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I turned over restless in bed. The silver strip of moonlight flooding through the window illuminated the room with a pale glow. There was no clock in the room so I could only guess what time it was. I laid in silence staring at the moonlight reflecting from the wall across the room. The time flickered by slowly as I tried to ease myself back into sleep. When the drowsiness was finally taking me away I heard a shriek from downstairs. It pierced my head and caused me to reflexively cover my ears. It wasn’t like the normal yelling I heard late at night that disappeared by daylight when the perfect family reappeared. It was a scream. Not a yell. It was sharp and shrill and ended as soon as it started. I carefully lifted my hands from my ears and sat up in bed, being careful to not let the springs of the bed creak. The wood floor was cold with the chill of winter and I recoiled when my feet touched it. I, like the mice in our barn outside, crept out of my room and down the hall to the staircase. I dare not walk down it as the age old wood would yell a cacophony of protests. I instead stood half behind the wall next to the stairs, just enough to see the entrance to the cellar, which was ajar. I stood perplexed as to why the cellar would be open. Was the shriek I heard just the opening of the rusty and aged hinges? No, it was a scream. I stood in the cold hallway for a few minutes before seeing the silhouette of my father dragging a mass across the floor before dropping it next to the opening of the cellar. He breathed heavily like a dog panting after chasing a rabbit in a field. I almost went down to him but in a wicked miracle the moon was removed from the clouds and shown down on the mass. I stared down at the face of my mother. My dear mother that wore bruises like freckles and flinched when you made a loud noise. Her lifeless eyes stared at me burroring their way deep into my soul. The half alive staring contest was broken as my father kicked her limp body with all his might sending her down the cellar stairs.
I woke up in a cold sweat. The nightmare, it happened again. Every winter I had the same nightmare. I curled up in a ball in my bed and wept quietly into my hands. My mother disappeared when I was seven. Her car and belongings were all gone so the police assumed that she had simply had enough and left. It made sense, she didn’t want to live on a farm in the middle of nowhere her whole life, she wanted a fresh start. It’s what my brother and I had been told our whole lives but the dream made me question everything.
There I sat though, curled up in my cold bed trying to decipher the truth from reality. Ten years had passed and I didn’t fully trust my memory nor did I trust what my father had told me. As the rays of the sun started replacing the tendrils of moonlight flowing through my window; I rose. It was an off day. No farm work and no school as we had been let a few days prior for the annual winter break. My feet touched the ground, it was just as cold as it was in the dream and did nothing to ease my suspicions. I started to formulate my plan for the day and I stood at my window and looked out upon the acres of farmland our house sat next to. Every Sunday, father would go into town to run errands. He would be out of the house and I would be alone, except for my brother. Al wasn’t much to worry about since he’s oblivious to everything. In fact, he’ll probably be out of the house and riding around the dusty backroads in his shabby old teal pick up truck the moment his eyes open. I’d be alone. All alone to finally find out what was in the cellar I’ve been forbidden to enter since I was a small child.
I sat in my room staring out the window until I saw both trucks sitting in the driveway leave. I watched them drive down the road until I could no longer see the dust the tires kicked up floating in the air. I steadied myself. The house was quiet, I could hear every creaking floorboard as I walked down the hall and stairs. The cellar door was staring at me much quicker than I wanted it to. I stood frozen in front of the door wondering if I was doing the right thing. I shakily got onto my knees and unlatched the door’s keyless lock. It slid easily like it had been used frequently. I thought a lock like this would be rusted over after ten years of not being used. I opened the door which turned out to be heavier than I thought and almost caused me to drop it. The smell of earth hit me in the face. The odor of cold hard winter dirt lurked in the air of the cellar as I cautiously scaled my way down the stairs. I felt around on the chilling stone walls for a light switch of some kind. Instead of my hands finding anything though, my head found it instead. I felt the pull cord of a ceiling light drag across my forehead. I reached up and pulled it and a warm glow filled the underground room. I blinked trying to adjust my eyes to the new presence of light. Once my eyes had adjusted though I stood stunned.
The room was spotless, not a cobweb in sight. A desk was set up at the east end of the room. It’s surface overflowed with books and loose papers. Everything looked lived in, not abandoned as I thought it would be. I started to walk towards the desk when I tripped over something on the floor. I looked down and saw a shovel laying in front of a deep hole in the ground. How I hadn't seen it before I didn’t know. I stepped around the hole cautiously and made my way to the desk. I stood still and looked at it not knowing where to start. My eyes met a journal sitting on the top of one of the various piles. It was open to a page with yesterday’s date on it. I closed it and held it by my side whilst looking at more of the things on the desk. I grabbed a few of the papers and neatly tucked them into the journal before heading back up the stairs and leaving the cellar almost as I found it.
I spent the rest of the day outside perched high in a pecan tree far away from the house and barn. With every page I read the more the blood drained from my face and the more frightened I became. All the papers and the journal I took were written in my father’s scratchy handwriting which wouldn’t be alarming in itself but the contents were. The first journal entry was from around a month before my mother disappeared. Up until her disappearance the entries made less and less sense. It was like reading a descent into madness. The entries stopped for nine years but picked back up in almost the same fashion as the ones about my mother. Except these entries were about my brother. From what my father had written my brother was sneaking out of the house late at night and going up to the hayloft in our barn. He wasn’t alone though, someone was with him. This is what my father didn’t like. He thought that whoever Al was with would take him away from the farm. That was my father’s biggest fear our whole lives, someone taking my brother and I away from him, I guess that’s why he killed our mother. She was going to take us away from him.
I sat in the tree dumbfounded. My father killed my mother and was planning to kill another innocent person. I watched the sky turn a brilliant orange as the sun set over the horizon. I stared out at it as I had a million thoughts rushing through my head at once. I had to tell Al what was going on. I climbed out of the tree and walked as fast as I could back to the farmhouse in the semi-darkness. Both my brother’s and father’s trucks sat in the grass in front of the house. I took off my coat and wrapped the journal and papers in it, so as to not alert my father that I had stolen his secrets. I walked into the house and looked around cautiously. There was noise coming from the kitchen so I assumed that my father was in there attempting to cook something. I scowled at the thought of having to eat what he was preparing. I shook my head and reminded myself that now was not the time to worry about my father’s cooking, it was time to worry about the fact that my father was a murderer. I darted past the closed kitchen doors being careful to only step on the floorboards I knew didn’t creak. I quickly walked into my room, closing and locking the door behind me. Once I was sure no one had followed me up the stairs I unbundled the journal and papers from my coat and slid them under my bed. The coat was thrown onto my bed and I ended up on the floor. The floor was cold, hard, and offered no comfort but I laid there anyway. My eyelids drooped and the darkness of the room lulled me to sleep.
I sat up in a cold sweat. I had another nightmare but it’s memory was already starting to fade. I looked at the clock sitting on my bedside table and was alarmed to see it was almost midnight. As I stood up I heard the slow opening of a door handle. It wasn’t the handle to my door, instead it was the door of the room next to me. Al’s room. The realization from the day prior hit me and I remembered everything I found out. I had to warn him. By the time I came to my senses I could hear the back door opening and closing. Al made no effort to be quiet which was probably how my father figured out he was sneaking out at night. I crept out of the house quieter than my brother and once outside started running towards the barn. It was dark but the small amount of moonlight lit up the land enough to see the barn I was running towards. I heard my father’s angry yelling and his heavy footsteps behind me but I didn’t stop. The barn was only a few yards away when I felt the sharp impact of something against the back of my skull. I fell to the ground as my vision blurred and the pain from the impact flowed through my entire head. A shovel fell to the ground beside me and I felt my body start to be dragged across the cold hard winter ground.
I fluttered in and out of consciousness as my father dragged me back to the house and down into the cellar where he tied my hands behind my back and left me curled up in the corner by his desk. I fought to keep awake as the adrenaline powered me to keep going. After my father left the cellar I went to work on the ropes that tied my hands behind me. The rope was rough and my wrists were raw and almost bleeding by the time I managed to shimmy the rope off. I tossed it to the ground and climbed the stairs leading to the cellar door. The door was heavy with the lock on the outside. I stood and looked at it, mulling over my options. My only option was to brute force it and attempt to break the lock. I walked back down the stairs and grabbed the chair sitting at the desk. Once back at the cellar door I hit the door with the chair as hard as I could. The chair let out a dozen cracks and splintered slightly. I hit it again and again until the chair was entirely broken and pieces laid on the stairs. I picked up a chair leg and slammed it as hard as I could into the door. I heard a snap on the outside of the door. I pushed the cellar door and it opened.
I crawled out and looked around. There was nothing, no noise, no light. I ran for the door not caring what noise I created. The moonlight outside had faded and it was almost completely dark besides a light coming from the barn. I ran as fast as I could, only thinking about saving my brother and the mysterious person he was seeing. The closer I got, the more yelling I heard. My father and brother were yelling at each other. It reminded me of the yelling I heard late at night when I was a child. Everything that happened is happening again.
I got to the barn and threw open the door. The sight that met me caused a small cry to escape my mouth. My brother was sitting in the hayloft at the edge of the stairs yelling down at our father who had a shotgun trained on my brother’s face. Al looked over at me, tears streaming down his freckled face.
He cried out to me in a plea of help. I stood still with no words frozen in shock. I watched as a figure appeared behind Al. My father must have seen it too as with a wild cry he pulled the trigger of his shotgun. Al fell backwards into the hay as the bullet missed the figure behind him. Father sent another shot into the hayloft and it hit it’s target. The other person fell forwards onto Al. I fell to my knees and started to sob. Crimson was smeared and splattered all over the flax colored hay and the wood of the barn. My father turned to me and aimed. I closed my eyes and embraced my death. I couldn’t save my brother or his innocent lover. Our own father killed him and he would kill me too. I heard the click of the trigger and the sound of the gun as my body functions ceased and I fell to the floor. After ten years of not knowing what was real it was finally over.