«Me too, Jack. Me too. I’m hoping the matter I’m busy with won’t take long.»
«You’re a capable young woman, so I’m sure you’ll do better than you think.» Jack chuckled.
«I missed this.» Rox sighed. «Thank you. And good night.»
«Good night, kiddo. See you soon.»
«Yeah. Bye.» the woman hung up, grasping at her head.
She was so tired from the long road and her investigations that took her all over the country. And though she found something she was good at, every new job brought her some sort of an undeniable feeling of an impending doom hovering ahead.
Rox looked at the first ever scar she received. The only one on her body associated with a good memory.
Her left palm held a small double scar of a very old injury, from when she was a child.
She never really had memories of her childhood, but she could recall the time she was about five or six years old. She remembered the day vividly, when she tripped and fell in the yard, piercing her hand on a rusty nail.
It was a fine day, sunny and warm, with the soft wind blowing quietly and making the trees all around rustle and creak. The yard wasn’t fenced – they lived in a forest, surrounded by nature – and Rox was running around playing ball, while her mother was busy sewing something on the patio.
But somewhere along the run Rox felt her ankle twisting from catching onto a branch she didn’t notice. Falling down, the girl didn’t even scream, although her palm landed on a small piece of wood, pierced by a rusty old nail. Rox still remembered how she got up silently, clutching her aching hand and looking at the blood dripping down to the ground.
She was a strange kid, never crying when hurt, but her mother always knew if something wasn’t right. when Rox turned to her mother – a slim, small woman with beautiful blonde hair and blue eyes – ran up, helping the girl to the kitchen. Being a nurse, the woman cleaned the wound before bandaging her hand.
Rox still remembered the warmth of her hands and the gentle touch, while she was taking care of the wound.
While her mother was alive, everything seemed to be good and tolerable, even though three older brothers kept bullying her every chance they got. Her mother protected her as much as she could, but whenever she was at work, Rox would get new bruises from the punches her brothers threw at her for the smallest reasons.
When Rox turned twelve, her mother suddenly fell ill and soon passed away. Rox still remembered the feeling of helplessness, hearing how her mother cried only a week before she died. Cancer was brutal and inoperable, claiming the life of the woman swiftly. Even though they seemed to be fine money-wise – the treatment was too late to be administered to save the life that meant so much.
Rox closed her eyes and felt a sigh escaping her lips. After her mother was buried on the cemetery, the family dynamic switched drastically. It wasn’t subtle at all – one night her father got blackout drunk, which was so unlike him. And her brothers used this, by cornering her in the shed, when she was busy putting the last of her mother’s stuff away.
That day she was raped for the first time.
If she knew then what she knew now – she might have had some kind of a fight to protect herself. But back then she was a scrawny girl who was grieving her mother’s passing.
Rox opened her eyes and grasped her wrist, where another scar tainted her skin. The restraints her brothers used to incapacitate her cut deep into the flesh. If that would have been an isolated incident, then, maybe, the scars wouldn’t be so prominent. But she suffered from her family’s abuse for three long years.
Her father beat her whenever she felt sick or weak, forcing her to take over all the household chores her mother used to do. And when he would be out from drinking all day, her three brothers would find a moment to catch her off-guard again.
Sometimes she managed to hide from them. Sometimes – they found her to do as they pleased.
The first time she saw their faces twisting and changing, she thought it was her mind playing tricks on her, making their features animalistic, demon-like. For a bit she even thought she was losing grasp at reality.
If she would have been able to go to school, maybe she would have been able to speak to a psychiatrist or a teacher about her troubles, but since her father pulled her from school to keep things done around the house, she wasn’t able to do any of that. And the pure horror she felt from threats her brothers threw at her made her fearful to run anywhere.
The day she turned sixteen was another harsh memory burned into her mind. Because it was that very day she got other scars that now covered most of her body.
Rox walked over to the bed and lied down, unable to shake off the flow of horrific memories that flooded her mind.
A bright flash appeared from behind the curtains, followed by the low, heavy rumble of thunder.
That night there was no rain – just the dry storm with flashes of lightning overhead and the thunder growling in the skies above. Rox was almost asleep by the time when she heard her father returning home much later than usual. Hunkered in the attic, the girl couldn’t hear him conversing with his sons, but the new, unfamiliar sound made her jump up from the dirty, dust-filled old matrass and crawl down to the second floor staircase.
It was a scream – a crying she knew to be not belonging inside their house.
A child, an infant somehow made its way inside, and the sound of the baby wailing filled Rox with horror – whatever her family was plotting, it wouldn’t be good. She sneaked down unseen and unheard, only to see her father downing a tablespoon of whiskey into the baby’s throat.
The child coughed, crying, but soon seemed to calm down.
The man left the bundle on the armchair, walking off into the deep dark hollow of their basement, where the three boys were doing something – by the sounds of it, clearing the floor out from the boxes and other stuff that was stored there for years on end.
Rox approached the child and found it sleeping.
Feeling unsettled, she went to see what was happening in the basement.
It was then she saw her whole family looking unlike themselves. Everything about them was different – the skin cracked, fingers elongates and crooked, eyes pitch black and filled with an undeniable hatred. Her father turned in the candle-lit basement and Rox saw his features sharp, demonic and dark.
Her brothers, busy with drawing something on the cement floor, looked no different – changed and freakish, growling something indistinguishable under their breaths, as if chanting a terrible curse in some unknown language. She had already seen them like that every time they tormented her. But only now she felt like everything was starting to make sense.
Rox saw the curved blade appearing in her father’s hand and immediately understood that the baby was in grave danger. Whatever fear she had before retreated behind the thought that she needed to protect the infant and save it from her family, no matter the cost.
She hurried back to the child, but heard heavy footsteps behind. When she picked the baby up – now sleeping soundly in her arms – she saw her father approaching with a grimace of hate on his inhuman face.
«Give her back, you whore!» he roared.
And when Rox darted to the door, she felt something bursting behind. A strange, sulfuric smell filled her nostrils, and the wooden floor immediately caught fire, but a moment later something hit her back, making her stumble from the immense pain. She pressed the baby to her chest, covering it with her body, and felt another slash hitting her, making her fall down onto her knees.
Hot blood poured down her skin, but she didn’t let go of the child, silently crying and hoping someone would help.
Alas,