Diabolic

Susan stirred from a deep sleep, an unsettling prickle crawling down her spine. The room was silent, too silent. The kind of silence that swallowed sound, thick and oppressive. Sweat slicked her bare skin, the heavy summer air pressing down on her like a phantom’s grip. She reached out, feeling the blood-red linen beneath her fingers, searching.

Her nightgown was missing.

Her brows knitted together. When had she taken it off? She strained to recall, but her memories were slippery, like ink swirling in water. A dream lurked at the edges of her mind, a fragment of something unsettling, incomplete.

Slowly, almost involuntarily, she traced a path from behind her left ear, down her jawline, to parted lips. The sensation was familiar. A memory? A habit? Her fingers drifted lower, finding the hard ridge of her collarbone. A voice echoed in her mind, deep and measured, dripping with venom and devotion.

“This is my beginning... and it will be my end.”

She shuddered. The words were his. Always his. The devil who whispered in her ear, who had owned her soul with the softest touches and the cruelest absences. A man who existed in the void between love and destruction.

The man she had escaped.

Susan’s breath hitched as she sat up. Moonlight forced its way through the thick curtains, casting ghostly slashes of silver across the floor. Her slip lay discarded near the edge of the bed, a crumpled specter of her unraveling mind. She grabbed it, pulling it over her clammy skin, and tiptoed toward the bathroom.

Then she heard it.

A voice from the hallway.

“Where are you going, dear?”

Susan froze. Her pulse pounded in her ears. The voice belonged to the crone. Her jailer. The woman with a gaze sharp enough to slice through bone.

“Can’t sleep?” the old woman rasped.

“It’s the heat,” Susan lied, her voice too thin, too frail.

The crone smiled, a slow, knowing curl of lips. “Good. Wouldn’t want you wandering off, now, would we?”

Susan swallowed hard. The hallway stretched before her, dark and unending. The walls seemed to breathe, pulsing with the memories they held captive. She turned back to her room, retreating from the weight of the old woman’s stare. The crone muttered to herself, her words barely audible.

“I’ll take care of her, my boy. Don’t you worry.”

A chill seeped into Susan’s bones. The house, with its towering walls and heavy drapes, was a prison. He had left her here. Left her with the one person who would never let her go.

Her hands trembled as she climbed back into bed. She could still feel him here, in the worn-out mattress, in the air thick with his scent. He had been everything to her...her tormentor, her salvation, her inevitable ruin.

The past rushed back in jagged flashes: her hands on his body, tracing scars both seen and unseen; his voice coaxing, demanding; her love, so consuming, so absolute, that it had drowned her.

Then he was gone.

But not really.

A sound splintered the quiet. A soft creak.

Susan’s body went rigid. Her breath shallowed. She wasn’t alone.

Before she could move, hands seized her ankles.

A scream clawed its way up her throat as she was yanked from the bed, dragged across the rough carpet. The air rushed out of her lungs as weight pressed down, pinning her. A familiar scent filled her nostrils, clean, crisp, tinged with musk.

CK One.

He was here.

Her mind fractured as he leaned in, his breath scorching her skin. “I can’t think without you,” he whispered into her ear.

No. No. No. This wasn’t real.

But his hands were real. His grip, the heat of his body, the pressure crushing the air from her chest - it was all terrifyingly real. Susan clawed at the bedside table, fingers closing around cold metal. The antique lamp. With a desperate cry, she swung it with all her might.

A sickening crack filled the room. He groaned, a choked sound of shock and pain. Blood seeped from his temple, dark and glistening in the dim light.

He slumped. Silence.

Susan gasped, shaking, staring at the unmoving body. Her heart hammered. What had she done? She reached for him, fingers trembling.

“Call an ambulance!” she screamed, panic lacing every syllable. “We have to save him!”

A slow clap echoed in the darkness. A raspy chuckle followed.

“You just did, dear,” the crone murmured. “You saved him from himself.”

Susan turned, horror etching into her features. The old woman stood in the doorway, her expression one of serene triumph. Blood glinted on her wrinkled hands. Slowly, methodically, she knelt beside the body, pressing gnarled fingers to his neck.

“No more trouble,” she whispered. Then, looking up at Susan with eyes alight, she said, “I’ll take care of you, my girl. I will never leave you.”

She said it over and over again, laughing her absurd, dry laugh until she coughed.

And when she had finished burying her son in the basement, she took Susan by the hand, steering her into the darkness.