The ones that have seeneverything.
“I’m not sure.” His brows knit quizzically as he assesses me. “Do you think you can make it to the top of this trail? Because I’d like to see this house.”
My lips quiver as I angle my head back, my gaze trailing across the dirt path that goes up the hill and to the top. I made it up there when I was younger. Granted, I didn’t have a choice. Do I have one now? Can I run because of my phobia? Run from a possible clue to a truth I’ve wondered about for years?
“You always have a choice, Ava,” my therapist once said to me. “It’s just that sometimes making a choice can be difficult.”
Branches claw across my face, and the snow seeps through my pants and shoes. I want to give up. Every aching muscle in my body is screaming for me to do it. And yet I fight. I choose to fight for my life.
I square my shoulders. “I can make it up there.”
He takes one look at my face and nods without questioning me.
We start forward again. My legs tremble the entire way. The higher we get, the more it feels like I’m stuck in a state of vertigo. I stare at the ground, refusing to glance up. One foot in front of the other. I’m struggling and moving slowly. I’d be worried Ellis is getting upset, but that’s not who he is.
My breathing rushes out of me in quiet, unsteady breaths. When he reaches back and offers me his hand, I’m so far gone in focusing not to have a full-blown panic attack that I instinctively take it. It might be the first time in years that I’ve held hands with anyone. It helps, though, the feeling of his fingers tetheringme to something sturdy. So that’s what I focus on, that Ellis won’t let me fall. That I won’t let myself fall.
By the time we arrive at the top, the sunlight has begun to fade away, and the sky is painted with pastel shades of orange and pink.
“It took a while to get up here,” I breathe out as I regain my bearings. “Sorry, that’s my fault.”
“You’re fine. We made it and that’s all that matters.” He squeezes my hand. “Thank you for doing this. I could tell how difficult it was for you.”
I’m about to smile, something I didn’t think was possible in this type of situation. But then my attention wanders to the cliffside and what lies out in the distance amongst the thick trees.
A small house-like structure secured by a lot of fencing.
“Part of me was hoping I remembered incorrectly,” I mutter as I stare at the house. My heart is thudding so loudly I can feel it in my veins, pumping blood through me like racing footsteps from someone fleeing for their life. It’s there, in the darkness of my mind, a seed begging to finally bloom as it gets its first taste of oxygen in a long time. I think if it could grow, it’d become a daisy.
I look at Ellis. “I think something awful happened in that house.”
13
CLOVER
DEAR DIARY,
There once was this house where dark things were kept hidden behind the rotting walls. The trees that stretched toward the dreary sky made it almost impossible to see. The fence that surrounded it was laced with the venom to burn anyone who dared touch it. Warnings glared brightly, like metal flames that pierced anyone with the fear of being blinded who dared lay eyes on it.
But I ignored those warnings. I walked straight into the flames and now they’re burning. Embers are still coating my skin, slowly melting me, but I can’t pluck them off. Not yet. I have to push past the pain so I can end this.
That house, what’s inside, I’ve seen glimpses of it. But it’s always through a haze of drugs because Jason always drugs me. He feeds my body with the thing it craves the most before we enter the place that reeks of blood and sins so dark not even the shadows want to be near it. The only thing that creeps around it is the ghosts of the girls who took their final breaths and the ones who sold their souls to live.
I’m the latter, but for me, it’s about finding the truths in death.
In Zoey’s death.
Although lately it feels like death is dragging a claw down my spine.
Most would run. But I can’t. I have to get to the truth. I have to find out what happened to my daisy friend.
I know she was in that house. I know she was one of those girls. I know that Jason and the men he worships are destroying those girls. Some of them “overdose,” while others stay drugged up, like me. It keeps us controlled, so we comply and do what they want, which is anything from sexual stuff to luring in other girls.
It’s fucking disgusting and I want to watch them all burn. But I still don’t know who’s all involved. Jason and his friends are definitely not in charge. I’ve heard them whisper about the bosses, ones that were masked and have power over this town. Perhaps the mayor? The Sheriff? I’m unsure yet, but I’m going to find out?—
“What’re you doing?” Jason’s voice slices through my writing trance, startling me so badly I drop my pen.
I hastily collect myself as I lean over and scoop it up off the floor. “I’m just writing in my diary,” I reply calmly. It’s a still of mine, remaining calm in terrifying situations. “I’ve been writing in it since I was like twelve.”
