Emily Kenyon 01 - A Cold Dark Place

the eaves swooped low over the grassy field that zoomed up the hill from the driveway to the highway. He noticed that laundry had been hung that morning. It fluttered soaking in the smells of the country that his mother loved so much. The serenity of the scene was utterly at odds with the supposedly urgent request to get home. Somethings really wrong. Nick could feel panic rising.
    He went back inside and stood at the bottom of the honey fir planked stairway.
    “Mom?”
    There was no reason to be upstairs. There were only bedrooms on the second floor. With a visitor here, why would they be up there?
    Up he went, into a nightmare.
    Jenna found an old cotton painter’s drop cloth, and put it around Nick’s shoulders. Each word of his story sent a shiver from her neck to the base of her spine. Like shards of glass stabbing. Like ice. Nick was looking at her then, measuring the impact of his words, not sure if he was losing her or winning her over. What he had to say was nothing, however, compared with what he’d seen in his parents’ bedroom.
    “It was bad,” he whispered. “It wasn’t some movie set or anything like that, but I wanted it to be fake. To be like some big joke. But I knew that my mom and dad would never play a joke like that.”
    Jenna held him closer. Her heart ached for what he was about to disclose.
    “You’re going to be all right, Nick. You’re going to be fine. I’m here”
    He shot her a look that stopped her cold. He didn’t even have to say the words. She felt stupid. Of course, he wasn’t all right. How could he be?
    “I want to smoke,” he said.
    “Later. I can’t help you if I don’t know what happened”
    He drew in a deep breath and held it. He wished he didn’t have to breathe at all. Breathing meant living. He’d wished to God that he’d been dead, that he never seen what was in his parent’s bedroom.
    “Mom? Dad?”
    The room was dark and absolutely still. The blinds glowed orange from the daylight outside, but the light was out and Nick couldn’t see anything. He reached for the switch. The flash from an overhead bisque and brass fixture filled the room with creamy light … and red.
    The red, he knew with the visceral response that comes with complete fear was blood.
    Not this. No. No. Please.
    His mother was nude on the bed. Shed been bound with something on her legs and feet. His father; dressed, was beside her. A spray of blood spatter arced behind the bed. There was so much blood! He took each piece of the scene in like a Polaroid, not waiting to really see what he was viewing. Later the images would emerge from the fog of what he d seen. His father’s curly silver hair was caked in shiny whorls of blood. His mother’s skin was tissue white. Everything had been touched by the dark red color of blood.
    “Mom! Dad!” Nick lunged for the bed and tried to shake them into waking, though he knew they were dead. His father’s dark eyes stared blankly at the ceiling. His mother had doll eyes, too. Open, but seeing nothing at all. He was crying then. His hands were wet with blood and he spun around, as the reality of what he d seen sucked him deeper into terror. “Momma! Daddy!”
    On the floor, he saw afoot, a leg, and then the rest of his brother. Still. Lifeless like his parents. Nick started circling the front of the bed. He was a caged animal. The door was open, he could leave, of course, but he just kept circling. He needed to call 911. Call the police. But he was paralyzed by fear He called out, a wail of emotion, for his brother and his parents. Had Dad killed Mom, then Donny? Why? Nick felt his pocket for his cell phone, but it was gone. Must be in my backpack. Or the truck.
    Family pictures looked on from the dresser. Among them was a shot ofNick and Donny grinning in cutoffs and Grand Canyon T-shirts standing against the celebrated red rocks of Sedona, Arizona. His mom and dad’s wedding photo, his dad having to forever live down the white and powder blue tux that he d put on because he loved Peg so much. Mom with her medallion for winning the Tri-State Cat Fanciers show
    Blood spatter mottled the mirror. Nick caught a glimpse of his own horror, a face he almost didn’t recognize, so twisted in fear He turned away to go for the phone when a guttural sound called out from the bed. It was a plaintive cry, not quite human sounding. He wondered if Natasha had followed him upstairs.
    The noise was a gurgling sound, but it wasn’t the cat. It came from