"We got to the Grande Canyon the next day, but I never got to see anything. They dragged me around the whole time. Pulling me after them. He picked her. He asked me if I wanted her too. I did. I said I did. I didn’t want to be alone anymore. I never saw you, just her. She was shiny and pretty. Then they dragged me back to the car. Laura took me home and Randy stayed at the Grande Canyon. The next day you guys were there, with me at the dirty house. She was allowed to play with me for a couple days. I shared my bed with her and my dolls but she didn’t want them. She cried. She cried all the time." My throat gets thick. I can't say anymore. I just can't. I want to retch. I would cut out my tongue before I would say any more.
I twitch from the horror crawling around on my skin, like the bugs in the hole.
His voice breaks the silence and he continues my story. He is the only other person who could know it. "They put me in the hole. He kissed Em and made her cry. I remember you. You played alone and quiet in the corner. Always in corners. You acted like you didn’t hear the screaming or the crying, but I saw you. The panic and the denial. It was all over you. Emalyn wouldn’t stop screaming. You put the toys down and I saw you go inside. I heard the shot and the screams. I couldn’t get out of the hole and you were screaming. Laura was screaming. I finally got the board off and scrambled out of the hole. When I got inside, Randy was hitting you and Emalyn was dead on the bed."
I can't cry. I'm stuck in the moment. My voice wavers, "I missed. He was so big and fat and I missed. Somehow I hit her. She was so little compared to him." I can see her face looking at me from the bed, the way I see it every time I look in the mirror.
"I grabbed the gun from the floor and fired the shot you had meant to. I turned and fired another shot. Laura dropped to the floor. I dropped the gun." His voice is soft and scared like mine.
I whisper, "You saved me. I tried so hard to save her and I couldn’t."
I hear him cross the floor. He drops to his knees in front of me. He grabs my hands and holds them tight, "But don’t you see, you did. The thing he was going to do to her would have been worse. He would have killed her anyway. He killed all the others, Sarah. All of them. We lived. We made it out."
I cry and pull my hands from him. "I'm so sorry. I'm sorry." I cover my face and cry harder than I ever had.
He wraps himself around me and tries to shelter me from it all. All the memories.
He kisses my head, "We ran and hid. We stayed together in that barn for all those days remember?"
"I went to sleep and you were gone. Where did you go?" I ask softly. I'm out of tears and lost in the sickness of the things I have done to survive.
"I went for the police. I told them everything. I tried to come back for you. I tried to find you. But you were gone." His voice is dull.
"Did you tell them about how I shot her?"
He nods, "I told them what you were doing and what was happening. They saw it all. The other bodies. The hole. Everything."
I feared the prison cell they would put me in more than anything. "I have to turn myself in." I whisper. I no longer fear cells. I no longer fear anything.
He shakes his head, "They know who you are, Sarah. You're the only one who doesn’t."
I start to freeze up. The dark isn’t as comfortable with that statement hiding in here with me.
"Who am I?" I'm not sure I want to know.
He grabs my hands and pulls me up. He walks toward the door. He pulls me through and in the light I see him differently. He is the boy. My hero.
I tug on his hands and stop him. He turns and looks down on me, "Eli. I am so sorry I stole her name. I didn’t want the police to know who I was."
He puts a finger on my lips. I almost pull away but I don’t. "You were a six-year old. You were barely alive when I met you." He kisses the top of my head and turns, pulling me down the hallway. I don't know him anymore. He's so different, again.
Seeing him now is weird. He's so strong and amazing. I want to be him. I want to be whole again, or for the first time. But I see the truth in it all now. I will never be whole. Not like him. Not past it the way he is.
He pulls me down a hall I've never seen. He opens a tall thin door. It leads to an office. A cluttered office with papers and books everywhere.
He moves some papers and turns a large leather chair for me and pats it. I grip my robe and sit down. I'm shaking and scared.
He walks around to the other side of the desk and sits. He rifles through some things.
He wriggles his lips and then his eyes brighten up. He grabs a paper and holds it for me to see.
I glance at the headline.
"Two-year old Sarah Mastermen missing from Chicago Hospital."
I frown, "Me? I always assumed I was a Spicer like them."
He shakes his head, "No. You had some teeth removed and filled and they stole you from the hospital. It was a simple surgery. Your parents were in the waiting room."
I read the article and look up at him, "Do they know?"
He nods his head slowly, "Yes. They know the basics. You're alive and not ready to see them. We needed to crack the memories before we risked telling them anything else. In case they came looking for you, before we had the chance to do all of this."
"They wouldn’t want me like this. I'm a murderer," I mutter.
He slides one of his huge hands along my cheek, "You are so close, Sarah. So close to fixing it all. Stop going backwards."
I glance at the wall behind him. It has my name on it with a list. I frown, "You were tracking the things wrong with me?" I ask, walking to the wall.
"Doctor Bradley is the best in memory recovery and PTSD. She helped me. She deals with extreme cases of hostage situations or kidnappings. People like us who need to learn to see the world again. Who need to see that the things we've done aren’t who we are. Sometimes you're made to do something you don’t want to. That doesn’t make you guilty of it"
I look at him, "You knew where I was all along? You've been watching me? You left me there all this time?"
He crosses his arms, "No. I didn’t know where you were. You made it to Clovis before the police could find you. I have searched high and low for you."
I narrow my eyes, "How? How did you find me then?"
"Emalyn is a pretty rare name, but combined with the name of the people who ruined my life. It was a breeze once I saw it. When you wrote that article in eleventh grade about the wastewater management, it came across my desk. Someone in one of our companies thought it was an interesting article and take on things from the perspective of the youth. I almost died when I saw that name. The combination. I flew out immediately."
I look around the room and shake my head, "My article? From school? What do you do?"
"I'm a business man, I work with my family. This isn’t our office. It's Dr. Bradley's."
"How are you so rich? None of this is making sense. Not that it ever has."
"I was born rich, Sarah. Emalyn and me were with our parents that day because they were telling us they were getting a divorce. It was our family's first outing together in months. We were so excited. We didn’t know they took us there to tell us the bad news." His eyes twitch with the memories.
I close my eyes. He touches me, making me flinch away from his hand. He grabs firmly and pulls me into his embrace.
"I spent a couple years watching you. Studying you. I know everything about you. I know what you hide and who you are. I brought your file to doctor Bradley, but she was scared you were completely submerged in the Emalyn Spicer character you had made. The life of the little lost orphan you had created. We created this abduction and reality to help you."
I push him away, "You tortured me and hurt me to help me?" I ask incredulously.
"Yes. It was the only way. We thought maybe the relationship with Sebastian would help trigger things but when you ended it we knew. There was no other way. Studies have shown that victims, who are at the brink of death and lose everything, find peace all again. They gain a coping mechanism and a new outlook on life. A new life. The New Leaf you wanted so badly."
I feel sick and horrified and yet somehow deserving of everything he did to me.
His blue eyes watch me. He smirks, "I have things, quirks if you will, that are leftover from the things that happened to us all. My quirks prevented me from living a normal life. Even close to normal. Sometimes they still do." He swallows and takes a moment before continuing. "The nightmares were brutal for a long time. My uncle knew Doctor Bradley. He knew I needed help. No one believed me you were real. No one. The Spicers were sick people who tortured and murdered little girls. They never left one alive. You were my imaginary friend to everyone else. The girl who shot Emalyn. Everyone thought I had made you up to deal with the fact, I had shot my own sister while trying to kill the Spicers."
I gasp. I never thought about the fact he would be blamed. I see him as the little boy still in so many ways. I can imagine him trying to explain me to them. The hopelessness he must have felt.
He brushes my hair from my face, "You ran so fast and so far that we couldn’t find you. Not even a trace of you. When you did get caught living on the streets, they never imagined you were tied with the Spicer file. It was so far away. No one clued in that you were a girl missing from Chicago, because you weren't close to where you had been abducted from and it had been five years. You looked so different. No one had a clue who you were and no Emalyn Spicer was missing. You were missed in the system."
I get lost staring into his blue eyes, "I climbed into the back of a truck. I thought you left me. I didn’t blame you. After what I'd done I understood. I'm sorry Eli." The memories are there like they were then - fresh and I'm still covered in blood and filth. He is looking down and shaking his head.
He glances at me through his lashes and grins, "When I found you they all had to apologize. All of them. I am crazy, but I never imagined you. And I have never forgotten you."