Sweet Sleep (The Children of Ankh Book 1) Read online

  Kayn saw his knife glint in the light from the moon. It was raised above her chest. Yes, she thought, let it be over now. She shut her eyes as the knife sliced into her chest. Kayn opened her eyes again with acceptance. She felt no more pain. She stared deeply into his eyes as hers filled with tears.

  With a voice thick with emotion he said, “To this life unto the next.” He slowly began to cut some kind of symbol into the skin on Kayn’s chest above her heart. She lay limp in his arms, still conscious of what was happening, yet free from the pain and fear now. He pulled her close to cradle her naked body in his arms like a baby, rocking her broken, violated flesh in his arms, stroking her blood soaked hair. He began to sob as if he were repentant in some way for how he had tortured her.

  As her vision flickered one last time, the man was gone. It was her mother looking into her eyes. Her mother’s eyes were filled with so much love that it seemed to release her from her pain and fear as it had when she was a small child. Her mother cradled her as a baby, rocking her back and forth. She was safe now in her mother’s arms. She was at peace. Mommy, her heart sang, you’re here to save me. The warmth of her mother’s love enveloped her tortured soul. She looked into her mother’s eyes. Her mother touched Kayn’s face and started to sing a song that she had sung to her every night when she was very small.

  Sleep, sweet sleep till the morning

  Just dream away and close your eyes

  My love you’ll be safe until the morning

  Sleeping in my heart, all through the night

  Although bad dreams come to scare you

  My love will scare them all away

  My heart …

  The lights flickered, the pain went away, and her mother was holding her, singing: “Sleep, sweet sleep …”

  The Beginning

  Chapter 2

  Connected

  Joined or linked together. Having the parts or elements logically linked together presenting a thoroughly connected view of the problem.

  Kevin walked over to his bedroom window and watched his father’s car pull out of the driveway. He waved from his bedroom window. He had done this every single time she had left for nearly a dozen years. He started to pick at the slivered wood around the window frame with his fingernails. The blue paint was peeling and weathered. He got a sliver of blue paint under his nail.

  “Son of a …” he said pulling out the shard of blue paint from his nail bed. Blood began to seep from where the blue paint had pierced his flesh. Kevin stuck his finger in his mouth and sucked on it for a second.

  “Works better than a bandage,” he said aloud. As a rule while he was growing up, every single time he had talked to himself someone would walk up behind him with some kind of smart assed remark. Kevin turned around quickly to see if there were any witnesses. No … he was completely alone in his room.

  He jumped on his bed, bouncing around to get comfy. Then he lay down, positioning his arms behind his neck to relax. Kevin looked up at the ceiling. Very funny, Kayn, he thought taking in the poster above his bed. It was of Megan Fox in a smoking hot pose. She’d a drawn a moustache on her face. He’d wondered why she was laughing so hard when she came back from the bathroom. He didn’t take the poster down; it was a stroke of evil genius on her part. He just stared at it smiling, shaking his head. She was so weird but in the most amazing way possible.

  The first day he met the Brighton twins stood out in his memory as truly magical. He had been in the park with his mother and brother. It was only a few days before kindergarten. A woman had given him a flower. She told him a small story about it. The lady pointed at two identical little girls. She suggested he tell them about the flower. He remembered walking over to the little blonde girls. He lay down in the grass close by. They were quietly watching bumble bees. He was intrigued by their unusual behavior. In the end, he had stuck the flower in Kayn’s shoe, and their friendship had begun.

  In school, the twins wore matching sundresses. They looked like little blonde angels with freckles and glistening shiny ringlets of curls. The Brighton twins were not cute identical. They were disturbing identical. They would respond to questions at the same time; they would even be thirsty or need to go to the bathroom at the same time. He remembered his kindergarten teacher’s frustration with their in sync questions and answers. No matter how hard she would try to help them socialize with the other children, they would just play together like no other children were even in the room. They were different in some ways even then. Chloe never had a hair out of place where Kayn was all grins, grass stains, and mud.

  He smiled at the friendly one a lot. Kayn smiled back, and he remembered wondering if she still had the flower in her shoe. He suspected that he would also have to become her sister’s friend if he wanted to play with her, so he set out on a mission to win over Chloe Brighton. It was a mission that had never ended. That day during lunchtime the girls had been lying in the grass looking intently at a patch of clovers.

  Kevin walked over, sat down beside them, and said, “What are you doing?”

  Kayn glared at him and said, “Shh, quiet, you will scare them all away … we are petting the bees.”

  Even at the tender age of five Kevin knew that was a buck crazy idea. “Bees can sting you; it really hurts a lot. Believe me, I know.” Kevin said in a soft whisper.

  “My daddy says they won’t sting us if we are really gentle with them,” Kayn whispered back.

  So Kevin watched the two crazy little girls petting bees for the entire lunch hour. He was just waiting for them to be stung, for one to go screaming to the teacher so he could say: see, I told you so. He had been extremely impressed when it was time to go inside and neither one of them had been wounded. He found himself most impressed when someone did something dangerous without getting hurt. He watched so quietly and without disturbing them that they must have decided he would be a suitable addition to their duo.

  Chloe did not even acknowledge him that first day, but the next day it was Chloe that had asked him to come watch the bees with them. They did this all the way through that year and for a few years after.

  One year Kevin bought Kayn a stuffed bee for her birthday. She still had it on her bed even after she found out that she was allergic to bees. Kayn got stung and swelled right up like a balloon. It was an extremely scary day. She still loved the bees; just from afar now and with an EpiPen in her little fanny pack. Her parents had made her wear that fanny pack every single day. That was the first thing that made the twins unique. They never really knew if Chloe was allergic to bees. She had never been stung by one.

  When questioned if she had an allergy to bees. “Chloe would say, “A bee wouldn’t dare sting me.”

  Kevin had to admit that he believed that statement the very first time she said it. They had only been eight years old, but he would wager her voodoo powers worked on boys as well as bees. He smiled as he realized that the mission of that day had never ended. It had been well over ten years, and he was still on a mission to win over Chloe Brighton. Kevin lay on his bed. He could hear the hum of his dad’s vehicle fading into silence. For some reason, he was feeling anxious tonight.

  His mother knocked on his door a couple times, then walked in and said, “Do you want to know what I think?” His mother always radiated sweetness. She stood balanced in the doorway against his door frame, smiling in an all knowing manner.

  He gave his mom a funny look and said, “Not really, but I bet you’re going to tell me anyway.”

  His mother walked over and playfully slapped him on the shoulder for being a smart ass.

  She said, “Do you think that it’s a possibility that you’re pining over the wrong sister?”

  “I guess anything’s possible,” he replied.

  Kevin’s mom rolled her eyes at him and said, “Just think about it. Which one do you really want to spend time with?” She gave him a quick kiss on the forehead and left the bedroom, shutting the door softly behind her.

  The door slamme
d downstairs; his older brother Clay came thumping up the stairs. It was almost like his testosterone level made him completely incapable of even the simple act of walking without announcing his all powerful presence. His brother was a muscle-bound meathead of unbelievable proportions. Kevin was not a fan of the inevitable sock in the stomach he would receive if he dared to call his older brother out on a moment of moronic clarity.

  Clay was working as a mechanic in town while he saved for college. He also happened to be best friends with the twin’s older brother, Matt. Kayn’s brother was already in college on a football scholarship. Kevin’s bedroom door swung open without ceremony.

  “I need to use the cord for your iPod. I want to go to the gym later. Mine needs to be juiced up.” Clay started to dig through the cords around Kevin’s computer.

  Kevin raised his eyebrows and said, “Hey, you’re already looking. What if I said no? Presumptuous much?”

  Clay shook his head, “Did you seriously just say presumptuous much to me? You seriously need to start hanging out with some dudes.”

  He started to walk out the door then stopped and said, “No more big words. It’s painfully dorky. You’re my little brother. You should be making out with chicks on a Friday night.”

  Kevin looked at his brother and thought, well, if I looked like a Greek god like you instead of what Kayn had called me … a dwarf. Oh no, she had called him vertically challenged; someone else had called him a dwarf. He scrunched up his face and looked at his buff stallion of a brother. This was really genetically unfair. Although his brother had been built just like him, he’d found a reverence for the gym and football. He achieved Greek god status and never looked back. Just then Kevin’s phone rang.

  Kevin teased, “Well, wouldn’t you know it. There’s a chick right now.”

  “Oh, come on. Kayn doesn’t count.” His brother sat down on his bed, looked up at the poster on the ceiling and said, “You are seriously one creepy little dude.”

  Kevin ignored him and said, “Kayn probably forgot her school bag or something.” He answered the phone. “Hey, thanks for pimping out Megan Fox. It’s not at all embarrassing for my brother to see that and think I’m fantasizing about a man in drag.” He started talking into the phone as he jogged down the stairs to see if she’d forgotten her bag. He kind of pre-empted most conversations with pure knowledge of her usual foibles. She wasn’t talking on the other end; the infamous pocket dial. He kept listening hoping for some juice about Chloe. All of a sudden the cell started squealing a pitch like there was interference or bad service. He could hear Chloe screaming for Kayn to run. Kevin froze on the stairs, his heart palpitating.

  Clay was coming down the stairs with the iPod cord in his hand. Kevin stood there with his face void of color, his eyes widened in terror.

  He grabbed his brother’s arm and said, “We have to get over there, right now.” He had to get to Kayn. His mind began to vibrate, replaying Chloe’s desperate scream.

  The brothers ran out the door. Jumping into the car they sped out of the driveway passing their dad coming home from dropping off Kayn. They started honking the horn insanely signaling for him to follow them. Kevin wildly waved out the window. Their father pulled a U-turn and began to chase them. Kevin’s mind was not on Chloe, just Kayn. Chloe’s inhuman screaming was still ringing in his ears like a sick recording, driving his desperation to reach her. Kevin had the cell phone up to his ear. The entire drive she hadn’t hung up. There was a lot of crunching, sloshing, swishing sounds, then silence. He just couldn’t hang up the phone. He knew Kayn needed him.

  They raced down the gravel road toward her house; the waves of desperation that had welled up inside of his chest had begun actually constricting his heart. It was almost too much for him to bear. What was going on over there? His mind raced through the plausible scenarios. His Dad’s car caught up to them as they pulled over in front of Kayn’s house at the same time. All three jumped out of their vehicles and started to run up the hill toward the house. His dad yelled, “What in the hell is going on?”

  Out of breath, gasping and choking on their own waves of adrenaline they ran up the path to the house. It was hard to determine where the path was in the dark. The veil of trees effectively blocked out any lingering light.

  “Chloe was screaming on the phone,” Kevin gasped completely out of breath.

  “Stop,” his dad called using his voice of authority, saved only for danger. Kevin only froze momentarily. Clay seized his arm to stop him pushing past his father.

  “Listen we don’t know what we’re walking into,” his Dad said as he blocked the path, “you let me go in first.”

  Kevin instinctively knew that something big and bad was going on. Danger was thick in the air around them. There was a dark, ominous presence that made his skin crawl. Kevin could feel it … This house was too quiet.

  “I have to get in there,” Kevin panicked, he tried to wrestle free of his brother’s grasp.

  “I know, son. We are just going to exercise a little caution, that’s all.”

  The ominous feeling came to chilling fruition as he watched his Father reach the pitch black open doorway. His Father flicked the light switch at the front door; it appeared to be burnt out.

  His brother said, “The upstairs lights were on. I saw them from the road.”

  “I know,” his father replied.

  Kevin had heard his Father’s stories about the pranks kids play at the high school. He could remember one about how one day every light in the school had been burnt out. Someone had taken the time to loosen each and every one. Automatically whenever there was a burnt out light bulb, Kevin knew his father always checked first to see if it had been loosened.

  His Father stepped into the doorway and reached up and tightened the bulb. The light instantly flickered on. Kevin didn’t say anything aloud, but knew now for sure what his Father had feared: someone had disabled the bulbs. This was really happening.

  The scene that appeared before him as the light from the bulb illuminated the front doorway was a morbid display of blood spatter across the wall beside the light switch. Kevin gasped as tears clouded his eyes instantly for this had been a second home to him. There were thick drag marks of blood that led to the hall closet. His dad pulled his sleeve down and opened the closet door.

  It’s not Kayn, it’s not Kayn, Kevin repeated inside of his mind.

  His father opened the closet door and exposed the lifeless body of Kayn’s mother. Claire Brighton’s eyes were wide open and staring off in the distance. He looked back at Kevin and shook his head.

  His Father said, “Don’t touch anything.” He backed away from the closet and dialed 911.

  His father seemed to be on autopilot now. His Father’s days as a medic and a soldier had obviously taken over on instinct. He had remained remarkably calm at the sight of Claire Brighton’s body.

  Kevin had lost his drive as he stared at the gruesome death scene. His eyes could not leave Claire’s open glassy stare. All that had been Kayn’s mother was gone. This was nothing more than the vacant case that she had come in. It was a strange moment of spiritual clarity amidst the macabre. Kevin’s brain sparked with thoughts of Kayn. Find her … you have to get to her. She needs you.

  Kevin started down the hall as his father spoke to the 911 operator. He reached up to touch the light in the hall to twist it as his father had twisted the other.

  His dad called, “Don’t touch it. There could be fingerprints, physical evidence we are destroying.”

  Kevin and his brother ignored their father and kept walking down the hall into the unknown. Kevin knew he couldn’t wait for the police to arrive. His mind kept repeating the same three words. Kayn is alive. He entered the kitchen, turned on the light. It looked as though nobody had been in there. Kevin ran back down the hall past his Father. The closet door had been closed to hide the horror within. His brother chased him up the stairs towards the girls’ room. Kevin could hear the sirens approaching. That was fas
t Kevin thought, but it didn’t slow him down. Kevin wasn’t coming downstairs. He wasn’t going to stop looking for her.

  His Father called out to him, “The police are here. Get back down here.

  He heard his father’s voice call out to them again, “I have to let them know you boys are upstairs. Once they see this blood, they may shoot us first and ask questions later.”

  The upstairs hallway was lit up, displaying a violent pathway of torture. The family portraits in the hallway were an eerie reminder of what used to be. A vision of Mrs. Brighton’s corpse flashed in his vision and distorted Kevin’s view of the hallway. He took his shoe and brushed it across the drops of blood speckled on the carpet. It appeared to be nearly dry. He bent over and touched it with his finger. It was dry? The voice in his head whispered you have to find Kayn.

  He stiffened as his eyes focused in on the twin’s door. The doorknob to the twin’s bedroom was caked in blood, and it was slightly ajar. The blood on the handle also appeared to be dry? Clay elbowed him out of the way. His brother yanked his sleeve up over his hand and pushed the bedroom door open from the upper left corner. All appeared to be normal. The beds were made and untouched. Kevin noticed tiny droplets of blood. They were like bread crumbs leading toward the twin’s ensuite bathroom. Kevin’s stomach turned instantly. What was that smell? Pennies?

  Clay edged in front of him. Kevin stopped for a second allowing his brother to go first. Clay touched the unsuited door with his foot and pushed it open. Clay froze for a second before staggering backwards. His brother made an attempt to choke back the bile that rose in his throat. Then it spurted out through his fingers onto the carpet.

  Kevin shoved past his heaving brother. He covered his own mouth as he entered the bathroom. He slipped and lost his footing. He landed on his knees in the sticky red liquid that covered almost every inch of the white tile. Kevin looked down at his hands in front of him. They were submerged in blood. His heart constricted in his chest for a split second and he gasped in agony. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t even inhale the smallest amount of air. His vision wavered. His own mind was fighting him. His vision came into focus, and he was on the floor only a few feet from one of the twins. He crawled through her essence. He fought the urge to shake the body. It was obvious: She was dead.