by Ryan Casey
I wasn’t covered in cold sweat like the night before. I wasn’t gasping for air, or anything dramatic like that.
I was simply sitting there, breathing normally.
Light was peeking through the window.
I looked at it for a few seconds. It didn’t look exactly like the window in my dreams, but it was close enough.
I turned to my side. Sarah was lying there. She was still lightly snoring. I didn’t know what time it was, but Sarah usually woke up really early, so I figured it couldn’t be that late. I’d leave her to sleep.
But something was bothering me. Something didn’t feel right.
I couldn’t explain it. All I could describe it as was that feeling you sometimes get when you wake up and know you have something coming up today but you can’t quite put your finger on what exactly it is.
This felt like that. Exactly like that.
Only I didn’t know what I was waiting for.
I got out of bed. Walked across the cold, hard floor. I made my way over to the bedroom door, opened it slowly.
When I looked down the hallway, nothing was amiss.
I swallowed a lump in my throat when I saw Bobby’s door. The padlock was still on it. Of course it was. Why had I questioned that at all?
I felt guilty about locking my son in his room. Which father wouldn’t?
But I’d done it for his own safety, just while things were on the ropey side.
Besides. I hadn’t heard him during the night. I had to assume everything was okay.
I walked down the corridor, which was totally silent. I listened to my footsteps echoing and I remembered why I used to enjoy getting up so early. I could hear the birds singing in the background. I imagined the smell of bacon cooking, the sizzling of a frying pan, and all of it made me salivate.
I walked over to the kitchen door.
And that was when I saw it.
The kitchen was empty.
Cupboards were open.
Food had been taken.
Supplies had been stolen.
My heart raced. I searched around, unable to understand what I was looking at, what I was seeing. How had this happened? How had we slept through this, all of us?
I raced around the kitchen desperately searching for some sign that this wasn’t real, that it had to be some kind of dream.
But no.
The place had been ransacked.
Very carefully, but ransacked nonetheless.
I rushed out of the kitchen. I knew I should shout. I should wake the others up. But I couldn’t. I was just too focused on getting to the bottom of this, to finding out how far this went.
I rushed outside. The cool air brushed my face, the sun kissed my skin, but all of it combined into a sickly concoction as I rushed across the grass towards the barn.
When I saw the state of the barn, my body went weak.
There were no animals alive in there. Some of them were gone, no doubt about that. Hens, sheep and cows, all taken away.
Those that remained were dead.
Their throats slit.
I felt my body shake as the reality of the situation dawned on me. We’d been attacked. This was an act of conflict, make no mistake about it.
I had to get the others.
I had to tell them what was going on.
We had to react.
I rushed back to the farmhouse. I had to alert the others. I had to let them know what was going on, what I’d found.
I ran inside. “Sarah. Peter. Suzy. Wake up. There’s—there’s something…”
I stopped, then.
I wasn’t sure why it caught my eye. I wasn’t sure why I noticed it.
But I found myself looking at the lock on Bobby’s door.
I found myself feeling the dread I’d experienced in my dream.
Seeing his blood-soaked body claw its way across the window.
Smash through the glass.
Fear in his eyes.
I heard shuffling from the other rooms as people woke. I reached into my pocket. Put the key into the padlock. Turned that key.
And I heard the voice in my head telling me not to go in there, screaming at me to back away, to stay away, because this was the thing I’d been missing; this was the thing that didn’t feel right.
But, heart racing, I pulled away the padlock.
And as Peter and Suzy emerged from their bedrooms, I opened Bobby’s door.
I saw him right away.
He was lying on his side.
He was so silent. So still. So peaceful, just as I’d left him last night.
Only there was something different.
His window was open.
There was blood on that window.
And Bobby wasn’t lying on his bed.
He was lying on the floor.
I staggered over to him, the feeling disappearing from my legs, the sounds and sensations all vanishing around me, the only thing that mattered lying there right opposite me.
Patches of blood all around him.
“Bobby,” I muttered. I rushed closer towards him. Sickness taking over my body. Dread suffocating me. Hands on my shoulder, people telling me to step back, to come away.
But I kept on going.
I fell to my knees.
“Bobby,” I said. “Please.”
I stroked his hair.
I held his cold little hand.
But there was no denying what I was looking at.
There was no denying what I’d found.
And when I heard Sarah rush to the bedroom and let out a hysterical wail, I knew for certain that what I was seeing was real.
My son.
My son was dead.
Bobby was dead.
Chapter Ten
I stood over my son’s grave and didn’t feel anything.
It was the evening of the day it happened. The day everything changed. The day my life broke apart more than it had ever done before. There had been times in my past where things had challenged me. Where I’d faced upset, disaster, grief. And I’d been through those things so many times that I didn’t think anything could ever hurt me anymore.
And I was right about that, in a way. Nothing could hurt me.
Because what I was experiencing now wasn’t hurt.
It wasn’t pain.
It was just sheer numbness, and it was devastating.
Thunder rumbled overhead. Rain fell down, muddying the ground. I had a spade in my hand. I looked down into the grave and I tried to convince myself this was just a dream. That none of this was real. After all, it didn’t feel much different to the dream I’d had the last few nights.
That window.
The hand at the glass.
Bobby’s body, covered in blood.
I looked to my side and saw Sarah standing there. Her eyes were wide and her face was grey. I remembered the last time I’d seen her looking so distraught. It was when we’d got the news that our second child wasn’t going to make it through pregnancy. It’d been hell for both of us. Something I wasn’t sure we’d ever truly conquer, not really.
And it had been difficult. Nigh-on impossible.
But we’d found a way to stick together.
I wasn’t sure we were going to get through this.
I looked at the rest of the onlookers, too, all of them with grave expressions. Peter. Suzy. Will. Will was crying, and his mother was holding him, telling him everything was going to be okay, that she was so sorry. Peter just looked full of remorse, like none of this should have happened.
And it shouldn’t.
It really shouldn’t.
As it rained down on the grave, I thought of the day Bobby had been born. Full head of hair, right from day one. He’d always had a smile on his face. Never cried in the night. Never complained. An absolute dream of a baby, and the most well-behaved kid I could ever have hoped for.
And sure. Sometimes I’d grilled him for his sensitivity. And I regretted that now. I regretted that more than anything.
&nb
sp; But that regret just welled up inside me.
It built up, sparked a bitter taste in my mouth.
It made me want to react.
It made me want vengeance.
I thought of all the positivity and happiness my boy brought to Sarah and my life as I looked down at the little mound in the earth. The way he’d ask such inquisitive questions. The interest he’d show about the homestead. The love he displayed towards the animals. He was too good for this world. Far too good for this world.
But that didn’t make what had happened any easier to swallow.
I heard my wife crying and I wanted to put an arm around her. I wanted to reassure her that I was here. That we were going to get through this. That we were going to be okay, because we had each other, and we always pulled through no matter what.
But I couldn’t.
I was numb.
Numb to the core.
All I could do was stare at my boy and wish that things were different.
I felt a hand on my back, then. I should’ve flinched. Probably would’ve done usually. But this time I just let it rest there.
When I looked around, I saw that it was Peter.
“Come on,” he said, looking at me with morose eyes. “It’s time.”
I looked back down at my son.
Then I looked at the shovel.
I knew he was right.
I knew it was time to let go.
But no.
I dropped the shovel.
Then I turned away and I started walking.
“Alex?”
I heard the voices calling for me as I walked off into the rain. I heard the shouts. The cries. The calls for me to return.
But I couldn’t do anything other than walk away.
I couldn’t bury my son.
There was only one thing I could do.
Walk away into the woods.
Walk away from everyone.
Walk away from everything.
Chapter Eleven
I sat against the tree and listened to the thunder rumbling overhead.
The darkness was soothing. I felt relieved to be inside it, wrapped up in it, like a warm blanket. Sometimes darkness was discomforting. It was the thing of nightmares, the spectre of bad dreams. But right now it was kind to me, because it was the only place I wanted to be.
I didn’t need other people around.
I just wanted to be alone.
The silence wasn’t my enemy right now. It was my friend once again.
The leaves of the trees made a rustling sound as the wind brushed against them. The ground beneath me was damp as I sat here, rested against the tree. Above, every once in a while, lightning flashed and illuminated the sky, and the rain fell heavier. I was soaking wet, right to the bone. But I didn’t care.
That numbness was still inside me.
And I knew the only way to fight that numbness was to be here, to be alone.
That was the only thing that could possibly make it feel any better.
I knew I was wrong to walk away from my son while on the cusp of burying his body. But I’d watched too many people die in my life for me to handle it anymore. It was like I was a shaken bottle of Coca-Cola, getting ready to burst all these years, again and again… and finally someone had yanked off the lid and everything had come pouring out.
I didn’t want to be the father who walked away from his family in its hour of greatest need.
But it was like I didn’t know how to do anything else anymore.
I swallowed a lump in my throat. Every few seconds, the reality hit me of what had happened. I couldn’t cry. That was the hardest part. I hadn’t even shed a tear. I’d heard Sarah’s wail when she’d first seen Bobby’s body. I’d even seen Suzy crying, and tears welling up in Peter’s eyes.
But I hadn’t been able to.
Instead, I’d been thinking about how it must’ve happened.
About whether my son knew what was happening to him.
About whether he’d suffered.
And about how those who had taken my son away from me were going to suffer.
Suffering. My life had been built on it. Right when I was a kid I’d been abused. I was beaten by my father, a drunk idiot who I didn’t want to even remember a thing about. I went through all kinds of pain, all kinds of things that a kid shouldn’t have to go through.
But somehow I’d come out of the other end of all that. I’d found myself in the care of nice people, David and Harriet. They’d raised me as their own. I’d called them Mum and Dad. Everything was good in life. And sure, I was in therapy for my demons every now and then, but it really felt like there was a positive outcome for poor little Alex for the first time in my miserable life.
And then they died. Right before my graduation.
They never got to see me in my graduation cap.
They never got to be proud of me for my greatest achievement.
I thought of Sarah, then. The happiness she’d brought to my life, unmatched by anything else. We’d had our moments together. Beautiful moments that I’d hold with me for the rest of my life.
But we’d had our sadness, too. We’d had our pain.
And it was on each other’s strength that we’d come through.
But this…
This…
I knew I’d shown my selfish side again by walking away from her. I knew that wasn’t the right or noble thing to do in any way. But it was the decision I’d made and I had to own it. I had to live with it.
I’d come so far in life. I’d even lived through a frigging EMP blast.
And still life was finding new ways to screw me.
Well not for long.
Not for long.
I looked up at the flashing lightning and I swallowed a lump in my throat.
Then, I stood up, took a deep breath, and I tensed my fists together.
The images of the faces of those men who’d come to our camp last night flooded my mind.
The guilt I felt about telling Bobby to stay in his room filled me with dread.
What if I’d just let him leave his room like he normally did?
Would he have seen those people coming?
Would we have been able to prevent what happened next?
And it all got worse when I thought of the last thing little Bobby had asked me.
“Can I sleep in yours and Mum’s bed tonight?”
I’d turned him down.
I’d looked him in the eyes and told him he couldn’t.
I was never going to get over that. I was never going to live that down.
But I could do something.
I looked at my hands. They were shaking. I realised the rest of my body was shaking, too.
Well let it shake.
I had to go home.
Because there was something I had to do.
I wiped the rain-soaked hair from my forehead. All the times I’d lost in the past, I hadn’t been able to do a thing about it.
But now I had a chance.
A chance to change things.
A chance to get even.
It might not bring Bobby back from the dead.
But it was going to bring some peace to me.
I looked up at the sky again as the lightning flashed and in its glow, I saw Bobby’s angelic little face.
And for the first time, I felt a tear roll down my cheek. It wasn’t rain. It was too warm for rain.
“I’m going to make this right,” I said, my voice quivering. “I’m going to make this all right.”
Then, in the midst of the storm, I began my walk back to the farm.
There was something I had to do.
Chapter Twelve
When I got back to the homestead, everyone was already asleep.
It was the middle of the night. I had no idea when, and I didn’t really have the energy or desire to even try finding out. The storm had receded, the rain long ago ceasing to fall. It seemed strange, being back at the farm and knowing that something s
o crucial to my existence here wasn’t here anymore. Someone I’d worked so hard to reunite myself with. Someone I’d done everything I’d done to try and keep them safe, to give them somewhere they could call home.
They were gone.
And I had to live with that.
The farm was silent as I walked through the grounds, past the barn. I could smell decay in the air, and I knew it was from the animals. I felt sorry for them. They were good animals. Not only that, but they provided us with the food and dairy we needed. They were a big part of what we had going here.
It was fast becoming clear that “what we had going here” now was nothing at all.
Everything was falling apart. And I didn’t know if anything could be done to change that.
I looked at the grave and I felt vomit work its way up my oesophagus, tasted its strong, acidic tang at the back of my throat. I didn’t want to even acknowledge who was in there. It was still a bitter pill to swallow, after all.
But I’d sat in the woods and I’d finally managed to cry.
Not a lot. Just a little. And that cry had given me some clarity. It had shown me a way forward. Given me a plan.
I pushed open the door to the farm and stepped inside the main hallway. The first door I saw was Bobby’s, on my right. And upon seeing it I was immediately reminded of all the memories of that crazy night last night. Bobby wanting to stay in mine and Sarah’s bed. Me telling him not to step outside, and that he couldn’t stay in our bed.
Padlocking his door.
And what had happened because someone had come in through that window.
I closed my eyes and gripped the bridge of my nose, unable to walk a step further.
I’d done this.
I’d helped contribute to my son’s death.
If I’d just let him go outside and watch the stars like he always did, maybe he could’ve alerted us.
If I’d stayed out on guard, maybe things would’ve been different.
If I’d let him sleep with Sarah and me, maybe none of this would’ve happened at all.
I took a few sharp, deep breaths, tears welling in my eyes again. I was getting caught up in thought, and that wasn’t something I could afford to do right now. No. I had to focus. Focus on the task at hand.
It might not be an easy thing to do. It might come across as detached. But I had to focus because focusing was what was going to change everything.