“Goodnight, Rue,” she said as she left the young boy’s room. When just the faintest sliver of white light remained between the door and its frame, she opened the door quickly and popped her head back in. “Remember that I love you no matter what,” she said with a smile plastered on her face.
“Don’t be so cheesy, mom,” the young boy said despite feeling a warm sense of comfort. Ever since he could remember, his mom left his room with a “goodnight.” It was only recently that she decided to remind him of her unwavering love.
The young boy heard his mom take the ten soft steps that separated his younger sister, Tara’s, room from his. Their mother would end her nightly rounds by reading a story to Tara. Her muffled voice drifted through the wall. It seemed to be a story about a young princess outsmarting a wicked warlock. Every few minutes, Tara’s high-pitched voice interrupted the mom’s tale.
While listening to their back-and-forth in the background, the boy’s eyelids began to droop with exhaustion. It was getting harder and harder for him to keep his eyes open. Before succumbing to that heavy feeling, he glanced at the clock sitting atop his bedside table. The matchstick-like numbers burned a bright red and casted a crimson shade on what would otherwise have been a pitch-black bedroom, which he loved. The boy and his mom had been shopping at a local antique shop when he saw the retro Sony digital clock, and he insisted on getting it. The digits read 10:00 p.m., and with that, he finally surrendered to the heaviness that slowly conquered him and drifted off to sleep.
A loud thump shocked the boy awake. As sleep tends to do, the boy felt like he had only been asleep for short amount of time, but, in reality, he had already been sleeping for nearly six hours. He looked at the bedside clock. The glaring red numbers looked back and seared into his memory that it was already 3:43 a.m.
Still a little groggy, he swung his legs over the edge of the bed. He slowly stood up, and he thought that the sound was probably nothing. Avoiding juvenile nightmares, his mind conjured up more plausible explanations for the sound, like his mom or Tara knocking something over in the kitchen as they were getting water.
He walked toward the door. Reaching out for the doorknob, he grabbed it and twisted the cool metal. Opening the door, he peered out to his right. The stairway light was not on. The stairs in this home were notoriously steep. The boy had had his fair share of tumbles down those steps. If either his mom or Tara had gone down them, they would have turned that light on.
He listened for a second, but he couldn’t hear anything from downstairs. There was rustling coming from the opposite direction, however. He turned his head to the left and confirmed that the rustling was coming from his mom’s bedroom. Light was pooling in the hallway from her open doorway. The opposite wall was illuminated and he could see some shadows moving frantically about.
He took one step out of his own room. Fear sat in the pit of his stomach, like a large rock that had sunk to the bottom of a river. His mind raced with the possibilities of what was happening. Those possibilities played one after another in his mind, increasing in speed until they ran together into one intangible feeling of dread washing over him. At the same time, he was in disbelief; he couldn’t possibly believe that anything bad would happen to his family. Not there, not in their home.
He ran through the family’s nightly routine. His mom finished cleaning up after dinner. Tara finished her homework. He went around locking all of the doors. He asked himself whether he had forgotten one of the doors.
He began to inch closer to his mom’s bedroom. The blood in his ears pulsed, which sounded like waves crashing against a shore. It was hard to hear anything else. Concentrating, he started to hear dull, swishing noises, similar to the noise when something is drug through water. On either side of him, his mom’s artwork was on the wall. He could see every individual brush stroke. He had seen these pieces on the walls for years, but as he walked by that night, it seemed like he was seeing each one for the first time.
The closer he got to his mom’s bedroom, the balance between fear and disbelief tipped, and each step filled him with that ever more familiar dreadful feeling. When he was two steps away from the doorframe, he leaned against the wall. He tried to calm himself, but that’s a fight that he didn’t win. His brain concluded something that he didn’t want to accept: something terrible was going on. Convincing himself to act, he took five deep breaths.
One. He could see that Tara’s door was slightly open, but her light wasn’t on. He hoped that she was still within sleep’s tight embrace.
Exhale.
Two. He realized that he was sweating so badly that his shirt was drenched.
Exhale.
Three. He saw a shadow figure on the wall opposite from him. It raised a long, pipe-looking object and made a swift, chopping motion.
Exhale.
Four. Over the pulsing in his ears, he heard a clear sound. The sound was like a stick being stabbed into mud, a sickening sound.
Exhale.
Five. He closed his eyes and prepared to look into the room.
Exhale.
With his eyes still closed, he made the 180 degree turn into his mom’s bedroom doorway. He slowly opened his eyes and, as soon as he did, the scene was imprinted in his memory. He reeled back, terrified. What had once been his mom’s pristine, white room was now marred with scarlet. Pools of shining blood surrounded her bed. The quilted headboard looked more like one of those ink blots that psychologists use than the familiar piece of furniture. A sharp, metallic scent, like he was leaning over a bowl of pennies, struck his nose. On the bed, was his mom. Once white-blonde hair was now stained with her own blood. Before he could look away, he saw the back side of head caving in on itself.
He couldn’t feel anything. No fear. No sadness. Just emptiness. Even though all emotion had abandoned him, salty tears left stinging trails down his cheeks. This was impossible.
Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.
As he tore his eyes away from his mom’s mangled body, he focused his attention to the side of the bed. In the corner of the room, his sister cowered behind a lamp. At her feet was the lamp from the other side of the bedroom. Tara’s hand rested on the pole connecting the base and shade. The base of the lamp was covered in red, shimmering liquid. Tara looked like she had taken a bath in blood. Underneath the red mask covering her face, he could still see Tara’s sapphire eyes. Normally, her eyes were bright and reflected light, but then, those eyes were dull and seemingly lifeless.
He realized that he had been holding his breath. The burning in his lungs notified him of a lack of oxygen. He was forced to allow his body to carry on its normal function. As a heavy breath left his body, he heard a short, sharp cry escape from his mouth.
Until that moment, Tara had been fixated by his mom’s lifeless body. The yelp drew her attention to him. Her gaze leveled on the young boy.
While she may have been covered in a grotesque, red blanket, it struck him that, otherwise, Tara looked exactly the same. His baby sister, his Tara, had become affected. The shock of the horrific scene wormed its way in and numbed him.
He didn’t know how long he stood there. Five, maybe ten, seconds. He realized that during that short time, Tara had released her hold from the lamp and had been inching her way closer to him. He snapped back to his senses; he saw that Tara was only about three feet in front of him. She had crouched down on her haunches, like a cheetah preparing to attack an unsuspecting antelope.
Right as she sprung forward, he ducked to his right to avoid her. She crashed into the wall in the hallway behind him. He landed on his hands and knees and struggled to get back to his feet. He half-leaped out of the bedroom into the hallway and quickly glanced behind him. He saw that Tara had also recovered, somewhat, and was on her hands and knees. He began to run down the hallway. His only thought was that he needed to get to his phone so he could call for help.
He could hear Tara’s labored breath and beating feet behind him. He was almost to his door when he tripped over a loose board. Damn board. He and his mom had planned to fix it six or seven different times before, and now, that board could cost him his life.
He tumbled to the ground and kept rolling. He crashed down the first flight of stairs and ended on the landing. As he rolled, he hit his head, which caused him to black out for the briefest of seconds. However short that time was, it gave Tara the opportunity she needed. As he was coming back to his senses, Tara landed on top of him. Her white-blond hair flew forward and brushed his face. He could feel it leave a trail of sticky blood. It looked like Tara had transformed into a rabid animal. Again, he saw her dead eyes, but this time, up close and with little light, they looked almost black. She clawed at his face without shedding a single tear. He could feel fresh blood streaming down his face. Warm tears mixed with the viscous liquid and burned where Tara opened fresh cuts on his face. He tried to fight her off, cut she had seemed to gain some unnatural strength.
All the distinct thoughts that were running through his head, at the time, were impossible to separate. Save for one. He knew that if he didn’t get Tara off of him and get away, he would end up like his mom. He felt more and more of the blood-tear mixture pouring over his face. That was it. His body acted without his fear-stricken brain. He quickly arched his back to throw Tara off balance. Then, he kicked his knee up, with all of his strength, and hit Tara in the back. He heard a groan escape from her and he guessed that he knocked the wind out of her. At the same time, Tara flailed forward from the force of the kick. He turned his head and watched as she tumbled down the rest of the steps.
As he watched this unrecognizable, yet familiar, animal flail down the steps, he heard a nauseating cracking sound. Almost immediately, he regretted what he had done. “I had to do it” replayed in his head over and over and over. After a few second, he realized that her body wasn’t moving. As his initial shock began to wane, he decided that he had to go to her seemingly lifeless body. He got up and slowly walked down the remaining steps towards Tara’s body. Just a short time before, he thought that he would never see anything as terrible as the scene in his mother’s room. He was wrong. The sight of Tara’s body will forever torture him.
Tara’s head was cocked at an unnatural angle with a slight bump on her neck where, he guessed, a broken bone was ready to break the skin. Her left arm was twisted behind her back, while her right arm was extended above her head in a macabre wave. Where her neck contained the bone, the skin of Tara’s leg had given way, and he saw jagged bone jutting from her right leg. It took everything that he had to not let loose his stomach. While he was able to keep his stomach under control, he could do nothing to stop another wave of salty tears stream down his face. As he took in the grisly scene through watery eyes, he tried to find any clue that might tell him why she had done this. No such clue presented itself.
He walked over to the table with the family’s landline phone sitting on it. Before tonight, he would make fun of his mom for keeping the relic when they all had cell phones. Then, he was thankful for the outdated technology being so near because he would not have had the energy to climb the stairs to get his cell phone. He picked the receiver up and stared at the numbers for a second. “What do I do?” He thought to himself. While he knew that he had to call the police, shock from what had just happened made his brain foggy.
He put his finger on the nine and hesitantly pressed down. He heard the tone confirming that the nine had been dialed. He had to get this over with, so he dialed the ones in quick succession. He raised the phone in time to hear a clipped, male voice, which stated, “Ironstead Police Department. What is your emergency?”
He hesitated. He had no idea how to explain the events that occurred.
“Excuse me, what is your emergency?” The clipped voice asked.
To that point, he hadn’t thought about the outcome. It was only how would he get through this moment. Hearing the question a second time set off an internal explosion that resulted in another wave of tears as he explained what happened to the officer. He choked every so often as he replayed the horrific scene to the office. The rambling and emotion-laden confession would be hard for the officer to understand, but the explanation was coherent enough to allow for the officer. After finishing the story, he dropped the phone, which fell to the floor. He could hear a slight buzzing from the phone, which had been the officer attempting to calm the young boy.
He returned to Tara’s body. Then, he crumpled. He lost all energy, but he, unfortunately, didn’t lose consciousness, which would have been a godsend. Rather, he waited.
Within ten minutes, he heard the sound of sirens coming closer. Within twelve minutes, he saw red and blue lights flashing through the living room windows. Within fourteen minutes, officers had kicked open the door and were rushing into the house. One officer rushed over to him and began talking. Knowing that someone else was there, the young boy was finally able to relax. He abruptly lost consciousness.
***
Inside that room in the large home on the waterfront, the young man jolted awake. The sun was casting long rays through his large windows. Another night, another night where essential oils hadn’t chased away the awful events that plagued him. Almost five years later and each night he endured the same torture.
“I’m so sorry, Tara,” he whispered softly, just as he did each morning. He would think about trying to close his eyes again, but he also knew that if he did, image of his late sister was waiting. Instead, he would stare at those old, glow-in-the-dark stars. He would wait.
About half-an-hour later, “Rue, time to get up!” He heard. With that, he threw the cover off of himself. He would spend the next ten or so minutes contorting his face in the mirror to make it look like he hadn’t just witnessed the death of his sister again. Then, he would go pretend to be happy.