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My lips quiver as he comes to stand right in front of me. The sound of a belt being unbuckled and a zipper fills the air.
Breathe. But I can’t breathe. My throat starts to close up like it does every time this happens. I swallow hard and part my lips, but that doesn’t seem to help the lump lodged in my throat.
“You’re so pretty,” he says quietly. “My pretty girl. Perfectly pretty girl.”
Sounds of him pleasuring himself fill the air. I listen to him jerk off inches away from me.
“You drive me crazy, baby.” He groans and I try not to let the sounds of him jerking himself off affect me.
“One day,” he says, grabbing my hair in a tight fist with his other hand. “One day I am going to have you, my pretty girl. You belong to me. You will always be mine.”
He groans again, and the sound of his thrusting into his hand gets louder until I feel the warmth on me. He lets his cum spill on my chest like he does every time. It’s like he’s marking me.
When he’s done, he lets out a sigh and then a short, breathy laugh. “That’s my pretty girl. Now go to sleep, Love.”
He leaves my room and slams the door shut behind him.
When I’m certain that I can’t hear his heavy footsteps anymore, I let out a deep breath and then I let the tears fall. I collapse onto the cold fall and curl into a tight ball, biting hard into my fist and screaming silently. My face is hot and I can’t breathe anymore, but I manage to get up from the floor and go into the bathroom. I slip out of my dress and get into the shower. The water is stinging hot, but I don’t care. I slide down the cold tiles and let the water gush over me. Even as I scrub away at my skin until I’m raw and stinging, and even though I’m now clean, I still feel dirty. I always feel dirty afterwards.
Closing my eyes, I drop my head back against the shower wall and let the water numb my thoughts and wash away my tears.
7
PIKE: CHAPTER VII
Now
It’s cold and my room is pitch black when I wake up. For a split second, my head is heavy, making me feel slightly disoriented and I feel a pair of eyes watching me from the darkness in my room.
My throat closes up and I gasp for air, as I shove my heels into my mattress to push myself up against the wooden bed frame. My hands fumble at my bedside as I search for the switch to my lamp.
The anxiety slithers its way through my chest, twisting itself into my bones until it’s wrapped right around my throat, almost completely restricting my airway.
“My pretty girl.”
His heavy breathing fills my hot ears and my eyes sting with tears, but I finally find the switch and when I flick it on, my side lamp washes the entire room in its soft warm light. My door is closed. No one is lurking in the shadows. It takes a few minutes for me to calm myself down. I rub small circles around my chest with my palm, hoping for that gnawing feeling to go away, but it won’t go away.It never does.
I climb out of bed and pull on one of my white cotton nightshirts over my naked body and then I move over to my window. Father’s car is down there. He must have come in late because when we arrived from The Bounds earlier he still wasn’t home.
He must have drank himself to the brink of death today. His worst nightmare is coming true and there’s nothing he can do about it. My brother is my father’s nightmare. He can’t do anything to prevent it.
And as for me? Rhys is my chaos. He’ll destroy me in his own sick way. I just don’t know when, how or why. The look in his eyes tonight confirmed that. When he grabbed my jaw and forced me to look up at him, he confirmed that.The anger in his voice confirmed that.
I leave my room and silently stalk the dark hallways of the manor like I do every night when I can’t sleep. However, tonight there is apprehension in my bones as I slide my hands against the crimson-red damask wallpaper. The light from the flickering candles above my head outlines the delicate gold floral details on the wallpaper. Old pictures of our family hang high above my head, a thin layer of dust coating each wickedly, haunting portrait. I refer to it as the corridor of horror. Each portrait is so eerily similar that it wouldn’t take an intellectual to realise the demented similarities between each Whitlock. From the midnight black hair to the ominously murky grey eyes and pale skin. Generations of haunting Whitlock beauty.
It wasn’t any secret that our family practised the idea that our bloodline should be kept in the family.No stranger’s blood should ever taint it. Perhaps that is why Rhys and I share an inexplicable affinity. Even if we’re fraternal twins, the blood that runs through our veins is Whitlock blood. Generations of ancient blood.
The manor frightens me, but it’s why I adore it too. The authenticity of its darkness and sordid history. As with most everything in Columbus, this house too was built by the hands of the tortured amid witch trials and hypocrisy within the churches and talk of Satanists. This entire town’s soil is soaked with the blood of those who cursed us and generations to come. So there is no doubt as to why most of us turn out to be so fucked up in the head.
There are secrets behind every door in this town. Secrets and lies and no one will help you or free you because no one will get involved. There’s no man’s law here, no God’s law either, because we’re all doomed to spend an eternity burning in Hell. Everything that happens behind closed doors, stays behind closed doors. Even if there’s a monster lurking in the shadows of your room, sometimes you have to confront it on your own.
But the thing with me is that I never had to deal with things on my own, at least not until he was whisked away with my mother to Hemlock Hollows. Rhys was my dark knight. He was the stronger twin and never liked showing me that he had a soft side, but I knew deep down that he cared deeply for me. I often felt it in his hugs and his fierce voice when he got mad at me for doing dangerous things like when I went down into the forest behind the manor and got poison ivy all over.He cared. He always did.
Rhys isn’t in his old room anymore, which was once on the same floor as mine. Earlier, I saw him heading upstairs to the third floor where there’s just a single abandoned room and the attic. No one ever goes up there anymore. When we were children it was a place we could play our made-up game of Kings and Queens. Rhys was the king and I was always the queen.
I’m willing to bet that he’s up there right now.
I move around the corner of the hallway and make my way up the black oak spiral staircase. When I get to the top, the only noise that surrounds me is the howling wind coming from the draughty high ceilings above me.
