Descent into the Abyss

Chapter 4

          As the engine shut off, and Blake opened the truck door, he couldn't take his eyes off the door of her house standing open. The echoes of the nightmare filled his mind, but with every step he took closer to the truth, the louder his heart pounded until it deafened the fear in his mind. He stepped up to the door, slowly opening it to look inside at the dark interior, but halfway open the door stopped and thudded softly. An answer to the unspoken question lay on the other side, where a black pool slowly spread outward from the source, where dark brown hair lay strewn about on the hardwood floor. Blake stepped into the house, gazing around the door, only to find the same sight of his nightmare, his eyes growing wide with horror and a silent scream coming to his lips. 

          "Jessica...?" He breathed, fear culminating into a choked-back sob.

          Her cold eyes stared up at the ceiling, while the blood soaked into the crevices between the floorboards. He struggled to formulate anything beyond the simplest of questions, but as he gazed up and down her still corpse, answers began to form. Her uniform from the diner, black with a red stripe, had several gashes down the side, many of which had blood stained and caked on it, meaning she had been attacked before the final, fatal assault occurred. Her dark slacks were ripped slightly, indicating that her attacker had sexual motivations, but from the bloody skin on her knuckles and the broken nails, she fought back. Unfortunately, that had probably enraged her attacker, leading to that final, fatal assault here in the doorway, but that only raised another, worse question.

          "Sabrina? Where is she?"

          A sudden thud followed by a muffled scream filled the air, answering the unspoken question. Blake's eyes shot wide open, realization of what was happening upstairs, mere feet above his head, and he opened his mouth to vehemently protest; to shout at his daughter's attacker with a string of curses and threats, but he stopped in his tracks. The wounds of her mother, the blade wielded by the maniac that forced their way into the house, were undoubtedly upstairs near his daughter. If he rushed up there, yelling and threatening, alerting the criminal that had no issue with killing, if not painfully evident by the corpse at Blake's feet. As he turned to head upstairs,  he could feel the cold eyes of Jessica follow him, the words of his nightmare evident once more in the back of his mind, but as he slowly ascended the stairs, he shook his head to clear the thoughts, because even if he had been too late for her, he still had a chance to save his daughter. Every step brought him closer to his daughter, but every scream and whimper he heard caused blood to boil furiously in his veins.

         He had to stop what was happening, but he needed to restrain himself, for one misstep could result in losing his daughter. So as he climbed each step, he gritted his teeth and gripped the railing of the stairs tightly, wishing that his hands were gripping the throat of the man who was violating his daughter instead. The inevitable zenith of the staircase crept towards him, as the nightmare voice of Jessica screamed the words that had haunted him for the entire drive here. Even after driving through the night, and showing up as quickly as he could, he still couldn't beat the clock on the mortality of his ex-wife. As he stepped up to the landing, his mind suddenly froze on the unanswered question, one that would never have an answer, and in the deepest recesses of his mind, one that he prayed to his vengeful God would never be answered: how did he know about Jessica's demise beforehand?

         "Stop! Please, don't!" He heard Sabrina yell from the nearby bedroom, snapping him from his thoughts.

          Blake stepped up to the bedroom door, glancing in through the opening to see a sight to made his vision turn red with fury. In the room, mere feet away, a bedside lamp illuminated his daughter's room, revealing a sweaty, filthy man lying naked on top of a whimpering mess of clothes and flesh. He pulled away briefly, reaching down towards his groin as she squealed and tried to pull away, crying out in pain as he pounced down on her, swiftly wrapping his right arm around her neck and pulling her back against him.