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Hard.

Like being thrown back through time, dragged into the dirt.

I feel the hands again, rough, greedy, everywhere. Fingers clawing at my skin, tearing me open while their voices chanted praise. I hear them laughing. Whispering scripture while they unzipped their pants. Blessing me as they defiled me.

I see the cellar as it was back then, shadows twitching, faces blurred, eyes glazed with holy hunger.

One of them told me I was an offering. Another said I was sacred ground as he poured holy water on the dirt.

The pain splits through me again like it never left, sharp and echoing and endless.

I hear my own screams, muffled by the earth.

Buried.

The walls didn’t echo. They swallowed.

I choke on bile but force it down.

I open my eyes.

The stairwell stretches down into blackness, no light, no mercy, no forgiveness.

This isn’t just where he buried my mother.

It’s where they buried me.

The girl I might’ve been.

The one who could’ve gotten away.

The one who used to laugh.

Gone, left down here to rot in the cold while the world above turned on its axis like nothing happened.

But I’m still here.

And now, the cellar isn’t just a tomb.

It’s a confession booth.

A vault of everything they were too arrogant to destroy completely.

I turn to look at him. Him. The man who started it all.

Sweat beads on his brow. His chest rises and falls in shallow, rattling gasps.

His eyes are wide, fixed not on me… but on the door.

He’s afraid.

Good.

He should be.

CHAPTER

THIRTY-SIX