The Unmaking (The Rayne Whitmore Series Book 1) (6 page)

            Selene laughs and to add
an exclamation point to what I just said, pulls her shirt off over her head and
stands naked in front of me, gracing me with the presence of flawless, smooth,
lightly bronzed skin. I don’t think I can ever get tired of the view in front
of me.

            “Well, Ray Ray,” Selene
starts, mocking the nickname that only Damien calls me. “If I fit that type,
then, he really has no idea. Look how sexually repressed he seems to be. Huge
muscles, sunglasses, permanent frown. He needs some sex like yesterday.”

            I laugh and shake my head
as Selene steps into the shower and closes the curtain. After a few seconds of
thought, I get up and go shower in the main bathroom down the hall. By the time
I finish, I hear Selene bumping Usher
’
s
8701
album through her
system and I watch quietly as she washes our dishes in a red half shirt and
black, laced, boy-short panties. Compared to me, Selene has more of a curvy
body. Her hair is a dark veil that is much longer than mine. She’s an inch or
two taller than my 5’6” frame, and her breasts are a little larger than my 36 b
cups. I take it all in, breathing deep as I examine my love. How’d I get to be
so lucky?

Chapter Five

           
B
y nightfall, I realize that I haven’t even bothered to
check my phone. So consumed in the bubble of peaceful bliss that surrounded Selene
and I as we took her black Dodge Charger to a movie, out to eat, then walked
around downtown enjoying the sights and sounds, I never even noticed that my
phone wasn’t on me. Back in Selene’s bedroom, I reach for my phone on the
charger and find ten missed calls and three voicemails.

            The most recent voicemail
pops up and is from Jazzy. Normally, I don’t do voicemails, but since it’s from
her and she usually texts, I decide to see what’s up.

           
“Rayne… Rayne… please,
don’t come home, something’s…”
three seconds of Jasmine whispering those
words into the line, fearful, pleading, before I hear the most gut-wrenching
scream ripped from her. I drop the phone on the hard floor and hear it crack.
Part of me recognizes that Selene is next to me, shaking me, questioning me.

            There’s a knot in my
stomach and I know that something’s wrong. I should call the police, I should…
“Take me home Selene, right now,” I demand as I run out the door. I can hear
Selene behind me rushing to the driveway, keys jingling. The twenty five minute
drive to my house seems to take an eternity even with Selene running lights and
speeding for my sake. I try to reach my dad, mom, Jazzy, nothing.

            ‘It’s a practical joke’ I
tell myself. I don’t know how many times I repeat it. Not enough I guess,
because I never end up believing the words.

            We reach the grounds’
front gate and the first thing I see is the entrance’s bars ripped from its
hinges. As Selene carefully drives around, I notice that one of the help is
lying under the broken gate, the spiked decorations piercing through his body.
Before Selene is even stopped, I jump out the car and start sprinting to my
house. Somehow, Selene manages to catch me, showing speed I would have never
known she possessed. She grabs my arm firmly, forcing me to a standstill. I
attempt to pull away from her giving her a stare that could frighten death
itself.

            “If you don’t want me to
break your arm now, you will let me go Selene.”

            “Stop,” she commands,
ignoring my own. She continues to keep an iron grip on my arm and I begin to
feel weaker under her grip. Selene looks toward the house, obviously frightened
and takes two steps back. “This feels wrong. I can feel the evil inside,” she
whispers, her voice trembling.

            “Selene, please,” I plead.
“Let me go. I have to see.”

            “If I let you go, you have
to promise me that you will stay by my side Rayne. I won’t be able to protect
you if you don’t.”

            “Yes, yes, okay, just let
me go,” I agree just so there won’t be any more time wasted. Together, we run
straight into my home because this door too is ripped off the hinges and is
lying a good twenty feet from the door way. Why isn’t the security system
working? Immediately I try to turn on a light and call for someone to answer
me. There is no response or power to the house and a profound fear truly sets
in this time.

            “Call the police Rayne,”
my clouded mind registers Selene tell me.

            “No. Not until I know.” I
have to find my sister, my mom, my dad.

            As I walk deeper and more
carefully in the house, I begin to smell two disturbing things. First, I smell
gunpowder and as I look closely at the walls, I see a mess of bullet holes
piercing paintings and shattered glass. Next, I smell death. I actually smell
death. It takes all my might for me not to gag and continue to press on.

            We reach the stairs and I
hear the sound ‘drip, drip’ coming from above me. I begin to look up but Selene
shields my eyes. “No. Do not look. If you want to find Jasmine, do not look.” I
hesitate, wanting to see what is making the sound.

            “Tell me then, what is
it?”

            “There are bodies of your
help hanging. Please Rayne, don’t look.”

            I start to shake. Who
could have done this? Who could have gotten through the security guards and the
front gate quickly enough to have not given them time to call the police, to
shut the power grid and security system down, but had enough time to cause this
much death? My thoughts flash to the man my dad was torturing and I know deep
in my gut that this is no coincidence. My dad had called him a sociopath, said
something about his kind. He knew people. They’d want revenge.

            “Selene, I’m afraid,” I
confess.

            “Do you want to go back
outside or are you going to look for your sister?”

            I try to take a deep
breath to steel myself. Then, I start up the stairs, trying to ignore the
‘drip, drip’ above me, the broken banister, shattered paintings, and I know my
world is crashing in. Somehow, I find the strength to run to Jasmine’s room. I
call her name quietly, but there is no one inside. Further down the hall, I
glance to see a blood streaked trail along the wall. It looks as if someone was
attempting to hold themselves up while running away from whoever was attacking
them. At the end of the trail, there’s a body hanging halfway out of the
window. Without closing the twenty feet of distance, I know that it’s my mom. A
cry of utter disbelief escapes my throat as I stare at the designer heels that
she’s still wearing and the way her body is unnaturally bent out of the window.
Did she try to jump but never make it?

            My knees shake and soon my
whole body follows suit. I can’t go any closer to her even though I want to
help her. I know I can’t leave her like that. Selene grabs my hand and whispers
something that I can’t understand. My strength returns, giving me the
confidence to move forward. One step becomes two, and then I finally close the
distance. My mother’s neck is broken and blood covers the side of her mouth. In
the moonlight I can see a couple more bodies near the pool, dead, in unnatural
positions.

            “Call the police Selene,”
I say brokenly.

            “Rayne, I already tried.
Somehow, there’s no service at all. I’m sorry, but we need to get out of here.
I don’t think Jasmine…” Selene doesn’t finish the sentence; she just places a
hand on my back as I struggle to rest my mom’s body on the floor. Then, I weep,
not caring about anything else, but needing to mourn for my mother.

            “Mommy, I’m so sorry. I’m
so sorry that all I ever did was argue with you. I need you to forgive me.” I
wait for two minutes, but those words that I desperately need to hear never
come. When I finally think of Jazzy again, I stand up and head to my parent’s
room, now understanding and hoping that my mother tried to bide some time for
Jasmine to get inside the safe room located in the far wall of my parent’s
room.

            I know my mom died
protecting my baby sister and I know that Jazzy may have died while trying to
warn me. What I don’t know is how absolutely horrible her death could be.

◊◊◊

            “We need to go. Don’t let
your last images of your family be like this. Whatever is going on here is evil
and I think it’s still here. I can feel it,” Selene cautions.

            I ignore her as I press
forward to my little sister. I want to hold her one last time, to apologize
because I couldn’t protect her even as she did her best to protect me. I step
inside my parent’s room and I swear the temperature drops a few degrees. The
bed and two dressers are overturned causing me to stumble a couple times over
various broken items. In the middle of the floor, I see Jazzy’s phone broken in
pieces. Behind me, Selene is whispering something else but I shut her out.
Keeping my eyes forward, eight feet in front of me is my baby sister. The panel
to the safe room is broken and open. I can almost picture her getting inside
and trying to close it before it was too late. There are drag marks in the
thick, once white carpet from her nails.

            Tears threaten to disable
my vision and all I can do is shake my head as I reach Jasmine’s side. There
she is. Lying there, in what seems like too much blood for anyone; let alone an
eighth grader to bleed is my Jazzy. Her throat is slit so viciously that her
neck is barely still connected to her head. Her stomach too is sliced open, her
intestines no longer where they should be. This time, I can’t help myself. I
vomit again and again and again as I choke on my tears and bang my hand on the
floor until it’s raw.

            Selene finally grabs my
hand to stop me, but I shove her so hard that she falls over. Later, I would
regret doing that. Later, is not right now though. Jasmine can’t be dead, she
can’t be dead, she can’t be. My mind sees the truth, but my heart, it knows it
cannot bear this awful certainty. I try to touch her, as if by my touch she
will wake up and be made whole. If only…

            This time, I start to find
the words that I need to say. But, before I can say anything, Selene is pulling
me into the closet and shutting it, covering my mouth with an iron grip. I
start to protest and fight, but she just grips tighter. “You need to trust me
and be as quiet and as still as possible, because our lives may depend on it.”

            I relax in her grip, but she
still doesn’t let go. Selene begins to shake against me as I follow her eyes
through the slits of the closet door. My eyes go wide as I take in the image
that I’m seeing. I blink once, twice, as this massive thing strides across the
floor. The smell of death that I noticed earlier is coming from, It. Whatever
It is, is at least 6 and a half feet tall and nearly as wide. It has no eyes,
only empty eye sockets, three mouths and talon-like claws.

            I want to look at Selene
to see if she is just as petrified as I am, but I can’t tear my eyes off of
this… Demon. I say the word in my mind and know the truth of it. The feel of
evil radiates off of its being. I can almost taste it in my mouth, so potent is
its energy. Then, It walks over to my sister and leans over her body. I see one
of its mouths start to open and…

            There’s a scream, sharp
and breaking me from my frozen state. “No!” I barely register that the scream
comes from my body before I realize that I am no longer in the closet and the
Demon is no longer focused on Jasmine. Its soulless, sightless sockets are now
focused on me. Another mouth opens in a disgusting gurgle and I find my resolve
quickly evaporating. I nearly fall over from the terror I feel as the Demon
takes a step towards me. However, before I faint, fall over, or worse, Selene
jumps in front of me, arms stretched out, and palms glowing.

            She looks back at me and
speaks softly as if there are other people she doesn’t want to hear her words,
her voice filled with power and sorrow, “I’m sorry Rayne, I didn’t want you to
find out like this.” Her hair starts to flow around her in an invisible wind
and the air around us starts to crackle.

            I take one step back away
from Selene and barely notice that the Demon has done the same. Then, a low
growl escapes one of its mouths just as Selene slams her hands together,
creating a boom and something that can only be described as a large burst of
energy that engulfs the entire room. I fall to the ground, covering my head
with both hands, as pieces of the ceiling collapse all around me.

            The avalanche of debris
pauses and as I begin to regain my footing, I see that Selene is the only one
of us standing. Part of me wonders if it is she that I should fear. There are goose
bumps on my arms and tiny drops of blood running down my forehead. Quickly, I
wipe it away, just in time to see the thing rush Selene with a speed that
should be impossible for something of its size. Selene barely has enough time
to register what’s going on before the thing is on her. Yet, somehow, she
manages to dive away. I feel my heart beating forcefully, threatening to escape
from my chest as I watch this scene unfold in front of me.