for the truth, and I was ready—more than ready.
But now that it’s out, I’m not sure what to do with it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
After leaving the prison,I head straight home, where my mother is waiting for me at the kitchen table. Sitting opposite her, I tell her everything, and her placid face never changes, her eyes almost looking through me. Pain spears my chest at her reticence, jealousy overwhelming me that Valdemar can hear my brother, yet all I’m surrounded by is quietude. The world of the dead is a silent one that leaves me with only my thoughts for company.
By evening, I’m drained, yet my brain refuses to shut down. Although I’ve been sleeping better, my dreams pulling me into a deep and immersive slumber, I wonder if sleep will come as easily tonight given that today’s visit yielded so many revelations, my head can barely hold on to them.
Yet the numbness remains, my body feeling nothing, my heart pumping purely out of necessity to keep me alive.
Ed spoke to me.
It doesn’t feel real. I want to hear his voice. I want to see his lips move, to hear the soft hiss of air through the small gap in his front teeth. I want his words the way he would have delivered them, with a smile or the curl of his top lip or the dimple in hisright cheek. I don’t want Ed’s words coming out of Valdemar Montresor’s mouth; they aren’t his to utter.
Nonetheless, it’s Valdemar’s voice I hear every night.
In my waking state, I feel shame and embarrassment at my actions in the dreams. Why do I give myself to him so freely when in the cold light of day, I can’t stand to be around the man?
Yet I’m not sure how true that is anymore. When my last few visits have ended, I’ve been annoyed, wanting to stay, to talk to him further, but surely this is only because he’s telling me things I have a right to know, things I should have known a long time ago. I’ve never been able to talk about my brother with anyone, or about my ability to see the dead, and I’m ashamed to say it’s been a relief to share some of my troubles. But that’s all it is. It has nothing to do with Valdemar as a person and everything to do with the fact that he’s the only one with whom I can talk freely.
After placing the book I’ve been trying to read on my bedside table, I switch off the lamp, thrusting my bedroom into an unnatural darkness.
Willing myself to fight him, I drop my head onto the pillow.
I will not let him take me.
I will tell him no.
I will stop this.
It isn’t right, and although it’s just a dream, it feels so real, too real for it not to eat away at my conscience.
My eyes close and sleep calls, and I can almost feel him waiting for me.
Barefoot, I run through the maze, my hands full of my gossamer skirt, my silver hair loose around my shoulders. Glancing back, all I see is the neatly trimmed shrubbery surrounding me, looking no different from the foliage I was looking at not five minutes ago. The night air is still. An owlhoots in the distance, and the towering mansion watches with cold amusement as I try to find my way out of the labyrinth.
Like a jungle explorer, I push past the overgrown branches, wondering if I’ve taken a wrong turn or if the hedges are growing taller around me. My feet sink into the undergrowth, my arms exposed to the night air as the halter-neck dress swishes around my legs, the smell of dense earth connecting me with nature.
Tuning into the night, I hear the rhythmic flow of water. Following the sound, I run faster, push harder, and race against non-existent time.
A few seconds, minutes, hours, eternity. Time passes in its dreamlike way as I finally reach an opening, the leaves parting to reveal a square courtyard, an imposing fountain taking centre stage. The fountain is shaped like a chess piece within a large bowl of water with gargoyle heads dotted around its lower half. Water spurts from their gaping mouths, the sound menacing.
I shuffle towards the edge of the fountain, then bend down and place my cupped hands in the cool water to scoop some up before letting the liquid drain through my splayed fingers. The gargoyles appear to grimace, their mouths cavernous, eyes set in stone.
“Angel.”
His voice startles me even though I’ve been waiting for it, readying myself for his arrival. I don’t see him, only hear him.
