Tick tock . . . tick tock . . . tick tock.
I would count until my Rabbit came home.
Chapter 4
Heathan
Eleven years later . . .
I switched the stick shift down a gear as I arrived at a familiar set of gates. Only these gates were rusted and worn, hanging limply from their fragile hinges. Weeds wrapped like talons around the bars. They looked nothing like the imposing gates I remembered from my years spent living here. They were ruined and destroyed . . .
Just like anyone who had ever entered this fucking place had become.
Then again, maybe I was already different and altered when I first came here. But she wasn’t.
I got out of the car and approached the gates. The hot sun beamed down on me from above. I fixed my cravat, straightened my black shirt and vest, then smashed my foot against the gate’s pitiful lock. The gate groaned under my force but then swung open, baring the vast hell that lay beyond. I stood, breathing slowly, deeply, trying to calm the voices spinning around my head. The ones that told me to leave no soul here alive, to take down every one of the fuckers and make them pay in blood and screams and torture . . . The voices that had kept me company all these years, never letting me forget the penance that must be paid.
“In time,” I said out loud. Out of instinct, my hand ran over the pocket in my vest, searching for the pocket watch that had stayed by my side for so many years. Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock . . .
I’m in here, it seemed to call from the mansion that lay beyond the long driveway and wayward trees. The siren’s call to the only two things that meant anything to my rotten core. My hand curled around the cane cradled in my palm. I glanced down, slipping my fingers down the black metal stick.
Rabbit, I heard Dolly’s voice whisper, a distant echo from the past, as I stared down at the decorative head of the cane. A white rabbit’s head, ears drawn back and teeth bared.
Rabbit.
Her rabbit.
Flicking my cane in a circle, I turned and got back into my car. I pulled forward, dust creating a smoky cloud behind me as my tires screeched on the now-dirt road. It was once paved and flat, but now it was bumped and degraded. I roared down the road, through the winding twists and turns. My hands tightened on the wheel when I approached the final bend.
The sprawling sight of the Earnshaw mansion lay just beyond. The house that birthed in me the beat that gave life, and the puncture that destroyed whatever semblance of a heart I once had.
My breath stalled as the edge of the brown-bricked building came into view. Moss and weeds crawled like a swarm of locusts up the once beautiful house, just like those spindling vines at the gates. The decay on the exterior reflected what had existed in the interior for too many years to count.
I knew those who had polluted this place with their poison were no longer here, but she was.
Finally, I was here to get her back.
As I pulled the car to a stop directly at the entrance, I looked at the stairs that led to the main doors. In my mind’s eye, the weeds covering the large oak doors I’d been dragged through as a child rolled back, baring the expensive shining wood beneath. The brass from the knob, shed of its orange and brown rust, gleamed in the sun once again. The overgrown grass on the lawn shrank to reveal acres of manicured land, and the dead and depressed floral border that framed the house sprouted into color, rich reds and yellows chasing away the thorns of dark and night. In my mind, the Earnshaw estate was once again pristine.
Then I too was back there. The night I was taken away. Taken from my darling . . . my Dolly . . . my breath, my sails . . . my soul . . .
The door swung open. Mr. Earnshaw marched out, followed by the “uncles” dragging me behind. My teeth clenched so hard I thought they would shatter as they yanked me down the stairs and into a waiting van.
Only seconds after I was thrown inside, the van pulled away. I sat in darkness, slamming my bloodied fists against the walls, trying to find my way out. “Dolly!” I screamed. “DOLLY!” I screamed over and over again. I screamed until my voice failed. My legs gave out, and I ignored the pain that shot through my body at the memory of what they’d done to me. One after the other for months and months. No reprieve. No breaks. Just them behind me, grunting and panting, ripping into me, pressing their chests against my back.