The Watchers by Ruth Ann Nordin Read Free Book Online Page B

repressed memories. Not yet. It’d be a little longer. He
gripped the sides of the cool porcelain toilet. Within a half hour,
it would be over. The wait wouldn’t be long. Another minute or two
and it’d start.
    His teeth began to chatter
even as he willed off the increasing cold. A slight amount of bile
rose up in his throat. He took a deep breath. 1, 2, 3, 4.... Behind him, the doctor
wrapped a warm blanket over his shoulders, and his nausea receded.
He exhaled. The reprieve was temporary, but he was glad for
it.
    He waited there in the silent room for
a minute when the first clear image opened in his mind. The tall
blond woman stood over him. She smiled, but it wasn’t friendly. It
was the smile a predator gave its prey before it struck.
    “ It’s always nice to see
you, Devon,” she whispered into his ear. Her hand traveled up his
leg until it reached his inner thigh.
    He struggled to get away, but he was
frozen to the table. Not again. He didn’t want to go through this
again!
    The scene faded, and Devon’s eyes flew
open. He was staring into the empty toilet bowl and shaking all
over, despite the blanket or the fact that the doctor turned the
heating lamp on. So cold. Nothing could conquer the icy sensation
pumping through his veins.
    A sharp pain under his fingernails
made him grit his teeth. He closed his eyes again, and this time,
he was strapped to a chair. Two men sat on either side of him. They
took turns digging razors under his nails. He screamed and tried to
wiggle his way out of the chair but couldn’t.
    Once again, his focus returned to the
toilet in front of him as the feeling of nausea increased. That
meant the flashes of memory would be coming faster. He clung to the
rim of the toilet, his body on the edge of convulsing. The doctor
came near with a syringe, but he shook his head and let the
repressed memories surface.
    He hung by his wrists in a room that
made him shiver. His stomach growled and his dry tongue stuck to
the roof of his mouth. How long he’d been there was anybody’s
guess, but his arms were numb and he’d long since lost the battle
to hold off on urinating. He groaned. He wanted to pass out but
couldn’t, not with the IV they’d hooked him up to in order to keep
him conscious.
    Rodents scampered across the floor and
tickled his bare feet. He struggled to touch the floor, to steady
himself so he wouldn’t swing whenever they ran into him. But his
toes merely brushed the surface of the rough wood. A snake hissed
and slithered around his ankle. They had snakes here? This time
when he shivered, it was from fear. He hated those things more than
any of the rodents in the room.
    Then another memory flashed in his
mind, and he was strapped to a board and shoved under water. By
instinct he held his breath. Exhaustion fought with his need to
struggle. He was weak. So weak he could hardly move, and his wrists
and fingernails were sore. He was still hungry but had long since
given up on the idea of food. How he wanted to go to sleep, to ease
the duress his body had been under for the past couple days. His
lungs began to burn, and just when he was about to inhale the
water, they brought him out. He gasped the warm air. Before he had
time to see who was handling him, they thrust him back into the
water and the process repeated itself.
    Bile rose up in his throat and his
eyes flew open. He was back in his house, staring at the clear
water of the toilet. Even as he trembled, he held onto the rim, his
fingers still tender and his wrists rubbed raw from the rope. It
all had come back to him, and he remembered that moment his
personality split in half—when he reached the point where he
couldn’t take it anymore.
    Luke. The blond woman named
him Luke. That was his new identity. And the code phrase was level 6 reinforcement .
    What did that mean? What was he
supposed to do when he heard that?
    He gritted his teeth and cried out as
the acute pain traveled the length of his back where they