Page 48 of Where The Devil Kneels

“I’m not delusional!” I yank against the restraints, achieving nothing but chafed wrists. “Rebecca Winters saw Garrow conducting some kind of ritual sacrifice. You were treating her injuries. There’s an entire underground network helping people disappear from Garrow’s influence. The estate is part of it!”

Maeve moves closer to the bed, her hand cool against my forehead. “This is exactly what happened after the accident, Elara. You created elaborate scenarios where someone was protecting you, keeping you safe when you felt powerless.”

“This isn’t like that,” I insist, though doubt creeps in, poisonous and unwelcome. Was I eight years old again, creating protectors from shadows because reality was too frightening to face alone? No. I know what I saw. What I experienced. “Dr. Rao, tell her the truth. You’re part of the network. You help people escape.”

“I help many people in my capacity as town doctor,” she responds, each word carefully chosen. “Including those who need mental health intervention.” She turns to Maeve. “She’s experiencing paranoid ideation consistent with prolonged isolation, possibly exacerbated by smoke inhalation and exhaustion.”

And suddenly I understand with perfect clarity what’s happening. Dr. Rao is sacrificing my credibility to protect the network. By framing me as delusional, she ensures that anything I reveal about Silas, the underground chambers, or Rebecca will be dismissed as a hallucination. It’s coldly logical, one person’s reputation versus the safety of countless vulnerable people who depend on the sanctuary remaining secret.

“You’re protecting them,” I whisper, the realization both reassuring and devastating. “By destroying my credibility.”

Something flickers in Dr. Rao’s eyes, regret, perhaps, or confirmation. She adjusts the IV drip slightly. “Your cousin has your best interests at heart, Elara. She’s already arranged for a psychiatric evaluation at County General.”

“You can’t do this,” I tell Maeve, a new desperation colouring my voice. “The estate—it’s mine. You can’t just have me locked up and take it.”

“No one’s taking anything,” Maeve soothes, though something in her expression suggests otherwise. “This is about getting you help, not the property.”

But I know better. Somewhere across town, Lyle Garrow sits at his mahogany desk, signing emergency property seizure papers with that gold fountain pen he’s always flaunting. His thin lips curl as he checks the boxes: unstable structure, owner’s impaired judgment. Three generations of Garrows have failed to acquiremy estate. The county’s convenient laws will finally deliver it to him, all perfectly legal when the owner is deemed incapacitated.

The sedative Dr. Rao has added to my IV begins to pull me under again. I struggle against it, desperate to maintain consciousness, to somehow make them understand. “Please,” I slur, the word stretching like taffy. “The house… protects… people…”

“Rest now,” Dr. Rao murmurs, her clinical demeanour softening just enough to reveal a flicker of genuine regret. “Some battles can’t be won through direct confrontation.”

Is it a message? A hint? My thoughts scatter like leaves in a storm, coherence dissolving as the drug pulls me toward darkness. The last thing I see before unconsciousness reclaims me is Maeve turning away, phone already in hand, no doubt calling the attorneys who will help her “protect” me from myself, and my estate from me.

Night presses against the clinic windows, its darkness seeping through gaps in the cheap plastic blinds like black ink through paper. I lie half-awake under the sedative haze, my wrists raw from intermittent, futile struggles against the restraints. The whitewashed walls seem to pulse inward with each sluggish heartbeat, a sterile cage growing smaller by the hour. Time has lost all meaning. Maeve came and went at some point, her perfect posture briefly silhouetted against the doorway before she disappeared with whispered assurances that “everything was being handled.” Whatever that means. The nurse changed my IV; her eyes carefully blanked when I asked how long they planned to keep me here. No one answers my questions directly anymore. I’ve become a problem to solve rather than a person to address.

The building settles around me, old pipes groaning as the heating system cycles off for the night. Fluorescent lights buzz in the hallway, occasionally flickering like they’re struggling to decide whether to surrender to darkness or continue their harsh vigil. The restraints allow me just enough movement to shift onto my side, facing the wall rather than the door, where staff periodically peer in to check that I haven’t somehow escaped my chemical prison or killed myself.

I press my ear against the cool plaster, seeking any sound beyond the institutional hum of medical equipment. At first, there’s nothing, just the faint percussionof my own pulse throbbing in my ear. Then… something else. A rhythmic pattern too deliberate to be random, settling noises.

Three soft taps, pause, two taps, longer pause, three taps again.

My breath catches in my throat like a scream I can’t release. Those sounds—I’d know them anywhere—the careful, measured footsteps of Silas moving through hidden passages. That rhythm that once lulled me to safety now ignites something primal inside me, a white-hot rage that scorches through my blood and burns away every rational thought. My teeth clench so hard my jaw aches, and I want to tear these restraints apart with my bare hands.

I press my lips to the cold plaster until my teeth scrape against it. “Where were you?” The words escape like venom, barely audible but burning with betrayal. My fingers claw at the sheets as I hiss, “They drugged me, bound me like an animal, and you—you who promised protection—you just stood in your precious shadows and watched.”

I hold my breath, listening for any answer, but hear nothing except calculated footsteps, nearer now, stopping just behind the wall at my bedside. He must be standing there, a ghost’s width away, with only plaster between us, so close I could touch him if walls didn’t exist.

Just hours ago, we moved through the burning house like dancers who’d rehearsed for years instead of days. When thick smoke stung my eyes, his fingers found my elbow, guiding me without hesitation. I followed his directions to hidden water valves and concealed fire barriers without question. In those frantic moments between life and destruction, we weren’t watcher and watched, we were partners, both fighting to preserve what mattered.

Then Maeve arrived, and he vanished. Just… gone. Retreated to the shadows while I was manhandled, sedated, and carried away like some hysterical Victorian woman having a case of the vapours. All his talk about protection, about the house safeguarding its own, was empty words when actual intervention was required.

The tapping stops. A soft scraping sound replaces it, like something being worked loose. I watch in numb fascination as a small section of baseboard shifts almost imperceptibly, creating a gap no wider than my pinky finger. Through this impossibly small opening, something dark is carefully pushed, a slender object that emerges millimetre by millimetre until it lies fully exposed against the sterile white floor.

A feather. Glossy black, perfectly formed, identical to the one Silas gave me as his symbol of protection. I stare at it, remembering his solemn explanation:“Inmy family’s tradition, we mark those under our protection with such tokens. It serves as both a reminder and signal, to ourselves and to others who understand its meaning.”

How meaningless that protection proved to be.

I make no move to retrieve it, though it lies within reach of my restrained hand. Let it stay there on the cold linoleum, as abandoned as I was. What good is a symbol of protection from someone who failed to provide it when it mattered most?

The soft tapping resumes, more insistent now, clearly seeking acknowledgement. I turn my face away, deliberately angling my body toward the opposite wall despite the discomfort of lying on my restrained arm. My jaw clenches so tightly that pain shoots along my temple, a welcome physical distraction from the emotional turmoil churning beneath my sternum.

“Go away,” I hiss, each syllable a blade. My voice trembles with the effort of keeping it low enough that only he will hear, though what I want is to scream until my throat bleeds. “Your protection is a fucking lie.”

My words hang in the air between us, bitter and final. I refuse to take them back. Then comes a stillness so complete I can track his withdrawal, that measured, deliberate movement receding from the wall, disappearing into passages I never suspected existed within these institutional walls. Something whispers against the plaster, his regret, perhaps, or merely the sound of my own breath returning to me.

The feather remains, a black accusation against white tile. Its presence feels like a question I refuse to answer, a promise I no longer believe. Once, I would have clutched it like a talisman, evidence that I wasn’t truly alone in this nightmare. Now it seems like mockery, a pretty token in place of actual intervention.