“The bad man I dreamed about last night—he hurt a lady.”
“Don’t say things like that!” Serenity snapped. Elizabeth’s face crumpled and Serenity tried to backtrack. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. But you scare Mommy when you say things like that. You just had a bad dream last night. The man in your dream wasn’t real.”
“I’m sorry, Mommy.”
Guilt swamped her. She’d never want to make Elizabeth feel bad for telling her what she knew.
“Don’t be sorry, honey. You haven’t got anything to be sorry about. Mommy’s just tired. I didn’t mean to shout.”
Again, Serenity forced a bright smile; trying to shatter the uncomfortable tension in the room. She couldn’t stand to see that expression on Elizabeth’s face, the one that said ‘what’s wrong with me?’ It broke Serenity’s heart.
“Come on!” she said again. “We need to get ready or we’re going to be late.”
She went behind Elizabeth’s stool and tickled her under the ribs. Elizabeth squealed with delight, squirming under Serenity’s hands.
“Hey!” The girl exclaimed in pretend protest. But within a moment Elizabeth laughed at her mother, her normal, happy self. For Serenity, things weren’t so easily forgotten. A sense of doom hung over her, smothering her heart like a thick, acrid fog.
Elizabeth ran off to her room to pull on the clothes Serenity laid out for her first thing that morning.
“Do you want me to help?” Serenity called.
“I can do it myself,” the little voice answered and Serenity smiled properly for the first time that morning. Elizabeth wanted to do everything by herself, even if it meant putting both legs in one pant hole and her sweater on back to front.
A few minutes later, as Serenity cleared away the breakfast dishes, Elizabeth reappeared with, miraculously, all her clothes on the right way round.
“Ta-da!” Elizabeth said, spinning in a circle, her arms outstretched. “I did it.
Serenity clapped her hands. “And you look beautiful. When did you get so grown-up?”
As Elizabeth beamed with pride, Serenity wondered if it was possible to love another person more than she loved her daughter.
Elizabeth’s preschool was only a few blocks away, easily within walking distance. The little girl ran ahead of Serenity, her small backpack bouncing on her back.
“Don’t run too far,” Serenity called out to her.
They reached the gates of the preschool. Elizabeth ran into the classroom, barely giving her mother a backward glance.
Serenity jumped on a bus to the city, to the office building where she now worked. The office wasn’t far from her old job, but even passing the place made her feel physically sick. She found the memories overwhelming and tried to avoid the area as much as possible.
Heading into work, she sat down at her desk and settled down for what would be a busy day. She’d started working at the firm as a temp, but the boss liked her work so much, he’d kept her permanently. It had been a big step for Serenity; leaving Elizabeth and integrating back into the work place. But she had surprised herself. She discovered how much she could get done without the distraction of wondering if her husband intended on keeping his threat of ‘showing her his fist’ when she got home, or without the constant pain she’d been in back then. Within a year, she’d been promoted to the boss’s personal assistant and now he depended on her to run his day. It wasn’t the job dreams were made of, but the position paid surprisingly well and her boss understood enough to let her work flexible hours should Elizabeth get sick or her childcare let her down. Serenity couldn’t ask for much more.
Serenity tried to settle down at her desk for the day. Despite the numerous telephone calls she needed to make and the reports she still had to write, she struggled to concentrate.
How had Elizabeth known about that poor girl being murdered? Had she snuck into the kitchen and seen the front page of the paper? But Elizabeth didn’t have the ability to read the words—her reading standards didn’t reach much beyond recognizing her own name. Perhaps Elizabeth switched on the small portable television on the kitchen counter and had seen the report on the news.
She wanted to believe either explanation; but Elizabeth had been sound asleep when she got up herself, and she’d only left the kitchen to grab the paper off the front step.
She could pretend all she liked—Elizabeth wasn’t a normal child.
Serenity only ever tried to give her daughter a normal, stable life; desperately hoping to enforce normality upon her. But she couldn’t change Elizabeth’s genes.
During her daughter’s birth, Serenity had been absolutely terrified. She hadn’t known what was going to happen to her baby. Thank God, Elizabeth turned out to be perfectly normal and healthy, and Serenity allowed herself to relax into motherhood.
But she’d never been able to completely relax. Constantly alert for things differentiating Elizabeth from other children, she worried every single day her daughter would change.
Elizabeth.
Her daughter’s name filled her heart with love.
Serenity hated her own name—her drunken mother’s permanent reminder of her past. An ironic memento—nothing about Serenity’s life had been serene. From the antics of her drug-addled, hippie mother, to her abusive stepfather, to her even more abusive husband.
When the time came to name her own daughter, she chose what she always wanted for herself: something traditional, solid and steadfast. Serenity wanted Elizabeth to have everything she never had. She wanted her to always feel loved, wanted, and like she was the most important person in the world. She never wanted her daughter to grow up as she did: always the outsider, the odd-one out, filled with the certainty that there was something wrong with her.
Her own past made keeping such a huge secret from Elizabeth—the secret of her father’s identity—hard. Serenity had never known her own father and she worried about the cycle of this part of her childhood.
Every day, she thought today would be the day she’d tell her daughter. But she never seemed to find the words. The secret played on her mind and sat on the tip of her tongue, yet she never forced the words out.
Could she really tell her daughter the truth? Elizabeth would never understand. Serenity barely understood herself; how could she ask the same from a four year old?
The day Elizabeth asked her who her daddy was would be when Serenity told her the truth. Serenity made this promise to herself eighteen months ago and still held the secret tight inside, eating away at her. Every day she waited with baited breath, expecting Elizabeth to say something, but she didn’t.
The strangeness of her daughter’s silence didn’t go unnoticed by Serenity. Elizabeth understood James was Noah’s daddy, yet she never asked about her own. Serenity put it down to her age—still so young—yet part of her wondered if Elizabeth picked up on Serenity’s reluctance to talk.
Serenity only wanted her daughter to lead a normal, happy life; yet she had something woven so deep into who she was and it threatened the chance of ‘normal’ ever happening.
That thought broke Serenity’s heart.
Elizabeth was strong, a fighter. Serenity suffered five miscarriages before having Elizabeth and thought she would never be a mother. Elizabeth had been her little miracle.
She wondered how much of Elizabeth surviving, where her other babies had died, was down to her genetic make-up. Yet to think about Elizabeth’s lineage terrified Serenity.
How could you love someone so utterly, so completely, and yet fear a part of them so intrinsic to making them who they were?
Though this was not the first time Serenity felt this way about someone. Of course it was different with your own child—she couldn’t even contemplate not loving Elizabeth—but hadn’t she also felt the same way about Elizabeth’s father?
Chapter Five
The lights and sounds of the city drew the creature like a magnet. The city was exciting and enticing, but those weren’t the only reasons it wante
d to get out of the forest. The more it fed, the more the pieces of its broken mind mended. The fog of confusion no longer surrounded it. The initial painful, jarring flashes of memory now took on fluidity. The constant agony burning through its flesh finally subsided, though if it went too long without feeding the pain returned with renewed force.
Of course, it did not only kill to help the pain or to feed. The creature rejoiced in its new strength, taking pleasure in the terror and pain it created. Human matters no longer concerned it and it had no worries about reprisal. Strong and fearless, it could do whatever it wanted.
Over time it edged closer and closer to the city. Waiting and preparing for the time that would come soon—for the time to head back into the city.
The creature was searching for something.
It remembered things now about its past life—it used to be human, a man—and it searched for a certain woman. It longed to be near her again, but no love lingered in its still heart. Memories of her brought only fury, pain and anger. It wanted to curl up its fists and pound them into the woman’s soft flesh. Draw its lips back from its monstrous teeth and bite… and bite… and bite.
The time to find her had arrived.
The creature moved with long, lolloping strides; an uneasy grace to anyone who may be unlucky enough to catch sight of it. To a human, the thing appeared to be an unfortunate specimen of their own kind. With its ravaged face and mangled clothing, it passed for a down-and-out bum or, possibly, an escapee from a lunatic asylum. The expression on the thing’s face made people give it a wide berth, but should they get close enough, they noticed the smell. After years beneath the ground, the creature had taken on the scent of the dead.
It stepped from the forest onto a road. The tarmac felt strange beneath its bare feet, rough and hard, but it would get used to the new sensations. This journey would be an excess of new experiences; at first it would take things slowly in order not to damage its fragile mind.
The thing followed the road, heading toward those ever tempting city lights. The metropolis held the promise of so much death. No longer would it need to wait for an unfortunate victim to stumble across its path—humans were everywhere. It would have its pick of humanity—a living, breathing buffet.
A car blared past and it cringed at the sudden noise and speed.
Anger toward itself rose within. The creature did not allow itself the emotion of fear; fear was for the weak.
Fear was for the hunted.
It had periods of speed, moving faster than its human counterparts, followed by episodes of walking, its head tucked between its shoulders. People it encountered either crossed the street before they reached him or shot him looks of disgust and revulsion.
The creature laughed inside. If only they realized what it imagined doing to them? If it showed them what it was capable of, they would run in terror. It had lived beyond them, returning from a place they couldn’t even comprehend. They would scream in horror as it fed upon them, still unable to believe what was happening to them.
It believed it had been blessed for a reason; brought back for a purpose it intended on fulfilling.
The city grew busier—the traffic heavier around the creature, their headlights blinding.
Though night, people still walked the streets. It could go out in the light if it wanted, the sun did not cause any harm, but its natural intuition was to stay in darkness.
Following its instincts, it traveled across the city, not checking street signs or road maps. It knew where it was heading.
Not knowing how much time had passed since last being here—it had no real concept of time—it found itself standing outside of a small duplex building. A small yard was out front, a window box in each window.
Home.
With the warm night, a bedroom window had been left open. Luck or perhaps simply fate? It lowered to a crouch and leapt, springing to the second floor with no more effort than a cat leaping to a windowsill. The creature wanted to turn around and roar at the world, make them feast upon its power, the sheer beauty and majesty of what it had become. But it restrained itself. To kill her quickly would be too easy. No, it planned to watch and learn before making her suffer.
The place smelled different.
Narrowing its eyes, it deftly stepped off the windowsill and into the room.
In the dark, two figures lay beneath the sheets, still and sleeping. The steady rise and fall of their deep breathing and the slow thu-thump of their heartbeats filled the room. One male, the other female.
So the bitch had found herself a mate.
The thing bristled with anticipation, with longing. It needed all of its resolve not to kill her here and now.
It walked slowly to the side of the bed where she lay sleeping. A thin drool of saliva ran from its mouth and down the side of its face. It wiped the dribble away with one filthy hand, its nails black and encrusted with dirt.
Something wasn’t right.
The thing narrowed its eyes again and bent closer. The woman sensed something was wrong and moaned in her sleep, twisting her head against her pillow. Dark hair fell back from her face, caught beneath her cheek.
This woman wasn’t her.
A low moan of anger started deep in its chest. Much older, the woman looked nothing like the one he sought.
The moan turned into a growl and the noise woke the humans. The male bolted up in bed, fumbling for the bedside light. The woman groaned and put her arm across her face, trying to block out the horrific smell she had woken to.
“What the fuck…” It heard the male’s voice.
The man’s fingers finally flicked the switch, flooding the room with light.
Horror filled their faces as they both took in what stood above them. The woman screamed; a high-pitched shriek loud enough to alert the whole neighborhood.
The creature just smiled, revealing the teeth responsible for killing so many before them.
Then it spoke for the first time since returning.
“Where… is… the… woman… who… lived… here?” Its tone rasped from lack of use, like the voice of a tracheotomy patient.
Hope dawned in their eyes; hope that their cooperation would result in them being spared. They had no idea that where the creature was concerned, hope did not exist.
The man spoke. “An elderly couple used to live here,” he stumbled over his words, stuttering from nerves. “Do you mean that woman? She left two years ago.”
Time meant nothing. It didn’t know how long it had been gone.
For the first time doubt crept in. Had it been buried for so long? Was it possible the woman it sought was the elderly woman? Had it been gone so long she may even have died?
No, not so much had changed. She was still alive. It sensed it.
“She… is… young… dark… hair. Her… name…” It searched the pits of its mind. “Serenity.”
The woman shot her husband a look of confusion and fear.
“Serenity?” she managed, obviously recognizing the name. “She owns this place. Why do you want…?”
It needed nothing more.
A hand shot out, grabbing the woman by the throat, strangling her words.
“Hey! Hey!” the man shouted, rearing back, his hands held up as though in surrender. “You leave her alone!”
The woman’s eyes bulged with fear and she made a strange clucking sound at the back of her throat. Her hands scraped at the ones holding her with no avail. Her tongue protruded from between her lips like a slab of meat.
The man leaped on the creature’s back, trying to pull it off, only to discover the muscles beneath its skin were as cold and hard as stone, and just as immovable.
It reared around with a snarl, drawing its foul lips back from its teeth. Staring the man in the eye, it gave a vicious smirk of satisfaction before twisting back around and leaning down, tearing a huge chunk out of the woman’s throat.
Shock flashed in her eyes.
Blood flooded from her, spilling dow
n her chest, soaking into the bedclothes beneath.
The man squealed and fell away. He landed on the floor and scrambled to the corner of the room. His eyes were locked on his butchered wife, watching as the light dimmed from her eyes and the monster, with the body of a man, crouched over her. The sounds of an animal feeding filled the room; sucking, tearing, chewing.
The man leaned to one side and wretched.
The creature turned to face the man, momentarily forgotten during the kill. Fresh blood coated the lower half of its face and, as it walked slowly toward the man, its next victim screamed in the same exact pitch as his wife’s.
Standing amongst the small crowd gathering on the opposite side of the street, Sebastian watched as two paramedics carried out a body on a stretcher. The people flanking him gossiped, their tone a hushed mixture of fear and horrified excitement. The crowd took a strange pleasure in what they witnessed, as though this terrible thing happening to someone else meant it less likely to happen to them.
Street lamps lit the street, casting an eerie light over the faces of the paramedics and those watching. A small group of police officers stood in front of the crowd, warning them to keep back.
Sebastian knew the stretcher didn’t carry Serenity’s body. The body remaining inside the house wasn’t hers either. He’d recognize the scent of her blood anywhere.
When he first arrived and saw the flashing blue lights of the emergency vehicles, dread seized him. He thought he’d been too late. After taking a moment to calm himself, he realized the blood on the air didn’t belong to Serenity.
Sebastian stuffed his hands in his pockets, tucked his head in and ducked away from the crowd.
His worst fears had come true. He needed no more convincing that the thing had once been Jackson and it was trying to find Serenity. Well, that made two of them now. Sebastian just needed to get to her first.
Jackson had become vicious and merciless; he hadn’t been much better human. Sebastian had seen the state of the poor woman in the forest and now another innocent couple had been slaughtered. If Serenity still lived here, she would be dead now. Only by luck was she still alive.
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