The Dark and Hollow Places (The Forest of Hands and Teeth #3)
Page 15“It can’t all be gone,” I whisper, needing to believe this is some sort of complicated ruse designed to throw me off and make me docile.
He shakes his head, and I can tell that the maps are the truth. I can see in his own face the pain of this reality.
“That’s why I needed you to see this, Annah. You’re a fighter, like I am. But you need to know that there’s nowhere else for you to go even if you’re able to escape. If you want to survive, then you have to fight for this Sanctuary alongside us.”
He lets the final pins drop to the floor, silver flashing, as I try to catch my breath and stop the tears from clawing up my throat.
“We need Catcher,” he continues. “Our survival depends on his ability to go out into that world and bring back supplies and food. You and Gabry and Elias are here to make sure he comes back, because if he doesn’t, then we have no use for you anymore. You’ll just become a drain on our resources.”
He leans toward me. “I don’t like trouble—I don’t like dealing with it because it’s nothing more than a distraction.” The tendons along his neck strain. “And so there’s something you need to remember: we only have to keep around one person Catcher cares about to control him. And right now we have three.”
Slowly, deliberately, he reaches out a finger and trails a scar that runs along my jaw. I try to jerk my head back but I’m pressed against the wall. I bat his hand away and he smirks, knowing he’s gotten to me.
“If he stops caring about you, you become useless to us. Well, to me. Perhaps some of my men would find a use for you. And if you start to cause trouble trying to escape or having a bad attitude that brings morale down …” He pauses, a wide grin breaking over his face. “Then we’ll get rid of you.
“Remember this: Catcher is what matters. You’re just ancillary to that end.”
I cross my arms over my chest, trying to force more distance between us. His point made, he takes a step back, his shoulders relaxed as if he hasn’t just threatened me and my sister.
“No matter what you’re thinking right now, I’m not a bad person,” he says. I snort in response, rolling my eyes, which causes him to laugh. “I’m a fair leader—that’s how I got to where I am. But I’ll give you another warning: be careful around my men. Some of them are good and honest guys and some aren’t. The thing is, they know I always side with them, and you should too.”
With that he claps a hand on my shoulder, squeezing hard to remind me of his strength. “Welcome to the Sanctuary,” he rumbles, then turns and starts through the door.
“Wait,” I shout, chasing after him. “What about my sister? I want to see her and Elias and Catcher.”
He pauses and glances out one of the windows lining the other side of the hallway before pointing to a door at the end of the corridor. “Follow the stairs up to the main level and through the glass door. It’ll lead you to the courtyard—you’ll find them there.”
As I race up the stairwell I hear Ox laughing behind me, but I drown him out with my pounding feet. I climb the last few steps and run toward a door with a narrow window set along one side. The glass is yellowed and aged, laced through with metal wires. It makes everything outside look like an old photograph.
Through the window I see Elias sitting on a bench, Catcher standing on the far side of the courtyard, his back to both of us. My heart rushes with relief, my breath coming in ragged gasps. I’m just about to turn the knob and bolt outside when Elias jerks his head up, his body freezing.
The pure joy and adoration.
She throws her arms wide and he reaches for her, grabbing her around the waist and spinning her so that her legs kick in the air. He stumbles under her, losing his balance, and they fall into a thick patch of snow-dusted grass, her landing on top of him with her body pressed against his.
That’s when I get a clear look at her face: it’s mine. It’s me. My blood refuses to pump, my mind to process what’s going on, my lungs to draw breath.
I watch myself lean over Elias, clean hair falling over my shoulder and skirting the edges of his jaw. Him reaching up a hand to tuck it behind my ear. My fingers touching Elias’s cheek and him smiling, his eyes seeing only me.
There’s nothing in the world except for me and Elias.
Except it isn’t me. I’m here in the hallway. I’m just a spectator as he reaches up his hand to her left cheek. Traces his thumb along the edge of her lip.
And because it isn’t me on top of him, because it isn’t me he’s touching, there are no scars. The skin’s flawlessly smooth.
Because he’s not touching me. He’s touching my sister, Abigail.
Then and there my heart shatters—shards of it slicing through my skin, razor sharp along each and every scar covering my body.
Abigail smiles, her expression purest joy, and Elias can’t help but grin back at her, his eyes bright with love as he pulls her face to his and kisses her.
It’s passion and need and worship as his hands tangle in her hair and she grabs for his shoulders.
It’s white-hot pain searing through me. He nibbles at her ear and she swats at him, laughing, and he grabs her hands and pulls her to him again. Pulls her fully against him. Over him and along him. I can’t hear the words he speaks to her, murmurs in her perfect ears, but I can feel the weight of them. Like they fill my hollow chest and drag me down.
He places his hands on either side of Abigail’s cheeks. His eyes eat every inch of her and he pulls her to him again, brushing his lips along her forehead and down her hairline. Over her ear and along the underside of her jaw until her mouth hovers over his.
I can’t breathe. Can’t move. Can’t feel anything in my body because everything’s numb—except for the broken pieces of my heart. I feel as if I’ve been turned to dust, ready to be blown apart and scattered far away.
I tell my legs to move but they won’t. I beg my eyes to close but they refuse. I plead for this all to be a mistake. For Elias to be somehow confused—that it’s really me he thinks he’s holding—but then his lips form the name: “Gabry.”
At first I don’t understand the sound’s coming from me—an impossibly loud wheezing sort of keening—but Catcher hears it, across the courtyard, Elias and my sister between us. He looks up at me through the window.
Of all the times I dreamed that my sister could still be alive, all the nights I stayed awake wishing on stars and praying to any god that would listen that I would someday see her again—that she was safe and warm and loved—I never imagined it would be like this.
Chapter XVI
I spin around and run. My feet slide over the concrete floor as I careen down hallways, randomly turning left and right, not caring about the footsteps chasing me.
Finally, I find my way outside, the bitter cold hitting me like a wall. Images and memories hurtle through my head: flashes of Elias and my sister overlaying memories of Elias touching me the night before he joined the Recruiters, his hand on my cheek, his fingers finding every part of me.
His lips touching hers. My sister’s mouth so close to his.
And my sister. Myself. Alive and here and soft-looking and pretty. My sister, whose eyes glistened with so much joy at being by Elias’s side.
I don’t even know what I want anymore. I used to want Elias home. I used to want the promise of safety and security but the Sanctuary feels more like a prison. I used to want to know my sister was alive, but I never expected that she would be that part of me that no longer exists.
Snow’s begun to fall from the heavy clouds and it stings my eyes, swallowing the sound of my steps. The entrance to a low squat building rears up before me and I slam against it, almost falling inside into pure darkness. Blissfully, I let it consume me.
I fumble forward, not caring that I can’t see, not caring that my feet stumble over uneven ground. I just need to move. I can’t stop my teeth chattering. The cold air seeps around me but even so, sweat breaks out along the back of my neck.
Behind me the door creaks open, a shaft of light cutting into my solitude. A figure just like me in so many ways hesitates before slipping inside. I want to tell her to go away. I want to tell her to leave me alone. But this is my sister. This is myself—missing for so long.
She’s so perfect. She’s what I desperately wanted to see in my own reflection but never did.
She’s also the reason I’m here in this city. The reason Elias and I were lost in the woods. The reason I’ve been alone for so long. If she hadn’t let Elias convince us to go through the forbidden gates and explore the paths in the Forest. If she hadn’t skinned her knee and refused to go farther. If Elias hadn’t been so afraid of getting in trouble because she’d gotten hurt.
She’s always been the reason my life fell apart so long ago. Why I can’t even remember the sound of my father’s voice.
She steps in after me and I retreat deeper into the darkness, weaving from side to side as I push away from the walls. I just want to be home. I want to be surrounded by my things and the long-faded smell of Elias and the way everything was.
I need time to think and figure out what’s going on before I face her but she calls my name and even though I don’t want to, I stop. There’s a small click and then a whirring sound. A moan penetrates the darkness and Abigail’s footsteps falter. My heart lurches as hands grab and tug me back to the entrance. My sister trying to pull me away.
The metallic creaking noise grows louder, steady and rhythmic, and then a light struggles to life. I wince under the sudden glow, throwing up my hands to protect my eyes and stepping instinctively into the shadows. Tucked in an alcove just off to my left, a young Unconsecrated man reaches for me through the bars of a wheel. With each step he takes toward me, the wheel turns, keeping him in one place.
“Just a wheel walker,” I murmur to my sister, slipping from her grip. The Protectorate used them to power lifts and lights. Instead of stocks or jails, they’d tie rule breakers to a chair in front of the wheels: temptation to keep the Unconsecrated walking. “They’re trapped—can’t hurt us.”
I shiver as his moans tremble around us. I can hear the sharp breaths of my sister behind me, the panic she’d felt at the Unconsecrated coming out with each puff of air.
A part of me wants to turn around and comfort her but I don’t. I’m not used to people getting through my barriers. Usually I just lash out, force them away. But I can’t do that with her. And I’m not ready to let her see my scars up close. To let her see the resentment I feel, which makes me even more petty and horrible.
Her shadow falls against the wall and I watch her raise a hand toward my back. Watch her fingers hover near my shoulder and then fall away.
“Annah?” My name’s a whisper. There’s no judgment or malice in her voice and it makes me feel even more selfish and cold.
I close my eyes. She used to be my other half but now she only makes me think of the worst parts of myself and I’m too wretchedly ashamed to face her. I left her alone in the Forest. I blamed her for being weak rather than blaming myself for being selfish—that’s what makes it even worse.
“Annah,” she says, her voice a little stronger. “It’s … it’s me.” She draws a breath. “It’s your sister.”
As if I wouldn’t know her.
“Please, Annah, please look at me.”
The Unconsecrated man moans and reaches, chains around his wrists rattling against the steel bars of the wheel he’s trapped inside. The lights connected to the turning gears hover and buzz, growing bright and dim and blazing back to life again as he lurches forward.
I wish he’d stop. I wish it would all stop. That the dead could just give up. Turn around and go back to their homes and leave us all alone. Then I could stay huddled here in the darkness and I’d never have to face my sister—would never have to see her expression when she sees my face.
I open my mouth to say her name but I freeze, suddenly unsure what to say. Gabry doesn’t feel right—she’s always been Abigail to me. “I don’t know what to call you,” I whisper awkwardly and I glance down at my hands, at the shadows they make, and heat crawls up my chest and along my throat.
“Call me your sister,” she says. And then I can hear the smile crossing her face, feel it brightening the hall behind me. “Your big sister.”
And I can’t help but laugh because it feels so like my hidden memories of her. I’d forgotten that as kids she’d lorded her superior age over me, even though it could only be counted in minutes.
She laughs too and I drop my chin to my chest, covering my face with my hands as my laughter turns to tears. All the guilt and shame and anger too much for me as my shoulders hitch with sobs.
She doesn’t hesitate but pulls me to her, taking my head and pushing it into her shoulder, her arms circling my back. I weave my arms around her and it’s like nothing’s changed.