Bury Me(56)

“Tobias was in cell number sixty-six. Only one more six and your father would have lived in a room with the mark of the devil on it. You’re lucky I’m here to make sure you never turn into him.”

My vision blurs and my body sways, forcing me to hold onto the open cell door as I remember someone telling me about Tobias. I don’t remember who it was but it’s a male voice, and I remember hating him for speaking about my father so cruelly. I remember telling him that I had already turned into my father and there was nothing he could do about it. A sharp pain suddenly shoots through my head as I try to remember more, try to see whom I’m talking to and who told me about Tobias.

I wince, squinting my eyes as the knives stab through my skull, and blood rushes through my ears, the pounding of my heart so loud that it’s a wonder it doesn’t rattle the whole building. I take a few deep, calming breaths, refusing to let the pain stop me or deter me from remembering. I can’t keep allowing this brick wall in my mind to slam down each time I’m right on the verge of remembering something I know is important.

Moving slowly into the dark cell, the setting sun’s orange glow that shines through the huge windows behind me lights up the shadows in the small room just enough for me to see what I’m looking for—the thing that drew me to cell number sixty-six that day I was down here with my father and what pulls me forward now.

I barely register the rocks and uneven stone floor beneath my bare feet as I move deeper into the cell, until I’m standing next to the broken toilet, right in front of the back wall. The pain in my head disappears and I open my eyes all the way, my hand coming up in front of me. My fingers gently trace over the crude drawing on the wall, careful not to press too hard and chip away any of the stone and ruin it.

“The devil can’t make you do something when he lives inside of you, and you welcome his thoughts,” I speak aloud softly, my voice echoing around the stone walls as I recite the words my father said to me today, and run my fingers over the satanic image he carved into the stone when he was imprisoned here.

I repeat the words like a chant, over and over, while my fingers move away from the carving of the horned figure with the forked tongue, up to the words he engraved in the stone above it.

“You will pay for your sins,” I read aloud softly.

I close my eyes and turn away from the wall, pressing my back against the cold stone and then sliding to the floor. Pulling my knees up to my chest, I wrap my arms around them and feel like I’m home.

My memories no longer make me feel like they are playing tricks on me. I know they speak the truth because as I sit here, in the cell where my father spent most of his life, I know I’ve been here several times before. The dampness of this space, the smell of musty stone, and the coldness of the floor seeping through my shorts pushes several moments forward in my mind where I can see myself so clearly sitting in this same spot, just so I could feel closer to him.

The words I remembered being spoken to me about Tobias and his cell number prove that I knew about him long before I found his file in…my father’s office. My brain stumbles over calling Tanner my father, but that’s how I’ve always known him, and it’s hard to make myself call him by anything else right now.

I want to believe that my mother was the one chasing me into the woods because it’s the only thing that makes sense. It fills in most of my unanswered questions, and it gives me a plausible reason for why it happened, especially after seeing her completely lose her mind and then kill herself right in front of me.

It would be so easy to just accept it as the truth, but I can’t. As I sit in Tobias’s cell and revel in the familiarity of being here, that explanation still doesn’t make everything click together in my head like it should. If that was the final piece of the puzzle, if that was the one thing my mind was still keeping from me, I think I would feel it, wouldn’t I? Finally figuring out the truth should make every moment from that night perfectly clear in my head, but when I try to remember who I was running from, I still see nothing but a faceless figure. I still hear a voice yelling at me, but it’s neither male nor female, just threats being yelled through the woods while thunder rumbled all around me.

Letting my head thump back gently against the wall, I remember the words I read in the missing journal page and know there’s only one thing left for me to do. The one thing I’ve always known I need to do, but kept getting interrupted before it could happen. Just like this cell, it calls to me, even stronger than before now that I’ve read the words I wrote.