Page 110 of Where the Snakes Sleep

I told him I loved him, and that I would give anything to rewrite our story. He asked me to stay, to run away with him. He promised things would be different.

And God forgive me, I wanted to.

Then I thought of the lives Henri ruined.

I said no.

* * *

2 December 2003

I leave tomorrow evening, so I must abandon you now, faithful journal, my silent confidante. I must say, I have rehearsed this departure in my mind for weeks, but now that it is here, I feel no courage.

Only grief.

I love a man who killed four people.

Henri Voclain is a murderer, a criminal, and a monster. And yet, it is the most excruciating pain that I feel leaving him. It is as if my chest is being torn in two from the inside, and I will never feel whole again.

I cannot help but wonder how I will survive this. Not only the loss of my other half, but also the ever-present knowledge that I am complicit in his crimes.

I killed Josef Klein.

I killed Théodore Desmarais.

I killed Nadia Moreau.

I killed Jean-Paul Fournier.

Hell will greet me when I die.

18

Ryan

I reach the end of the journal and pause, fingertips still brushing the faint ridges of ink.

Then I force myself to read it again.

Not the whole entry—just the last few lines, because some masochistic nerve in my brain still believes that repetition will dull their impact, but it doesn’t.

I killed Josef Klein.

I killed Théodore Desmarais.

I killed Nadia Moreau.

I killed Jean-Paul Fournier.

Hell will greet me when I die.

My thumb rests against the bottom corner of the paper. I feel its slight warp beneath my nail. I don’t turn it. There isn’t another page. No final note from Virginia explaining that somehow everything worked out. No later paragraph in blue or black ink announcing that Henri served time, that everyone received therapy, and the nightmare was a tragic misunderstanding. Just those five white-hot lines. Then nothing.

I sit perfectly still, the hidden chamber around me cloaked in a silence so absolute I can hear my own breath rasp against my ribs—each inhale catching halfway up my chest as if my lungs are wrestling with the notion that there is room here for both oxygen and the guilt I’m desperately trying to hold.

I should move. I know this. My legs are stiff from hours of crouching on the rough stone floor; the back of one knee prickles with damp dust that clings to sweat. A black smear, dried and granular, cakes the skin on my wrist—leftover from whichever stagnant water pooled beneath the loose slabs overhead. None of it matters.

I stare at the looping swirls of my grandfather’s handwriting. Hell will greet me when I die.