Goodnight

Chapter 8

The headlights were blinding me as I stood there, ignoring Lena's screams and cries for me to run away. I couldn't. My feet were stuck in the snow and my body was entirely paralyzed. This wasn't a dream. This was real. There was no escaping.

A car door slammed shut, and my mother began walking quickly over to me. Her heels were crunching against the leaves and her feet were sinking into the thin layer of snow coating the floor. Her hair was bouncing wildly behind her with each step, her light eyes were wide and filled with worry and tears, and her arms were folded against her chest. A tear fell from her eye and slid down her flushed cheek, just as a small snivel escaped her lips.

"Ma'am, stay back! He is dangerous-"

"He's my son, I'll go near him if I want to!" she cried out, her voice thick with panic.

I swallowed hard as I stared down at my mother, before my eyes dragged across the line of policemen standing behind her. I gnawed on my lip again, watching as she moved closer to me.

"Get away from me," I warned her, my fingers curling into fists at my side as I watched her eyes study my face. I knew all along she never wanted me back home.

"Stop this, Ethan. I don't want for this to happen, I don't want you to have to go back, trust me," her voice was straining, filled with desperation. "I want you to be with me."

"Then why are you doing this to me?" my voice broke. "I- I am not dangerous. I'm not! What, just- just because I can't sleep at night, just because I have nightmares- d-doesn't mean I-"

"Ethan-" she said softly, attempting to calm me.

"No!" I cried out, shaking my head. Her fingers wrapped around my thin arms and she held me in place while I shook my head rapidly. "I don't want to go back, please! I am not dangerous-"

I watched her open palm fly up and slam into my cheek. I ignored the stinging sensation that pulsed throughout my face as I glared down at her, my eyebrows furrowed and my chest heaving quickly.

"Listen to me," her voice was gentle. "Just listen-"

"Is this what Lena warned me about? Is it? Is this why she wanted me to run away, because she knew how fucking evil you are?" I yelled, my voice echoing throughout spacious sky of the forest. "Here I am, thinking that you care about me. I guess if you did, you would've probably believed me when I told you everything that happened there."

Something in my mother's baby blue eyes changed instantly.

"Lena?" she questioned, blinking as she watched me.

I snorted, shaking my head. "Yeah, remember your fucking daughter?"

My mother's stare was blank. "She... she told you," my mom shifted her weight onto her other foot, "she told you to run away?"

"Yeah, yeah, she did. She told me I needed to get away from you as soon as possible, which, I don't blame her." My teeth were grinding together and the wound on my lip had opened, pouring blood down my chin again and into my mouth.

"Honey," my mother said, a few tears slipping down the slope of her cheekbone. "Lena has been dead for almost two years."

It felt like a bullet hit my chest.

My heart almost stopped, and I almost fell to the ground right there. The gray hued sky was spinning before my eyes and the tree tops were swaying more rapidly above us.

The world around me had fallen entirely mute, and a ringing blared in my ear that made my entire body quake with fear. My mother, with her cruel eyes staring at me as if I were some sort of science experiment, had taken a step away from me.

"You're a filthy liar. She's right here!" I yelled, pointing to the area my sister was standing only seconds before.

Except she wasn't there. I glanced around rapidly, and she was no where to be found.

"You need to listen to me, okay?" my mother said, her fingers wrapping around my shoulders and tightening against my flesh.

"I-"

"Just listen to me!" she screamed, her voice travelling throughout my entire body. Her breath softened, and her tone did as well. "Your father killed Lena over a year ago. Do- do you remember?"

I shook my head; my eyes were huge and any ounce of sanity left inside my mind had disintegrated.

"He found her with that girl, and he killed her on the spot," my mother said, her body shaking and her fingers flying up to cover her mouth as she recalled the scene. Tears were quickly falling from her eyes and saliva was staining her mittens as she began to sob into her palm. "S-So you killed him."

I woke up and instantly jumped out of bed the second I heard Lena and T screaming from across the hallway.

I grabbed my baseball bat and swung it above my shoulder, just in case there was an intruder in the house. When I opened my bedroom door carefully, light spilled into my dark room, and I peered out to find my father standing in the doorway of her room.

"Shit," I cursed to myself, but I stayed behind the door as my father then ran into Lena's room.

She cried out again, her voice echoing throughout the entire house as my father dragged her out of the room by her hair. She was thrashing and struggling, shaking her head and cursing at him. My mother was standing there at the staircase, watching idly, with not a single tear in her eye.

I watched as T sprinted out of Lena's room in fear, running towards me as my father focused on screaming at Lena. I moved out of her way so she could run into my room.

"What happened?" I asked, but she ignored me. She was hyperventilating and her eyes were frantically darting around the room.

"What should I do?" she asked me breathlessly.

I nodded towards my window and she started towards it, pushing it open.

What happened next was a blur. All I remembered was that there was screaming, cursing, crying, and... blood. Lena was laying on the floor, coated in her own blood, her eyes open and her face bashed in as my father cursed and paced across the hallway.

And then, before I knew it, I was on top of him, bashing his face in with my baseball bat. My mother, who had watched so intently and said not a single word while my father was attacking Lena, was now screaming at the top of her lungs and threatening me as I attacked him.

All I saw was blood. All I saw was torn flesh. And after that, it was nothing but darkness in my mind.

That was who had been haunting my dreams, I knew it instantly with the recollection. It was my father, saying Goodnight to me before the incident that night as he closed my bedroom door.

"And they know you killed Amy, too," she whispered.

A figure came up from behind me and pulled my arms forcefully behind my back, digging the handcuffs into my wrists as he pressed his palm into the small of my back and walked me towards the police car.

I stared at my mother the entire time. My eyes didn't leave her once as they shoved me into the back of the car. I watched as she stood there, just like she stood at the doorway, watching me like a coward and doing nothing to help her family.

"The psych ward missed 'ya," said one of the policemen in the driver's seat, a grin just barely showing beneath his thick black mustache.

When I stared out the window as the car drove through the trees of the forest, I saw my father standing there again from far away. The torn flesh of his face made my stomach twist and my drained body fall further into the backseat.

He waved to me.

And then I heard it, in a small whisper right beside my ear. I even felt the hot breath of nobody against my skin, sending goosebumps crawling up my arms.

"Goodnight, Sweet boy."

I swallowed hard.

"Goodnight."

THE END