Page 50 of Wicked Vile King
I don't want to remember, but I can't forget.
The wind whispers outside the room, seeming to scream through the night, and it brings me back, away from the root cellar and the man to all the ghosts that haunt me.
I cackle at the ceiling.
"You think this will work?!" I scream for the doc, the words breaking apart with my splintered voice. "They aren't real!"
The doc will never know the truth—my truth—only what I choose to show him. And I will show himnothing.
Laughter grows soft then loud again, and I think there's a madman somewhere, cackling up at the forgotten god.
14
WILLOW
Deep down in the darkness, I see my mother, her body pale, her skin ethereal, and her eyes glazed over and empty. The bathwater has long cooled from hot to tepid and tepid to cold, and as night quickly falls, I can still feel her staring at me.
I'm back in the dark room again, at the place that always seems to find me when I'm asleep or scared, at my every moment of vulnerability. It smells exactly like I remember, spilled blood and panic poisoning the air. The last few hours churn together in my brain, the timeline not quite making sense. Memories fast-forward, pause, and rewind.
I don't want to be here again, but I can't leave.
The darkness never lets me go.
"Mom," I say again like a puppet remembering her lines as I knock on the door to my parents' bathroom. I look down at the water spilling beneath the doorjamb and out across the hardwood floor and onto the rug, handmade and imported from Persia, a gift for my mother custom-ordered by my father.
Just like before, my brain is slow to form the question.
Why is there water spilling out from beneath the door?
I step back, but I still see it there spreading, pooling, and wetting the hardwood planks.
Oh God, my father's going to be furious when he returns home tomorrow.
Oh no, we have to get it cleaned up.
We have to get it taken care of.
We don't have much time.
I knock on the door once more, harder this time.
"Mom?" I say again, worries about my father's reaction muddying my thoughts.
I try the French door handle, and it opens easily, but it's still bent a little and chipped at the end from the last time my mother didn't obey and my father lost his shit. I walk into the bathroom as dusk paints the wallpapered ivory walls in oranges, reds, yellows, and golds, closing the door behind me.
I pass the double vanity to my left and the shower to my right as I walk into the bathroom. The first thing I notice is the water on the floor, sloshing softly beneath my sneakers with each step, wetting my toes. It spreads everywhere, wall-to-wall across the marble tile and the white baseboards.
"Mom," I say again, my voice soft and shaky this time.
The second thing I notice is how the water drips out of the tub, spilling over the tall porcelain sides ever so gently and falling to the floor. It grows redder the farther I walk into the room.
The third thing I notice is how the water follows the line of my mother's arm, which dangles off the side of the tub and touches the tile. Beneath her fingers, the water isn't that strange pink anymore, it's red.
Bloodred.
My heart skips a beat and stops entirely when I spot the first wound, a gash across her wrist, deep and gaping and oozing onto the floor beside a wine glass tipped over and shattered.
My brain is still slow to realize. Or maybe I just don't want to know.
