part, though, is how many of her features mirror my own, like I’m staring down at an image of myself.
I’ve no doubt that this is the same ghostly woman who visited me back at the cabin, though her features weren’t so pronounced. More of a watered-down version, where my head must’ve forgotten some of the details of her face. Yet, I know it’s her. The one who claimed to be my mother.
I drop the photo onto the desk and cover it with the folder, closing the notes away. Pushing away from the desk, I breathe hard through my nose to settle the panic bubbling up inside of me.
Don’t look away.
“She was my mother.”
“I always wondered if your similarities were as obvious to everyone else as they were to me,” my father answers. “Seems they were most obvious to you.” With a slight smile, he clasps his hands behind his back and paces in the archway. “Her story intrigued me. I’d never met a woman so resilient. So puzzling and captivating. I dare say I fell in love with her.” A separate note at the end of the chart details those exact thoughts. Written as a letter to Vivienne, in which he went on to profess his love and desire to steal her away.
Perhaps it was too late by then.
Tears wobble in my eyes as I stare down at the folder. The very thing I came here to find out, I suddenly wish I didn’t know. “I found the file once before. I knew she was my mother then.”
“One afternoon, I finished with my sessions. I called down to you, but you didn’t answer me. I found you lying passed out beside her open folder. You’d gone into a sort of trauma upon seeing it.”
“That’s why you boarded up the rooms and hid them away.”
“Yes. Over time, you forgot about it. You didn’t even seem to notice that there should’ve been doors in that hallway. You never asked. And I never spoke of it again.”
True, he never did speak of it again. In fact, he went so far as to deny that the chamber ever existed. “You made me think I was crazy. You tried to convince me that there was no chamber.”
“For your protection. I never meant to hurt you, Cely, please believe me.”
“My mother … she was murdered.”
“Yes.”
“By whom?”
“That’s what you need to find out. I’m afraid I can’t tell you that.”
“But you know.”
“Of course I know. But you don’t. And I’m a figment of your mind. Therefore, I can’t tell you. Everything you’ve learned up to this point, you already knew. You just refused to see it.”
“This is all too much. Too much at once. I don’t …. I don’t even know what to do with all this shit. Russ. Brie. My mother …. I feel so tired right now.”
“I know. I worried that it might be overwhelming. But you deserve to know the truth. No matter what.”
No matter what. Don’t look away.
An unaddressed envelope sticks up from the folder, and I reach for it and palpate whatever’s inside. The back of the envelope is sealed when I flip it over, so I tear it open and reach inside for the small object. A tiny flash drive. Turning it over in my hands, I try to imagine what it could contain. Giving a shake of the envelope produces a business card that lands in the palm of my open hand.
Goldstein and Associates, with an address in Chicago.
The scale image tells me it’s a law firm. On the back is a phone number, written in hasty scribbles.
Detective Lozano.
As a general rule, my father didn’t seem to trust the police, so I can’t help wondering why he’d have the phone number for a detective.
Other objects lying about the desk are books--old, leather-bound books, and I nab the first from the stack. Voodoo, Palo Mayombe, and Dark Magic. The second book on the stack is one about satanic rituals. Along with the third. Beside those is an object made of broken twigs tied together with twine, in the shape of an animal head. A ram, or something, with a triangle face and horns. I lift a folder from beside the books to find sketches inside. More detailed images of what the object must be, and I’m convinced it’s a ram, or a goat, with pointed horns. It’s when I flip to a sketch of that long horned skull as a mask on a face that I drop the folder.