Uncovering You 10: The Finale (16 page)

Four hours left.

Two hours.

One.

I wish desperately that my internal clock was not so precisely synched. But I’ve become an expert at feeling time pass. I know how long one hour feels. I can attribute that to Stonehart.

Minutes. Minutes left. Minutes tick by. I’m helpless to stop the images. How can I fight voices that are in my own head? No amount of mental strength or willpower can undo the chemical damage done to my brain.

The door opens. I jerk up. I turn my head—and see Jeremy there.

No. No, no, no. That’s all wrong. Jeremy can’t be here. He can’t be
there
. I blink rapidly and shake my head.

My vision splinters. The doorway seems to expand, like it’s going to swallow me whole. Then, in a blink, it snaps back to itself, and I see who’s really there:

Big Man.

He grins at me. They’ve long since forgone wearing the ski masks—except for the camera.

He takes a step into the room.

“No, no,” I say, shying back. “Stay away. Don’t come any closer. Please don’t come any closer!”

As I look at him, right before my eyes, his face transforms. It blurs together, the nose melting with the lips and the eyes. And then, when I take my next breath. Jeremy is standing there once more.

My fear vanishes.
Fear
?
What fear?

Why should I be afraid of the man I love?

He extends his hand. “Come with me.”

I smile. It’s a radiant smile offered from the very depths of my soul. I feel so happy, seeing him. Jeremy.
My
Jeremy. My lover. My everything. My man.

I stand up and catch a glimpse of red
.
I look down. I’m in silks. In that luxurious, wonderful dress that I wore on my first public outing with Jeremy in the Caribbean.

I feel wonderful. I feel like laughing, like dancing, like spinning. I hop toward him and take his hand.

Our skin touches.

Wait. Something is wrong.

I recoil. These aren’t Jeremy’s hands. These are large, dirty, heavily calloused hands.

I stare at the fingers in horror. There’s hair growing on their backs. Thick, black, bushy hair, like a moustache or a fuzzy caterpillar.

I try to jerk my hand away, but Jeremy holds on tight. “No,” I whisper. ‘No, no, no.”

“Oh yes,” he says. He smiles in a crude way. His teeth—I gasp. They’re yellow. Why are they so yellow?

I keep pulling my arm, trying to yank it free. Something tickles my skin. I look down. The most horrifying scream is ripped from my throat.

Those awful caterpillars have grown. Doubled in size. Multiplied.

And now, they’re swarming over my flesh.

In one last desperate pull I jerk myself free. I stagger away. My legs hit something. I lose balance and fall…

I find myself floating on the surface of a warm body of water. I look around and laugh in delight when I see where I am: The lake of Jeremy’s private island. There are lilies blossoming around me. Their petals float alongside my limbs in the water.

I feel light, happy, and carefree. Nothing can touch me on this island. I love the warmth of the water and the bright rays of the sun. I dip my head back, and laugh, once again, when I feel my long, beautiful hair sponging up the moisture of the water.

From the corner of my eye I see movement. I turn my head and spot Jeremy climbing the heights to the waterfall. His bare upper body looks glorious in the sun. I bite my lip and watch the perfect contractions of his back muscle as he scales the rocky cliff.

He reaches the top. Then stands tall and waves to me.

I wave back.

He nears the waterfall’s edge, stretches his arms up and to the sides. His muscles shine in the sunlight.

Then he kneels down, picks up a pebble, and tosses it over the ledge. For some reason, I am absolutely fascinated by its decent. I watch, transfixed, as the rock arcs and drops.

It hits the surface of the water. The lake swallows it with a satisfying
plop
.

Suddenly there are pebbles falling everywhere. They drop in the water like frogs in a rainstorm—a torrent of them, unceasing, unrelenting. They grow in size, becoming larger, thicker, more menacing.

In a moment of absolute horror, I see that they’re not pebbles but human skulls, gleaming white and raging down all around me.

I scream. The sound is swallowed in the roar of the falling skulls. I look up, and Jeremy is there, atop the waterfall, shoveling them from behind him with a demonic intensity. “The road to the top is not easy, Lilly. It is not paved in gold!” He screams. “It is littered with the bones of all those who’ve tried to get there and failed. You find decaying bodies along the way, still half-alive, begging for water or food or a merciful end. They call to you. They pull at you. They try to bring you deep underground so they can triumph in your destruction!”

Laughter overtakes him. A mad laughter, an insane laughter. His laughter knifes the air like a flaming sword through dry brushwood. It envelops me, swallows me whole. Pain, pain. All I know is pain, brought about by the horrible ringing in my head. I clasp my hands over my ears, shrieking in pain. The sudden movement knocks me off my floating lounger. I fall face-first into the pool. Liquid fills my lungs. I start to suffocate, choke, drown.

I pass out.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Moments later, I come to. My eyes are closed. I can’t seem to find the strength to open them.

No, it’s not that. More like there’s something pressing onto them from about me. Something I cannot move.

A thin, cold metal straw is brought to my lips. My head is tilted up. “Drink, now,” a female voice coos. “Drink, sweet Lilly.”

I suck at the liquid. It’s sweet. Almost sickly so. Like a syrup or some type of nectar.

I drink…and feel my grip on reality solidifying. I feel the sensation come back to my limbs. I wiggle my toes. I stretch my hands to the side. I open my eyes, see sunlight, and close them again.

Confusion grips me. Sunlight? How? From where?

And then my hands find the top of my scalp, brush over the short, prickly hairs growing there, and my eyes pop open. I’m wide awake.

I surge upright. I’m in a wheelchair, placed in the middle of a verdant meadow of grass. I look around me, still blinking fast to adjust to the sunlight. I see a beautiful white Greek estate. Across from it is a sandy beach, leading to the ocean. Gulls circle above us.

Rose is beside me. As soon as I see her, I try to stand—only to find my ankles bound to the legs of the chair.

“How nice it is to be outside,” she says. “Don’t you think?”

It’s just me and her out here in the open. I look at the glass bottle from which I drank. It’s still half-full

Rose taps the lip with her nails. “You should probably drink all of this,” she tells me. “The full dose of counteragent is in there. Unless you want to return to the false reality your mind creates ahead of time.”

She stands and walks away, turning her back to me. I grab the bottle and greedily drink.

“You know,” Rose says, “there is a way for you to distinguish if what you’re seeing is real or not. It’s called an anchor. Something that is wholly unique to you. Something that you have possession of in the real world that you do not when consumed by your fancies.” She turns back to me. I glare at her, the sun starting to burn the virgin flesh on top of my head.

“Why, Rose?” I ask her. “Why would you do this? Jeremy gave everything to you. I saw how you lived. You never lacked.”

“No?” She shakes her head sadly. “That’s where you’re wrong, Lilly. Jeremy did not give me anything. All he did was take away. He took, and took, and took, and never once considered what I had already given him.”

“And what’s that?” I scoff. “You molested him as a child. Everything that you had was more than you deserved.”

“Perhaps in your eyes,” she murmurs.

I kick my legs, trying to free myself from the bonds.

“It’s no use,” Rose says, “dwelling on the past. What’s done is done, what’s been given has been received. Oh, and stop struggling, Lilly. That’s no use, either.”

I grit my teeth and stare at her, loathing burning through my veins.

“You see, Lilly,” Rose says, coming toward me and stopping just out of arm’s reach. She adjusts her hat. “I was there before you. I was there before Jeremy became Stonehart. I was there from the start. I witnessed him grow, saw him become who he is. And don’t try to belittle me by calling me a child molester. I made Jeremy a
man
. He was forever grateful for that.”

“You’re sick,” I say. “Before, I thought that Jeremy was the worst. But all along it’s been you!”

“I do have my flaws,” she admits. “But I was always mindful of them. And, despite what you might think, I always cared for Jeremy.
Always
. Even after you came along and became his little slut-on-demand!”

The passion in her accusation startles me. And then, realization strikes.

“You love him,” I gasp.

Rose comes closer and pats my cheek. “
Loved
, honey,” she tells me. “I
loved
him. I was never
in
love with him!”

“No?” I challenge. “I think that’s a lie. I think you’re in love with him, and you always have been. You never
stopped
loving him! And—” I gasp again. “—oh my God! So much of how you’ve acted toward me makes perfect sense. When you saw the collar off, you panicked. When you always called him Mr. Stonehart—even around me—you were trying to make yourself seem distant. You were threatened by me. Weren’t you?” I jerk around in my chair so that I face her. “Weren’t you, Rose? Answer me!”

Her eyes widen, just a sliver, under my accusations. Then a smile curls her lips, and she laughs.

“Threatened by a whore?” she asks. “No. Never! And I’m not blind to the fact that I’ve aged. I’m too old for him, now.”

There is no vengeance like that of an ex-lover
, I tell myself.

“Anyway.” She winks. “I have a new man in my life. The
right
man. The man whose woman I was first. He rose from the ashes and came back to me. If there’s anything I cannot forgive Jeremy for, it’s that: He lied to me about his father’s death and kept him away from me this whole time. Besides, Lilly, I wouldn’t worry so much about me, if I were you. I’d worry more about the next assault of images scarring your mind. Think about what I said about the anchor. Maybe you can find one.”

She takes her hat off, places it over my eyes, and walks away.

I spin the wheels around and work my arms as I try to roll toward the building.

It’s hard work. My muscles have all but wasted away, and wheelchairs were not made to traverse grass and dirt. I find myself having to stop and catch my breath every few yards.

I adjust the hat. At least it keeps the sun out of my eyes.

An anchor. An anchor, an anchor, an anchor. Something that exists only in reality that I can clasp onto when the images come.

But what? And, moreover, how can I be sure of its effect? How do I know I won’t just misattribute it as well? Why should my mind give me that one advantage when it’s at the mercy of the chemicals destroying it?

A gust of wind picks up and blows my hat off. “Dammit.” I curse, and roll over to retrieve it from the ground.

I reach down to pick it up. On instinct, I run a hand back through my hair to get it out of the way. When my fingers find nothing but that short, prickly stubble, I almost succumb to a hopeless breakdown.

Wait.
I freeze. My hair. When I thought I was on the island with Jeremy floating in the lake, I had all my hair, rich and lush and beautiful…

And now? I scrub my hand over my head. Now, there’s nothing there?

Could that be it? Could that be the anchor I need?