Chapter 14 - THE EMPTY CRIB
"Call 911!" Ryan bellowed, leaping out of bed and tearing through the bedroom door.
I grabbed my phone with shaking hands, dialing the three numbers with frantic thumbs.
"911, what is your emergency?" a calm dispatcher answered immediately.
"My sister-in-law broke her house arrest!" I screamed, running down the hallway behind Ryan. "She's in our backyard with bolt cutters!"
"Ma'am, stay in a locked room, officers are being dispatched," the voice instructed.
Ryan was already sprinting up the stairs toward the children's nursery, his bare feet slapping against the hardwood.
A sudden, deafening crash of shattering glass echoed from the ground floor.
The sound came from the sunroom window directly beneath the back patio.
"Ryan!" I shrieked, racing up the stairs after him.
The hallway was pitch black, illuminated only by the faint blue glow of the emergency wall lights.
Ryan reached the nursery door and threw it wide open, slamming it hard against the drywall.
"Lucas! Sophie!" he shouted into the dark.
I reached the threshold a second behind him, flipping the light switch on the wall.
The bright overhead bulb flooded the room in blinding yellow light.
Lucas was sitting up in his toddler bed, rubbing his eyes and beginning to wail in terror.
"Daddy?" the little boy cried, his face crumpled in fear.
Ryan rushed to scoop Lucas into his arms, clutching the boy fiercely against his chest.
I spun around toward Sophie’s bed on the opposite side of the room.
My heart stopped beating entirely.
The white wooden rails of her bed were smeared with dark, damp earth from garden boots.
The little pink blanket with the embroidered rabbits lay bunched in the corner.
The mattress was empty.
"Sophie!" I screamed, a raw, guttural sound that tore through my vocal cords.
"No, no, no!" Ryan yelled, spinning around, his eyes wild with unfathomable horror.
A sudden gust of freezing night air swept through the open nursery window.
The white sheer curtains were billowing wildly in the wind, flapping like ghostly wings.
On the wooden windowsill rested a small, muddy handprint.
Next to the handprint lay a folded piece of paper weighted down by a single silver baby rattle.
I lunged across the room, grabbing the note with trembling, ice-cold hands.
Scrawled across the paper in jagged, hurried red lipstick were six horrifying words:
*AN EYE FOR AN EYE, NORA.*
May you like
From downstairs, the heavy thud of the kitchen back door slamming shut reverberated through the house.
***
