1. Julian
Julian
The first lie I ever told her was that the streetlights kept the monsters away. The second was that we were her keepers… her protectors…
I watched her through the dusty, smeared pane of the parlour window—June.
She was fifteen now, possessed with the awkward grace of mid-adolescence.
She was a blur of rebellion and chipped black nail polish, chasing fireflies with her younger cousin, Annie, in the deep purple twilight that settled over Maple Street.
Every few minutes, she would pause by the paint stripped picket fence, turning her face back in the direction of our shadowed manor on the hill.
Even from this distance, through the layers of glass and gloom, I could feel the pull of her innocent faith.
She looked at this house and saw a sanctuary. She looked at us and saw heroes.
Only a few hours ago, we had been sitting in the overgrown garden behind the carriage house, tucked away from Cain’s prying, judgement eyes.
I had been teaching her how to weave words into rhythm, showing her how a stanza could hold a heartbeat.
I had borrowed a tattered, spine cracked volume of Edgar Allan Poe from the local library, a book I’d have to return in a few days.
She was immediately obsessed with him. She loved the gloom, the ravens, the beautiful women who died in their prime. She didn’t know she was reading her own future in those pages. I had spent the afternoon reading Annabel Lee to her, my voice low as the wind rustled the dying rosebushes.
“And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side / Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride…”
She had looked at me with such wide, wandering eyes. “Do you think anyone will ever love me that much, Julian? To stay by my side even when I’m gone?”
I’d smiled through the hero’s mask and told her she was too young for such morbid thoughts. But as I watched her wave from the yard, I made a silent promise to her.
She deserved the world, not the grave we were digging for her.
“You look like a fool.”
Cain’s voice, flat and emotionless, cut through the quiet. He was in the doorway, a silhouette framed by the hallway’s darkness. Cain never walked into a room; he just appeared in it, a regular haunting in our home.
“She’s growing up,” I said, my eyes never leaving the yard.
“She is. Which means our window is closing.”
My jaw tightened. I couldn’t look at him.
To Cain, June wasn’t the girl who spent her mornings trying to capture the perfect sunset on canvas; she wasn’t the girl who stayed up late scribbling stories about ghosts and lost loves.
She wasn’t the girl who got lost in the library stacks for hours, her thumb tracing the spines of historic tragedies. To Cain, she wasn’t a girl at all.
She was a ticking clock. A countdown.
“Why are we still here… Cain?”
“We moved to this stifling, wretched town under the guise of the selfless grandsons. We told the neighbours, we told her family, that we were here to care for our sick grandmother. A woman we hadn’t spoken to in years.”
I stepped in-front of him, my voice dropping to a low hiss. “Our family has never lacked for money. We could have hired 24/7 carers so we never had to step foot in this manor. But you volunteered us. You insisted we be the ones to hold her hand while she withered.”
I let out a harsh, mocking breath. “And for what? She died not even a year after we arrived. The duty has been done. Yet, we stay. We’ve stayed for years in a town that has nothing to offer us.”
He didn’t flinch. “We stayed because our grandmother was never the point, brother, she was the bridge. She gave us a reason to be ‘the good boys’ next door, to be trusted. She gave us legitimacy here.”
“You never told me why her,” I demanded. “Why June? There were a dozen others you could have chosen.”
Cain took a slow, deliberate step into the room. For a moment, the mask of the strategist slipped, replaced by something devilish.
“Do you remember that Sunday? In that crumbling stone church? I saw her in the third pew. The sun hit the stained glass just right, throwing a blinding circle of gold directly onto her head. It was like God was marking her, crowning her with that light. She looked like a vision of innocence sitting there, totally unaware that the world was full of wolves. In that exact moment, I knew. I saw our sacrifice. A little bird that was destined to be crushed in our hands.”
I felt a cold shiver race down my spine. “You’re a lunatic.. You’ve built a cage for a girl based on a trick of the light.”
“And I’ll build an empire on that trick,” Cain countered. “And you’ll help me lay the bricks.”
He was right. We had created this world where June had no need for anyone but us. We protected her from boys who looked at her too long, from the small accidents of youth. Not because we loved her, but because the Ritual required it.
But as I looked back at the window, I felt the sickening tremor of affection.
Cain didn’t know how close we had grown.
He didn’t know I found myself laughing at her stupid, innocent jokes, or that I caught myself staring at her when I shouldn’t have.
He certainly didn’t know I watched her through her bedroom window at night sometimes.
She reminded me of a little angel being courted by two demons.
I still didn’t know if I believed the crap Cain talks about.
The Ritual. The Pact. It feels like an addiction, some type of sick fantasy he’s conjured up in his twisted mind.
He hasn’t been the same since just before we moved here.
The night I found him covered in blood, crying in his room.
That was the last time I saw any humanity in him.
Now, he was a shell of his former self and now flawlessly embodies the personality of a narcissistic, controlling psychopath.
“I know the agreement, Cain. And I know the date. June 14th. Her twenty-first birthday.”
I was her hero, her protector, and her greatest threat. I would have given her my heart—knowing all the while, we’d soon be devouring hers.