My heart is pounding so hard, I’m positive I could lead a boat straight to us.
Enzo looks indecisive, staring at Kacey, then down the stairs. I know what he’s battling with—leave me up here with her alone or let me come with him.
“Don’t go down there.”
He growls with frustration but ultimately looks to me.
“I need you both to stay up here,” Enzo says, gripping his shotgun tightly. I’m shaking my head before he can finish.
“No, no, just stay up here until I get ahold of somebody,” I plead desperately. The thought of him going down there and possibly getting hurt is enough to make my stomach twist with nausea.
“Baby, this is a tiny space, and it could easily turn into a shoot-out. I won’t risk your life. I won’t fucking lose you,” he argues vehemently, keeping his voice quiet.
“Enz—”
He stalks toward me, halting the protests on my tongue by hooking his fingers in my teeth and bringing me toward him. Then, he switches his hold to the back of my neck, holding me hostage as he captures my lips between his.
It’s soul-crushing, the way he kisses me. It feels like love, but even that seems so colorless when my entire being feels vibrant beneath his touch.
My bottom lip trembles and he catches it between his teeth before releasing it with a soft pop, stepping away as he does. My hands are curling into his t-shirt, clinging to him with fright. For so long, I’ve only ever felt that for myself, and this… this feels so much worse. Whoever created the word goodbye never knew loss. There’s nothing good about the way he leaves me.
“I’ve faced predators far more powerful than he will ever be. And now he will face me,” he assures me, his voice dropping low, sending shivers down my spine.
I try to nod, but it’s choppy.
He absently brushes his thumb over my bottom lip. “I love you,” he murmurs, which makes me angry because that sounds more like an omen than a profession of love.
“I love you, too, but can you not say that right now? It’s concerning.”
That dimple flashes while he removes himself from my desperate grip. “You can take care of yourself?”
I nod. “Yes. I’ll be okay.”
Appearing unconvinced, he looks at Kacey with a severe frown, as if the dimple never existed.
“I’m going to trust you,” he tells her, though it sounds more like a threat. She nods, taking a step back again to assure him she won’t come near.
He’s still conflicted; however, he gives me one more glance before heading down the stairs.
I’m sick with worry, but I will not stand here and do nothing while he risks his life.
I turn back to the radio, flipping to another station and repeating my call for help, ensuring to keep my voice quiet but clear.
Kacey moves behind me, and an alarm blares in my head the moment she is out of my peripheral vision. I shift toward her, watching her slowly drift toward the steps.
“Stay up here,” I tell her. I don’t want her to follow Enzo. Something tells me that if she came up behind him unexpectedly, it could be lethal.
There’s something off about her. Obviously, there’s something off about her. She’s been trapped in this place for her entire life. Her mouth is fucking sewn shut.
How does she even eat?
Then, it dawns on me. Those handmade plastic sacks with the white tubing in Sylvester’s bedroom suddenly make sense. They were feeding bags, which means he must’ve cut a hole somewhere in her stomach in order to get the nutrients inside her. It also explains why there are so many Ensure bottles in the cabinets.
My stomach twists further, coiling into a tight rope. I feel sick at the thought. I can’t even begin to imagine what torture this poor girl has endured.
Kacey twists toward me, and it’s still shocking every time I see her mutilated mouth. There’s no getting used to the sight of that. It comes straight out of a horror movie and cements the feeling that somehow, I’ve managed to stumble my way into one.
Guess I can’t even be angry. The universe is definitely getting its karma right now, and well, I can’t really fucking blame it.
She can’t speak, and it doesn’t appear that she has any other method to communicate, so after a few uncomfortable seconds, she turns away and just stands at the top of the steps, staring down into the black abyss.
My discomfort grows, alongside my growing worry over Enzo and concern that no one has answered my call yet.
But as the minutes tick by, a new emotion swirls into the already too potent cocktail in my bloodstream. Dread.
Something is wrong, and I feel more and more useless chattering into a radio and getting no response, while Enzo is possibly in danger.
“Maybe we should—” I’m cut off as a loud bang disturbs the otherwise silence. I gasp, dropping the radio speaker and staring down at the stairs with wide eyes. Moments later, a second shot goes off, racketing my heart farther up my throat.
Was that Enzo or Sylvester? There’s no telling who’s persevering.
“Okay, now we need to go check,” I say, my voice uneven and tight.
Kacey slowly turns to me. The energy has shifted, and I’m no longer confident she’s on our side.
My lips feel bone dry, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth as she steps toward me.
“Don’t do that,” I warn her, and she pauses. “I have no intention of hurting you, but I will if you fuck with me.”
She cocks her head, and for all I know, she might not even know what that means. There’s no doubt she’s been extremely sheltered. But rather than confusion, the act almost seems… condescending, like placating a child that is whining because they can’t eat cookies before dinner.
Bitch.
She takes another step toward me, and I straighten my spine.
Fuck her for trying to intimidate me. I’ve fought my entire life just to survive. I’m not going to stop now.
She seems to still, and before I can figure out what her intentions actually are, there’s a loud boom, followed by a muffled shout that sounds like Kacey.
Her head snaps to the staircase, and then after a few moments, she slowly faces me again. My heart is in my throat, pounding viciously, and my brain can’t decide where to focus its attention—on the commotion coming from below and the danger Enzo is likely in, or the girl with a rotted mouth rushing toward me.
I have just enough time to duck out of her way, sending her crashing into the control panel, and race toward the steps.
Fuck this.
I’m not staying up here fighting with a half-dead girl that’s clearly not as docile as she seemed to be.
I’m plunged into darkness within seconds of practically tripping down the stairs. I can’t hear the chains on her feet chasing after me, but my terror has convinced me of it anyway, and I’m not stopping to verify.
As I get closer to the bottom, my heart rate grows faster. There isn’t any noise from beyond the doorway anymore. And I find that far more unsettling than if there were a loud ruckus. At least then, I know Enzo is still alive.
Without hesitation, the moment my foot reaches the bottom, I’m barreling through the door and into the living room.
Sylvester is sitting on the couch with a shotgun in his lap, wooden leg propped up on the coffee table.
I skid to a stop, terror nearly sending me into an early grave. Immediately, I’m whipping my head toward the kitchen, frantically searching the area for Enzo.
He’s not here. Where the fuck did he go?
“Lookin’ for somethin’?” Sylvester drawls lazily.
Heart in my throat, I train my gaze on Sylvester, chest pumping as I try to figure out what the fuck happened in the two minutes we were apart.
“What did you do?” I choke out.
Sylvester’s hand rises to his beard and strokes it with mocking contemplation.
“What do you mean?” he questions. “I am simply sitting on my couch, in my home, and drinking a nice cold beer.”
Said beer is sitting on the end table, though the cap is firmly on.
“Where is Enzo?” I push, ignoring his condescension.
Sylvester sighs, as if this whole situation is a huge miscommunication and an inconvenience. As if he didn’t attempt to keep me locked away here and grew angry and unhinged when I said no.
As if he didn’t lie to us from the very beginning and purposely kept us trapped here.
“I’ve already contacted someone,” I warn. “They know we’re here and are being held hostage.”
Far from the truth, but it’s better than him believing we’re completely vulnerable.
Sylvester drops his wooden leg from the coffee table, the thump loud and causing me to flinch. With a grunt, he stands, and instinctively, I take a step back.
A soft breeze of air whispers across the nape of my neck, causing the hairs to stand on end like a petrified cat.
I freeze, and Sylvester grins, a devilish glint in his eyes. He lifts his hand and points behind me.
“She’s excited to keep you.”
My muscles are stiff with horror, and I refuse to unlock them and turn around.
“I told her you would stay here with her. She’s very excited to have a new friend.”
I work to swallow, but it feels no easier than swallowing dry sticks.
“Then why did she lead us to the beacon? Why would she help us find a way out?”
His eyes flit over my shoulder, a flash of pure rage in his eyes before it extinguishes. In that tiny increment of time, I see every bit of insanity residing in that empty tomb where his soul is supposed to be.
“Kacey gets lonely sometimes. Doesn’t always like being here. She comes around eventually but acts out every now and then.”
“Is that why you sewed her mouth shut?” I spit, disgusted with what he did to his own daughter. It sickens me to think what else he might’ve done to her.
I feel a finger slide across my nape, and I bristle, a slimy feeling trickling through my bloodstream. Her touch moves south, and then begins to swirl in a pattern I can’t distinguish. She’s drawing something on my back, but I’ve no idea what. It feels like letters, but I can’t be sure in the midst of my panic. I think I feel her trace L-A-R, but my mind is racing too fast to interpret it.
“We all suffer consequences, my dear,” he says, walking around the table and coming to stand in front of me. I’m trapped between the two, and I’ve no idea how the fuck I’m supposed to find Enzo and get us the fuck out of here.
“Was getting a supply drop-off when she started screaming. I had already cut out her tongue the previous time when she tried to call for help, but that doesn’t stop someone from making noises of distress, even if it’s incoherent. She forced my hand.”
Nausea churns in my stomach, the acidity burning a path up my throat.
“You never had to stay here,” I remind him, my voice raspy and uneven. “If you were so desperate to not be alone, you could’ve just left.”
“My daughters were born and raised here. I served years upon years manning the beacon. I dedicated my whole life to being here. Why would I just throw that away?”
“Because it drove you insane,” I reason. “You don’t have to live like this.”
He stays silent while his hands clench and unclench. I’ve no idea what he’s thinking, but it doesn’t even matter. He’s not going to leave, and he’s not going to let me go. That much, I’m sure of.
And who I thought might be willing to help is only a broken soul that has been tortured and possibly brainwashed. I know there’s one side of her that wants to be free—the same side that left the bookshelf open for us to find and desperately tried to get our attention—but there’s another side of her that feels just as hopeless as I do in this very moment, and doesn’t want to be alone, either.
“I think I’ll be happy here with my two girls,” Sylvester says finally. “Your friend is no more anyhow, I’ve already disposed of him. You have no family, no friends. And from the sounds of it, you’ve found yerself in a lotta trouble. I’m doing you a favor by keepin’ you here.”
“What did you do to him?” I bite out through gritted teeth, panic beginning to overwhelm my senses.
There’s no blood, is there? My vision is tunneling as I frantically search around for it. He can’t be dead. I refuse to believe it.
“He ain’t dead yet,” Sylvester says. “But he will be.”
I shake my head, tears beginning to well in my eyes as the hopelessness deepens.
It’s reminiscent of being back in that house with Kev, forced to endure a situation I could see no way out of. My words and cries for help were only being screamed into a void. There was no one to save me—except me. The day I took my life back was the same day it was no longer mine to live. I had to let it slip through my fingers in order to survive.
And for the second time in my life, I’m asking myself yet again—do you want to survive? Or do you want to waste away?
But what is surviving without living, and what is death without pain?
It’s an empty, cracked shell where a soul has been born and where that soul will die.
I no longer want to be that shell. I don’t want to just survive anymore—I want to live. And I won’t waste away, spending my days as a hollow being that awaits death like an old dog sitting on a doorstep, waiting for the day someone opens the door and invites him inside to stay.
So, I do the only thing I can think to do. I kick Sylvester right in the dick. A puff of air bursts from his throat, followed by a resounding shout of pain. Assuming Kacey is too stunned to react, I bolt toward the kitchen, screaming Enzo’s name and nearly tripping over the rug beneath the broken bits of the dining room table.
He can’t be far. I’m positive Sylvester wouldn’t have had time to hurt him and hide him outside somewhere, so he must still be in the lighthouse.
“Enzo!” I scream, hoping to God he’ll answer. But he doesn’t.
Sylvester shouts something at Kacey, but I’m already gunning for the knives in the kitchen. Ripping open the drawer, I quickly grab a knife, slicing my hand on another in the process. The pain hardly registers, especially when a rotten-mouthed girl calmly walks toward me, her chin tipped low and a wicked glare spearing me from beneath her brows.
I hold out the knife, my hand trembling violently. The adrenaline is oversaturating my system, and I’m finding it difficult to concentrate on a definitive plan.
“Enzo!” I scream again. Desperately, I sweep my gaze across the room, confused about where the hell he could be. There’s no way Sylvester could overpower Enzo. Which means he had to have taken him by surprise somehow.
Kacey closes in, and I turn my attention back to her.
“Don’t come closer, Kacey. I told you we would help you. You don’t owe loyalty to the person who has abused and tortured you.”
She pauses, staring at me with an emotion I’m too frantic to place.
“Get ’er!” Sylvester shouts, his face purple with pain and fury, while he struggles to get back to his feet with his wooden leg. Curses are spilling from his lips, spit flying and sticking to his beard, but Kacey isn’t listening.
“Kacey, please,” I beg, voice hoarse. “He’s kept you trapped here and hurt you in many ways. He doesn’t love you; he just wants to possess you.”
Her eyes become glassy, but Sylvester is back on his feet and charging toward her, his wooden peg against the floor echoing with his wrath.
“Useless fuckin’—” he cuts himself off and fists her hair, whipping her behind him and tossing her to the ground. She lands with a thump, but he’s already on his warpath toward me.
Admittedly, I freeze for a moment. The terror is a parasite, injecting its venom directly into my bloodstream and paralyzing my muscles.
But the moment his fist cocks back, rage contorting his face, it’s like time slows. My body unlocks, and I move on instinct, ducking below his punch and straightening just as he closes in. He grabs my throat, squeezing tightly, but my hand is already pressed firmly into his stomach, blood spurting, and I loosen my grip on the knife handle.
He pauses, eyes widening while he looks down. The entirety of the metal is plunged into his stomach, and the slick, hot feeling of his blood coating my hands has vomit threatening to spew from my mouth.
It feels so familiar. Just like when I had sunk that knife in Kev’s throat, red bubbling from the wounds and covering my hand and face in it.
I never wanted to take a life. Yet, here I am, claiming another.
He snarls and grabs ahold of my wrist, squeezing it until it cracks. I cry out, releasing the handle instinctively.
“That was just stupid of ya,” he growls, his face twisted with both pain and fury.
Before I can react further, his fist is flying toward me again. This time, I’m too slow to react, and the only thing I recall is a burst of pain, then darkness.
