Silence

The first sound was a scream.

It was brief, almost delicate, and ended so abruptly that eight year old Emily wondered if she had dreamed it.

She lay beneath her pink comforter, staring into the darkness. Rain whispered against her bedroom window, and the little nightlight beside her dresser cast a warm amber glow across the walls. Paper stars glittered faintly on the ceiling. Her stuffed rabbit rested beneath her chin, one floppy ear caught between her fingers.

Everything was as it should be.

She was home.

And home was safe.

Then something crashed downstairs.

Emily lifted her head.

A chair scraped across the kitchen floor. Something shattered. She heard hurried footsteps, followed by a muffled voice she couldn't make out.

"Mommy?" she called.

No answer.

She pushed back the comforter and sat up, listening.

Then her mother screamed.

She knew the sound of her mother's voice better than any other sound in the world.

She had never heard this.

The scream rose into a desperate, strangled cry. Something crashed against a wall. There was a succession of heavy blows, each followed by a terrible gasp, as though her mother were struggling to breathe. Emily heard her calling out, but the words dissolved into choking sobs.

Then came a final, muffled sound.

Silence.

Emily stared at the door.

"Mommy?"

Her voice was barely audible.

She waited for her mother to answer, perhaps to call up the stairs and tell her to go back to sleep. She waited for her father to come rushing into the hallway, for Daniel to shout something from his bedroom.

Nothing happened.

Then a someone began walking through the house.

Emily scrambled out of bed. Her bare feet sank into the carpet as she hurried to the door. She reached for the handle but stopped before turning it.

The footsteps had stopped downstairs.

Something dragged across the floor.

Then the stairs creaked.

One step.

Another.

Emily backed away from the door.

Whoever was in the house was coming upstairs.

She wanted her father.

She wanted him so desperately that her chest hurt. Daddy would know what to do. Daddy fixed toys, killed spiders on her bedroom wall, and checked beneath her bed whenever she dreamed about monsters.

Daddy would make this stop.

She heard footsteps moving across the living room downstairs. They reached the bottom of the staircase. Slowly they began walking up.

The footsteps reached the top of the stairs.

Emily pressed both hands over her mouth.

A floorboard creaked in the hallway. The steps moved slowly past her bedroom door, then stopped outside Daniel's room.

Her brother was eleven. He was brave in the way older brothers were supposed to be brave. He took her to the bathroom in the middle of the night when she was too scared to go by herself, covered her eyes when certain TV shows got too scary, and promised he’d protect her from all monsters.

"If anything bad ever happens," he'd told her, puffing out his chest, "you just come get me. I'll protect you."

She had laughed at him.

Now she wanted him more than she had ever wanted anything.

Daniel's door creaked open.

"Mom?" he mumbled sleepily.

A pause.

"Who's there?"

Emily crept toward her own door and pressed her ear against it.

She heard Daniel's feet touch the floor.

"What are you doing?"

Something scraped across the bedroom.

Then Daniel shouted.

The sound that followed was so sudden and violent that Emily stumbled backward. His bed slammed against the wall. There was a crash, a frantic struggle, and a succession of heavy impacts that made the framed photograph outside their rooms rattle against its nail.

Daniel screamed.

It was a raw, terrified sound, unlike anything Emily had ever heard from him. He shouted for help, his voice breaking as he struggled to get away. Something struck the floor hard enough to shake the walls.

Then he screamed again.

And again.

Each cry grew weaker, broken by gasping breaths and desperate, choking pleas.

Emily covered her ears, but the sounds seemed to come from inside her head.

She heard him scrambling across the floor.

She heard a sharp impact.

She heard him try to speak, only for the words to collapse into a wet, strangled noise.

Then came a final thud.

Something dragged across the carpet.

And Daniel was silent.

Emily stood in the middle of her bedroom, trembling so violently that her teeth clicked together.

She understood.

She didn't know how she understood, or how her mind could possibly accept something so terrible, but she understood.

Her mother was dead.

Daniel was dead.

And whoever had done it was still in the house.

A sob escaped her.

She clamped her hand over her mouth.

The footsteps returned to the hallway.

They moved slowly, without hurry, as though the person had finished an ordinary household chore and was deciding what to do next.

Emily backed toward the window and fumbled with the latch. Her fingers slipped against the cold metal. She tried again, pulling harder, but the window wouldn't budge.

She couldn't get out.

She couldn't call for help.

She couldn't even cry.

The footsteps stopped outside her door. After what felt like an eternity, the footsteps backed away from the door and started moving slowly down the hallway.

She stood motionless, listening until the sound of footsteps faded.

Only then did she move.

She needed somewhere to hide.

Her bed was too obvious. The space beneath it was where her father always said monsters looked first. Her closet doors rattled whenever anyone touched them.

Her eyes landed on the wardrobe.

It stood beside her dresser, a tall wooden thing that smelled of cedar and old clothes. She had hidden inside it during a game of hide and seek once, and nobody had found her for nearly an hour.

She ran to it, opened the door as quietly as she could, and squeezed herself between her hanging dresses and the back panel.

She pulled the door almost shut, leaving a narrow crack through which she could see part of the room.

Her stuffed rabbit lay beside the bed.

She had forgotten it.

She wanted to go back for it, but she couldn't make herself move.

She curled into the smallest shape she could manage, pressing one hand over her mouth and gripping her pajamas with the other.

The house settled around her.

Rain tapped against the window. The clock downstairs ticked steadily. Somewhere, a pipe groaned in the wall.

Ordinary sounds.

Familiar sounds.

Sounds that had never frightened her before.

She thought about her mother making pancakes on Sunday mornings, letting Emily stir the batter even though she always made a mess. She thought about Daniel pulling silly faces behind their father's back at dinner. She thought about her father carrying her upstairs after she'd fallen asleep on the sofa, his arms warm and strong beneath her.

She wanted yesterday back.

A floorboard creaked in the hallway upstairs.

Emily stopped breathing.

The footsteps began moving again.

Slowly.

They started down the hallway.

Emily pressed her forehead against the wardrobe's wooden back panel.

The footsteps passed Daniel's room.

They stopped outside her bedroom.

For several seconds, nothing happened.

Then the bedroom door handle turned.

The door opened.

She could see a pair of dark shoes enter the room.

They crossed the carpet slowly, passing her bed and the discarded rabbit. The person stopped beside the window.

Then he turned toward the wardrobe.

The shoes approached.

One step.

Two.

Three.

They stopped directly in front of her hiding place.

Emily bit down on her hand until tears sprang into her eyes.

The footsteps suddenly moved away.

She heard them cross the room and stop near the bedroom door. A moment later, they disappeared into the hallway.

Emily waited.

One second.

Two.

Three.

She didn't move.

She couldn't know whether the killer had left or was searching the other rooms.

She knew only that she was alone.

Alone in the house where she had grown up, surrounded by the things she loved, with no one left to protect her.

She began to cry silently.

She was so tired.

Her legs ached, her throat hurt, and every breath felt too loud. She wanted to crawl into bed and pull the comforter over her head. She wanted someone to tell her that she was safe.

A floorboard creaked in the hallway.

Emily went still.

The footsteps were coming back.

They passed Daniel's bedroom.

They crossed the narrow stretch of carpet outside her door.

Then the bedroom door opened again.

Emily stared through the wardrobe crack.

The dark shoes appeared.

They crossed the room.

Stopped beside her bed.

Moved toward the dresser.

Then turned.

The footsteps approached the wardrobe once more.

She could hear who ever it was breathing.

The wardrobe door began to open.

Emily recoiled into the corner, raising her arms over her head.

"Please," she whispered. "Please don't hurt me."

The doors swung apart.

A man crouched in front of her.

For a moment, his face was hidden in shadow.

He reached toward her.

Emily flinched.

Then he leaned closer, and the dim light caught his features.

She stared.

Her breath caught in her throat.

She knew that face.

She knew the little crease between his eyebrows, the faint scar on his chin, the familiar shape of his hands.

"Daddy?"

Her father smiled.

"Oh, sweetheart."

Emily made a small, broken sound.

Then she threw herself into his arms.

He caught her easily, gathering her against his chest as she wrapped both arms around his neck. The sobs she'd been holding back burst free, shaking her so hard she could barely breathe.

"Daddy! Daddy!"

He held her tightly.

"I'm here, sweetheart."

She buried her face against his shoulder.

"They're gone," she sobbed. "Mommy’s gone, and Daniel, and I couldn't help them. I was so scared. I'm sorry, Daddy. I'm so sorry."

He stroked her hair gently.

Emily clung to him harder.

She could smell his familiar aftershave beneath the strange metallic scent that seemed to hang in the air. She pressed her ear against his chest and listened to his heartbeat.

It was steady.

It was real.

It was the same heartbeat she had heard when he carried her upstairs after she'd fallen asleep on the sofa.

She had thought she would never hear it again.

She lifted her head, tears running down her cheeks.

Her father looked at her for a moment.

"Oh, sweetheart," he whispered. "You must have been so frightened."

Emily nodded.

He gathered her closer, and she let herself relax against him. The terrible sounds seemed distant now, as though they had happened in another house, to another family.

Daddy was here.

Daddy would know what to do.

He would hold her until morning, just as he had when she was little and woke from nightmares.

She closed her eyes.

"You're not going to leave me, are you?" she whispered.

Her father held her tighter.

"No, sweetheart."

He shifted her in his arms.

The little nightlight beside the dresser illuminated his familiar face, his rumpled shirt, and the large blood soaked blade he was holding behind her back.

The steel gleamed inches behind his daughter's head.

Emily nestled closer to her father.

“I love you, daddy.”