Page 21 of All the Things We Buried

TWENTY

LENORE

T hey took me to an old, empty house.

The air reeked of rot, moldy rot, like the bowels of Gloomsbury Manor. But here, there were no spirits to haunt me. No ghosts to guide, torment, or set me free.

I was alone.

The room had no windows. Just an old, stained mattress on the floor and faded wallpaper peeling from the corners. It was painted with a crumbling bridge and a forgotten town, stretched across every wall like a memory too stubborn to die.

I ran to the door, threw myself against it, fists pounding, voice breaking. No one answered.

I screamed until my throat went raw, so hoarse it felt like I had swallowed ash. My nails scraped at the wooden frame, desperate to claw my way out. All I left behind were trails of blood.

“Dorian,” I whispered.

My body slid down the door as my legs gave out. I folded into myself on the floor and shut my eyes. I begged. I prayed. Anything, to whomever was listening, that he was alive. That he made it.

Not knowing was a slow, sick death. I had no tears left to cry.

I heard footsteps approaching from the front of the room.

I scrambled backward, dragging myself to the mattress. I curled up, shut my eyes tight, and waited.

The door creaked open. I felt the presence before I saw it.

A man stepped inside. He wore a black ski mask. I peeked through the narrowest slit of my lashes, heart pounding so hard it drowned out every other sound. He moved slowly and took my hand in his.

I didn’t fight. I couldn’t. I was paralyzed with a fear that swallowed everything.

He pulled out a needle and pushed it into my vein.

Dark poured in behind my eyes. My vision blurred. The room tilted, then disappeared.

But I could still hear the footsteps. I could still feel them dragging my body across the floor.

I wasn’t fully gone, but I wasn’t awake either. I had no control. No way to fight back.

So my mind slipped away. It searched for anything to hold on to, and found a memory.

That night in the graveyard.

Sophie was there, sitting on a flat stone with her legs crossed.

She was laughing, talking to someone on the phone. Scissors dangled from her fingers. She held pliers in the other hand.

“Yeah, so he won’t shut up about how her hair smells. I bet he’ll stop if she’s bald,” Sophie chuckled. Then she added, her voice lowering, “I slipped something in her drink. She should pass out soon.”

She was talking about me.

I knew it. I knew . That’s not what friends do.

Something in me snapped. I knelt down, grabbed a jagged rock from the ground, and swung it at her head.

She dropped from the stone she was sitting on with a soft grunt. Just collapsed like a broken doll.

I stepped over her, looked down at her body. Whoever she had been talking to was still on the line.

I raised the phone to my mouth and said, mimicking her tone, “Yeah, let me call you back.” My voice was high-pitched and mean, just like hers. Just like a loud bitch who deserved to die.

The scissors were already in her hand. I took them and began cutting her hair. Chunk by chunk. She didn’t deserve it. Not that pretty, glossy hair. Not when I heard what she said.

The pliers were beside her, cold in my hand when I took them from the ground.

I pried open her mouth.

“You just have to talk about your pretty teeth, don’t you?“ I whispered, giggling. “Let’s change that.”

Something inside me shifted, like a switch flipped, and everything turned dark. Thought disappeared. The feeling disappeared.

I clamped the pliers onto her front tooth and pulled.

Her head thudded against the dirt every time I yanked. She screamed herself awake, eyes wild with shock and pain.

“Shhh,” I told her.

But she wouldn’t stop.

So I made her stop.

I stabbed her. Over and over. The pliers slammed into her stomach, her chest. She writhed, choked, bled.

“Cut, cut, cut,” I shouted. “Chop, chop, chop.”

When she finally stopped moving, I went back to the teeth. One by one, I pulled them out, humming to myself. The same lullaby my mother used to sing to me at night.

“Hush now, darling, close your eyes, The stars are whispering lullabies. Moonlight paints your dreams in gold, Safe and warm, though nights are cold…”

When the last tooth came free, I set her body back up on the stone like a puppet. I kept singing.

“Tiptoe shadows, don’t be scared, Mommy’s gone but someone’s there. Hearts can break but still beat on, So sleep, my love, till the pain is gone.”

I wiped the blood from her face with my hands, just like my mother did to me.

“Roses bloom where no one sees, Ghosts still hum beneath the trees. So hush now, darling, time to rest, With broken dreams against your chest.”

I scooped all her teeth into my hand, curled my fingers around them.

Then I picked up the phone from the ground and dialed Gloomsbury Manor.

“Daddy,” I cried, voice trembling, “I’m so, so scared.”

“Lenore?” my father said. “Where are you?”

“Somewhere near the graveyards,” I sniffled. “I’m scared. It happened again. The voices… they told me again. To cut. To chop.”

He was silent for a moment before clearing his throat. “Lenore. You will be okay. You have to pray. Do you hear me?”

“Y-yes,” I whispered.

“I’m coming to get you.”

I crushed the phone beneath my heel, ending the call. My father’s voice disappeared into the silence.

I looked at Sophie. I pressed two fingers to her mouth and forced it open.

“Smile.”

“That’s what you always told me. Smile,” I whispered. “I faked it.”

I let out a slow breath, trying to keep my voice steady. “I was hurt, Sophie.” A tear slid down my cheek. “When our best friend died, you were out having fun. I stayed behind, crying until I couldn’t anymore. And then you told my dad it was me.”

I sniffed hard. My throat tightened. “Do you remember when we were six? Playing with the dollhouse in that locked room? The one Dad never let anyone into? The three of us promised we would always be there for each other, even after death. When the nightmares came, we swore we would never be alone.”

I choked on the memory. “But we aren’t kids anymore.”

I shook my head slowly. “Still, I’m taking you somewhere now. Somewhere, you can be a child again. A place where time never moves forward. You’ll be stuck, just like I am.”

I stepped farther away from her body and stared into the woods. “Everyone dies. That’s the truth of life. Some sooner than others. But when you die with unfinished pain, you become something else. You become the thing that haunts.”

I turned back to her lifeless eyes. “Now you really can blame me. Because now… it finally happened to both of us.”

I kept walking, my feet dragging through the dirt and leaves until I saw my father waiting along the path. He didn’t speak. He just wrapped a blanket around my shoulders, gently. Then we walked home together, side by side, as if nothing had happened.

The teeth were still in my hand. I had not let go. The roots dug into my skin, sharp and unforgiving.

When you grow up alone, surrounded by ghosts, you become one. When your home is broken, you break in return. And when you have no one, you learn to trust no one.

But I had someone. Dorian. He wasn’t a ghost, even though he was broken, the same way I was. He was the only person I could trust.

And she tried to take that away from me.

I couldn’t let that happen.

Father punished me for what happened. He always does.

And this time, Dorian wasn’t there to heal me. No one can heal your wounds. Only you can.

I turned the water on and let the bath begin to fill. Steam gathered quickly, curling around me, wrapping the room in fog. I stared at my reflection in the mirror.

I was still there.

I could still see myself. And somehow, that was worse than disappearing.

Nothing changes. Not on the outside.

But inside, something had died.

Tears began to fall. My eyes blurred, and then I saw the razor. Without thinking, I reached for it. The blade kissed my skin as I carved the word:

“Smile.”

Tears kept falling. Another word followed.

“Fake.”

When the pain started to drown out my thoughts, I continued.

“Faith.”

But before I cut deeper, I turned toward the bath. The water was warm now, rising, waiting. I stepped in and lay down. My body sank slowly into the heat. I blinked, and in that single blink, I saw her.

Someone was above me.

The wet lady.

She haunted me.

Her hair hung in drenched strands, dripping cold water onto my face. I was too numb, too terrified to open my eyes again. So I tried to dive beneath the surface, to escape.

But her hands reached for my neck.

Her grip was ice, and all I could see was a heart-shaped medallion hanging from her throat.

I gasped, but blood water flooded my lungs. I couldn’t breathe. Every sound became distant. Every movement slowed.

Maybe this was my punishment.

Maybe this was how I was meant to die.

Maybe it was because I envied Sophie. Because she was better than me. Or maybe it was because I longed for Dorian’s touch in ways I shouldn’t. Maybe it was because loving him was killing me slowly. So slowly, I had to finish the job from the inside.

But nothing was dying.

I kept gasping. I kept trying to breathe.

And then, everything went quiet.

I just floated.