The bedside clock reads 12.27 AM. I want to go and watch television. But the dark whispers eat away inside my jumbled mind.
I’ve checked everything. There’s no need to worry. The room is safe, I’m safe.
Shepherd Lawson is just my imagination running wild. He’s not back in Greystone. He’s not the new owner of Swan Lake. He’s not living upstairs, the room above mine. I didn’t sleep with him in the woods.
I stop breathing.
I’m afraid I will drop and break. Because I’m guilty of every sin. Because my heart is pounding like the tick of a bomb. My body is trembling like an earthquake. And my soul is burning on fire.
Something sad, but beautiful, swarms inside me.
Bad whispers in my head.
Those fingers that dragged over my skin . . . so hot they felt like they left abrasions.
His hard, muscled body felt like Holy Water and my body worshiped his like a born again believer.
I know it’s wrong. But the very thought of his hands reaching up my dress, again, and touching me, again, makes me blush in all the wrong places.
Will he reach inside and uncover my secret?
My tongue feels severed. I get up from my bed and drink a glass of water. Then I go to the door. I start my checks all over again.
This can’t continue. It’s been three years.
It has to stop. Make it stop.
This time, I go through the whole process of checking the door twelve times, and only then, can I move on to the front window.
I wipe my eyes, wet and mute. I don’t want to cry. But without my tears, my heart would die.
THE PANIC ATTACK HITS me just before five in the morning.
I didn’t get sleep. It was punishment. A kind of torture. Because while the world slept, I was up alone, my mind buzzing with every painful random thought of what was. And then it just went blank. And it was during this moment I became aware of the silence, and realised how alone I am.
I lost control.
Shepherd.
Devil’s Woods.
His body pressed against mine.
The electricity scorching through my veins.
What is wrong with me?
How could I sleep with the man who left a thousand stinging thorns in my heart?
I can’t lose control again, I tell myself. I was upset about Elizabeth, and the dark secrets of my family. Shepherd took the pain away for a fleeting moment. That is all it was. It won’t happen again. It was a mistake.
The room feels violated just as I do, even though it happened outside in the woods. I can sense his shadow everywhere.
It’s his smell. Smells hold memories. I need to do something. Something to cure this never-ending ache in the pit of my chest.
I get up and start checking.
The first set of checks don’t kill the whispering creatures slithering inside my head. I realise it’s because I’m still contaminated by him.
I go into the shower and scrub my body. I want to peel away all of my skin and find a different me underneath. My skin is red raw by the time I’m finished.
I brush my teeth until my gums bleed, gargle with mouthwash, dress in a pair of clean white jogging pants and a sweatshirt.
After that, I check the room again. It’s no good. Half an hour later, when I’m still standing on the toilet seat, checking the bathroom window which doesn’t even open anyway, I realise I still feel wrong. It’s the tears, running down my cheeks, contaminating my hot skin.
I strip off again. Back into the shower. For a full thirty minutes I lean against the tiled wall, the water flowing over my skin. It stings from the last time I scrubbed it. I try to make myself believe that it means I’m clean.
There’s nothing left, I tell myself. He is gone. There’s no trace of him left. He’s not here. He is not back in my life. The woods was just a cruel nightmare.
Still not clean, I retrieve my nailbrush and the antibacterial soap and start scrubbing again. This time, the water is running pink down the drain. It reminds me of pink lemonade.
I sit on the edge of the bath, wrapped in another clean towel. I’m almost too wrecked to start again. But I must — or die.
When at last I’ve finished the whole thing, again, still wrapped in the towel, I put on a clean white top and a pair of faded yellow leggings from the airing cupboard. This is a bad one. I’m stuck. The urge to start again, do it properly, just once more, to be certain, to be absolutely sure that I’m safe, is overwhelming.
I’m cold. Trembling like an autumn leaf. And the feel of the clothes on my skin is scratchy and irritating, not tranquilizing.
I do the only thing I can do. Go back to the door and start again.
By half-past seven, I’m so ruined I physically can’t do any more. I hold off the panic a while longer by making myself a hot drink in the kitchen downstairs — I made sure Shepherd wasn’t in there. I go back up to my room, sit shivering on the couch, cradle my mug of tea.
I find myself watching a video online on my laptop with dry eyes, my skin all over my body tight and sore.
When the shivering subsides, the tiredness overtakes me. I curl into the corner of the sofa like a cat, listening out for any noises above my room. The
