Sweet Sleep (The Children of Ankh Book 1)

by Kim Cormack

  His eyes filled with tears, and he choked out, “Chloe … Kayn?”

  She lay in the fetal position on the floor. Her wet blonde hair matted with blood. She was naked; her swollen, severely beaten face was almost unrecognizable. One of her eyes appeared to be missing. Her one remaining eye seemed to be staring past him. Her fingers were clawed and outstretched from her body, as if in her final moments she had still been fighting, still willing her body to crawl away from the brutality which she’d succumbed to in the end. The towel rack had been ripped off the wall, and it lay on the blood soaked tile. It had either been used in her torture or perhaps she had ripped it off the wall to use as a weapon in her own defense. The blood and brain matter sprayed across the shower curtains, walls, and ceiling signified how hard she had fought for her own survival.

  Kevin knelt before her body in the blood. His mind tranquilized by shock. An unfamiliar voice in his mind kept repeating the words this is not Kayn … This is not Kayn. All of a sudden he felt a strange sensation. It was as though he had been sedated. He was in a trance like state. His body began to operate on autopilot. He could hear the rustling of the officers, the voices, the cries of horror and despair as though he were completely detached from the situation. This is not Kayn; you have to find Kayn his mind echoed again. He heard the agonizing cries of his father and brother.

  Someone clutched his shoulder. He heard a voice say, “Kevin.”

  His mind repeated again, this is not Kayn. Find her Kevin. She can still be saved. Snap out of it.

  “Kevin snap out of it,” his father shouted, as he dragged him away from the body and out of the blood.

  Kevin saw the carpet and started to come back to reality. The reasons why this was not Kayn began to create a list in his mind. He scrambled to his feet. His father pulled him into his arms.

  “It isn’t Kayn,” he stammered into his father’s chest. His father held him tighter. Once again he spoke into his father’s chest, “Kayn had a shower after track. This isn’t her.”

  His father replied, “I know you don’t want it to be.”

  Kevin heard his brother talking, “Matt’s at school … we were texting earlier today. He was going to a party tonight. I just texted him again, and told him to call me back. I also called and said it was an emergency.”

  Kevin pushed his father away to speak. “Kayn had a shower before we left school,” Kevin asserted loudly.

  “This is Chloe. It’s Chloe … not Kayn,” he said again while looking at his brother, his eyes pleading with him to agree.

  “I can prove it. Kayn has a crescent shaped birthmark behind her right ear. Chloe has one behind her left ear,” he pointed at the lifeless corpse on the floor.

  It was obvious neither his father nor his brother were going back in there.

  He said, “Why isn’t anyone looking for her? Everyone is just standing around. We have to keep looking. She’s still alive!”

  Clay said, “You saw her mother and now Chloe. You have to prepare …”

  Kevin’s Father cut Clay off midway through his speech. He nodded and said, “No … We have to go and find Kayn.”

  Kevin stammered, “She found somewhere to hide and she’s fast. You all know how fast she is. She would run; with everything she had she would run.” Kevin turned and ran into Officer Jenkins.

  Kevin recognized him. He had been to many family dinners. He’d been friends with Kayn’s dad since high school.

  “Son, you need to get outside. This is a crime scene,” Jenkins maintained with all of the authority he could muster.

  An officer stepped into the bedroom and announced, “We found Stan in the carport. It looks like he didn’t even make it into the house after he got home from work.”

  Kevin knew what they were all thinking. A Chloe stalker went nuts and massacred the whole family. They were assuming Kayn was already dead. They were looking for bodies now. They were counting bodies, and only one was unaccounted for. Kevin knew better. His soul whispered. She can still be saved.

  The officer who was standing in the doorway said, “We will find the other twin’s body. I am going to need to ask you three to come downstairs and answer a few more questions. We can have an officer drive you or escort you home after we are finished.”

  Kevin looked directly into Jenkins’ eyes. He said, “I’m not crazy. We are wasting time. I know Kayn’s alive. I don’t know how, but I know. We have to hurry. Kayn Brighton is not dead!” Officer Jenkins held his hand up towards the officer in the doorway and said, “Let’s go and find her.”

  Kevin didn’t know whether or not Jenkins really believed him, but he began to rally the troops Jenkins shouted out, “We have one girl still missing. One of the Brighton twins isn’t in the house.”

  Kevin descended the stairs, and he sensed that she wasn’t in the house. She would have tried to run. Kevin walked out the front door and began to walk around the side of the house and into the backyard. His body was moving on its own. He was on some kind of emotional autopilot.

  A policeman tossed off the panel to the crawl space beneath the house that had haphazardly been put back on. Kevin knew she wasn’t there even before the police could attempt to crawl inside.

  Kevin called, “She’s not in there; you’re wasting time. She wouldn’t have wanted to be backed into a corner.”

  Kevin thought, Kayn could run—she could run really fast. He glanced toward the opening to the trail, spotting something in the far corner of the backyard. The plastic bag with eggs his mom had given her was lying in the damp grass halfway across the lawn. “She’s in the trails,” he shouted. “Oh God, maybe she did get away. She knew these trails.” He was talking aloud this time and not really caring who heard him do it.

  His mind knew she wasn’t okay. He had accepted on some level the inevitable. His heart had to hope that maybe the possibility existed that she was injured, but not gone. She would have called him by now, if she had escaped. He was running and carrying on an argument inside of his head. They were enveloped in completely incapacitating darkness as they entered the brush to search through the overgrown bike trails. Kevin fumbled for his cell phone in his pocket to use it for a light, and then mid-stride he paused. He peered down at the cell phone and thought: I can’t believe I am this stupid.

  Kevin grabbed the police officer in front of him to get his attention. “I can call her phone! She had her cell phone on her. She pocket dialed me. That’s how we knew they were in trouble.”

  The officer got everyone’s attention; the crowd of officers hushed. In the darkness, they couldn’t see two feet in front of them, but maybe they could hear her phone. Why hadn’t he thought of this in the house? It would have saved so much time. He dialed her number, and everyone stood in hopeful silence. Kevin pressed the speakerphone setting on his cell phone. In the distance, they could hear her phone’s ringtone. It was an eerie muffled melody through the misty trails. They all ran toward the sound of the ring.

  His phone volume was so loud everyone could hear her voice. She said, “Hello,” then paused and said, “Hello, I can’t hear you. It’s a bad connection.”

  Everyone froze. She’d answered. She was alive.

  “Ha-ha, got you. I’m not able to get to the phone right now. Please leave a message after the beep.”

  Kevin had forgotten about that message.

  Everybody stood frozen in place. There was a split second of hope in everybody’s heart, decimated when they realized it was only a recording. The joke message had been hilarious the first time he’d heard it, and fallen for it completely, as he’d started talking to her, but it was horrible now.

  “Walk slowly and cautiously people. We need to find that phone. There should be a blinking message light. Look for the flashing light. We can call it one more time in a minute,” the officer that appeared to be in charge said.

  He knew there was no point in trying to call. The next unanswered call would go straight to her voice mail. It was so dark they could walk right by
her, if they were not extremely careful. He opened up his cell phone for the light. The trails were onyx with an eerie lacing of thick mist lingering just above the forest floor. Kevin was trying to walk the pathway through memory. They had heard the phone and he half hoped that she had just dropped her cell phone as she escaped. Then he saw a glimmer of light through the dense forest and began to walk gingerly toward it. The message light indicating her missed call signaled like a lighthouse beacon through the mist.

  “It’s over there,” someone yelled.

  “Kayn, can you hear us, Kayn?” the mix of voices beckoned.

  Kevin picked up the cell phone in his hand and stared at it. Kayn was nowhere to be seen. Come on Brighton where are you? Kevin passed the phone to Jenkins and felt defeated. The men were scouring the bushes.

  A voice yelled, “Hey, what’s going on? Can I help?” It was a man’s voice.

  “We are looking for a missing girl,” Jenkins hollered as he walked through the foliage toward the voice.

  The man pushed his way through the bushes at the back of his property to see the excitement on the trails. “Oh my God,” he choked, “Over here … she’s over here!”

  Kevin pushed through the bushes at the back of the property, the man stood with the crumpled, naked body of Kayn curled up in the fetal position at his feet. Kevin was frozen in place, his feet completely unable to move. The officers pushed by him. The eerie similarity to her twin sister’s lifeless body was more than he could bear. Kevin’s heart began to race, the dark violence of the night spun around him. He dropped to his knees trying desperately to catch his breath. She isn’t dead, she is not dead his mind repeated as if it would be the truth if only he believed.

  An emergency team pushed by him.

  He had never been overly religious, but he just shut his eyes and began to pray, “Don’t take her away from me. Please, I will do anything.”

  Then he heard someone yell, “We have a pulse, we have a pulse!”

  Chapter 3

  Cleansed in Chloe’s Blood

  Kevin looked at his brother. Clay kept staring at his cell phone. Clay would need to go to Matt; it would be horrible to hear this news from a random stranger. Clay had been leaving cryptic messages and texts on Matt’s cell phone for over an hour. They all knew Matt. He was probably blind hammered and had left his cell at his dorm room so he wouldn’t lose it when he went out partying.

  “I have to go and get him,” Clay said.

  Kevin stood, gazing off toward where the ambulance had been. He replied, “That’s a good idea. He’s going to need to come home.”

  The brothers were both frozen in place as the ambulance’s lights faded into the night.

  “She is going to be okay,” Clay said. He put his hand on his brother’s shoulder and squeezed.

  Kevin was so emotionally spent, he couldn’t even cry. Other ambulances were pulling up with no lights on and no sirens. The brothers stood silently as two attendants, and a lady in a suit wandered slowly up the hill towards the house. A black SUV pulled up, and four people with suits got out and walked up the hill after them. He guessed they were going to be bringing the bodies out soon.

  Clay said, “I’m not sure I want to see this. We should leave.”

  Kevin felt his brother grasp his shoulder again. Kevin glanced at his brother. Clay was anxiously staring at his cell. His father was still talking with the officers. His father left them and began to walk towards them. Everyone knew each other in this small northern town. This would rock the town to its very core.

  “Boys, the police are done with us for tonight.” His dad touched Kevin’s other shoulder. “Let’s go home or to the hospital, anywhere but here.”

  Kevin met his father’s eyes. “Will you drive me to the hospital? I need to make sure someone’s there for Kayn?”

  “I already called your mom and asked her to meet us there. She’s going to bring you clean clothes,” his father replied.

  Kevin glanced down at his pants and shirt. He was covered in blood, and not just a few drops. He looked as though he had bathed in blood. A vision of Chloe flashed through his mind. Her hands had been frozen in time as they clawed at the bathroom floor. “I’m leaving. I need to get to Matt before the police get there,” Clay said as they parted.

  His dad nodded his head, and they left in their separate vehicles.

  Kevin had never seen his father look this way. His eyes were vacuous and he was speaking in fragments. Kevin thought he should offer to drive, but his father looked like he was thin threading it. He chose to do nothing, say nothing. Kevin began to concentrate on breathing. A deep breath in and a deep breath out as they drove in mentally vacant calm.

  Kevin wondered why he wasn’t crying. He thought of the crumpled identical bodies of Chloe and Kayn. He thought about that family picture in the hall that would now be a heart-wrenching memory of how joyous their families had been together. He gazed out the window at the scenery he had passed a thousand times coming back and forth between the houses. Everything would be different now. He suspected that he would never be able to enter the front hall of the Brighton’s house again and not see Kayn’s mother’s lifeless glassy eyes.

  They arrived at the hospital in numb silence. Kevin got out of the car, and followed his father towards the emergency room doors. Kevin was still cloaked in shock as they approached the sliding doors. The doors slid open to the emergency room. Kevin’s mother walked toward them. She stopped moving when she saw him. Kevin could tell she was attempting to rein her emotions in. Her face overflowed with grief. His mother’s eyes were a steady stream of tears as she whispered, “Kevin you need to come with me. You can’t sit on a seat and wait in the lobby like that.”

  Kevin remembered what he wore. Chloe’s blood … It was all over him. Hospital staff rushed towards him, and Kevin said, “It’s not my blood.”

  They stopped moving, everything stop moving as his mother led him through the gathering of stunned staff.

  Kevin heard his Father say the words, “We just came from the Brighton house.”

  His mother gently guided him away from the group of people. She handed him a plastic bag with clothes in it and accompanied him down the hall.

  A lady he recognized as someone his mother was friendly with said, “it’s okay honey, I’ve got him.

  She pushed open a door into a private room and directed him inside. She glanced at him and said, “How are you feeling … honestly?”

  Kevin answered, “I just need to know how she's doing?” She said, “Last I heard they were still working on her. Once they have her stabilized, she’ll be airlifted to Vancouver. We’re not equipped to treat all of her injuries here.”

  “She’s still alive?” Kevin asked.

  “Yes, she’s still alive. You have a shower and clean yourself up. I will let you know if anything else happens.”

  She shut the door behind him, and Kevin stepped into the bathroom. He looked at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. He gripped the side of the sink and began to sob. This was not real. This had not just happened. He raised his eyes back to his reflection in the mirror. His pants and shirt were drenched in blood. It was smeared across his face and clumped in his hair. It was Chloe’s blood. Chloe’s blood he repeated to himself. His mind snapped back to reality Chloe’s blood it screamed, and he tore off his clothing and stepped into the stall. He couldn’t breathe. He struggled to calm himself as he turned on the water and stepped under the powerful stream.

  The water pummeled his skin, and he looked down at his feet as the red water circled down the drain. He stepped out once the water cleared and grabbed the contents of the bag. There was soap and shampoo and a scrub brush. He stepped back into the shower and turned the heat up. He covered himself in shampoo and soap. Kevin scoured his skin and underneath his nails until his flesh was enflamed and the dried blood was gone. He began to feel dizzy and was ready to step out when he looked down and realized his toenails had blood caked in them. His shoes had been soa
ked in blood. He slid down to sit on the bench in the shower and scrubbed his toenails. Once the water ran clear from them, he knew he was as good as he was going to get.

  He also knew that it wouldn’t matter how much scalding water he rinsed his skin with, he was never going to feel clean again. He knew that Chloe’s blood was never going to wash off. He could hear her voice in his head and feel her under the surface of his skin.

  Kevin stepped in front of the mirror and looked at his reflection again. His skin had been scrubbed raw. Every last speck of blood had been scrubbed off. He put on his clean clothing and shoes. Kevin stood and stared at the soiled pile of clothing and the shoes that would never scrub clean. Every single article of clothing that he’d worn on this horrific night, needed to be destroyed. He looked at the garbage can and scooped everything into the plastic bag trying not to touch the blood. He tied the bag and chucked everything into the trash.

  He paused at the door touching the handle, knowing when he left this bathroom he would have to face his mother and father and their worried looks. He was concerned about one thing and one thing only now, Kayn. He would focus on Kayn. Everything was going to be all right, if she survived. He had to believe that she would. He walked out of the room and right into the nurse coming to check on him.

  Kevin looked at her and said, “Is she still alive?”

  The nurse said, “Yes, She is still alive.”

  He walked with her to where his parents were waiting. Kevin sensed there was much the nurse wasn’t allowed to tell them. They were not Kayn’s next of kin. They were not blood relatives. Kevin’s mother stood waiting for him. She walked slowly towards him. Kevin knew any attempt he wanted to make to be strong was going to be short lived.