The house was old, with its wildly overgrown garden, always silent. It was the graveyard for all of their secrets.

Twenty-one months earlier...

She woke up in a bright, white, sterile room. “Where am I?” she wondered. She took in her surroundings as she slowly lifted her head from the cold metal table. She stared at the one-sided glass mirror. Her thick and curly strawberry blonde hair was now matted and disheveled. Her eyes were stricken with pain and suffering as if a terrible storm crashed a ship into her soul. It was changing her innocent sky blue eyes into a muddled ashen gray. She brushed her bony fingertips across her pale, freckled face, stopping at the 4-inch gash below her jaw. “Who are you?” she mentally questioned the reflection of the stranger looking back at her. She could feel gooseflesh on her skin. She pulled her too thin paper gown around her gaunt knees and started to pick at her fingernails caked with dry mud. “Why is it red?” she wondered.

The creaking of the door gave away the entrance of a tall and mysterious man. His hair was jet black and his eyes were cerulean. He slyly edged himself into the room holding a brown cardboard box. After setting the box at the end of the table, he pulled out a chair across from her, one she hadn't seen before, and sat down.

“Can you tell me what your name is?” he asked flatly, giving no explanation of who he was, and sounding almost robotic.

It took the girl a few moments to think about the answer to the man's question. Finally, she replied, “Charlotte Humble.”

He quickly stood up and walked over to the cardboard box. “Alright, Charlotte,” he pulled out a plastic bag and dropped it. The bag hit the table with a dull thud. It was filled with her clothing, soaked through with swampy rain water and blood. “Can you tell me what you remember?”

Charlotte frantically withheld the urge to cry. “No,” she said.

“No?” the man questioned.

“No, no! No! Please don't let him know I am here! Get those away from me! Leave me alone!” she screamed while backing herself up to wall.

“Charlotte, please calm down. He's not here anymore.”

“Please, I am begging you, just leave me alone.”

The man quietly stood up, while obeying her pleas, and pushed in his chair. He slid a manila folder across the table and before turning around he reassured the girl, “I'll be waiting, whenever you are ready.” She watched helplessly as the man disappeared behind the door. Reluctantly, she gripped the folder with both of her small hands. She knew what was inside, now she just had to decide what she should do. Keep it a secret or expose the painful truth?

Twenty-one years, the present...

She fiddles with her key trying to find the keyhole in the night. Finally, she makes contact and turns the knob until it clicks open. She walks into the small room of the cellar, and spider webs catch at her face, a sign that nobody had been there yet. She reaches up, searching for the short string to turn on the light bulb. Within seconds a dim light bounces off the dark, earthy walls. The room only contains one thing: an old, fragile, and damp cardboard box. She walks over to it, picks it up, and carries it out of the cellar. She walks up the steps of the house and enters her small living-room. She then kneels on the carpet, hovering over the beat up box that began molding itself to the floor. She knew it was time. Flap by flap, she reopened the fears that she had worked so hard to suppress. It was not until that moment that she realized how far down in her memories she'd buried what had happened all those years in the woods.

Hours later a man walked into the room to see her lying in the fetal position in a corner of the room. She was cradling the blood stained clothes he had first found her in. The kind man wrapped his arms around her and spoke comforting words into her ear. He sat her on his lap, but she immediately buried her head back into the hollow crook between his neck and shoulder. “I'm sorry,” she choked out between hiccups and stifled sobs.

“No need for apologies, for I will protect you. No matter what. That man will never hurt you again.” He ran his hands up and down her back, soothing her, until she fell asleep.