Prologue
Itchy wool draped over her shoulders, numbness setting in as officers kept speaking to her. Nothing registered, nothing processed. Lily Eriksen was fifteen, staring at the bodies of her parents under yellowed sheets. The blackened crimson was already seeping through, and she knew the soil had to be impregnated with their blood by now. Officers thought she’d cracked. She didn’t shed a tear, staring into nothing. “Shell shock,” they called it, and that was probably true, but no one knew the hell she’d put up with for those eternal fifteen years of life. The abuses she’d suffered, broken bones and contusions, bruises and scratches. No one knew. At least, if they did know, most often went with the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ philosophy and went about their business.
She wasn’t sure how it happened, just that she’d been startled awake by the china crashing to the floor, wooden furniture breaking as it was overturned, and the screaming. Her mother’s screams. Not once did Lily hear her father. She wouldn’t, as he was killed first, according to detectives still processing the scene. Cause of death? His jugular had been torn out, and by something small, but what? The next was her mother, terrified and dragging her husband’s body outside, her throat hoarse from screaming, leaving her unable to call for help. Stripes of red like garish paint streaked through their one story home, out onto the lawn where her father bled out completely, and was also the scene of her mother’s death. Eyes cut from her skull, throat open in an insidious smile, her blood soon permeated the soil just as her father’s had.
But where was she? Of course, it was the most common question. From officers, the detectives, medical attendees, all of them. Initial instinct had Lily locking herself in her bedroom as she heard the footsteps of her parents’ killer stalking through the house. Clutching a teddy bear with a rose sewn into its hands, knees to her chest, she heard something… no, someone, brushing against her bedroom door, humming ‘You Are My Sunshine’ upon passing. Whimpering, she tucked her head down, quaking, waiting for her parents’ killer to come after her next. It never came.
Instead, the steps retreated, following the panicked footfalls of her mother and dragging of her father. Then, quiet. Nothing else could be heard inside, prompting Lily to curiously rise from her bed and step toward the door, bear still in hand. Outside. The noises were faint, but audible, and they weren’t inside the house. Door ajar, she peeked through the hall, finding nothing but faint illumination from the street lamps outside. Opening the door further, she stepped into the hall, her toes meeting with the sound of squelching on the carpet. Hmm… she didn’t realize until later what that squishing had been. Still, she pressed forward, her fear and curiosity mingling into one.
Outside, she could see the prone corpse of her father, eyes staring blankly at the starless sky. A little closer and she could make out a silhouette, standing above her now dead mother for a moment before looking back, directly at her. Heart in her throat, Lily froze in terror, waiting for what she identified as a man to turn on her next. It never came. All she could make out was the hair. Fiery red, as deep as the blood no longer in her parents’ bodies. With the subtle tilt of his head and blowing her a kiss, he was gone, but he left a parting gift.
Police were still asking questions when she regained some composure, still clutching the items the killer left behind. A rose, deep and bloody crimson, with a note. Thin fingers held onto both tight enough to turn her knuckles white, red seeping through her fingers from the thorns. The note was one she’d carry forever, inspiring her to find the killer, to know his face, to know the name behind the hair that still burned in her dreams.
You will forever be my sunshine, darling. No one will ever rain on you again.
Xoxo,
Rose
