Bury Me(57)

It’s time for me to get into the basement, even if I have to break down the door.

Giving myself a few more minutes of quiet, I think about Tobias’s voice and how good it made me feel that he saw right through me.

“My name is Ravenna Duskin. I’m eighteen years old, I live in a prison, and the devil is inside of me.”





Chapter 20





I spent so long down in cell number sixty-six that by the time I made it back to the main hallway, Nolan had returned from checking on his mother and was knocking on the door. Something has been screaming in my head ever since I let him in that he shouldn’t be here, and I shouldn’t let him go down into the basement with me, but I’ve pushed those thoughts aside for now. I wasn’t able to get the door unlocked the last time I tried, and I need him to do it for me.

Standing over his shoulder, my body vibrating with excitement like it has the last few times I’ve tried to go downstairs, I tap my foot impatiently against the floor, trying not to scream at him to hurry. It feels like Nolan is moving in slow motion as he uses the same hanger he used to open the spare bedroom and the one I used unsuccessfully on this door the day my father drunkenly stumbled down the stairs and interrupted me.

The click of the lock releasing almost makes me want to wrap my arms around Nolan’s shoulders and kiss his cheek, but even the thought of doing something like that makes my stomach churn.

He stands up and tosses the hanger to the floor, turns the knob, and opens the door.

“It’s fine if you need to go back to your mother; I can do this alone,” I tell him, trying not to come right out and tell him I don’t want him here, that his presence is threatening to kill my excitement. I might be a mean, twisted person deep down inside, but at least I’m not rude. He did just help me with something, no questions asked, and after everything he’s learned about me and helped me figure out, he still isn’t running in the opposite direction because it’s finally hit him that my life is entirely too messed up for him.

“My mom’s asleep right now, so I don’t have to be back to give her medicine for a few hours. I’m not going to leave your side, Ravenna, don’t worry,” he reassures me, leaning down and placing a kiss on my cheek.

Just like I figured when I thought about doing it myself, the feel of his warm lips against my skin makes me feel nauseous, but I’m completely surprised that it also calms me in some way. I’m so on edge right now that I feel like I’m going to jump out of my skin. The door is finally open, and I know with everything inside of me that going down these stairs will give me the answers to everything. I don’t even know how to explain what I’m feeling. I don’t know how I know the last of the secrets are down here—I just do. Nolan’s kiss, while almost vomit-inducing, slowed my heart down, so I no longer feel like it might explode. It also stopped me from screaming at him to get the hell away from me. I should be worrying that I’m growing more comfortable with him, but I don’t have time for those pointless thoughts right now. Just as I wrote, over and over, in my journal, the secrets are hidden in the walls of this prison, and I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that they are down those steps, beyond the darkness.

“Can you grab two flashlights?” I ask him, pointing distractedly to the small side table behind him and against the wall next to the basement door. “My father keeps a bunch there for tours since there’s only one light at the bottom of the stairs.”

I stare in a daze at the rickety wooden stairs that disappear into the blackness of the basement, so deep the lights from up here can’t reach. Nolan taps my arm with the end of a flashlight and I jump, realizing he’d been holding it out in front of me while I was busy staring.

“Come on, let’s go into the basement.”

“Are you crazy? It’s scary down there.”

“It’s not scary when you go with someone else. Come on, there’s something I want to show you.”

“I’ve been down there before, believe me, there’s nothing I haven’t seen.”

“You haven’t seen the bones…”

The conversation I remembered the last time I tried to go down into the basement floats through my mind, as well as the words I read from the journal page earlier. That page made it sound like someone else was making me go into the basement, but the memory of that conversation is perfectly clear in my head. I can see myself standing in this very spot, hands on my hips and a cocky smile on my face as I coerced whoever it was to come with me.