Free The Secrets You Hide: A Mind-Blowing Thriller (The Psychosis Series) by Alex Crimson Page A

Prepare for your next performance.”
    I rushed to the living room and found another light blue envelope identical to the one I had found the previous day. I extracted a set of pages from it as I walked back. The top page of the set once again consisted the same three words– Follow the script. However, this new set of pages was much lighter, consisting only five pages in all. Those five pages hurt me more than anything else that Jack had written in his script.
     
    9: Robert’s Journal – Of Day 9
     
    I had just finished reading through the new set of pages when Jack called me again. I picked up the phone and was the first to speak.
    “Don’t do this Jack. Please don’t do this.”
    “Doctor, you have to stop pretending. Annie deserves to know the truth about who you are. She deserves to know the secret which you have been hiding from her for years.”
    I fell silent, uncertain if arguing this out with him was going to serve any purpose at all. I also understood why he had used my father’s name when he had called me at the clinic in the morning. He had dropped me a hint about what was coming.
    “How did you find out about this, Jack?”
    “Do you really want to know?” he asked before continuing, “It was all very simple, doctor. It only took a little motivation to dig out your past. Most of it is well documented across many old newspapers. Even I was surprised, doctor, to find the secrets that you so love to conceal from your family and from the world. I think that Annie trusted you to tell her everything about yourself. But you did her an injustice by hiding something so critical…something that defines you. Now is your opportunity to end the betrayal, doctor. It’s a fairly low price to pay to keep her alive, don’t you think?”
    I heard some disturbance on the phone, like the sound of a struggle and then I heard Annie’s voice.
    “Robert? Are you there?” she sounded tired, probably starved.
    “Annie, are you okay? Has he hurt you? Is Sarah safe?”
    “We are okay, Rob. He has kept us locked in some room. What is he making you do? Please don’t do something that you might regret.”
    “Don’t wor…” I said before Jack pulled the phone away from Annie. I heard her struggling in the distance, probably trying to break free of her constraints…
    “So, doctor. I have gagged your wife again so she cannot interrupt your performance. But we are all eagerly looking forward to what you will do now. Go on, doctor. Tell her. Follow the script.”
    I closed my eyes, gathering my composure, bringing myself to do what I was being forced to do. Jack said nothing, fully aware that I had only one option.
    I looked down at the pages which I had taken out of the envelope.
    “I have been lying to you, Annie,” I said, choking.
    “I have been lying to you about my family. I have been lying to everybody…about them, trying to bury their secret away. But I have known for a very long time that secrets cannot stay hidden forever…they are eventually revealed. I have always known that this would come back to haunt me someday…to destroy me. Today, I have to reveal the truth of my family’s death. I have to accept their fate, and mine.”
    I halted, expecting to hear Annie’s voice. But there was no sound. I continued.
    “I have always maintained, I have always told the world that my family died in an accident. My parents and my elder brother, who was eleven years old then. But there was no accident, Annie, they were murdered…”
    I paused for breath before reading further. “My father had taken a lot of debt from the banks for his business. He was facing foreclosure. They were threatening to take away everything that belonged to us…the house…the farm…and everything that was left of the business. He tried everything he could to avoid it…to stop it all from happening. But he failed…he failed to cobble together a plan to prevent the foreclosure.
    “So…” I paused. I could feel my face contorted