“I don’t know how to feel, Anmara,” he responds with his voice raw from crying. “How are you?”
“Is there a point in saying it?” I look deep into his eyes, and I watch him shake his head.
He kisses my forehead, and I put my head back to his chest. The place I stayed for what seemed to be an eternity.
It is calming, I’m not gonna lie, but I still want to feel another one’s warmth in this moment. I would’ve liked to find this image in Lucas’s company, however odd these thoughts can seem. He would’ve stopped my tears and would’ve moved more than a finger.
But Blake… seems as lost as I am.
From the moment she was brought home from the hospital, Blake was her favourite. The age difference was big, but the attraction between the two of them was even bigger.
Lucas was always jealous when he wanted to play with his little sister, and Blake was also in the room, she didn’t even seem to bother with his presence.
Blake suffered the most after her presumed death. At least, that is what I think. We were close in that period after the burial. It took him one year to open up to the people around him.
He talked to me the most. He used to speak freely, telling me everything that went through his mind, how much he missed his little sister.
I remember that when my grandma took me to visit him, and he was sad, I just hugged him, wanting to calm him down in silence. His grandparents even came to us pretty often because it was too quiet, and they were sadly smiling at me when they opened the door and caught us embracing each other.
When my grandma died, I didn’t have another shoulder to cry on. I always thought about how it was for Blake to appear on my doorstep and hold me tight to his chest, but it never happened. I had to handle her loss all by myself. As a result, my connection with Anora deepened. She even took control of my body a couple of times. Especially when I started stealing more.
I got a bit lost in my memories, which seemed more beautiful than what was happening in the present, and I start to feel my eyes getting wet again.
At some point, I didn’t even know who cried harder. It affected us both, even though I only saw her a couple of times. Her image remained imprinted in my head, however mature her body looks now.
If I process how she ended up like this, I can’t find a logical explanation. The cops from back then said they identified the bodies of the three of them through the remaining bones found in the car that was destroyed by the explosion. Now, I can feel that something more dangerous is standing in the way of the truth.
I have a feeling that the roots of the problem are way deeper than we could imagine, that it existed way before we were born. I don’t know these things, but I learned in my 25 years of walking on this earth that my intuition has always been my best friend. I could trust it in any situation, even in the ones that seem like fantasies from faraway worlds.
This makes the situation in front of us weirder because it makes no sense what is going on and why the girl in front of us, who was presumed dead ten years ago, was alive all this time. And now she has been sacrificed for who the hell knows what experiment or demonic ritual.
Or both, by the looks of it.
What kind of crazy people could do these things? Were their parents also alive? Could they be connected to this fucked-up operation?
I can only think of one person who perfectly fits that description: Cathal.
I mean, seriously, what were the chances that when Lucas and Paul arrived at the orphanage, he would be there and take them?
Please, let me do the honours when we find him.
With great pleasure. I’ll bring myself a massive mental popcorn bag and watch the show. Somebody needs to be punished for this.
“I don’t get who they could find to be more interesting than….” I hear Paul’s voice while he opens the door, but he stops abruptly, and I can hear how he swallows his words.
We both look at the two of them, slowly moving away from each other.
“No, no, no, this can’t be possible,” Lucas’s voice says.
It is going on trails I never heard from him, having so many tonalities and inflections in his voice in a way I never had.
He closes the distance between him and Clara and pushes her hair aside to take a look at her face. I then hear him sniffling. He manages to take out the nails from her hands and legs, a thing we weren’t capable of doing. I just couldn’t get closer to her without bursting into tears again.
He takes her down and sits her against the wall. Two of his fingers go to her neck through her hair, hoping to find something, and then he shudders abruptly.
“Oh my God!” he says, starting to shake her body. “Wake up, Clara!”
I get up and end up next to Lucas in an instant. A ray of hope rises in the dark labyrinth, buried way too deep.
