Nothing happens.Shit. My gaze whips around the office, looking for any numbers around the room that might jump out at me. There are none. I bite my lip nervously, mulling over the fact that he so clearly wanted me to get into the safe, so why couldn’t he leave me a damn code?
I freeze, realization hitting me like a brick.
My grandfather entrusted me with this secret—this monumental clue in his belief that I would keep it safe, so I try my date of birth, holding my breath as I rotate the dial to the last number. The lock clicks.
A triumphant smile stretches across my face at my success. Jewels, documents and stacks of cash are piled high within the solid box. But it’s the folder on the top shelf that immediately catches my attention. It’s such a deep shade of purple, sealed with the Hollow Iris Crest, and I am confident that this is what I’ve been searching for all along.
I collect it and lock the safe, hanging the painting back up exactly as I found it, and adjusting it so it’s straight. If this was my grandfather’s secret space, then it will continue to be mine as well.
Sitting back in the leather chair, I place the folder upon the desk and stare at it for a moment, letting myself feel the emotions, as I’ve finally secured it and completed my task. My fingers pad over the stencilled detail. It’s beautiful, and not at all what I was expecting to find. My curiosity gets the best of me, and I lift the front cover, peeking at the contents inside.Just one look couldn’t hurt.
The first page isn’t at all what I had expected. Devastation slams into me, and an audible gasp leaves my mouth as I lay eyes on a photo of my mother’s lifeless body and the wreckage of the vehicle that claimed it. It’s loaded with news article clippings, police reports and handwritten documents by my grandfather himself, trying to piece together the investigation.
I can’t read the words on the pages fast enough. Eager toconsume all the information at once, I spread them out across the desk, one by one. My eyes grow even wider when I come to a photo of a face that is all too familiar. A face that brings me discomfort just being in his proximity. Charles “Chip” Sullivan. My blood begins to boil, and I see red as I continue flipping through the pages and uncover clipping after clipping of unsolved crimes, all of which my grandfather believed in some way led back to the Sullivan family. None of this makes any sense. Disappearances of students and gruesome murders that have been brushed under the rug. When I see an image of the society crest, sickness churns in my stomach.
I flip through to the back of the folder, and my breath stalls. The most intense eyes I have ever seen stare back at me. I’m having trouble breathing. The room spins violently around me. I take a moment to steady my breathing before looking down and reading the headline of the news article again.
Hollowcrest Local, Loxen Gray, found deceased by murder at the Gravenhurst Manor.
THIRTY-TWO
VERENA GRAVENHURST
I’m not sure if my heart has stopped, or if I’ve simply slipped too far into madness to hear it beating. My boots thud heavily against the mud as I sprint through the gates of the garden in search of a pair of cobalt eyes.
“Loxen!” I shout, but my voice comes out shattered as I hurtle myself deeper into the manor grounds, clutching the folder against my chest. Dense clouds darken and collide overhead, completely swallowing the sun—a clear warning of a storm quickly approaching. I pick up my pace, taking a sharp left, darting as fast as I can through the path towards the graveyard. It’s ironic that our sanctuary is a cemetery, because with him, amongst the dead, is the only time I’ve ever felt alive.
My breath comes in rapid, heavy pants as I step foot on the soil of my favourite place on the estate. Thunder cracks through the sky like a whip, and I’m just about to call out for him again when I spot the back of Loxen’s dark hair, kneeling before his mother’s tombstone, placing an iris on top of it. It takes me back to the first moments we shared here. My heart twists so painfully watching him, I think it might split open. For a moment, I just stare, because he’s real. He’s right there. Breathing, moving,existing. The article was wrong. As if feeling my presence, he stands to his full height and slowly glances in my direction. My breath hitches. His expression is solemn, and his posture is rigid, but his eyes soften ever so slightly when they find me. I force air into my depraved lungs, remembering the last time we spoke. There are so many questions that have been left unanswered, so many feelings that I’ve yet to make sense of. I stare at Loxen for a long moment before taking confident strides towards him.
“That night in the library,” I say, out of breath. “You said you’d tell me your story another day. I need today to be that day.” His eyes flick towards the folder, and when they meet mine, something changes in his face. An indication of fear, like he already knows everything this folder contains and all of the questions I’m about to ask. His jaw tightens.
“Verena,” he says softly, taking a step towards me with his hand out, like he might spook me.
“Explain this,” I demand. “Explain why it says that you’re dead!” The wind picks up, whipping my hair around my face, and a drop of rain falls from the sky, landing on my cheek. I swipe it away, and Loxen takes a step towards me.
“I tried to tell you so many times, I did. I wanted to—neededyou to know, but I-I just—” he stumbles over his words, his expression pleading, begging me not to turn away from him. “I couldn’t risk losing you.”
I take a step away from him, and his features become tortured, like I’d just ripped his heart clean from his chest. “Tried to tell mewhat,Lox?”
He points towards the folder still gripped tightly in my palm. I look down at it, then back at him.
“No.” I shake my head violently. “No. No, because I’ve been talking to you. You’ve been here. You’ve been?—”
“I know.” His voice cracks, just slightly.
I laugh, but it comes out strangled, horrified. Not laughter at all. “What do you mean, youknow?” I hiss. “Do you hearyourself? You can’t be dead, Loxen. You can’t be! Because you’re right here. You’re right here!” I scream, reaching to shove against his chest, to feel his warm flesh against mine, but where my hands should have connected, they went through him as if he were nothing but a cloud of smoke. My heart drops so fast it feels like I’m falling through the seams of time. Suddenly, as if my grief were strong enough to split the sky, rain cascades from the clouds, soft at first, then ferociously. The sorrow in his eyes is unbearable, making me weak in the knees.
The folder slips through my hands, onto the damp earth. I hold my palms out in front of me, looking at them as if I’ve never seen them before, as if they aren’t mine at all, as if I, too, do not exist.
“One year ago, I took my last breath on these manor grounds.” He speaks over the rain as it beats down, soaking every inch of us—of him, which shouldn’t be possible if he’s merely a figment of my imagination. My ears ring. Lightning cracks through the sky. “I’ll explain everything, just please, please don’t shut me out.”
I take a step back. “No,” I whisper again, but my voice is weaker. Something in Loxen breaks then, and he rushes towards me, raising his hand to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear, his restraint snapping, but his touch never comes. And it dawns on me that I’ve never actually felt the warmth of his skin against mine. All those times I thought he didn’twantto touch me as bad as I yearned for him to, all the times I thought there was something wrong with me, it wasn’t out of lack of desire, but because his body belonged to death, and mine to the living. A tear streaks down my cheek, mixing with the rain.
“Verena.” Loxen’s voice sounds worried. I look up at him, breaking my gaze away from my hands. I expect to see his blue eyes staring back at me, but they’re staring past me, towards the entrance of the graveyard. I slowly turn my head towards what’scaptured his attention, and dread becomes a living thing within me.
Stalking towards us through the downpour, like a murder of crows, is the society. Each member is cloaked in black, their faces covered in masks. In the front, leading the pack, is the mask of a wolf.
“Verena, run.” Loxen shakes his head, “You need to run!” he yells, panicked. He reaches for my shoulders, but it’s in vain because he’s dead and his hands whip through me like a breeze. Loxen is dead; none of this is real. Am I even real? I feel numb. My feet stay rooted to the soaked earth.
