Written By and Copyrighted to Lydia Stone AKA Twisty.
The night was raging, the storm an unrelenting force, as if somehow angered. Not merely nature but, something else, something far more sinister, bought forward by a deeply evil Being.
Ella could feel the electric seizing the air, charging every particle that hung in the empty space. The only way to be heard was to shout.
“What do we do?” Henry shouted as he shoved close another of the windows with all his might. Not even his muscular physic was a match for the rage that had captured the weather. He was soaked through to the bone from just that simple encounter.
“We have to ride it out,” Ella said, as her words left her lips, the lights flickered and died It appeared even the light didn’t want to stay for this storm.
Looking around Ella sighed, her chest heaving up and down. She had never seen a storm as fierce as this. It bashed at the doors and windows, determined to get in. In the darkness, she could just about make out Henry’s form.
“Where is Masie and that boyfriend of hers?” Henry asked, as he walked towards her through the damp puddles of the rain that had already infiltrated their defences.
Ella looked to the stairs, she knew they wouldn’t be asleep, how could they? However, she imagined they must have felt that little safer in their beds. She pointed to the upper floor above her head. “They are up there!” She yelled.
“This is bloody ridiculous!” Henry shouted back as he stomped in another puddle.
“It’s weather,” Ella replied slumping down on the sofa. Now they had everything battened down, there was nothing else to do, but wait it out.
“You’re really going leave them alone up there?” Henry asked, wondering if he should drag his daughter and her boyfriend down to spend some ‘family time.’
From above them they heard a guttural scream. Without realising she had moved, Ella raced up the oak stairs. Followed only a step behind by Henry.
When they reached the source of the scream, both Ella and Henry had the urge to retreat back out of the bedroom.
“What have you done?” Ella screamed at Jacob who stood covered in blood, a blade in his hand. His thick blond hair, drenched in hot crimson. She was shaking violently as adrenaline coursed through her veins.
“They told me to,” Jacob replied almost inaudibly, as he moved away from the body on the floor and sat calmly on the bed behind him, the knife still in his hands.
The body was once Maisie. To look at her now, with her stomach splayed open, no-one would have been able to guess she had only been seventeen.
All the life had drained from her and she was laid bare, her torso ripped in two, from chin to pelvis. Ella looked at Maisie, and a sheer, blinding rage took over her, she lunged at Jacob. Henry moved fast, grabbing her mid leap.
It was like grabbing a ferial cat out of mid-air, Ella squirmed, scratched and let out inhuman noises trying to escape her bonds.
“Ella, stop!” Henry demanded, trying to get a better hold of her, desperate to turn her in his grasp, so she could see only him.
“I’m going to kill him!” Ella spat as she almost broke lose.
Jacob simply sat there, un-phased by the pending assault, staring at Maisie as if transfixed on what he had done. “They told me it had to be done,” He said again.
Henry was desperately trying to stay calm, although he himself wanted to throttle the young man before him.
“The Wind Whisper’s,” Jacob said coldly. Looking up for the first time. His eyes looked completely dead, as he stared at Henry, ignoring Ella’s outrage. “They said I have to kill you all,” He added, with a small grin.
Henry, unnerved shuffled the desperately struggling Ella onto his shoulder and walked out the room.
Once in the landing he turned and kicked the door shut kneeing the deadbolt into its home. When they first got there, he had wondered what it had been for. Now he understood why they had got the holiday home so, cheap.
“What the hell was he talking about, Wind Whisper’s?” Ella asked.
“I don’t know,” Henry said, putting his wife down, but still holding her by the shoulders. “I need you to go downstairs,” he added glancing back at the now locked bed-room door.
“What? No!” Ella screeched, trying to fight Henry’s grip.
“Yes Ella!” Henry shouted. “I need to deal with him. The power is out, the phones are down, and we have no signal. I am not leaving him in alone in there, with a knife,” he explained, which seemed to momentarily calmed Ella down.
Henry loosened his grip, and watched as Ella defeatedly slumped down the stairs, following her close behind. He stopped in front of the fireplace only long enough to grab poker and marched back upstairs. Taking a deep breath, he tried to squash his own hate and pure distain.
Driving the deadbolt back out of its home, Henry eased the door open, gripping the poker hard and walked into the room with it out in front of him. “Jacob,” he said firmly.
The teenage boy was still sat exactly where he had left him. Looking curiously at him with his dead sea-green eyes.
“Jacob, drop the knife and kick it over to me,” Henry said sternly.
“I could, or I could stab you,” Jacob replied, void of any emotion.
“You could try, and it would give me an excuse to kill you in self-defence,” Henry retorted, equally as emotionless. He was trying so hard not to plunge the tip of the poker into Jacobs eye now, and his own words startled him.
As though he was bored, Jacob flung the blade at Henry’s feet and flashed him a twisted smile.
Henry bent down without taking his eyes off of Jacob and plucked the knife up. Realising he must have got it from the kitchen, it was one of the steak-knives. Stepping momentarily out the room he gently let the blade slide down the stairs, where it stopped about half-way down. Never taking his eyes off Jacob who had stood up and was at the doorway to the bedroom.
“Turn around Jacob,” Henry said, and dropped the poker too, deciding it was best not to let Jacob have a chance to take the weapon off him.
Jacob did as he was told and spun around, as if he was mocking Henry, he placed his hands behind his back.
Henry instantly grabbed hold of Jacobs wrists and forced him around to face the hallway. He had remembered there was also a lock on the master bedroom. Pulling Jacobs wrists down, making him lean back as they both marched forward towards the end of the hall.
When they reached the Master bedroom, Henry forced Jacob up against the wall and opened the door, before pulling him back upright and pushing him into the room, slamming the door shut and locking it.
*
Henry had come back down stairs, picking up the weapons as he went, and sat next to Ella on the sofa. She was still shaking, red-faced, and tear stained, sat nursing a glass of cheap wine. Trying to figure out why the teenage boy, who had dated her daughter since they were both twelve, had snapped and carved her up.
“He’s locked in the Master,” Henry said to Ella. His arm wrapped around his wife, his body quaking, fighting the urge to go back upstairs and strangle Jacob, then make him swallow the knife he had just thrown onto the table in front of them.
“I heard a myth when we were in the pub last night, but it was just that, a myth,” Ella said, her face completely twisted with confusion and grief.
“What did they say?” Henry asked, turning so quickly to face Ella, she almost spilt her wine.
“Something about creatures that live in the woods outside that use the wind to send messages to people. They hate intruders on their land, apparently people have died here before, and the locals say it is because of the Wind Whispers,” Ella said, sagging back into the sofa’s cushions. Once again picturing her Maisie, and a fresh flood of tears began to prickle at her eyes.
“That little bastard,” Henry uttered, however, under the noise of the storm, it went unheard.
Once Ella finally fell asleep, aided by several more glasses of wine, Henry moved gingerly, so he could lye her down. Covering his wife with a blanket, he took a moment to look at her.
Still, Ella was beautiful. Her fair hair was long and thick, her skin, which was usually pale and unmarred, was flush, with steams of damp patches, like small rivers marking where her tears had run. And her delicate frame somehow seemed even more fragile tonight.
‘Not surprising,’Henry thought as he felt his own strength threaten once again, to leave him. His own resolve to keep Jacob alive slipping away with each breath his wife took. Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore, grabbing the blood-soaked blade from the table Henry made his way to the stairs.
His muscles ached, his head was light, and his stomach in knots as he ascended the staircase. Adrenaline and rage soaring through his veins as he marched closer to his target.
When Henry did find his way to the bolted door, he slid the lock out slowly, the sound seared into his very soul. He opened the door carefully, expecting Jacob to lunge at him, but to Henry’s surprise he had sat down on the fourposter bed and seemed eerily calm.
“Welcome back,” Jacob said, turning his head to look at Henry who was stood stock still with the knife in his hand.
“I should kill you now,” Henry sneered, allowing himself some semblance of anger, now he didn’t have to keep Ella from letting lose all of hers.
“The police won’t come until we are all dead,” Jacob said as he stood up and walked casually out of the room.
“I would love nothing more than to kill you. However, I know Maisie wouldn’t want that,” Henry said curtly, deciding to stop himself from becoming a monster.
Jacob didn’t seem to be listening, he was looking around the room, as if listening to something else. “Don’t you hear them?” He asked smiling.
“No,” Henry replied bluntly, turning to leave.
Turning to leave, Henry didn’t see Jacob clamber across the fourposter bed he was sat on. He didn’t realise the attack had occurred until Jacob was on top of him. Jacob wrestling the knife free from Henry with animalistic force.
The blade plunged into Henry’s side. The feeling of metal tearing into flesh sent spiralling pain through his entire body and awakened all of Henry’s senses at once. He became aware of Jacob clinging onto his neck, the knife buried into side, which through some, miracle had missed every vital organ.
Being knee-jerked into survival, Henry threw Jacob off him and tried to find his way out. But the commotion had sent them both skidding across to the other side of the room, and Jacob was now between him and the door.
Pulling the serrated blade out hurt even more than it did going in, sending yet more dizzying pain and adrenaline coursing through Henry like a drug. Running, he slammed Jacob against the wall, making them both cry out, moving quickly Henry stumbled back while Jacob was too winded to hold onto him.
But, Jacob was like a wild animal, as soon as Henry stepped away, the blood covered, insane man made another lunge. This time it was an assault from the front, sending them both sprawling onto the bed. Henry felt the slow ooze of blood turn into a downfall as Jacobs weight, as light as it was, pressed against him. Letting out an involuntary moan, Henry heaved Jacob off him the knife catching Jacobs lower arm as he struggled.
As if instantly subdued, Jacob lay there, holding his arm out, the blood cascading out. Henry had caught an artery; dropping the knife he grabbed for his side, the adrenaline slowly seeping out, leaving him stunned and weak. Now the pain began to throb through Henry, each one worse than the one before.
Yet, as Henry watched Jacob, his blood mingling with Maisie’s, his smile turning into a crooked grin. “You will hear them now,” Jacob muttered before his eyes fluttered closed and his arm finally dropped.
*
The storm had broken, and Henry was able to ring the police. When they arrived and were asking questions, they seemed suspicious as to why Jacob had snapped. And why Henry thought Ella was sleeping.
“Mr Lath, we have to ask, what do you remember of last night?” the police woman asked as she sat in the kitchen, the paramedic was tending to Henry’s side. However, when he told them what had happened, the police woman shook her head. “Mr Lath, your wife isn’t sleeping. Someone cut open the artery in her leg, she bled out,”
With this news Henry shot up and without a word marched into the living-room to see Ella. There lying under a blood-soaked blanket lay his wife. “That evil little…” Henry began, but was stopped by the police woman.
“Mr Lath, our Medical Examiner says your wife died first, then Jacob, then your daughter,” She paused and looked concerned at Henry, “I’m sorry, but, there is just no way your story can make sense.”
Henry began shaking his head, the longer he did it, the more violent the motion became. “No, the Medical Examiner, they must be wrong!”
“Mr Lath, I am arresting you on suspicion of first-degree murder on three counts.” The police woman said and placed handcuffs on Henry. “I am going to recommend you get a psych evaluation.”
“No, no, this is all wrong,” Henry muttered as he was hauled out of the cabin.