Page 5 of The Blood we Crave

I’m not wishing for screams. I’m wishing for my mother to return to the land of the living. And I know, the same way I knew when it was going to rain, her soul has left, leaving me only with her vacant body.

I was used to listening to the steady rise and fall of her chest—it was what lulledme into sleep almost every night, and now…now, there’s nothing.

Just silence.

Emptiness.

I can physically feel in my gut the moment her heart stops. Maybe it’s the bitter stillness in her body, or maybe…

It’s because I feel something inside of me fracture.

Snapped clean in half. It’s as if a light cuts off in my mind. A light that had always been there, guiding me through life. A switch that I’d never noticed abruptly clicked off, and all I feel is…frigid disinterest.

I can’t feel anything. I’m unexpectedly numb to my surroundings and I don’t care what happens to me from this moment forward. If I never make it out of this closet, if no one ever finds me and I die wrapped in my mother’s sweater, I wouldn’t care. If that man—that monster, Henry—crawled towards me with his teeth bared and hands outstretched, I wouldn’t move.

And it’s because of that coldness that I open my eyes.

There are heavy exhales coming from her attacker. The one that’s still perched atop her body. Herstiffbody. Too stiff. His hair is disheveled, and there’s something like relief sinking onto his shoulders.

Mom, I mouth, but not a peep leaves my lungs.

The grandfather clock in the foyer rings loud and solemnly. It shakes the quiet. It seems to snap the man out of his trance, as if the bell had pulled him from inside his own head, where he was enjoying the feeling of my mother’s death beneath him.

My bottom lip trembles as he presses himself up from the floor. The squelch of liquid moving below him makes me queasy. Bile makes itself comfortable in my throat no matter how many times I try to force it down.

I haven’t often thought about death or what taking someone’s life would look like. Mostly due to the fact I was happy; my life was good. I had no reason to think about anything that dark but the random thought crosses my mind that I never pictured something so violent yet so calm.

A wide circle has begun to form around my mother’s body, oiled and dark. The moonlight reflects off the slick, showing the red hue that the night tried to hide. From my spot, I can see that there are multiple circles on her robe, each doused with blood. The knife in his hand was responsible for each wound on her soft body.

I look at him as he stands to his full height, graceful in the way he drags the blade of the knife against his clothes to clean off the blood. It’s only now that I notice his leather-gloved hands and dark, crisp clothing. This was not something he’d done on a whim, and from the way he so easily steps past her dead body, I know this was not his first time.

No, he’d ended more lives than just my mother’s. She was just another body he’d add to his growing list. An obstacle, from what I gathered from their conversation, that he plowed through.

When his feet hit the edge of the doorway, he’s not met with an empty hallway. No, instead another figure appears in the space just outside the room.

“There you are,” Henry says evenly, speaking for the first time since my mother took her last breath. “Did you find her?”

My heart stills.

Her.

Me. He means me.

He and his partner, who was tasked with handling me. They were looking for me. Had I slept in my own bedroom tonight, I would have met the same fate as my mother but at the hands of someone else. All I can see are the long legs of the accomplice; everything else is blocked by Henry’s unruly size.

But—

“No.”

It’s just one word, a singular response, but I can feel it all the way inside of my bones, like a gust of chilly wind pushed into this burning closet.

“The house is empty, save for some snakes in one of the spare bedrooms,” says the voice. They are young; I can hear the youth in their voice no matter how much darkness tries to mask it.

“Stay here, son. I’m going to do a quick look around, and then we will be leaving. Don’t touch anything—”

“Unless I have my gloves on,” the unknown partner interrupts with an elegance that is far older than what he sounds like. “I remember your rules.”

Son?