I remembered little of the aftermath; the whole thing was basically just one big blur of numbness and disbelief.

The building was cleared, and all the hostages were located unharmed in the basement. Turns out the thugs who’d grabbed them realized they were in extremely deep shit and they’d stashed their captives down there in the hopes we wouldn’t smoke them all on sight. From a mission standpoint, we’d accomplished all our objectives. As far as I was concerned, though, this had been a defeat in detail.

Tim was gone, and I’d been absolutely powerless to prevent it from happening. The pain of his loss stayed with me; a ceaseless ache in my chest reminding me of my failure constantly.

The funeral was standard fare for a fallen officer. Lots of somber people in dress uniforms, a folded flag, and the report of gunshots from the salute—each one a final, awful punctuation mark on a life that ended far too soon. I’d tried talking to Shelly, Tim’s on again, off again girlfriend, but she’d wanted nothing to do with me. I couldn’t blame her—I’m sure she was thinking the same thing I was.

Why couldn’t it have been me?

Telling his parents had been the hardest part. Bob and Lucy were two of the kindest, most loving people I’d ever met, and it nearly broke me to see their grief. No parent should ever have to outlive their children. The whole time I sat there, looking across their coffee table as Tim’s mom sobbed uncontrollably into his dad’s arms, all I could think was, why not me? My parents were gone. The only family I still had anymore were cousins and distant relatives. Why did it have to be him? Why couldn’t that shitbag have shot me instead?

But, no… that wasn’t right. Was it? I vividly remembered not having any family to go home to, and yet something inside of me screamed the untruth of the thing. My thoughts were so thoroughly muddled after I finally left their house that one of the grief counselors that’d accompanied me on the trip had to physically shake me back to my senses when she dropped me off at my house—the one I shared with my wife, Lynn, and our three beautiful girls.

Do you ever have dreams where you forget about something important in your life, only to rediscover that it’s a thing right before some important event? Mine is always about a class that I signed up for, but then don’t attend for an entire semester. Eventually, the day of the exam rolls around, and I realize I have absolutely no idea what material has been covered, and the sense of impending doom it imparts is terrible. I always wake up before the exam actually begins, and the whole thing leaves me with a deep feeling of unease, like I completely forgot about some significant part of my life. It can take days to fully work itself out of my psyche.

This was a lot like that; a vivid dream state that insisted I didn’t have a family and, therefore, should have been the one to take that bullet. But I did have a family, and I got to go home to them, while Tim got tossed in a pine box and buried in the ground.

I was an absolute wreck.

The department gave me two weeks’ paid leave and told me it wasn’t optional–just like the sessions with the psychiatrist. I did my time, listening to her prattle on about survivor’s guilt and how it wasn’t my fault—like she fucking knew what I was going through. The extra time with my family was nice, though. I hadn’t been able to spend as much time with them as I’d have liked lately, so it was good to reconnect. At least, that’s what I tried to do.

Truth be told, my job had slowly been driving a wedge between Lynn and me, though I was loath to admit it. Long hours, high stress, and nearly a decade of shit I continually shoved into a box in the back of my mind and refused to deal with was a recipe for disaster. I’d been spending more time at work and volunteering to take extra shifts just so I didn’t have to address my rapidly disintegrating family life.

Slowly but surely, my lifelong struggle with anger—something the Corps had helped me move past, or so I’d thought—was bubbling back to the surface. Tim’s death had then served as a catalyst for it to flare back into life with a vengeance. I kept a tight lid on it at home. At least, I tried to. I’d gotten pretty good at hiding it from the kids, but my wife occasionally caught some of the spillover, especially when the kids weren’t around.

She was understanding, and much more so than she had any right to be. I never hit her. Never. But words can sometimes cut deeper than any physical attack. I was off the rails and I knew it; I also knew how to put the monster to sleep…

I was drinking again. Too much, but it kept me functioning. I know a lot of people who turn into mean SOBs when they’ve had a few, but I’d always found I reacted the opposite way. Drinking numbed my mind, offering a brief respite from the fury burning just beneath the surface.

A month passed, and I went back to work. They’d given me light duty for the first couple of weeks, then slowly worked me back into the rotation. Working again was good; it kept me active and distracted. The problem was I couldn’t drink before or during a shift. It led to more than a few out-of-character incidents for me, from a fist-shaped dent in a locker to an informal inquiry after I’d put some punk down with a buttstroke from my carbine when it hadn’t really been necessary. My team knew what I was going through, and they did their best to cover for me, but I could tell we were reaching the point where they wanted to distance themselves from me.

Lynn finally called me on my bullshit about seven weeks after Tim’s funeral. I’d been snuggling on the couch with Cassie, my oldest. She’d been having some issues with stomach aches lately, and her pediatrician couldn’t figure out what was going on. It was frustrating, but until we could get her in to see a specialist, it meant I got to spend some quality daddy time with her wrapped in my arms, instead of roughhousing with her on the floor.

So there we were, watching The Princess Bride while my wife got the younger two to sleep for the night. After Lynn got our three-year-old down, she made her way into the living room and brushed my shoulder with a hand, asking me to put Cassie to bed and then come into the kitchen. I could tell right away that things were about to go sideways—that tone was in her voice.

I’ll spare you the details, but it got ugly.

When I stormed out of the house twenty minutes later, Lynn was sobbing on the floor in the kitchen, and I could hear the girls yelling for us from their rooms.

I just jumped in my truck and took off. I drove around aimlessly for a while, then ultimately ended up heading in to work. I kept a change of clothes there, and I could always crash on a cot—I certainly wouldn’t be the first guy who’d done so.

And that was the first time I felt it.

Do you ever get the feeling that someone is watching you? I had it then: the overwhelming sense that someone was right behind me. Yet, no matter how many times I turned around or checked my mirrors, nothing was ever there. And still the feeling persisted. It also seemed to coincide with the ache in my chest flaring up–the one that’d been there since Tim’s death. Like something was draining the life right out of me.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

And it didn’t stop.

I stayed at work for a couple of days; the guys doing what they could to talk me through my bullshit. The whole time, though, there was this constant nagging in the back of my mind that something was watching me. It wasn’t too long before I could have sworn that I was starting to see things, too. First, in the mirror after a shower. Then, more frequently, always like an out-of-focus reflection that wasn’t really there. Windows, mirrors, even in the reflection in one of my teammates’ sunglasses, one time. And always that same stabbing pain in my chest, coupled with a looming dread.

I should have told someone; gone to the shrink, asked my boss for some more time off… something. But I didn’t. I kept my head down and did my best to ignore the flaming wreck my life had become. I didn’t call Lynn, didn’t ask any of my buddies to check in on her or the kids. I’d completely shut down.

And all the while, that feeling kept eating away at me, like something was feeding off my misery; sapping my will to keep pushing forward.

Things came to a head about a week after I’d stormed out on my family. I was on my way back to the department from my favorite watering hole, when my phone rang. Lynn’s picture popped up on my phone, and I immediately moved to silence the call… but I froze for some reason. My finger hovered just over the Ignore button. I couldn’t explain it, but I just knew that I needed to answer. I accepted the call, and I could tell immediately that something was wrong.

“Del, you need to come home—Cassie’s in the hospital.”

The thirty minutes it took me to make it back to my house were the longest of my life. They say the worst words anyone can ever hear are, “you have cancer,” but I now knew that wasn’t even close to the worst thing someone can tell you. The worst words anyone can ever hear are, “your daughter has cancer.”

Lynn didn’t mince words. She knew me too well—knew that if she didn’t dive right to the heart of the matter, the odds that one or both of us would hang up would rise exponentially with each passing second. I was completely numb. Those four words pulled the rug out from under my world more effectively than anything else could have.

My little girl was in the hospital, possibly dying, and I wasn’t there for her. The looming dread that’d followed me around, occasionally peaking over my shoulder, rode shotgun with me the whole way home. Not even Tim’s death had constricted my chest like I experienced in that moment, and it felt like whatever the hell had been nibbling on my pain was now absolutely feasting.

I wanted to go straight to the hospital, but Lynn explained Cassie was asleep for the night and scheduled for surgery in the morning. Lynn’s dad was there to keep an eye on Cassie, and her mom had our other two girls at my in-laws’ house for the night.

Lynn wanted to talk to me alone before we went over to the hospital. I didn’t want to talk. I wanted—no, needed—to act. But in what may have been my first moment of clarity in at least a week allowed me to see I wouldn’t do anybody any good unless I stopped running from a disaster of my own making and made an effort to get myself on the road to recovery.

And that started with having a conversation with my wife.

When I finally pulled into my driveway, I frowned. All the lights were off, which wasn’t right and set off alarm bells in my head. I’d just talked to Lynn a few minutes ago, and she’d told me to come home so we could talk. I parked my truck in the driveway and opened the glove box, withdrawing the Glock 19 I kept in there as a truck gun. My heart hammered at my ribcage as I quickly checked to make sure there was a round in the chamber, then jumped out of the truck and made a beeline for the front door.

Something was very wrong, and the feeling that I was being intently watched was stronger than ever.

“Lynn?” I called out, praying that some lights would flip on. “Lynn!” I called again, now practically sprinting toward the front door. I brought my gun up and toggled the weapon-mounted light on, aiming it at the front door.

My blood froze. The front door was closed, but I could clearly see splintered wood around the jamb. I knew what a kicked-open door looked like better than most, having spent almost two decades of my life doing exactly that.

“Lynn!” I screamed, blasting the already open door aside and charging into the house. “Lynn! It’s Del! Where are you?”

I rushed through the main level, clearing room after room as I went and constantly calling out for my wife. She was here somewhere. I could feel it. The tightness in my chest continued to build as I progressed through my home, room after room, without hearing my wife’s voice call back to me.

Then I saw the blood. I tore through the living room and rounded the corner into the kitchen, and that’s where I found her.

Her phone was lying on the floor, mere inches from her outstretched fingers. Blood matted her hair, and her face was a sea of cuts and bruises. She was stretched out on the floor, and I could immediately tell she’d been struggling to get to her phone…

…When she died.

“Lynn!” I screamed. I slapped the switch on the wall, bathing the kitchen in light. I quickly cleared the space, then rushed to my wife’s side. Dropping to my knees, I scooped her up in my arms. My fingers desperately probed her neck for a pulse, but the blue tinge to her lips and unfocused gaze told me I wouldn’t find one.

I wailed, letting loose with a truly soul-rending cry. Tears poured freely from my eyes as I cradled my wife’s body. A stabbing pain pierced my heart, an order of magnitude more painful than when Tim had died.

And the monster watching me purred in delight.

I spun around, suddenly on high alert again. I realized I hadn’t finished clearing the house, and whoever had killed my wife could still be there. But there was no one.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a flash of red light. The scream of sirens filled my ears a moment later, getting louder with each passing beat of my thumping heart. I looked down at the floor, thinking that maybe Lynn had called 911, but her phone was clean. The bloody fingerprints that should have been there were nowhere to be found on her phone. Had a neighbor seen something and called it in?

It didn’t matter. They’d be here shortly, and then we would get to work finding the dead man who’d killed my wife.

I stayed where I was, hugging my wife for all I was worth. I heard the first shouts from approaching officers a minute later, and I tried to call out to them, but I simply couldn’t form the words. The beams of their flashlights swept past me soon after, but my mind was so broken by that point that I was having trouble making out what they were saying.

“Let her go! Hands up, motherfucker! Hands up!”

I looked up in confusion as their shouted commands finally penetrated my consciousness.

Three muzzles were aimed directly at me.

I looked around, but it seemed that every responding officer was now in the kitchen. Why the hell were these guys not clearing the rest of the house?

“Hands up!”

“Release the woman! Do it, now!”

“Let her go!”

More footsteps approached from the other entrance into the kitchen, and I turned to see more patrol officers storm in, guns drawn. One of the first guys took advantage of my moment of distraction and came up from behind, tackling me to the floor.

My face bounced off the tile, and my grip on Lynn slipped. I struggled to flip onto my back, but a crushing weight kept me pinned, and all I was able to do was drunkenly turn my head. My vision swam and went cloudy, darkening from the edges as I fought against unconsciousness. The kitchen was a chaotic mess of yelling and cops flashing in and out of my line of sight.

But despite all that, I’ll never forget the last thing I saw before darkness finally claimed me: a pair of glowing red eyes.

They bore into me from just outside the kitchen window. The hazy outline of an ephemeral face wavered in and out of existence around those crimson orbs. Pain like I’d never before experienced ripped through my chest, and I could have sworn the monster at the window grinned.

Then the darkness won out, and I slipped into unconsciousness.