Bury Me(60)

“I don’t deserve this, Dr. Thomas. None of this is my fault, and you are going to regret this. I’ll make sure you pay for this.”

“Ravenna? Are you okay?”

I hear Nolan’s voice, but I can’t open my mouth to speak. I’m too busy clenching my jaw as hard as I can. Pain…so much pain. It hurts everywhere and it never stops.

The electric shock waves that shoot through my body, needles stabbing up and down my arms… Forced into a tub filled with ice cubes and freezing cold water and made to sit there for hours, strapped into a straitjacket and left in a pitch-black room for days at a time… Being starved, being beaten, and so many other things that all come flooding back, making me want to scream and claw at the skin on my face and rip the hair from my head.

“Ravenna, answer me,” Nolan says again, his voice finally penetrating my thoughts.

“I’m fine. Where was I?” I ask calmly, moving away from the cage and farther into the basement where it starts to get darker, the single bulb at the base of the stairs unable to provide enough light.

“Are you sure?” he asks, his voice full of fear and concern.

His fear wraps around me like a warm blanket. I want him to be afraid. I want him to be concerned for my well-being. I’ve taken that final step at the edge of the cliff and I’m falling so fast that no one can save me now.

The secrets are hidden in the walls of this prison. They will destroy you before they set you free.

I chuckle out loud, thinking again about the words I wrote in my journal. These remaining secrets that are so close I feel like I can reach out and touch them can go ahead and try to destroy me. Nothing can crush me. I’ve lived my life in the bowels of hell, and it only made me stronger.

Flipping the switch on my flashlight, I aim the beam into the shadows in front of me, the light reaching all the way to the wall at the end of the basement. I continue walking until there’s nowhere else to go.

“There’s a door here, but it’s camouflaged into the stone,” I say robotically as my hand automatically moves right where it needs to go. “There’s a room back here, but no one knows about it. It’s where bad things happened. Very bad things.”

“You haven’t seen the bones. Didn’t anyone tell you the story of the men who died down here? How do I know something about this place that you don’t?”

“I should have known you’d be too scared to do it. Move out of the way; I’m not afraid of anything.”

“Why am I doing this? Because they deserve to know what it feels like to lose everything. Swallow the water, breathe it in, close your eyes and just slip away. It will only hurt for a moment, and then you’ll be free.”

“I think we should go back upstairs,” Nolan tells me as I run my palm over the cool stone wall, feeling for the doorknob. “I don’t think we should open that door. Something doesn’t feel right about this.”

He’s probably correct. Nothing good can come from opening this door, but I can’t stop. I feel like I’ve been waiting for this moment forever and I can’t turn back. The truth is right in front of me, screaming at me to keep moving, to open the door, and remember. Just remember.

“Do you remember? Do you know? T means death, death means T. Remember T. REMEMBER!”

My hand bumps into the handle, and I smile to myself as I wrap my palm around it, but pause before turning it.

“There’s a story that’s been passed down between the guards for years,” I speak softly, letting the anticipation build before I pull the door open. The anticipating is the best part. I remember being in this room the last time. The excitement of finally coming to the end of my plan and realizing I only had one step left before it was finished.

“Behind this door is another room. There isn’t much of a floor, maybe around four feet all the way around the outer edge by the wall. It drops right down into a sub-basement. I don’t even know why they call it the sub-basement. It’s no bigger than any other cell in the prison, but it’s not a cell. It’s a hole. Back in the 1800’s, they didn’t have solitary confinement and cages; they had ‘The Hole.’ Dirt floors, dirt walls, and shackles attached to those dirt walls to hold the men down there. The shackles were overkill since the hole goes down about ten feet and once you were in, there was no getting out unless the guards lowered a rope ladder.”

The door creaks as I pull it open the tiniest bit.