Pictures.
They littered the walls. They littered everything in the room: the ceiling, the floor that Roland walked on. They were everywhere. On every tabletop, on every chair. On the bed in the corner.
But maybe 'pictures' wasn't the best term for what Roland saw when he entered the upstairs rooms, straight ahead from the staircase. The 's' made it sound like there were multiple things being depicted, but instead, there was just one photo, reprinted a thousand times and scattered to its heart's content on the floor.
Roland's birth certificate.
He had seen his birth certificate before. He had needed it for a school project one time, and his parents had handed it over with no issues. It was like any other run-of-the-mill birth certificate: his name, Roland Antonio Green, and his parents names: Cynthia Ryle Green (now just Cynthia Ryle, after the divorce) and Steven Roland Green. Simple. Not incredibly exciting.
And definitely not something that lived up to the letter's promise of Roland discovering why his parents had always seemed to favor his older sister over him.
"Read one of them."
The voice made Roland jump so high he was pretty sure he should have been on the Barnum Prep basketball team. It was the same voice that had been on the car's GPS: a robotic female voice that he was pretty sure belonged to no real human being whatsoever. It was like Siri on his phone, but...darker.
"Read one of them."
The voice repeated itself and Roland took one step forward, stepping on who knew how many copies of his own birth certificate as he went. He walked forward slowly, each step carefully calculated, until he reached the far wall and plucked one copy off of it. There was putty attached to the back, putty that had held the copy to the wall until Roland had picked it off.
He knew there were cameras watching him. There was no other way for the bodiless voice to know that he hadn't yet read one of the copies. So he planned his next move carefully: he took the putty off of the back of the certificate using his coat sleeve and swiftly put it in his pocket as he flipped the certificate over to read the front, hoping that the cameras hadn't caught his maneuver.
Someone had to have put that putty on the back of the certificate. Someone had taken painstaking effort to put all of these certificates on the walls. Someone had probably done something similar in all of the rooms that the other four were in.
Roland hoped that that person had become lazy by the time they reached Roland's room of birth certificates. Perhaps they hadn't been wearing gloves.
Perhaps Roland could get a fingerprint when he left this awful place.
"Read it out loud." The voice ordered.
Roland cleared his throat and obliged, reading the certificate in all of its glory, from top to bottom.
"State of Maryland department of health and mental hygiene division of vital records. Certificate of live birth."
"Keep going."
The voice never got any less creepy.
"State file number: 99-59199. Name: Roland Antonio...Titran."
Titran? He couldn't have read that correctly. This wasn't his birth certificate, that wasn't his name.
"Keep reading. Do. Not. Stop."
Roland swallowed the bile rising in his throat and forced himself to keep speaking.
"Sex: male. Date of birth: August 25, 1999. Weight: seven pounds ten ounces. Place of birth: Baltimore. Time: 2:09 AM. Maiden name of mother: Julia Renee Titran, age 24. Mother's place of birth: Virginia. Name of father: Steven Antonio Green, age 29. Father's place of birth: Maryland. Date record filed: September 1, 1999. Date issued: November 26, 1999."
Roland looked up from the certificate and shook his head, tears starting to blur his vision.
"Julia Renee Titran? I only know one person with the name Titran, and it's their middle name."
"Their maiden name." The voice answered, its monotone off-putting as Roland tried not to vomit or sob. "Julia Renee Titran was married to someone else when she gave birth to you."
"No..." Roland trailed off, shaking his head, "If this is true, if this is true, then I'm—"
"It's true." The voice interrupted him, "It's true, and your mother gave you up. Your real mother let your father take you. Your real mother told her real husband that she lost the baby during childbirth. Your real mother has been just a few streets over, watching you grow up, for your entire life. Your real mother didn't want you. Your fake mother didn't want you. You weren't hers. Erin was hers. You were never hers."
"She raised me—"
"She raised you because she had to." The voice reminded him, "She raised you because your father brought you home and ordered her to. That divorce was coming from a mile away, and it started to go into effect the day you were born."
Roland shook his head.
"You made this up. You made this up to scare me—"
"Your real mother got busy right away. She gave birth again, nine months later. Ever notice that one of your friends is almost exactly nine months younger than you? Which one of your friends was born in May of 2000? May 29, 2000?"
Roland shook his head again, his mind whirling around in his skull as he tried to make it not be true.
"No—"
"Who's maiden name is Titran, Roland?"
"Mrs. Conrad." Roland whispered, "Julia Titran Conrad."
After which he promptly vomited over twenty copies of his own terribly true birth certificate.