The Forgotten Girl

Chapter 35

Maddie

The entire drive home, I try to figure out what to do with my mother. She spent so much time lying to me, thinking it was for my own good. I don’t think she’s necessarily a bad person, just delusional and perhaps insane. But I know it’s time for her to let me go so I can move on and try to live life on my own, either with or without Lily—I haven’t decided yet.

Never once does it cross my mind that there’s so much more to this than Evan being a memory or simply remembering my past. Quite honestly, I’d forgotten about a lot of the stuff that had happened over the last couple of weeks, like the murders and how I’d never even figured out if I was doing them or not.

But then I enter the house and see her sitting on the sofa in the living room.

At first I think I’m hallucinating again, seeing her outside my head. But there’s something different about her this time. More life in her eyes. More confidence. More darkness.

“Lily?” I whisper in astonishment and horror, the door blowing shut behind me, and I whirl around in surprise. It’s quiet except for the wind howling outside as I press my hand to my heart and rotate back around to face her.

Her lips turn upward like she’s going to smile but it looks warped and wrong, like it’s melting off her face and her mouth instantly sinks. Her blond hair matches my freshly dyed hair, only hers looks longer and shinier—better. Her eyes are even darker than they were in my hallucinations, her cheekbones more defined. She looks less like me and appears more in control of her surroundings, which is very unlike me, except for when I’m Lily—or her I guess.

“Hello my dear Maddie,” she says, uncrossing her legs and getting to her feet. She’s wearing a red dress that hugs her body, knee high-boots, and fishnet tights. “How have you been?”

“Are you… are you real?” I haven’t budged from the foyer, too afraid to get close to her, too afraid she’s like the Maddie inside my head. But what if she’s not? What if she’s alive? But then why am I just meeting her for the first time now? No, she has to be a hallucination.

“About as real as you,” she says, skimming me from head to toe. I haven’t showered since I woke up in the woods and my clothes are caked with dry mud, so I look like shit.

“Why are you… how are you here?” I note the voice inside my head is quiet—this Lily before me has to be my Lily.

A grin slowly creeps up on her face. “That is the million dollar question, isn’t it?” She saunters around the room, keeping her distance from me as she takes in the excessive amount of knickknacks in the living room. “God, our mother might have a bit of insanity in her as well.” She touches her finger to a small figurine of a stallion. “Don’t you think?”

“I don’t think I’m the best judge of that,” I reply tentatively. “Considering my own mental instability at the moment.”

“At the moment.” She casts a glance at me from over her shoulder. “Oh my dear Maddie, you’ve been crazy since we were ten years old, when you could neither except nor deny what our father was trying to instill in us.”

My bones feel as though they crack and tear out of my skin, my heart thudding violently inside my chest. I’m afraid, but I’m not sure if it’s from her or the truth.

“I need to know why you’re here… if you’re real?” I spot something out of my peripheral vision and jump to the side, bumping into the wall.

“Because we have some unfinished business.” Bella exits from the kitchen doorway, wearing black pants, a white t-shirt, and boots. Her hair is pulled back tightly in a ponytail and something silver is in her hand—a gun.

I instantly start to back away, ready to run out the front door.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Lily says, pleased, as she cross her arms. “We’re not finished yet.”

I glance back and forth between Lily and Bella, wondering if they’re like Ryland—not really here. Part of me wishes that was the case. Insanity over death—I just my take it.

“We’re very real Maddie,” Lily assures me as if she can read my mind and I suddenly realize that the Lily in my head has become alarming quiet inside of me. “So relax and lets chat.”

“I’d rather not.” I glance at the window, wondering where my mother went and if she’ll return to this madness. Maybe I should try to text her—warn her. Am I that kind of a person?

As I reach for my pocket deciding if I am, Lily says, “Don’t even try it.” She sticks out her hand. “Now toss me your cellphone.”

Glaring at her, I get my cell phone and reluctantly throw it across the room to her.

“Thank you.” Lily tucks it down her boot, out of sight.

“Stop talking,” Bella abruptly snaps, quickly crossing the living room with the gun aimed out in front of her. There’s also another gun sticking out of the pocket of her pants and an uncontrollable frenzy in her eyes, like she’s about to lose all control. “I didn’t come here to talk.”

Lily glances at the gun in Bella’s hand, composed with no fear in her expression unlike me. I remember how she was always the composed one while we were in the basement and for a second I envy her steadiness. “Relax, I haven’t seen my sister in years.” She flashes me, a haunting smile, eyes lacking emotion—she reminds me too much of the Lily in my head and a chill courses up my spine because I honestly can’t tell if she’s real still. “How are you my dear Maddie?”

I look helplessly around me. “Fine.”

“You seem confused?”

“That’s because I am.”

“I don’t blame you.” Lily takes a leisurely step toward me, but stops still several feet away as if she doesn’t want to get too close to me. “It’s kind of the whole point, isn’t it? And it’s good for you—brings out what needs to be brought out.”

Confusion swirls inside my head. “What are you talking about?”

“Oh.” Her grin shadows her entire face, and I can’t help but think about when my mother said she was the bad one. But no… I still can’t believe she’s here. This has to be my Lily—I’ve lost all control and now she’s taken over everything, including the outside world. “You still haven’t figured it out, have you? What’s been going on?”

“That your dead and I’m hallucinating,” I say. “None of this is real.”

“No Maddie, I’m very much real and alive, but not because of you,” she replies, cocking her head to the side, studying me. “Tell me, why did you leave me in that cabin when it was burning down?”

“I didn’t.” I shake my head in protest. “We were running away together…” But suddenly the images rush through me that I haven’t seen before. A light. Gas. Fire. I lit the cabin into flames and watched it ignite, lying down in the midst of it. I thought I was going to die, but Lily woke me up. We ran. She shot our father, while I took off in a panic and the whole place roared into flames behind me. “But you survived.”

“Of course I did. I’m a survivor.” She pauses then looks at Bella who is just standing there with the gun in her hand. “Unfortunately, her son didn’t.”

“I’m assuming you still don’t remember me,” Bella inches forward, reducing the space between us. “And I mean, who I really am. Not who I pretended to be.”

It painfully clicks. I remember how she told me once she had a son once, but that he left her. I understand now, what she meant. He didn’t run away—he died. “You’re the woman that was in the cabin with us… Ryland’s mother and the person that was always talking to my father.”

She looks lost. “Ryland?”

“Evan,” I correct myself, trying to mentally guessimate how quickly I could get to the door. I’m close to the threshold of the foyer, just a few steps and the wall would block the bullet… maybe. “You’re Evan’s mother.”

That gets her to unstiffen and grin, but it’s an eerie sight to behold like it’s painful to get her lips to move that way. “Aw, so you do remember my boy.”

Just thinking about Evan hurts my heart, a fresh wound, still raw, that makes me feel sick, makes me want to run back to the cabin and beg him to come back to me. “Vaguely,” I lie.

Her nostrils flare and within moments she’s strode toward me and stolen most of the space between us. “Vaguely. That’s all you can say after he sacrificed himself for you—told you to run after you burnt the place down.”

“You’re the one who let him be tied up in the basement of a psychopath.” I’m treading on thin water, wishing Lily would step in because she’s always so much better at dealing with stressful situations than I am. I look over at the real Lily, who’s watching Bella with a bored look on her face.

“I’m over this,” Lily says, staring at Bella. “It’s time to get it done and move on to something else.”

“Get what done?” I ask Lily as she strolls around the sofa and stops beside Bella and I.

She shrugs nonchalantly. “You’ll soon find out.”

“I did what I had to do to survive in life,” Bella says hotly with her finger on the trigger. “Your father took care of me, loved me. I had to make a few sacrifices, but I did what I had to do to keep a roof over my head and yes his beliefs were a little hard to deal with, but it’s better than the alternative.”

“Survive life,” Lily and I say simultaneously, like our brains are linked and we’ve become one person again. Lily tips her head to the side, strands of her hair falling in her eyes as she assesses Bella. “That’s a ridiculous excuse.” She pauses. “You want to know what I really think? That you liked all that fucked up shit—torturing people—just as much as my father did. You were both fucked up in the head and were the perfect match for each other. No judgment here though.”

I’m so perplexed. What’s going on? Who’s really bad? Is Lily real? Is Bella real? Do they know each other?

“Shut up!” Bella cries and I flinch, but Lily is calm, the exact replica of the person living inside my head. Bella cocks the gun like she’s considering shooting me, right here in living room, when suddenly her eyes dart to the window. “Oh good, he’s here. Now we can finish this.”

I follow her line of gaze and my heart misses a beat. In the driveway is a car and getting out of it is River. He’s wearing his glasses, a flannel jacket and jeans, his hair messy.

“What’s he doing here?” I ask as I watch River walk up the path to the front door, looking at the house with hesitancy as if he’s worried about something.

“Oh, you haven’t figured it out yet?” Bella says and when I look at her, she’s grinning, tears streaming out of her eyes as if she’s emotionally overwhelmed. “The phone call at the bar. Getting you to come down there because my AA boyfriend got me into trouble. River helped me get to you. Poison your drinks. It was beautiful.”

I shake my head in disbelief, backing up until I bump the wall. “It was you the whole time… I was never… Lily was never… I’m not crazy.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Bella say, her tears drying. “But it was rather easy… and Lily helped us tremendously.”

My attention snaps to Lily. “She can see you… you have to be real.”

She rolls her eyes. “I already told you I was.”

“Why…” I can’t finish, feeling as though I’m going to pass out. My vision is going in and out of focus, air getting trapped in my lungs. “Why are you doing this to me?”

“Because you let me burn.” She puts herself right between Bella, the gun, and me and has a contemplative look on her face. “Well, I guess that might be more of an excuse than anything. Sure I’m mad.” She gives a sharp laugh, like she’s about to go off the deep end. “But this was also kind of a test, like the tests we used to get when we were younger, Maddie. Do you remember those? Pass and we get spared the beatings and violence, fail and… well, I don’t need to explain it to you, since you always failed.” A grin creeps up on her face. “Although this time maybe not, considering what happened to all those victims.”

“I didn’t kill any of those people.” I brace my hand on the wall to keep from falling down. This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening.

“If that’s what you want to believe then that’s what you can believe, but that’s not what mother will believe,” she says. “She already thinks it’s you… our well the Lily version of you. So do the cops, so when you die, the truth will die with you.”

I’m not sure what’s real and what’s fake. What’s right and wrong. If I did kill all those people or of they set me up.

“They’ll find out that you killed me,” I tell her, hunched over, clawing at my chest, wishing I could claw my heart out so the fear would go away. “They’ll find evidence that you did it.”

She shakes her head, her face masking with an evilness that sends a chill down my spine. “No, they won’t. No one will even believe that I’m real.” Then she leaves the room and when she returns she has a large gasoline bin in her hand. “They’ll barely be able to identify your body.” She starts dumping gasoline all over the place, dousing the sofas, the floor, the walls, even her boots and drops splatter on her red dress “It seems so fitting, doesn’t it? To die the way you killed Evan and me.”

I stand up straight and fight to keep my balance. “But you’re not dead, so this isn’t fair.”

“But I could have been,” she says, setting the gasoline bin down by her feet. “And as dad always taught us, the bad must die. Fail the test and pay the consequences.” She pauses, musing over something. “You know, if you would just stop fighting what’s in you, it might not have come to this—I wouldn’t have to destroy you.” Then she takes a lighter out of her boot, ready to burn the whole place down.

“I don’t even know what you want from me.”

She taps the side of her head. “Think, Maddie. Think. What does Lily always tell you to do.”

I shrug. “I don’t know… hurt people?”

“There you go.” She glances at the front door. “And now here’s your chance.”

I’m struggling to say that I thought I already did, when River knocks on the front door. Bella takes the gun that was sticking out of her pocket and drops it by my feet. Another knock and then the door swings open.

I glance over my shoulder as River enters my house with a wary expression. “I got a message to…” he trails off as he sees Bella with a gun aimed at me, gets a whiff of the gasoline scent, and then his expression instantly hardens. “What are you doing here?” he asks Bella.

“I think you know the answer to that question,” Bella says, wiping some sweat from her brow.

“I told you to stay away from her,” he replies, his jaw taut, hands to his side, his eyes colder than I’ve ever seen them.

“I already told her everything,” Bella tells him, nodding her head at me. “There’s no use pretending anymore that you didn’t help me make her think she was insane.”

I look from Bella, to River who looks like he’s about to vomit, then to Lily, who’s looking at me with a curious expression. Then she bites her lip, considering something, then mouths the gun.

I shouldn’t trust her, but I feel like it’s Lily in my head telling me to do it so I quickly bend down and grab the gun, then skitter to the side with it pointed at River, then shift it to Bella, back and forth. “Someone please explain to me what the fuck is going on?” I direct my question to River.

He puts his hands up to the side, his hands noticeably trembling and his breath faltering from his lips. “Maddie, relax. I’ve told you from the beginning that I’m here to help you. And what she’s saying… it’s not true. I promise I never did anything to make you think you’re insane.”

I laugh sharply. “You know her.” I direct the gun at Bella, who has her gun pointed at me. “And she’s… well, she’s bad, so that makes you bad too, doesn’t it.”

Lily chuckles under her breath. “Now there’s logic for you and wouldn’t that be like admitting you’re bad too, considering the people you know.”

Bella laughs sharply. “I’m bad? You’re the one who’s been killing, Maddie. Sydney. The poor man in the woods. Granted, that one kind of deserved it. He probably would have raped you if you hadn’t killed him.”

“I didn’t kill anyone!” I shout, looking around the room. I want to be more convincing but I know I could be capable of what she’s accusing me of. “I didn’t.” My hands are around the handle of the gun, palms damp with sweat, the metal stone cold.

“Of course you didn’t,” Bella says with a sigh, then her eyes flick to River. “Would you like to explain that one to her, or me?”

River appears puzzled and starts to stammer. “I-I have n-no idea what you’re t-talking about.”

“Of course you don’t.” Bella rolls her eyes. “Okay, play dumb then. I’ll be the one to tell her.” She pauses, scratching her head with her free hand as the scent of gasoline makes its way around the room. “Every time River would slip you the rufi—all those times you woke up and lost track of time—he was setting you up. He was the one that killed Sydney and the men in the woods. He’s the one that’s been tormenting you, helping me drive you insane, all because I asked him to—you want bad, there’s your bad.”

“That’s not true.” River’s words rush out of him as he starts to hurry toward me, but I hold the gun in his direction and it makes him stop in his tracks, his skin draining of color.

“He was helping us break you,” she says. “He knew about your past. About your mental disorder. About everything from the moment he accidentally ran into you outside his AA meeting. He was actually waiting to run into you. Thought he could use it as a good excuse to get to know you more, to study you and see just how far you would go... It was never a coincidence that you ran into him.”

I think about the stuff I read in River’s notes and coldness seeps into my bones. “Is that true?” I ask River, swinging the gun in his direction. “Did you purposefully meet me because you… you knew about my past and my… Lily…” I don’t even know what to call her anymore and Lily smiles at me, like she understands.

He doesn’t answer right away, raking his fingers through his hair. “Maddie, I never meant to hurt you.” His voice is uneven as he keeps eyeing the gun. “At first yes, I got close to you because I wanted to study you… and I knew about your past… But I never killed anyone or helped them poison you… that was all them.” He blows out a breath of frustration. “I’ve decided to do my thesis on something else. I care about you too much to do that to you.”

“Do your thesis on something else?” I gape at him incredulously. “You made me think I was a killer!”

“I promise that wasn’t me!” He shouts. A promise with fear and begging in his eyes. He moves for me in desperation and I shake my head, inching the gun closer to him. The barrel ends up coming into contact with his chest, but he still doesn’t step back, despite how terrified he is.

“Please listen to me,” he begs. “I caught Bella slipping drugs in your drink and threatened her—that’s why she disappeared. Or at least I thought she did. It’s been her, Maddie, this whole time. She’s been trying to make you go crazy, drugging you and killing people then setting you up.”

“Nice try,” Bella says, shaking her head. “But don’t try to put this all on me now that we’re all here together.”

River glares at her. “Stop lying to her.” His voice cracks and I can tell he’s scared. Terrified. And it makes me wonder how he could possibly kill someone. It just doesn’t feel right. Him doing those things—he doesn’t have it in him.

Me on the other hand, I’m not so sure.

“I’m not the one who’s lying.” Bella looks over at Lily and Lily gives her a look of encouragement, which makes me wonder who’s really running the show. “And if Maddie really thought about it, she’d know. And she’d kill you, River. Get her revenge, just like I plan on doing.”

I’m starting to get flustered, my heart soaring in my chest like it did back when I lay in the street, dying. I’m just as confused as I was then, even more. A maze of lies right in front of me and I’m just supposed to what? Figure it out in a second? Lily, come out. I need your help.

Nothing.

Please Lily, I need you.

Only silence. And I look to the real Lily who’s sitting on the armrest of the chair watching the scene unfold in delight. Then she gives me this look and for a faltering second, I swear she looks just like me.

“Maybe I’ll just kill you both,” I sputter out, backing up until my back hits the wall. I’m taking ragged breaths, my mind racing a million miles a minute, and I can barely think straight. “Then I won’t have to figure this out.”

“Maddie, just calm down,” River says unsteadily, hands surrendered in front of him. “Everything’s going to be okay. Just take a step back and really think about this.”

Pitter-patter… pitter-patter… I can see the flames. The smoke. And the man in the center of it all. I point the gun at him, ready to shoot him, ready to make him pay, but I hesitate, too afraid. I’m always too afraid. Lily steps in, takes the gun from my hand.

“Everything’s going to be okay,” she says, then she aims the gun at the man and pulls the trigger.

“Don’t kid yourself Maddie. You’re nothing but a whore!”

You’re a whore!

You’re a whore!

You’re a whore!

The lies. The games. I’m tired of them. My father wants me to hurt people, mess with my head, tells me I’m always wrong when I fight him. Then I’m punished and I’m split in half, not quite whole anymore. Lily though, she never lets him down. Does what she’s supposed to and it hollows her out.

I flinch from my memory, my finger starting to push down on the trigger, ready to shoot, when a man appears beside Lily, the same one I saw behind Sydney, who broke into my house, who’s been standing in the street. If I thought things couldn’t get worse, I was wrong. It’s as if the veil has been lifted off my mind and suddenly I recognize him. He’s the man in the photo I burnt, the man in the cabin.

My eyes widen as I turn and point the gun at him. “Dad?”