PROLOGUE
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WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED TO ASHLEY GOODE?
╭┈──── ◌ೄ◌ྀ ˊˎ IT HAD BEEN EIGHTEEN YEARS. Eighteen fucking years. Ashley Goode was now 34 as she stood in her bland room, staring out the window that she had wondered for years where it looked out upon. The shutters on the outside were closed, a small gap of light shining through when the sun was out, but mostly Ashley used it as a reminder. When she looked into the glass, her reflection looked back, and each day she would see it. She had grown out of her childlike looks, dark shadows under her eyes, higher cheekbones, her skin shallow and pale. Her hair had turned lighter somehow, bright blonde locks that passed just below her chest, but she would mostly tie it up so she could see.
The reason why Ashley really looked in that reflection every day, though, wasn’t to see how much she had grown in those eighteen years. No. She looked to see that scar on her neck, the faded red mark that slit from one side of her throat to the other. It reminded her why she was where she was, what had happened on that horrifying night at camp, and it gave her a reason to keep fighting. Though, it brought tears to her eyes every time. Because it reminded her that she was still dead to the world, and most likely, she always would be.
Around her room, she could see the aging of her bed, her pillow, the boxes that still sat deserted in the corner, the walls. The walls were the most significant part. After she had gotten the shackle on her ankle off – Nick haven taken it off due to ‘good behavior’ – she had used the metal chain to scratch the days she had been trapped into the wood. To say that the wall was basically half as thin as it had been before she had put up there was fair.
Nick hadn’t been too happy when he had climbed up at the end of the week to find her scratching into the wall with a metal chain, but he couldn't do much worse to her anymore. Ashley was desensitized to all forms of pain at this point, the only one lasting was her memories, maybe the worst one. She would wake up from nightmares up to fifteen times a week, sweat covering her skin, pain ripping through her head. It would be the same nightmare, Ruby Lane cutting open her throat over and over again, Ziggy and Cindy standing, watching, while the other murderers stabbed them, but they didn’t react. They only watched her die.
A couple weeks ago, Ashley had been sitting up on her bed, doing the only thing she could do anymore, think, and the hatch opened hurriedly. Nick pushed his way inside, slamming it down after him and he looked up at his sister with wide eyes. Ashley only stared back, no emotion on her face, because honestly, she didn’t care.
“It happened again.”
Those were the words that Nick had uttered, and it caused Ashley to jump up from her bed, anger boiling her blood. She didn’t know why Nick had told her that, or why he let her punch him across the face that day, but she decided it was because he did feel slightly guilty about what he was doing. At least he was guilty that he was keeping his sister locked away, most definitely for the rest of her life. Although that was just an idea, it could be completely untrue for all Ashley knew.
It took Ashley a year after being locked away to actually adapt to her new surroundings. She didn’t want to at first, I mean, of course she didn’t. She had been kidnapped by her own fucking brother. It was the most infuriating thing, but what made it worse was no one else knew. Nick had explained that to her clearly a week after locking her away. He explained that she was stuck somewhere no one would look, not that they would try anyway, no one was aware she was still alive. If they went looking for her body, they would check at the camp, or at least where it used to be. Five years after the massacre, Will had run for mayor of Sunnyvale, not that anyone could believe it, and he won. He made the declaration of turning Camp Nightwing, the disused camp that was left abandoned after 1978, into a mall. The Shadyside mall.
When Ashley heard, she decided it was the best decision Will had ever made in his life. She wanted rid of that fucking area, not caring that it used to be the one place she wished to go every summer, because as of now, she would love to be free anywhere. Freedom, as of right now, was anywhere but this awful, bland room she was locked in. However, she wasn’t getting out, Nick reminding her every time he closed the hatch and locked it.
But, yes, it was eighteen years later, and Ashley was eighteen years wiser. Over the years, she had spent multiple hours of her day hatching new plans to escape, but she came to the conclusion of either trying to find a way to get out that window, or find a way out of the hatch. It came just as a small, brightest bit of luck that Ashley had ever gotten, when Nick made a horrible mistake that would impact everyone’s lives.
But, really, Ashley was going to get out whether it killed her or not. I mean, she had died once, right? What would anyone care if she actually died this time?