One (Count to Ten Book 1)

by Jane Blythe

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  One

  Jane Blythe

  Copyright © 2016 Jane Blythe

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, distributed, reverse engineered or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, including photocopying and recording, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented without permission in writing from the publisher.

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Bear Spots Publications

  Melbourne Australia

  bearspotspublications@gmail.com

  Paperback

  ISBN: 0992418070

  ISBN-13: 978-0992418076

  Cover designed by QDesigns

  I’d like to thank everyone who played a part in bringing this story to life. Particularly my mom who is always there to share her thoughts and opinions with me. My most amazing cover designer Amy Queau who makes my covers so much more amazing than I could ever have imagined! And my lovely editor Mitzi Carroll, and proofreader Marisa Nichols, for all their encouragement and for all the hard work they put into polishing my work.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  MAY 4th

  12:23 A.M.

  He felt so tightly on edge he was a little surprised he didn’t crack.

  Every nerve was aquiver; every part of his body tense and primed, ready to spring into action.

  Above him the sky was so clear and so black that the stars and the moon seemed as bright as the sun. The millions of tiny white diamonds, that as a child he had believed were the lights from the homes of the angels who lived in the sky, cast such a pretty glow that it was hard to reconcile it with his reason for being here.

  He could have looked up at the beautiful sky forever, but he had a job to do.

  It wasn’t every night that he stood in someone else’s front yard, ready to enter a quiet, peaceful home.

  Still, he was here for a reason and he wasn’t leaving until it was all taken care of.

  He crept quietly toward the front door, over a lawn that was in bad need of a mow and past flower beds that were in bad need of a trim; clearly, the people who lived here were not keen gardeners. He slipped in between two cars, another two were visible in the open garage, indicating that multiple drivers resided here.

  Reaching a hand out to the doorknob, he was frustrated to note that it trembled more than it should have considering the number of times he had done this. Focusing, he stilled the tremors and got himself in the zone.

  Easing open the door, he was met by the tranquil silence of a home at midnight. Taking note of his surroundings before proceeding, he was standing in a small entry hall with only a coat rack and a small table, atop which sat several sets of keys. From his position he could see into a cramped lounge and dining room, throughout which were scattered stacks of magazines, a pile of what he guessed was clean laundry, and a number of children’s toys. To his right was a study, which was impeccably tidy and organized, indicating at least one member of the family was a neat freak.

  Nothing and no one stirred within the dark shadows. It was hot inside, perhaps indicating a lack of air conditioner—or maybe a broken one. The carpet had once been nice but was now quite worn, same with the furniture and the wallpaper.

  Stepping inside, he felt his edginess intensify a hundredfold.

  Heading straight for the back of the house, he eased through another door and found himself in a messy kitchen—plates covered with food dotted the countertops, and someone's attempt at homemade cookies still littered the space around the oven. The kitchen opened onto a family room, and if the lounge and dining room had been untidy then this room looked like a bomb of clothes, toys, papers, shoes, books, magazines, and junk food wrappers had exploded inside it.

  Still there was not a sound or a movement.

  He climbed the stairs slowly—not knowing if one might creak—and sidestepped a pile of neatly folded clothing and some more toys. Reaching the top, he found himself at the end of a long hall. There were six doors—three on each side, all of which were closed—and unsurprisingly, the narrow space was cluttered with junk.

  Picking the first room on his right, he cautiously eased the door open and entered quietly. He found himself in a young woman’s bedroom where everything appeared to be in its place, and he wondered if this was the resident neat freak.

  As he took a step closer to the bed a sheath of moonlight spilled through the open window, illuminating an arm that hung over the edge of the bed. The skin on the arm was so pale it was almost translucent, and he could actually see the long thin blue veins snaking their way from wrist to elbow.

  Moving closer still, in the half-light he caught sight of something that made his own veins turn to ice. With a hand that still shook more than he’d have liked, he reached it slowly down toward the slender neck of the young woman lying tangled in the bedclothes.

  Realizing with a start that he was holding his breath, he forced himself to resume a normal breathing pattern, but couldn’t help letting out a strangled squawk when the woman’s lids popped open and he found himself looking into astounding white eyes.

  “Kate, call an ambulance,” Detective Xavier Montague screamed over his shoulder, one hand pressed to the young woman’s neck, the other to the heavily bleeding wound at her shoulder. “This one’s alive.”

  * * * * *

  6:35 A.M.

  Detective Xavier Montague couldn’t get those white eyes out of his head.

  They weren’t really white, of course, just such a pale shade of blue that they appeared almost colorless.

  “Xavier,” his partner, Kate Hannah, flicked him in the arm.

  “What?” he blinked and realized he’d been daydreaming.

  Rolling her dark blue eyes, she asked, “What are you daydreaming about?”

  Embarrassed, he didn’t want to tell his partner he’d been thinking about the young woman that had been rushed to the hospital. Sidestepping her question, he stepped back through the front door through which they’d crept just six hours ago. “Come on, let’s go back in.”

  Flicking her long blonde hair over her shoulder, Kate eyed him with delighted suspicion. “Did you meet someone? A girl someone?” she added.

  “No, I didn’t.” Xavier couldn’t quite help cringing at the thought of falling for someone new; he’d sort of sworn off women the last few years.

  “Xavier,” Kate groaned, “when are you going to move on? It’s been three years since Julia.”

  Xavier was well aware that it had been three years since everything had blown up with Julia. In fact, to be exact it had been three years, one month, eleven days and four hours since everything had blown up with Julia. He had messed up badly with her, and it had left him shaken.

  “I don’t want to have that conversation with you again,�
�� he told his partner sternly. Kate had been his partner for almost seven years and she had been right by his side when things fell apart. She had supported him, sat for hours listening to him while he tried to sort out his tangled web of emotions, but she believed that now he needed to move on and try to find happiness again.

  With a frustrated sigh, Kate let the topic drop and followed him back inside the Englewood house. “Did she say anything to you?”

  “No.” Once more, his thoughts dipped to Annabelle Englewood’s eerie white eyes. “She looked at me for just a moment and then she was gone.” Xavier didn’t think Annabelle had been conscious for more than about five seconds before she had slipped away again. “It doesn’t look like anything’s been disturbed down here,” he commented, taking in the messy downstairs rooms, looking even untidier in the light than they had in the dark.

  “Yeah, it looks like all the action was upstairs,” Kate agreed, beelining for the stairs.

  He followed her up the stairs, the coppery smell of blood growing stronger with each step, until it almost seemed to take on a life of its own as it invaded his nose and mouth.

  At the top, Diane Jolly, both his and Kate’s favorite crime scene tech, met them. To look at, Diane seemed nothing exceptional—fifty-years old, medium length gray hair, brown eyes, average height and build, dedicated to her job and her adopted family. But Diane Jolly had a wild side. She was a skydiving fanatic. She was always trying to convince people to go with her, but so far, she was yet to convince him. Xavier didn’t see how jumping out of a plane and plummeting towards earth could be considered fun.

  Today, Diane’s normally placid face was lined with shock. “It’s like a slaughterhouse up here.”

  Xavier hadn’t seen inside the other rooms yet, hadn’t seen the horror hidden behind the closed doors. Annabelle’s room had been the first he’d entered, and after he had realized she was alive he had remained by her side, ripping off his shirt to press to her shoulder in an attempt to stem the flow of blood.

  When the EMTs arrived, he’d helped them load her onto the stretcher, maneuver her down the stairs and into the waiting ambulance. By the time it had departed, the crime scene unit had shown up and started their painstakingly careful once-over of the crime scene.

  He and Kate had passed the time, until they were allowed back inside, by speaking with the neighbors who had lined the streets to see what all the hubbub was about. Garnering nothing useful, they had been debating going to the hospital to see if Annabelle was awake when Diane had called to say they could come in.

  “Did the girl say anything?” Diane asked.

  “No,” he explained again, “she just looked at me and then passed out.”

  “So we still don’t know why all of this,” Diane waved her hand at the hall, “happened.”

  He shook his head. “Where did it start?”

  “Parents’ room,” Diane replied. “End of the hall.”

  Traipsing down the corridor past the other bedrooms whose doors remained closed, Xavier steeled himself for what was to come. Even though he’d thought he was prepared, as Diane swung the door open he couldn’t quite contain a small moan of dismay at the scene before them.

  Working with the easy stuff first, he surveyed the room. It was like someone had drawn a line down the middle, one half was impeccably tidy with not a thing out of place and the other was strewn with clothes, shoes, handbags and makeup.

  Finally, unable to put it off any longer, Xavier let his eyes fall on the bed, where John and Kathy Englewood’s lifeless bodies lay. Deep gashes crossed their necks, nearly separating their heads from their bodies. Blood drenched the sheets and puddled around the bed. There were black holes where their eyes used to be. Inside their gaping mouths, they were missing most of their tongues. Their hands had been removed and were now resting on top of their owners’ stomachs, each cradling an eyeball, the tongues resting in between each pair.

  Xavier made himself look beyond the macabre sight for any details that might help explain what exactly had happened here. The covers didn’t appear to be mussed, and it didn’t look like either John or Kathy had struggled. It seemed as though they had been killed in their sleep. But how had whichever of them was killed second not awakened during the first murder?

  “Why did . . .?” he started to ask.

  “The other not wake up?” Diane finished. “I’m thinking they were drugged.”

  “There was food still on the bench in the kitchen,” Xavier remembered from their earlier trek through the house.

  “Already collected,” Diane nodded.

  “You think it started in here?” Kate asked.

  “Looks like it,” Diane confirmed. “Bloody footprints lead out of this room but not into it.”

  “Who was next?” he asked.

  “Oldest son would be my guess,” Diane headed for the door.

  Following the trail of smudgy footprints out the door of John and Kathy’s room, the three walked into the one next door where a similar scene met them. Twenty-year-old Paul Englewood, the spitting image of his father, lay in his bed, killed just as his parents had been by a slice across his throat. Once again the eyes, tongue, and hands had been removed and left arranged in the same way.

  The young man looked in top physical condition, but once again, there were no signs of a struggle, so Xavier decided it was a safe assumption for the moment that the family had been drugged. This added a definite aspect of planning and forethought.

  “The footprints lead to Julian’s room,” Diane spoke softly.

  Not really wanting to see another copy of this room, Xavier reluctantly followed the bloody trail once again, feeling like he was trapped in a sinister version of The Wizard of Oz’s follow the yellow brick road. The room across the hall belonged to seventeen-year-old Julian and, as expected, was where the boy had met the same grim fate.

  Barring Annabelle’s room and the bathroom, that left just one other.

  One that Xavier couldn’t bear to ask about. For the last room belonged to a little girl aged just seven years old.

  Meeting his eye, Kate gave a single nod. They'd worked together long enough to read each other, and right now his partner’s face confirmed that the little girl had been murdered and mutilated just like the rest of her family.

  On autopilot, his feet began walking toward the last closed door. Almost against his will, his hand found the handle and turned, leading them all into a world of pink. The walls were bright pink, stenciled with pictures of ballerinas. The curtains, too, were pink, although a paler shade this time and one that matched the carpet. A white desk contained a Barbie laptop, and a stack of books whose covers were graced by ballerinas and princesses. Toys spilled out all over the room. The toy box was open, and the shelves were crammed almost to the point of overflowing. The closet had been left wide open, showcasing a range of little girl outfits.

  On the bed by the window rested the tiny body. Her hair was still in braids, and in her open, tongueless, mouth he could see that her two front teeth were missing. Her small hands were clutching the eyeballs.

  The sight literally brought tears to his eyes to think that anybody could do this to an innocent, defenseless, little child.

  Absently, he turned away from Katherine Englewood and headed out of her bedroom door and into the room opposite. Annabelle’s room. The twenty-three year-old was the only survivor of this carnage.

  “What would possess her to do this?” Xavier asked at last to no one in particular. “What would possess someone to slaughter their entire family in such a horrible way and then attempt to take their own life?”

  * * * * *

  4:41 P.M.

  “Well, it looks like a pretty open-and-shut case,” Xavier told his boss, Lieutenant Robert Hollow. “There was no evidence of a break in.”

  “No broken windows, nothing to show the locks had been picked, and the door was locked from the inside,” Kate elaborated, pulling her blonde locks into a neat ponytail.

 
“Right,” he shot a small frown his partner’s way; he hated it when she interrupted him. “At the moment, all the evidence points to Annabelle Englewood slaughtering her family and then attempting suicide.” The picture in his head of Annabelle’s white eyes had been replaced by one of her little sister’s empty black holes, and he felt a white hot rage bubble up inside him.

  “So how did Annabelle Englewood manage to slaughter her whole family without any of them waking?” Rob’s bushy eyebrows were wagging madly.

  “We think that she drugged them,” he explained. “We’re just waiting for Diane to confirm whether the leftovers from the kitchen contain traces of drugs.”

  “So, they eat dinner,” Rob mused aloud as he walked himself through the most likely scenario. “Everyone feels tired, so they all head to bed. You don’t think they would have thought that odd? That all of them were suddenly tired after eating?”

  “Kid in the house,” Xavier suggested, his sisters and brothers all had houses full of kids and various colds and bugs were always working their way through the family. “They’re like magnets for colds and flus. They probably assumed Katherine had picked up a virus and passed it on to the rest of them.”

  “Okay,” Rob nodded, “so they all head off to bed assuming they’re coming down with the flu. Then, when they’re all asleep, Annabelle grabs a knife from the kitchen and heads from room to room slitting her parents’ and siblings’ necks, cutting off their hands, gouging out their eyes, and slicing off their tongues.”

  Picturing the bloody bedrooms once more, Annabelle must be one messed up young woman to commit such vicious murders. Again, an image of her white eyes formed in his head, and determinedly he pushed it away.

  “Bloody footprints all over the place, leading from one room to the other,” Kate was saying. “Did you see blood on her feet, Xavier?”

  “I’m not . . .” he trailed off, about to say he hadn’t been sure but then a flicker of memory spurted into his mind. As he’d held his shirt pressed to Annabelle’s shoulder the wait for the ambulance had seemed like an eternity. He hadn’t moved her from the bed, not wanting to risk causing any more damage, but as he’d been helping the EMT’s shift her to the stretcher, he had seen blood smeared on her feet.