Page 65 of Master of Lies

But I didn’t want sex mixed up with the locked-in-the-dark feelings. No, no, no.

I twisted, struggling under him. He leaned down and kissed me hard, and then rolled off and got up. He straightened his clothes and stared at me, looking worried.

“I don’t like upsetting you,” he said. “I hate hurting you. I don’t lack empathy, Freya. Sometimes I wish I did. Things would be a whole lot easier.”

“Piss off, Jed. You feel bad for treating me this way? Aw, boo-hoo for you. I don’t give a damn about your feelings.”

“I have to do what I have to do. I just hate it that you ran into that wall.”

Oh, puh-leeze. I would have spit at the guy, if I could have reached him. “Spare me the sermon, you self-righteous scumbag.”

“Okay. I’m gone. We’ll finish working this out later,” he said.

“Oh no, we won’t. We are so very done, Jed.”

“Freya, please,” he said wearily. He slid a pistol into the holster he wore beneath his suit jacket, then shrugged on a black wool overcoat. He pulled out his wallet, peeled out two fifties, and tucked them under the base of the lamp on the dresser. “For the housekeeper,” he said. “Just in case.”

I turned my face away. He went in to the front room, but as he opened the door, panic exploded inside me. “Wait!”

He turned back, looking through the open bathroom door. “What?”

“The light,” I said. “Turn it on. Don’t leave me in the dark. Please.”

He came back to the door of the bedroom, and flipped the switch of the overhead lamp. “I should be back long before it gets dark,” he said.

“Whatever,” I forced out, through lips that shook. “Just…just leave it on.”

I heard the door shut, and the locks engage, one after the other. Then a hollowthudas the Jeep door closed. The sound of the engine roaring to life.

Gravel crunched, lights flickered outside, the sound retreated…and he was gone.

He’d left me to it. Alone with my demons. The square of gray, rainy sky through the window didn’t help. The dim, watery bulb of the overhead light didn’t help, either, because the darkness was inside me. Memories, rushing back, of being huddled in the dark, chained up like a miserable animal in the pitch-black basement room. Rocking to soothe myself. Filthy clothes. The smelly pee and poo bucket. Nasty, spoiled food.

I had stayed down there for weeks at a time. No way to gauge how many weeks, or how many times. There was no day or night down there. It was all darkness.

It had started out normal, if anything could be called normal after Mom and Dad’s car accident. The three of us, sent to stay with Uncle Orren and Aunt Jean. It wasn’t home, and never would be, but we were too shocked and busy grieving to notice.

Then things got tense. Ethan and Shane quickly began to chafe at the strange, senseless rules of the place. They started mouthing off. And just like that, Uncle Orren had arranged for my big brothers to be taken off to the local reformatory.

They were gone, and it was just me, miserably afraid and alone.

I tried to run away, after a few weeks. That was when they put me in the basement for the first time. After that, the basement became the go-to punishment. Always for longer and times. Because they liked it.

They said it was to make me pray for forgiveness. To make me reflect upon my sinful ways. My impure impulses. My evil feelings. I needed to pray for goodness to come into my heart and drive away the selfishness, the wickedness.

All I had to cling to was the hope that Ethan and Shane would come and save me. But they were locked up, Jean said. And they would stay locked up.

They’re trash. You’re all trash, like your worthless mother, and that turd she married. Zero plus zero will always equal zero. You godless little freak.

Jean would never stop ranting at me. Not until I had proved her right, and turned into a piece of garbage. Something nasty to bury at the bottom of a dark hole. Stinking, rotting, bad through and through. Because Jean was still in there, deep inside my head.

And she would never stop trying to stuff me back down into the dark.

Stay in the moment. Just breathe. Stay in the moment. You’re all grown up now, and Aunt Jean and Uncle Orren are gone. This will end. You can take it. Breathe.

I used all my usual tricks and techniques to coax myself back up from that old dark pit and back to the light, and then I heard it.Pop.

The lightbulb had just burned out.

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