“You ruined everything. I would’ve been a better father to Teddy than you ever could’ve been. Now, I don’t care what happens. Caroline’s dead. What does it matter?” He picked up a metal box. “But first, we have some business to take care of. I’m going to make you wish you’d never been born.”

He pushed the button again, pulling my shackled hands into the air a little higher, then dropping me suddenly. My arms rattled in their sockets. It felt as if they were about to be pulled from my torso.

“How does it feel to be completely powerless?” he asked.

“I’ve had worse days.”

“You’re the reason Caroline is dead. If she’d left you for me, she’d still be alive.” Ben looked me over. “She didn’t give a damn about you.”

“You can’t blame me for her death,” I said. “You’ll have to live with the guilt of that for the rest of your life.”

He pulled a black plastic object out of his pocket and took aim at me. As the hooks sank into my skin, I realized it was a Taser. The electricity that flooded through me was like a fire. It crackled through my brain, forcing my eyes wide and making me gasp.

“Admit it. Caroline never loved you. She was only with you for your money. Caroline was a climber. She used you as a stepping-stone,” he taunted.

I didn’t answer. He charged up the device again. The pain was overpowering, almost magnificent. Fire raged through my body again. I’d been here before, so many times, so many years ago. It was the oblivion I’d always craved. It was the reason I’d been with Mirelle and the reason I’d wasted endless nights in awful places and the reason I’d poured dangerous substances into my body. In the darkness was perfect stillness.

“Caroline stayed with you as long as she did because of Teddy. But she hated you, Theo. She really did. Caroline knew you murdered a girl years ago. She thought you deserved the worst.”

Those words truly hurt. They were the last nail being hammered into my coffin. Because Ben was right about this single thing: Caroline had believed the worst of me. I’d always been afraid she would learn the truth and hate me for it. The horrific irony was that my fear kept me from investigating what really happened that night. Caroline died believing that I was a killer. I would never have the chance to make matters right between us.

What made me want to die was that Caroline had gone to her grave hating me.

“I would’ve prepared better if I’d known I’d be entertaining guests here. I want this to be as painful as possible,” Ben said. “I’ve got strychnine, which is supposed to be the worst poison of all, thanks to the convulsions. I wish I could hang around for three hours to watch you die. But I have to go out and shoot your accomplices now.”

“Teddy . . .”

He punched me in the face. “You ruined everything, you know that? If Teddy gets hurt, that’s on you.”

That lit a rage inside me that pushed the void back. Falling into the soothing blackness was a luxury I didn’t have. I had to fight for my son.

“Caroline . . . told . . . me . . .” My breath escaped in short bursts, as if I were still being rattled by amateur electric-shock therapy.

“What’s that?”

“Caroline . . . told me . . . about you.” My head drooped forward as if the life had already bled out of me.

I am full of hidden horrors.

The voice scratched across my brain, far worse than anything in Ben’s limited repertoire. Ursula claimed the words were from a play; I wasn’t certain that I believed her. They had taken on a life of their own inside me.

“What did she say?” He stepped closer to me and then, as if reading my intent, he fired up the Taser again. My whole body convulsed, loudly rattling the chain.

I whispered something unintelligible.

“What was that?” Ben was impatient now, and he came so close I could smell his shaving lotion. He was desperate for any token, any sign indicating that Caroline had thought of him at all.

My lips brushed against his throat when I finally spoke. “You underestimated my ability to tolerate pain,” I whispered.

Before he could step back, I sank my teeth into his throat, right into his jugular.

CHAPTER 48

THEO

I would have been satisfied to die in that darkness. I wasn’t afraid. Ben was no longer a threat to Teddy. My son would be safe. I hadn’t thought I was capable of saving anyone, but at least I’d done that. It didn’t matter if I died now.

The scar that ran down my chest burned as if a beacon lay inside my flesh. Perhaps that was Death’s way of letting me know he was close. Blood blanketed me from top to bottom. The metallic tang of it lingered in my mouth. I’d killed Ben Northcutt, and the dreadful shame I was supposed to experience over taking a life was nowhere to be found. That man had deserved his fate.

For reasons I couldn’t explain, I had the sense that Caroline was in front of me, touching the scar on my torso. I couldn’t see her, but I could feel her presence as surely as I could catch the scent of her perfume in her bedroom. We were caught in twilight, neither living nor dead.

I am full of hidden horrors.

I had never wanted to face that voice. It was better believing that a tiger had slashed me to pieces. That was a comfort compared to reality.

I am full of hidden horrors.

Dr. Haven had told me I needed to re-create smells and sounds and tactile sensations to bring my memory back. She was right. In that horrific basement, time unspooled. I was no longer an adult man, but a three-year-old boy, lying in a cold cellar. The ground was dark with blood. My blood.

I floated outside of my body, watching myself at Teddy’s age. Feeling Caroline’s presence beside me was the only reason I was strong enough to do it.

My mother was kneeling over me with a knife in her hand. She was reciting the same lines, over and over, as if casting a spell for an unbreakable curse. I am full of hidden horrors.

I’d known the story of Medea long before I’d ever heard of Euripides at boarding school.

I’d heard my mother’s voice taunting me all my life. I knew I must have been the worst kind of monster there was to make my mother want to murder me. All my life, I’d been haunted by that broken shard of a memory. As she stabbed me again and again and the blood drained from my body, I imagined I was being purified. If I died, it meant I deserved to die. I felt an odd sort of liberation in knowing that I’d been a sacrifice rather than a target. My mother hadn’t wanted to kill me because she thought I was a monster but because she knew my father was.

My mother had tried to destroy me, just as Medea killed her own sons. Medea had done it to spite her unfaithful husband; perhaps that was what my mother had in mind, as well. Only I hadn’t died.

In my memory, there was an oubliette guarded by steel traps; I wasn’t supposed to venture in that direction, ever. A black fog swirled in the air above it; brushing against it left me light-headed and sapped my energy. Backing away from it, my memory cleared, but it only picked up several years later when my mother had vanished and Ursula was suddenly my stepmother. But Ursula had been there, in the house, for a long time. She had been in the house that very night my mother tried to kill me.

Caroline’s soul was still beside me, giving me the strength I’d always lacked. My mind returned to that oubliette and—for the first time in my life—I peered inside it.

I saw my father running into the basement. My mother screamed at him, and he wrestled the knife away from her, then shoved it with all his might into her stomach. She screamed, collapsing beside me on the floor, covering me in her blood.

For the first time in that darkness, I screamed.

CHAPTER 49

DEIRDRE

“Maybe we should wait for the cops,” I said.

“You should wait for them,” my father said decisively. “You almost died already today. I’ll do this.”

“Like hell,” I said. “I’m going with you.”

We trudged across the road again and down the driveway, the broken bone in my foot aching. The headlights of Theo’s car were still on, and I saw blood on the three steps up to the house and wood slats in front of the door. My father tried the front door, but it was locked.

“We can get in at the back,” my father said.

My phone rang, but I ignored it as I hurried around the side of the house. The porch door was still hanging open, its torn screen blowing in the breeze.

The door to the house was still unlocked.

We stepped inside a mudroom. To the right was the kitchen, where Teddy’s abandoned pint of ice cream was melting over the table. To the left was the living room, with a large fireplace. To the left was a step up to a hidden door that blended with the wood paneling. It must’ve led into the addition, presumably upstairs.

“No blood trail,” I whispered.

We crept to the foyer. Blood was streaked over that floor. The path ended at a closed hallway door. We stopped, listening for any sound. There was nothing.

“That’s the cellar,” my father whispered.

“We need a weapon,” I said.

“We need to hurry.”