Page 161 of Corpse Roads
How he knows about it, I don’t have to guess. One of the guys must’ve clocked what’s going on and ratted me out. Shame slips over me, hot and clinging, until I want to crawl into a quiet corner to hide.
“It’s nothing.” I drop his gaze.
“Nobody is judging you, Harlow. It’s normal to struggle with the trauma of what you’ve experienced. I want to help you.”
“I don’t need help.”
“Is that why you’re not sleeping or eating? And why you have started hurting yourself to cope? That doesn’t seem like someone in control to me.”
I close my eyes to hold the tears back. “Every time I sleep, I remember more about my past. The memories won’t stop coming, and the more I remember, the worse it hurts.”
He abandons note-taking and looks straight at me. Richards isn’t a bad person. His job can’t be easy, and he hasn’t given up on me yet.
“I once treated a man that spent years of his life trapped in the mind of another.” His smile is wistful. “Jude was forced to become a whole new person. He shut out the memories of his old life to ease the pain of losing himself.”
“He couldn’t remember? At all?”
Richards shakes his head. “It took a long time to piece those threads back together. We spent years working together.”
“And it worked? He got better?”
“In a manner. Some things never leave us, Harlow. The size of our trauma doesn’t shrink over time. With therapy, we learn to grow around it. Slowly but surely.”
With a defeated sigh, I unclasp my fingers and make myself sit back in the chair. Richards smiles and picks his pen back up.
“I can remember the sound of her voice, and bits of what she looked like,” I admit, squeezing my eyes shut. “It’s all there, but it still feels out of reach.”
“Then let’s take a step closer. Listen to her voice, Harlow. Is it high? Soft? Loud? Quiet? Take in the smallest of details.”
“She was crying.” I wince, peering into the dark crevasses of my mind. “Her voice was kind of gravelly. She was older than the others.”
“Zoom in a little further. Can you see her face?”
Taking a steadying breath, I walk myself back into my caged cell. Dank, dirty, the scent of spilled blood hangs in the air like smoke. Mrs Michaels’ off-key humming wraps around me, broken by the awful crunching of the saw moving back and forth.
Pushing further, I follow the sound, returning to the sight that made me sick last night. Mrs Michaels lifts a stiff, blue arm to begin hacking it off, causing the corpse’s head to slump and face me.
Empty, misted-over eyes meet mine. She’s been dead for several hours. Her skin is grey, rubber-like, and purple around her neck where Pastor Michaels strangled her to death.
“Kiera,” I breathe. “That’s your name.”
Her short hair is caked with dried blood, and her cracked lips once spread in warm, comforting smiles from between our cages. I think… she prayed with me, whispering for her personal God to save her.
“I recognise her,” I say shakily. “She was maybe the second girl to arrive. One of the ones I’d forgotten until I saw her picture recently.”
“Good,” Richards encourages. “What else?”
“We prayed together. She was religious.”
“She was?” he repeats, surprised.
“No… that doesn’t make sense.” Screwing my eyes shut, I try to keep my focus. “Why would he punish a woman of faith?”
“Go deeper. Visualise what happened.”
“I’m scared,” I admit.
“You’re not alone, Harlow. I’m here and I promise that you’re safe. These are just memories. They can’t hurt you now.”