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He walks away when his cell rings in his back pocket. As he takes it out, he notes the caller with a heavy eye roll. “I’ve gotta take this. You can wait in the living room. You remember where it is, right?”
I nod an assent, even though I havenorecollection of whereanythingis here, and he answers just as he’s stepping into a den of sorts.
“I’m busy, Marc. Make it quick.”
I’m internally questioning whether that was Matt’s reclusive brother, Marcus, on the other end of the line, when a twinge in my lower abdomen makes me recoil in pain. Fear that something is wrong with my newly discovered stowaway follows rapidly.
I quickly spend a couple of minutes looking inside each room on the ground floor in search of a bathroom, but come up fruitless in my endeavors. My feet fly up the dark walnut stairs, vaguely remembering that Matt’s bedroom is on the first floor.
I take a left at the top of the staircase, then a right, bringing me down a long corridor that feels slightly familiar.
I’m beginning to doubt myself, when I spot an open door ahead, relieved to find it’s a bathroom at last.
“With all the rooms in this monstrosity, what’s with the lack of facilities?”
My question echoes off the lonely cladding-covered walls, loud even to my own ears in the silence, before I enter the bathroom.
I’m still grumbling as I do my business, grateful nothing is amiss with my little secret, but when I’m washing my hands, I hear a loud bang that makes me stop dead in my tracks.
As I stand there quietly, I hear it a second time, and it’s with a frown on my face that I step back into the hallway, hearing it again for a third time. My feet take me toward the sound, even as the rhythmical pounding of my thundering heart fills my ears.
A fourth thud sees me coming to a stop outside the room the sounds seem to have come from. I’m scarcely breathing when I turn the handle, pushing open the door, only for my world to careen utterly off-kilter as my eyes adjust to the darkness within.
Finally, I focus on the horror before me, and my legs almost buckle.
It’sme. They’reallme.
Hundreds, maybe thousands, of images of me adorn the walls, covering every available surface. From my teen years right up to the present day.
Smiling, laughing, crying. A plethora of emotions line the walls, the shelves, the bookcase.
I’m swimming in the Sound. Jogging on the beach.
Sipping tea with Mom. Eating junk food with Elodie. Laughing with Levi.
Covered in paint in my studio at Rogue.
Kissing Vaughn, stripping off my dress, body arched as we come together.
Eachprivatemoment is captured on film.
Oh my God.
My stomach rebels violently, and I fall to my knees, throwing up all over the floor. I wretch until there’s nothing left, and I’m a sweaty, trembling mess.
When I look back up, tears are streaming down my face, and my mind is in overdrive, trying to make sense of what the hell I’m seeing here.
My eyes land on a smaller door at the back of the mostly darkened room, and I scramble toward it, rising to my wobbly feet as I try and fail to push the door open.
Another bang from within sees me twisting the key that’s inside of the lock, simultaneously terrified of what’s within, but more so of what currently surrounds me.
The door opens easily to showcase an enormous open-plan library with floor-to-ceiling windows facing out onto the immaculately landscaped gardens and the glistening bay beyond.
Walnut bookcases line the walls, packed to bursting, and images of the Porter family spanning generations are scattered throughout the space, each lit up almost eerily by old-fashioned kerosene lamps.
It almost feels like a sacred space, and I’m the clear intruder.
I slowly encompass the rest of the space, stopping when I find a foldable cot bed covered with a lumpy pastel blue blanket. I take a hesitant step closer as the blanket moves, and there’s another louder thud.
