Page 43 of Wicked Nightmare

Cam's hand landed heavy on my shoulder as he leaned forward. "Keep going, Lakes. We need to know everything. I... I can look if you don't want to."

I shook my head. I needed to know. Everything they'd done to us would be done seven-fold. Just like they'd promised me if I didn't let them...

No. I can't think of that right now. I'll fall apart.

My mind raced, piecing together the horror show in front of me. What the hell had they done to her? And why? The questions burned, but the answers would be worse.

"I should've been here," I whispered, more to myself than Cam. "I could've stopped this. I could've saved her. They… they told me she left. They just took her here."

"You couldn't have, baby. You were very much a victim yourself," he said. "But we can make these fuckers pay. I feel like I fucked up, setting this whole thing in motion. Maybe we'd have been better off carrying on the way we were. It's not too late for me to call Dani."

"I killed Dani, dip shit."

He chuckled. "Whatever, there's always one to replace the old. Anyway, it's not too late for us to just walk away, light a match and forget about all of it."

"Nah. Call it my demonic rage, but I need to know what they did. Besides, I'm having some hella hot visions of you fucking me while I stand inside Father Christopher's corpse."

It's true. It would be super hot.

"Damn baby, that's nasty. Okay, what's next?"

I looked up at him, seeing the cold anger overtake the brief flicker of lust in his eyes. It matched the inferno raging in my chest, threatening to consume everything. I managed a lop-sided smile.

"Got any ideas for the Father? I'm thinking we start with his fingers."

Cam's lips curled into a cruel smirk. "Sounds like a good warm-up to me, darl'."

I turned back to the photos, straightening my spine and pushing my shoulders back. Lydia deserved justice, and I'd paint these halls red to get it for her. There were so many photos here.

Why? Why did they document it like this? Did they get off on it? Was it some kind of record-keeping? Some clinical need to catalogue their work the way a surgeon keeps notes?

I suppose I'm not much different. Getting off on killing. At least I recognize that I'm sick and twisted. They did everything they did under the guise of 'love and salvation.'

There's no mistaking what I am. What I was turned into. I've never pretended to be anything I'm not. I've always been exactly who I am, even if that version of me differs from the one from a moment ago. Suppose that's what made me self-aware though. Most people walk through life under the misconception that they will be loved if they act a certain way. Dressed a certain way. Talked a certain way. It's all a lie. Everyone will hurt you in the end, it doesn't matter how pretty you wrap your meat sack, you will never be the person you pretended you were, especially when they peel the mask back to reflect the ugly that lived inside you. Lying about it just buys you time.

At least I was honest about the ugly. At least I wore it on the outside where people could see it coming.

I shook my head, clearing my thoughts as I flipped to the next photo and felt my world tilt. Lydia was splayed out on a surgical table, her belly swollen with pregnancy. Her eyes were wide open, vacant, like she was already gone. Tubes snaked out of her arms, and a mask covered her face. But it was the scalpel poised above her stomach that made my skin crawl.

She'd been pregnant. Lydia had been pregnant and she hadn't told me. Or maybe she had, during one of those whispered conversations in the dark, and I'd forgotten. Or maybe she'd tried and I hadn't understood because I was a teen and traumatized teens don't know what pregnancy looks like on another teenager in a group home run by people who were supposed to be celibate.

Father Christopher. The father. In every sense of the word.

Turning it over and placing it face down, the next picture showed her skin peeled back, a gaping hole where the upside-down T was cut. Her fucking spine was showing, her organs taken out and laid beside her on the table.

"Fuck," I hissed, my hands shaking so bad I nearly dropped the photo. "She was pregnant, Cam. They... they tried to cut the baby out of her."

Cam leaned in. "Sick bastards.”

I fumbled with the attached note, my eyes scanning the clinical words: "Unsuccessful removal of fetus, both deceased." My stomach lurched, and I tasted copper in my mouth.

"They killed her," I whispered, my voice breaking. "They killed her and her baby."

The words on the page were typed. Clinical. No emotion, no acknowledgment that this was a person, a girl who counted in the dark and shared her bread and dreamed about becoming a mother someday. Just "unsuccessful removal." Like she was a failed experiment. Like the baby was a tumor they were cutting out instead of a life they were ending.

Memories flooded back. Her dreams of becoming a mother someday. Many whispered nights of what we would do once we escaped. She'd come from a broken home, said her dad beat her and her mom fled, leaving her at his mercy. But she never let it dim her smile. She never let it change her the way I let it change me. She was sweet. Kind. Look at what fucking good that did her. All of it stolen, ripped away by these monsters. Something snapped inside me, a dam breaking loose.

"I'm gonna gut every last one of them," I snarled, my vision going red. "Starting with that fucking nun."