Two

I had to pry my feet from the hardwood floor. The shock had cemented me in place, but as I examined the royal purple and deep red fabrics hanging around the room, I felt the need to explore more.

My hand reached forward as I turned in the doorway and faced the wall. The fabric was silk and slipped through my fingers as I grabbed the edge and lifted it. Beneath the cover were more symbols, some were hand-drawn, and some were etched into the wall.

It baffled me, and I took a step back, releasing my hold on the fabric.

"Oh, what were you two up to?" I whispered as I spun around, overwhelmed by the discovery. Out of all the fucking things they could have had up here, this was the last thing I would have guessed.

I walked across the floor, the symbol beneath my feet giving me an uneasy feeling as I made my way toward the book. The unrealistic hope that they were reading Pride and Prejudice flew right out of my head as I approached the aged, tan pages and the unfamiliar words.

I narrowed my eyes at the modern white sheet of lined paper sticking out from beneath the book. It slid out easily, and my surprise turned to wonder at my mother's handwriting in what appeared to be Latin. A language I wasn't aware she knew. She had copied the words from the book in front of me, but there were several notes as she crossed out some and added in others.

During my time in school, I had taken Spanish. I did not remember most of it, but I knew that Latin was the root of most languages. As I scanned over the writing, a few words stuck out to me, and I began to sound them out to myself to see if I could figure out what the familiar words said.

My lips moved the smallest fraction as I quietly read out the words on the page. When I reached the end, I flipped the page over, hoping my mother had left me some sort of note in English that could allude to what she had been writing.

The blank side of the paper stared back at me, and I resisted the urge to crumble it up into a ball, knowing full well that I would need to go online and translate this later.

A breeze blew through the room, and I let out a sigh of relief that the air conditioner was not broken after all.

It wasn't until the cool air turned hotter than a mid-summer day that I glanced up in the direction it was coming from to glare at the air vent. Only, the ceiling was bare. A quick scan of the room confirmed that there was no vent anywhere in sight, not even a ceiling fan.

My gaze flickered over to the window to confirm that it too, was closed. My hair ruffled in my ponytail as the breeze turned into a heavy gust that sent papers flying from the table by the window. Thunder sounded from the storm outside just seconds before rain began to pelt the glass between us.

I placed my hands on the book in front of me, holding the paper with my mother's writing down on it. A scream of terror was lodged in my throat as a mini-tornado seemed to be forming in the room. Fabric was being ripped from the walls, and my eyes narrowed to protect themselves from the obtrusive air and flying objects.

There was nothing that I could see to warrant the wind in the room, and I snapped my head around to find anything that could explain the miniature storm inside my home. A trickle of fear spiraled down my spine, and while I was aware that I was the only one in the room, the feeling of eyes on me brought goosebumps to the surface of my skin.

My shirt whipped around my torso, and my hair was rapidly breaking free from the band holding it in place. I jumped as a book flew from the shelf and slammed into the wall behind me, nearly taking off my head.

The sound of a manly chuckle was the final straw, and I let go of the book and paper I had been protecting. I traveled quickly through the room and out the door, slamming it behind me. Not bothering to turn the lights off.

It was clear that my lack of sleep had finally caught up with me. I knew I was alone in the house. The security system was the first thing that I had installed when I moved in. There had been no alarm, and no motion detected with a heat signature around the outside of the house, or security at the gate would have called the police, and I would have been notified by the blaring alarm.

My first thought was to get out of the house and to my car, but with the hurricane outside, I was stuck with my second option. Like the scared woman I was, I rushed downstairs to my bedroom, where I locked the door once I was inside, climbed into bed, and pulled the blanket up to my shoulders.

My eyes never strayed from the large wooden barrier between me and the rest of the house as I sat waiting and listening for anything to happen. The longer I watched, the heavier my eyelids became until I was being sucked down into the darkness of a much-needed slumber.

***

I walked up those front steps excited for dinner with my parents. Living on my own, I hadn't had a real home-cooked meal in years. I survived mostly on take-out and premade frozen meals. It put a dent in my wallet, but it was either that or give myself food poisoning.

No one had answered when my manicured finger pressed into the doorbell. It could be heard echoing through the large home but went unanswered. I had rung it once more before pulling out my phone to call my mother.

I checked the time on the lock screen before I opened it and pulled up her contact information. I was on time. Yet, the line rang until I reached her voicemail. Clicking the end call button instead of leaving a message, I had reached into my purse to pull out my old set of keys that I hadn't used since I moved out.

It slid into the lock easily, but a sense of dread dropped to the depths of my stomach as the deadbolt clicked back into the door. Maybe it was the raven I saw perched on the gate out front, or the wilted plants that lined the walkway leading up to the house, but I knew as the door creaked open that nothing good was behind it.

The smell of death hit me as I let the heavy piece of wood swing open. I raised my hand up and over my mouth, but it did nothing to hide the screen of terror as my eyes laid on the scene in front of me.

The sound of familiar deep laughter echoed around me, and I fell into the darkness.

***

My rapidly beating heart and breathing were not a new feeling to wake up to. I had nightmares almost every night. Sometimes they were small clips, and other times I had to relive the entire terrifying experience.

The feeling of sand beneath my eyelids irritated me, and I reached up with lazy arms to rub my eyes. The white ceiling above me received my glare as I debated staying in bed for the rest of the day. Everything that I needed to get done by a certain date had finally been completed yesterday. Everything else I could hold off on.

I was ready for a well-deserved rest and recovery period.

I thought back to the dream of the attic that I had the night before. It was out of this world, and I refused to give it a second thought. I would look at the attic another time when I was well-rested to prevent further hallucinations.

"You're not crazy. You were just tired." I said to myself. The back of my mind was alerting, telling me that part of the night wasn't a dream. But, the rational side knew that everything I thought I experienced last night was impossible.

My hands moved up to finger through my hair at the top of my head. The passing of my parents and all of the stress I had been under had just been too much. I was ready for a break, and if I was honest, I was ready to get the hell out of this house. Forever.

A dark red mark on my wrist captured my attention in my periphery, and I turned my head an inch to the right to get a better view of the skin. My fingers loosened in my hair as I stared in shock. Burned into my skin was a pentagram, surrounded by a circle. It was the same symbol from my dream, the one that had been drawn onto the floor of the attic.

I traced over the raised skin, expecting to feel pain from the fresh wound. But, the rubbery scar was healed enough that if I wasn't aware of its overnight arrival, I would have thought it was several years old. The dime-sized mark on my flesh sat on the sensitive skin of my inner wrist, directly below my pointer finger.

"What the hell is going on?" I asked myself as I pushed down on the new design on my skin. A familiar manly chuckle echoed through the room, and my eyes widened as the memory of last night flashed through my mind. I had heard it before, and it wasn’t just in my dream. That I was absolutely sure of. It was the same toe-curling deep noise of amusement that I had heard right before I had run out of the attic.

"Hell has nothing to do with it. That was all you, my dear." The unfamiliar, deep voice caused my breathing to falter. My body tensed as I placed it coming from inside my room. The room I had locked before I went to sleep last night.

My head tilted up slowly, hoping it was my imagination talking back to me. Instead, my eyes landed on a man leaning against the doorframe. He wore a pair of low-riding black leather pants that looked well-worn and abused, with no shirt or shoes. Black markings covered the exposed skin of his torso, moving and vibrating as if they were alive.

I scanned him from toe to head, feeling a rush of adrenaline and panic fill me when I scanned over his face and short dark hair and settled on the pitch-black eyes. Everything about him looked dark and dangerous, but his eyes seemed capable of taking someone's soul without an ounce of effort.

My gaze flickered from him to my purse that lay only a few feet away on the top of my dresser. I knew I had a can of pepper spray in there. I just needed to get to it. Once I had him down, I could make a run for it or get to my cellphone to call security.

My to-do list grew even longer as I mentally added the need to buy a weapon for protection and perhaps a personal bodyguard since the new gate security just wasn’t cutting it. That was… if I made it out of here alive. The man in the doorway seemed not to care about my wondering gaze as I looked back at him. His eyes were locked on me, with his arms crossed in front of his chest.

Everything about his stare made me feel uncomfortable. It felt as if he were analyzing me. The open curiosity was evident in the way his eyebrows pulled together as he looked me over.

I could feel my chest tighten, knowing that I was about to face the same fate that my parents had. That didn't mean that I would go down without a fight. This guy could go to Hell, and if I could be the one to send him there it would be all the better.

His eyes widened in amusement, and the corner of his lips curled up as I lunged from the bed. My hand slid into my purse with precision, immediately finding the palm-sized can. I spun around to face him, the strange man leaning in the doorway, and pressed down on the top of the spray. A stream of liquid shot into the intruder's face, and I held my finger down for as long as possible.

I just needed him to move or be blinded long enough for me to slip by him and make my way out of the house. As the spray stopped, I watched with horror as the man whose jaw was clenched and eyes were closed reached up and wiped his face.

There was no sign of pain or discomfort, only irritation, and annoyance.

"Explain!" He demanded, the dark and powerful voice sending a chill down my spine. My mind was screaming from the danger I knew I was in. I was well aware that I was about to be in immense pain and would more than likely suffer before I met my end.

However, the way that my body reacted to the man who was about to murder me was unfounded and moronic. There was no reason for me to feel a twinge of excitement at his display of dominance and strength. My body seemed to have a mind of its own, like it was under his spell, there to do his bidding.

"I was…" I found myself stumbling over my words for a moment before the reality of the situation came back to me. "You broke into my house! I don't have to explain anything to you! How did that not hurt you?"

This time it was my turn to demand an answer as the man flicked his hand to the side, sending drops of the dangerous liquid against the wall and floor. "You are as ignorant as you are beautiful, you naive creature. It is a shame that I will need to kill you."