Traces of Delilah

Five

A murder-suicide wasn't something I'd have wished on my worst enemy. As much as I despised my aunt, I wouldn't have wished her into a situation like that either. Scratch that, death in general wasn't something I had the balls to wish upon anyone.

So, why was it cast upon a seemingly innocent girl? And why was she the one who did it? 

A picture-perfect family, almost too perfect to be true, painted my laptop screen with their honor and glory. There was one mom, one dad, one son, and one daughter—same eyes, same eye color, same hair color, and same skin. But like all perfect things, there were cracks. And within those cracks, there were lies.

I laughed under my breath. It was funny, their perfection (fake or not) almost made me jealous. I might have been . . . if there wasn't such a gruesome headline attached to the image.

"FAMILY OF FOUR DEAD AFTER MURDER-SUICIDE INCIDENT", was what the headline said.

Bile slithered up my throat, but I had succeeded in keeping it down. A headline like this wasn't something I would have liked to be greeted with, my third day in town. Shit happens. I knew that. But when shit like this happened in the home—the very room—I'd been staying in, that was where things got weird.

My assumption was right. They were an Asian-American family, specifically Korean-American, as stated in the article. I had barely made it five lines in before I found myself consumed in the case. Photos, articles, police reports—I had done so much research I could write a book with the information I found.

No evidence of a struggle had been involved. One minute they were alive. The next minute they were gone, just like a memory. I wondered if people in this town still carried their memory. It was just a thought.

The cause of death seemed to have been gas. Though, I couldn't find what kind of gas it was. Had it not been identified in the autopsy? No, that couldn't have been possible, if they knew it was a gas that killed them all.

It was strange. Every time I thought I'd filled a missing hole in the truth, another hole appeared. It was like their death was absentmindedly written off as a murder-suicide. Like the media was covering something up.

"Are you ever going to come downstairs and hang with me? Or have you developed a strange new addiction to the dark while I was away? I cooked dinner!" Skylar's voice rang through my ears. She drew her last sentence out in a high-pitched sing. There was a hint of hope in her tone, as if she'd been trying to pry me away from my laptop for hours now.

Had I been sitting here that long? I'd been so occupied she was able to cook dinner without my nose sniffing it out. Now that I thought about it. . . When did she walk into the house? And when did the sun start going down?

Suddenly, the light flickered on, brightening the darkroom. I scrunched my face at the window. A full-developed moon reflected back inside alongside a palette of white stars that lit the sky. My pupils burned with anguish as the deadly light sunk into them.

When I adjusted, I turned to the door, eyeing her pouty face. "Yeah, I promise. I promise. One second"—my stomach grumbled, interrupting me—"okay, I'm coming now."

"Yay!" she cheered with a clap. 

After closing all the tabs and shutting my laptop off, I followed her downstairs to the kitchen, where there was a large pan set on the stove. The scrumptious smell of stuffed shells bled through the air, urging my taste buds to life. Sheesh, I had forgotten to eat all day.

"What were you doing by the way?" she pestered. I opened my mouth but caught myself before words flew out.

Skylar had been staying in this house since August of last summer, a few months after their bodies had been cleared out. Could she have known about its dark history? I mean, would she have cared? Every piece of property must have had some kind of past to it. A past I wasn't so sure Real Estate agents would have willingly shared so easily.