Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

I Can Still Hear Their Screams

I can still hear their screams. They, along with a string of clinical experts, are the only constant in my life. You would think that, after all these years, I’d have gotten over them, right? Wrong. I will never get over it.

What occurred shouldn’t be spoken of. Heck, it shouldn’t even be written about. But hey, rules were meant to be broken, and many were broken that day.

“Jen! Get up! You’re friends will be here any minute!” The man that had yelled, turned back to watching his wife’s fingers squeeze the last dollop of icing onto their second child’s pure red cake with black cursive.

A groan replied to the shout, albeit muffled through the dry walls.
“Can’t she find a different favorite color?” The man’s voice was a light baritone sprinkled with kindness and had a slightly greater than middle-aged grate to it. His hands wrapped their way around his chubby wife, his hands linking on to the forearms of his beloved spouse as he leaned in to kiss her icing-splotched cheek.

“She’ll change it if she wants too. Frankly, I think it’s your fault she likes that colour.”

He blinked innocently as the words poured out of her mouth until she explained: “You shouldn’t have told all those stories about vampires and werewolves if you didn’t want her to become an enthusiast like her father.”

“Hey,” a simple monosyllable adequately indicated that she had entered low-blow territory.

“How was I supposed to know young minds were so impressionable?”
The rolling of his wife’s sea green eyes made him huff and pout as she found her way free of his embrace to put away the rest of the icing.

“You shouldn’t have left your work out for her to find. I think you planned for her to
find them,” she scolded.

“I did not! And besides, where else was I supposed to put them? I ran out of space
out my desk.”

Of course he was referring to his work as a writer. He wrote novels about heroes and mysteries and illustrated them all himself. Actually, his current work was entitled: ‘The Bloodied Baron. It was about a baron who had died, leaving a will that stated, “Any who shall spend a fortnight within my mansion, shall come to own it.” Everyone wanted a piece of this rich, dead guy’s pie, so people started trickling in from everywhere. Funny thing was, once the final family entered, the gates of the estate locked and refused to budge. Then the deaths started.

The father sipped his tea as he watched his daughter opening her presents, a smile lighting his face at the one that spread broadly across Jens’.
“Oh, thank you Daddy!” The little girl jumped up and hugged him just as he managed to put his cup down to avoid a spill.

“You’re welcome Princess. Why don’t you go try it on?”

The 9-year-old nodded so fast her black hair flew all over the place. His chuckle was followed by the happy laughter of his only daughter and her friends as they ran upstairs to her room.

“You just HAD to buy her that dress didn’t you, dear?” His innocence was turned back on as he glanced towards his wife beside him who was doing her best to keep a frown plastered on her face.

“She really liked it,” his voice imitated a child’s tone but was horribly mangled. “You even said she didn’t wear enough dresses.”

The look his wife gave him was burning but briskly withered as his daughter appeared in the doorway. So what if it was old-fashioned? It was just like the ones he drew in his stories; tight bodice with the criss-crossing ties on the back and an expanding skirt flowing and rippling all the way to the girl’s calf with an abundance of frills, frills and more frills. Her hair finished off in a healthy crimson and matched the black lace of her elbow length gloves.

“You are B-E-A-U-TIFUL princess.” It was now a true statement; his daughter really did look like a princess.

I choked on gasps as the image slivered back to me. How perfectly that day had started.

“Princess, don’t stay up too late.” He kissed his daughters’ bang covered forehead before leaving her room. She was having a sleepover with two of her friends, and, to accommodate this special circumstance, was enriched with a later bedtime of 10:00.

“We won’t daddy,” shrieked her excited voice.

He was glad his daughter had friends to play with; they would keep her happy and smiling forever. A chuckle that had been growing in his throat promptly died as the lights shut off in one movement and a triad of startled screams sounded behind him, a stark contrast to the delightful giggles previously.

“DADDY!” His daughters’ voice sounded choked and rough and it tore at his heart stronger than any other accident caused in his life.

With a quick turn, a stubbed toe and a stumble later he was throwing open the door to his princesses’ room. The dark shadows only lasted a second before they were replaced with pure night, the only sounds; his daughters’ scream, her friends’ sobs, and a set of husky laughs.

That was the beginning of my end and the end of my families’ beginning. Things had gone by in a flurry of screams, laughs and all of them covered in blood. First had been my youngest son; luckily he’d been too young to withstand the treatment and had died quickly. Next were my daughters’ friends, beaten and accosted but left alive long enough to witness my wife get the same treatment along with my eldest daughter. Then, once they were finished with them, they both went after my princess. I can barely stand to rethink the images that have been bored into my skull, but I must; for I am the only one who remembers and the only one whoever will.

The police had come then, their sirens wailing out on the street and forewarning the devils in my home that they had limited time. They had jumped to it; slashing throats, stabbing chests and stomachs and once they’d finished off the children; they came for me, only they never got that far.

Those stupid police! Why couldn’t they have been a minute later?! I can still see the two men in front of me, covered in my children’s blood and grinning with their eyes burning straight through mine, only to falter, sway and fall down. I still cannot recall the sound of the bullets being fired, but I know that was what had to have happened.

I was ‘saved’ as the papers described it; ‘saved’ from two junkies high on LSD(Lysergic Acid Diethylamide). Only, I feel no where from being safe. My life is tormented by the images of that night, the sounds, the smells and the pain that pierced my body like the proverbial knife and killed my heart.

I guess I can finally finish my story; for I am the Bloodied Baron, alone and cursed to live the rest of my life in this old estate, the only one knowing the true terrors that this world contains.

Shaking hands dropped the dust covered journal onto the floor of the grand library. “No wonder the guy had no living relatives…” The woman’s voice died off just as the leather bound book connected with the wood and a picture slipped from the pages.

A second figure, this one male, bent and picked the picture up. He brushed the dust off and held it under a flashlight to examine it. The picture was old and yellowed, taken from a Polaroid; an instamatic camera that came out in the late 1940’s. In it was a little girl wearing a puffed skirt with a tight top of crossing ribbons and lace, smiling at the camera and blushing prettily. On the bottom of the picture, written in black ink and a well practiced script, were the words ‘You are B E A U TIFUL princess.’

The female was pleading with the man, supposedly her boyfriend, “C’mon Travis, we can still leave! Who knows what kind of s**t this guy has put up in this building!?”

Travis wasn’t listening, the picture had a hold on him and a voice had started in his ear telling him to flip the picture over, that there was more to be known. Now holding his breath, Travis turned the picture over with shaking hands and found more writing; “Life is just a game that the players play and the pawns die.”

The whispers started. Beginning from afar and muffled, similar to a choir building up as more and more voices were added to its’ song. No one noticed the gates slipping shut and locking. The voices grew until the vibrations raked through the foundations and deafened those that had been ensnared in its trap.

“LET THE GAMES BEGIN!”