36
Rayne
A Father’s Wickedness
I couldn’t recall the last time I’d rested like this.
It wasn’t entirely willing; I was eager to get up but Salem watched me with ruthless determination, not even allowing me out of bed to go down to the kitchen.
She brought food to me instead, a plate piled high with scrambled eggs, sausage, and waffles.
I was used to doing things for myself. My first instinct—hell, my only instinct—was to accept no help and fend for myself. But Salem hovered over me, anticipating my needs sometimes before I even realized them myself.
Her stomach rumbled loudly as I ate, and I looked up at her in alarm. “Did you have breakfast?”
“O-oh, it’s okay, no—”
I slapped the mattress next to me, pulling back the blankets for her. “Get your butt over here. I’m not going to let you sit there and starve.”
She snuggled up beside me and said shyly, “I’ve been anxious. My stomach has been sensitive.”
“Just small bites then,” I said, slicing off a piece of buttery waffle.
She chewed slowly, but after she swallowed, she perked up a bit and said, “Can I have a sausage?”
We cleared the plate together. We spent the rest of the day in bed, napping and playing cards, with her getting up only to get us more food and let Loki outside. I didn’t like her opening the door without me, even during the day. With clouds covering the sun, I simply didn’t trust that it was safe.
“Do you at least know how to shoot a gun?” I said, offering her mine. But she stared at the weapon awkwardly.
“I, uh... shot a BB gun once,” she said, and I sighed.
“I’m coming down with you. Don’t—” I held up my hand to silence her protests. “I need to stretch my legs anyway. I’m just going to stand there and watch, that’s it.”
She let me do that, at least, but she looked at me worriedly every time I breathed too hard. It was... cute. It was sweet . It made my heart flutter in a way I hadn’t experienced before. I didn’t know how to react to being taken care of.
Mom would have loved her.
But our comfortable laziness couldn’t last forever. Salem had found something she wanted me to see, and I could tell by her face that I wasn’t going to like it.
The next morning, she brought me a mold-stained manilla envelope.
“There’s photos inside,” she said softly. “I don’t really know how to explain them.”
The first Polaroid I pulled out made my stomach churn even before I figured out what I was looking at. The texture of it made a revolted chill run up my back the moment I touched it. Coated with rings of black, crusty mold, it was still remarkably preserved, the photo clear.
Stained hands held a bloody human bone etched with strange carvings. The blood was fresh, bright red. As if the victim had only just died. As if it might have still been warm as their body was skinned and hacked to pieces.
“Rayne?” Salem grasped my forearm in concern, and I slowly inhaled. “Are you okay? You look...”
“I’m fine.”
Setting the photo aside. I picked up another. There were so many. At least a dozen had been hidden away in the envelope Salem found. Mutilated animals, offal placed in bowls, surrounded by candles.
“What the hell is this?” I muttered, my eyes moving from one horror to the next. “Why would he have these? Why would he keep them?”
Salem listened to me, biting her lower lip. I was used to talking myself through my problems; usually, the only one listening to me was Loki. But he lay asleep near the fire, as if he was relieved to have finally passed me off to someone else.
I paced back and forth, pausing only to pick up my whiskey glass and take a generous sip. Only then was I able to pick up the photo of a dead, naked woman lying on a table.
It was the table in the stone house, I recognized it instantly. The body looked unreal, gray and waxen. The slender throat was cut, gashed open so deep it was almost a decapitation. Her face wasn’t visible, but even so, a cold feeling swept through my veins.
“How would your father have gotten that body?” Salem said, but her voice seemed to drift to me from far away. As if she was shouting to me from across a long, dark field. “And those symbols. What could they mean? I’ve never seen anything like...”
Those slight hands, rigid in death. Fingernails painted a defiant shade of red. My stomach clenched, and I couldn’t get enough air. I finished off my whiskey, but it didn’t help.
Tossing the Polaroids down on the coffee table, I muttered, “I’m sorry, I need to think. I can’t... these... I can’t.”
She didn’t say a word as I walked from the room. My body felt like it might explode, my hands and teeth clenched so tight it hurt. I wanted to run. To scream.
I didn’t want her to see me like this.
On the third floor, at the end of the hallway, was the locked door leading to the attic.
My mom’s old bedroom. Turning my key in that lock always made my heart pound.
When I was young, I would sit at the bottom of the attic stairs after her death, earbuds in, pretending she was just up above, singing softly as she rouged her cheeks and sprayed her perfume.
I fantasized that she would come down at any moment, wrap her arms around me, and kiss my cheek a dozen times.
What shall we do today, honey? Would you like to come to the garden with me?
On the stairs, I caught myself on the railing as I choked on a sob, forcing it down. The dust couldn’t cover the scent of her perfume; I could still smell it in the air.
Or maybe I only wished I could. Maybe it was my own grief turning the smell of damp and decay into the sweet floral scent of lily, mandarin, and grapefruit. She used to hide the bottle from my father, and when she died, I hid it too so he couldn’t take it away.
The attic was exactly how she left it. A green-and-black blanket, crocheted by a grandmother I’d never met, was folded neatly near the footboard.
Lacy curtains framed the round window that looked out upon the lighthouse.
Books of poetry lined her shelves; she used to read to me, but most books were too difficult for me now.
It broke my heart to think she would be disappointed to know I hadn’t picked up a book since my last tutor left when I was fifteen.
Her vanity had been cleared off by my father, all the makeup and nail polishes thrown away. I caught sight of my face in the dusty mirror, bruised and tired. My eyes looked a hundred years old, older than hers ever had.
There, in solitude, I broke down.
Arms wrapped around myself, I sobbed until I fell to my knees and bent with the weight of grief, my forehead pressed to the floor. I hated the sound of my own weeping, I wanted to curse myself for being weak.
Funny, the voice that cursed at me for breaking sounded so much like Dad.
He’d always been a distant parent, but I saw him offer affection to others, to his congregants.
His flock. Everyone who got to pray with him, be led and guided by him, everyone who felt the light of his love; I hated them all.
How dare they take him? How dare they have him when I couldn’t?
He would barely even look at me, talk to me, but he would preach to them for hours.
What was wrong with me?
Why wasn’t I enough?
“I needed you here.” I didn’t even recognize my own voice. “I needed you, Mom. I still need you. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know...”
For a second, I swore I felt a cold breeze move over my back, an eerie whisper too faint to make out—but then, instead of the phantom’s chilling presence, the warmth of Salem’s arms wrapped around me.
I hadn’t even heard her come up. She didn’t say anything. She just held me as I knelt there, her weight on my back. She held me tight, and at first, I desperately wanted to pull myself together, to show her I was strong.
But I couldn’t. I was broken, and I couldn’t hide the cracks anymore.
When I was finally able to raise my head and look at her, her face was wet with tears.
“Why are you crying?” I said, hurriedly wiping her face, worried that I’d somehow hurt her.
But she took my hands and kissed them and said, “When you hurt, I hurt too. And I know it hurts so much.”
In her arms, I was raw, more vulnerable than I’d ever allowed myself to be.
Guilt and fear waged war in my head, but grief was more powerful than either of them.
Usually I could ignore it, shove it into the dark recesses of my mind and pretend it wasn’t there.
But even healed wounds left scars, and mine had never healed in the first place.
For a while, we just sat on the floor, facing each other as she held my hands. I touched the polish on her nails, chipped away over the weeks she’d been here, but still a beautiful shade of green.
“My mom would have liked this color,” I said softly.
She smiled. “I think she would have too. It’s the same color as your eyes.”
I kissed her forehead, then her beautiful mouth. “I think she would have liked you too. I think she’d be happy you’re here.” Taking a deep breath, I let the sadness wash through me and away. I let it rest, curling up in my heart like an exhausted creature.
Salem leaned into my hand as I cupped her face. “There’s something else I need to tell you,” she said. “Something that happened while you were gone.”
As I listened, she told me about her search for Loki in the storm. As she described the specter, its long hair, its distorted face, the whispers began again. I resisted covering my ears, but when she suddenly fell silent and looked around, I realized.
“You hear it too?” I said, and she nodded quickly.
“Whispering, screaming, crying,” she said. “And Rayne... I felt it. It touched me.”
The specter had never attacked me; I had long believed that it was only capable of hurting me with the madness it induced. But to hear Salem describe the awful sensation of choking, the taste of blood, the certainty she was going to die—I could hardly bear it.
How could I protect her from something I couldn’t fight?
It had whispered the same words to her it had long whispered to me. Blood and bones, blood and bones ...
“What could it mean?” she said. But I was already trying to piece it together, trying desperately to understand why this was all happening now .
“You said you tasted blood,” I said slowly. “That it felt like choking...” She nodded. “My mom’s throat was cut. She would have died choking on her own blood.”
Salem’s eyes went wide, and she covered her mouth in disbelief. “Rayne... you don’t think... you don’t think really that’s your mom? In the photos?”
“I don’t know. But I know my father did something he kept secret, something he took to his grave.
” Thinking back, I recalled the verse he had shouted so many times from behind the pulpit.
“ He cast upon them the fierceness of his wrath by sending evil angels among them . My father always said the beast was God’s judgment for Blackridge’s wickedness, and that my mother’s murder was the catalyst.”
Even the dead could still speak, and they had the answers I needed.
“Salem.” I turned to her, jaw clenched around the vile thing I was about to tell her. “We need to dig up my mother’s grave.”