Page 109 of The Shadowed Oracle
He trailed off, palming the back of his neck and taking short breaths. It was almost painful to watch. Ingrid searched for another question, some casual segue or a story of her own to lighten the load, but whatever comforting words occurred to her all turned to mush before she could speak them into existence.
She was nervous. To strain like this, to hurt just by seeing him hurt, and to be so wary of saying the wrong thing to him—she hadn’t felt that in so very, very long.
Don’t complicate it,she thought.Just say something. Anything. We need him. And right now, he needs me.
A small gesture. Match the vulnerability he’d shown. It was the least she could do. Since that impossible task of telling her what she was and where she came from fell on him, Dean had a way of putting her at ease. It was one of the first things about him that enthralled her, that scared her.Her world had doubled,she’d clashed with very monsters from her nightmares, and still her worst fear was the basest level of connection.
She had to make another leap.
She sent microscopic search parties into her hazy memory, shot past the blockades built to keep the younger versions of herself locked away in darkness, and then dove recklessly into those hidden places in the crevices of her mind.
Places that, Ingrid quickly realized, she never should’ve gone back to.
The first thing she saw was faces. A never-ending shuffle of them. Tortured faces. Faces made hideous by hatred. Faces twisted in despair. Faces she’d worked so hard to forget.
Then came the fleshed-out memories. Things she’d set fire to inside herself, turning it into fuel. Things that had been ignored and forgotten even as they ate away at her. She saw a dark apartment. She saw her father passed out in a stupor. She saw the group home and the sinister sister who’d left bruises on her backside so deep she couldn’t walk without limping for days.
Then she saw the pretty girl with the black ribbon in her hair—remembered her name, even. It was Francesca. Her first friend. The first girl to look out for her, teach her, be kind to her. Francesca, that was her name. The first innocent soul she had witnessed being swallowed up by a cruel, unforgiving world.
Her body tensed breathlessly. She couldn’t so much as shift her gaze to Dean, to ask for help, alert him—anything. Her body remained in the present, but her senses were fully transported back to that large old home full of crosses and idols, back to that cold room she shared with the youngest of the orphans.
Then she saw herself. As clear as Dean had been in front of her just seconds ago, her younger self appeared. She was alone, sitting on the floor of her room. Her hair was a mess, and her eyes were tired, yet intensely focused. She had a pencil in her hand. All around her were crumpled-up and discarded papers encasing her like fresh snow.
Her sight, her present-day self, moved in closer to examine the contents of the drawings. She had a pounding headache, a spinning stomach, an aching desire to go back, back to her body, to her present, to Dean, but she couldn’t take her eyes off of them.
They were depictions of her nightmares. Crude, childish renditions of them, but no less frightening. In some ways, they were more frightening. A ten-year-old’s innocence giving the macabre figures a sickening juxtaposition.
It was enough to break Ingrid completely.
Despite not remembering what happened next, what her vision was trying to show her, she knewwhyher younger self was drawing them. She remembered it so clearly now. This late-night scribbling was an attempt at curing herself. At ridding herself of the visions poisoning her mind. Putting them on paper so they could finally be removed from her head. She had worked tirelessly at it, trying so hard to get it perfect. For if it was wrong, if one line was crooked, one detail not captured, it wouldn’t work.
That’s what she’d convinced herself of. She’d demanded perfection. For weeks, she worked at it. Sketching all night, parked under the window and using the streetlight as illumination before the sunrise peeked through. Sketching until her hand was numb. Drawing until the lead was dull and sharpened down to a nub. Until she got it right. Until the nightmares were all purged.
Until…
The door to her room opened, causing Ingrid’s vision to wobble. She tried to call out, to warn her younger self that someone was coming. But she could only watch. Watch as that same violent sister who’d punished her so brutally found her and her drawings. Those hideous, demonic drawings.
Young Ingrid didn’t have time to fight back. The woman in black grabbed her by the hair and dragged her away to an isolated room. The room where misbehaved children were taken. Yelled at. Scolded. Called names.
Ingrid was sinful, the woman said. Possessed. Evil.
Stop!
STOP!
Adult Ingrid struggled to watch the memory from her disembodied eyes. A tear welled, but when she went to wipe it, she realized her hand wasn’t there with her, and the tears were not only in another time, but another world, as if her life ran sideways through space.
She was only able to witness the buried memory as if it were happening all over again. Watching, as amidst that dark recollection, a light finally shone in. Like an angel, she descended upon the scene and put a stop to all of it. Francesca, her black ribbon tied in a perfect bow around her single braid. She acted like a shield for Ingrid, taking all the blame. Just a teenage girl, and already saintlier than all those sisters put together.
How could Ingrid have forgotten? She had a name. She had hopes. Plans for her life. Yet, she had sacrificed herself for Ingrid. Accepted the unwarranted beating. Was tossed out of the home and into the streets. Banished from the group home, for Ingrid.
No more.Ingrid begged.I don’t want to see any more.
She wrestled with her mind, with the vision, trying to take back control. Trying to find Dean’s presence nearby to plant herself back into the present.
But the vision didn’t stop there.
Because the story didn’t end there.
