Diel stayed in the doorway as the boy put his little sister to bed. Darkness fell outside, but the boy sat all night, staring at the door, a knife hidden under his bed just in case the man tried to come in.
He was guarding his sister from the man outside.
His mother hid her away from the outside world; she forever stayed stuck in that tiny room. The mother and the man mocked her for her birthmark. They neglected her needs enough that when an eye disease came to the eye on the marked side of her face, they didn’t get her help. They let her lose her sight in that eye, told her she deserved it … and she remained hidden away, a lost, sweet soul.
Sweat dripped down Diel’s neck. His pulse fired into a heady beat as he stared at that boy. He felt what that boy felt inside. Rage. So much darkness and rage and—
“Go back into the hallway,” the voice told him, and Diel made his feet walk back through the shack and out into the hallway of doors. He wanted to go back. He wanted to go back and be with the children. He wanted to help the children. But the door to his left pulled him close this time. He couldn’t stop thinking of the boy with the knife under his bed and death in his soul, or the little girl with the birthmark and one blind eye, but the other door compelled him to look inside.
“Enter the door,” the voice said. Diel stepped through. And he was met with carnage. Blood covered the shack’s floor. The drug-addicted mother was on the floor, eyes open with a bullet wound in her head. The man had the small girl over the kitchen countertop, a gun at her head. “You ugly little shit.”
Those words were a flint to Diel’s tinder. He shook as he stood in the doorway. He went to step forward, the scene feeling more than familiar to him, when—
“Let her go.” The boy walked into the room. Darkness flickered in his eyes, a darkness Diel recognized. One that he knew. It looked remarkably like the monster that lived within him. Diel watched the boy find a knife on the counter and hide it behind his back. Diel felt a spark of pride in his chest. He wanted the boy to hurt the man.
Diel looked at the young girl. She was petrified, and Diel fought to keep his feet planted to the ground. He wanted to whisk her away, take her away from the man and to somewhere safe, then return to this shack and join the young boy in killing the man. Gutting him like the pig he was.
The boy struck. He plunged the knife into the man’s neck. Blood spattered the walls and the floor of the kitchen. A cold smile etched onto Diel’s lips as the boy kept stabbing. As he became drenched in blood and fragments of bone and muscle and flesh. As his blue eyes shone brighter as the man beneath him became unrecognizable under his hands.
“Finn.” A broken, terrified sound came from across the room. But the boy was lost to bloodlust. Diel felt it too, that power that came with ending a life, the euphoria that swelled the veins as a body became dismembered by your very hands. “Finn …” The small voice was cracking now, losing strength. “Finn … please …”
The boy suddenly stopped, the voice cutting through his blanket of darkness. He turned, knife still in his blood-drenched hand. Diel followed his gaze. Across the room, the little girl was crouched low, tucked into a corner, tears tracking down her face. The boy froze and stared at her. Then the knife dropped slowly from his hand.
“Cara,” he said, voice hoarse and losing the rage that had swept over him. He stepped forward, and the girl watched him with wide eyes. There wasn’t a part of the boy that wasn’t covered in blood. Only the whites of his eyes remained clean. He crouched down to meet the girl.
She raked her gaze around the room. “Mommy’s gone.” Diel looked at the mother, who was most certainly dead, no doubt by the man’s hands.
“We’re going to be okay, Cara. I’ll fix it. I’ll take care of us. I promise. We’re … we’re free …”
Then Diel heard the front door open.
“Mrs. Nolan?”
The boy’s head whipped up and his mouth parted in panic. Diel’s heart began racing. Someone was coming. Someone the boy didn’t want to see. The girl reached forward and grabbed the boy’s arm. Her pure, clean hand became tainted with blood. But she didn’t seem to care.
The boy tried to move, his head flicking around the room as he tried to think of what to do, what to say. But then Diel saw the man come into focus. Every part of Diel began to shake—with rage, with fear, with the need to pick the children up and run away. Take them from harm.