Larkspur

Chapter 1

I saw my little brother, Aiden, walk inside from playing with the neighbor's kids. Every day after kindergarten, he would wait for the kids to get home so they could all play games in our yard. That was one good thing about this house; we had a huge yard that surrounded us. Almost all of the neighbors would ask to have their kid's party over here just because it was the only place big enough to have a party. My parents loved having everyone over, so it worked out perfectly.

Aiden grabbed a juice from the fridge and yelled at mom that he was back. He walked with his tiny little light up shoes, covered in mud, over to the couch and turned on cartoons.

"Aiden you know mom will be mad if you have your shoes on the couch. You better take them off," I told him as I walked over and joined him on the couch.

"You can't tell me what to do! I'll do what I want sissy!" He yelled back, sticking his tongue out. My eight year old self was mad and wanted to yell to mom to tell on him. If I couldn't have shoes on the couch than neither could he!

"Yes I can! Mom! Aiden has his shoes on the couch!" I yelled, hoping off the couch and running up the stairs to meet mom. I could already hear his tiny feet pounding against the ground behind me. I made it to my mother's room first, but he was right behind me. We were both pounding on the door yelling about what really happened and what didn't happen. When the door swung open, I could tell my mom was upset. Her normal bright eyes were filled with sadness and surrounded by dark circles. Her skin looked a sickly yellow and pale. Even though I was only eight and just cared about me being right over my brother, I knew something was not okay.

"You two just go to your rooms if you cannot be together. It is getting close to bed time anyways, so just go stay in your room," She spoke loudly, interrupting our arguing. We both looked at each other in rage, but went our opposite ways into our own rooms. My room was near the right side of the house and Aiden's was on the left, closest to my parent's room. It was a good thing to be far away from your brother, since we never got along.

Once I slammed my door shut in frustration, I went to my bed and turn on my TV. Some type of cartoon was playing, but I wasn't really paying attention to it. My mind was on how bad Aiden was going to get in trouble tomorrow and how I would be right. Mom would take my side and I would get rewarded with all the candy in the world. Aiden would have to eat nasty broccoli or some kind of healthy food like that. I never got candy, our parents always made us eat healthy rabbit food, but I would get lots of candy for being this good. There is no way my mother could look away from this wonderful deed.

Over the loud noise coming from my TV, making it loud enough just to annoy my brother, I heard a loud crash. It was like the sound of glass shattering and slamming onto the hard tile floor. I immediately jump up to go bust my brother, catch him doing something wrong so I could get double the candy, but as I turned the doorknob I realized that it was locked. I didn't even know it could lock from the outside, but I figured this out quickly. At first I just thought Aiden was doing this to tease at me, but when I heard a scream I knew something wasn't right. Fear filled up my body and I started to panic as I ran to the corner of my room. My parents always told me to not trust strangers and if I heard anything that scared me to go into the attic. So that is what I did.

Every now and then our parents would make us practice hiding if an intruder came into our house. Aiden and I would both run up into the attic above my bed and shut it. We would huddle in the corner until our parents told us we could come out. I thought that this was a normal thing that every kid did, so when I told my friends about it I was shocked to hear them say how weird I was. I guess not every kid had Hide From the Scary Killer Guy Fridays like we did.

I pulled the string down, letting the small door above my bed creak open and a wooden ladder following. Once it was completely down, remember the all the steps from practicing all the time, I climbed into the dark attic and shut the small hatch. Any light that I had was now gone and turned into dust. The attic wasn't very big, but I liked to come up here sometimes when I wanted to get away from Aiden. Aiden. I completely forgot about him being in his room. Was he locked in too? I had to get him in here with me. I couldn't leave him out there alone.

With shaky hands I go to open the hatch back, but the sound of a loud bang stops me. Then another one. As the tears started to pour down my cheek, I heard the shouts, the cries, of Aiden. I wanted to scream back, tell him to run in here, I would protect him from the bad guys just like we practiced, but nothing came out when my mouth opened. Just silent tears poured down my face as I heard Aiden's screams stop with another loud bang,

I crawled to the corner of the attic, hugging my knees to my chest and cried. Everything was quiet for a while, just the sounds of my sobs, but then I heard the click of my door unlocking. I tried to stay as still and silent as I could, but I couldn't stop the tears. I was whimpering by the time I heard the footsteps below me, seeing the small crack of light coming through the hatch door. Whoever was in the house was going to find me and hurt me too. Someone was hurting my family, but my eight year old self didn't do anything about it. I sat there in the attic and cried because I was scared for my life. I didn't go out to see if I could help, I hid away.

I saw a big hand on the top step of the ladder, covered by strange black drawings. At the time I didn't know what a tattoo looked like, so I described it as pretty black drawings. However, as soon as I saw this hand, it vanished. The hatch stayed cracked and I heard footsteps running away until everything went silent.

I was left alone in the attic for many hours before the police arrived. I didn't want to go down, but I wanted to see my parents and my brother. I wanted run to them and tell them how scared I was of the scary man. I wanted to tell my brother how he could get the candy and I'll take the stinky broccoli. I didn't get to do that, though.

One of the policemen carried me out of my room and down the stairs. All the doors I passed were shut, but I knew my parents weren't going to come out of them. I knew that I had failed to save my little brother, my mom, and my dad. I knew I was the reason that they wouldn't come out of those rooms. It was all my fault.

**********

After I talked to the police and told them what I saw, they thanked me and told me how sorry they were. I stayed there for the rest of the night, too shocked to say anything else, too upset to move. At the end, they drove me to my grandparent's house. My new home.

The years that followed were some of the worst years of my life. I never spoke to anyone or wanted to do anything but go to my room. My grandparents smothered me and tried fix me. I spent all of my time thinking about that tattoo and wandering if I would have remembered what it was, maybe I could have help them catch the guy who did this; however, they never found the guy. After years of nothing, they dropped the case. They stopped caring about the pain that this man caused in my life.

And that is why I am here now. Toget away from everything and anything that tied me to my awful childhood. Iwanted to have a brand new start; be a new person.