Haunted Rayne

14 - Parents Day (part 1)

Scott Residence
Blackburn, Michigan
September 23, 2018

┈┈

Clouds blanketed the moon in Blackburn, Michigan, leaving the Scott household shrouded in darkness. The motion-activated floodlight over the driveway only flickered as nocturnal rodents skittered out of the surrounding brushwood. There was an eeriness to the evening that Officer Emma Scott could not explain, a sort of nervous calm before the storm, a shiver of anticipation that shook her fingers with every breath.

She had just finished tucking her youngest son, Brandon, into bed when he began to argue. He folded his arms over his chest and pushed his lips into a pout. "You always take Jared's side for everything," he whined.

"I didn't take his side," Emma explained, giving the seven-year-old's chubby cheeks a pinch. "You're just not supposed to throw your food, dude."

"It was a bread roll!" he grumbled. "It didn't even hurt him . . ."

"Baby, that's not the point."

"But he said I was small."

"And I said no throwing food in the house. Look at that," she said with a smile, "Mom wins. Plus, you are small, pipsqueak."

"Ugh, but he started it!"

"Brandon." She gave those anger-reddened cheeks a quick kiss. "I'm not gonna tell you again. Go to bed."

"Wait." The moment she stepped away, he gripped her pant leg. "Mommy, don't go."

It was the tone of his voice that startled her.

Desperate, insistent, almost frightened.

Emma turned her head, eyeing the tiny fingers gripping her brown slacks. She realized now, as the soft purple luminescence from the cosmos night-light spun and caught his baby blues, that there were tears brimming his eyes.

"Honey," she said, gasping, "what's wrong?"

"Don't go," he whispered, and she sat down on the bed beside him.

His bangs fell over his face, sticking to his cheeks as tears finally spilled over. Emma swiftly tucked his shaggy brown hair behind his ears, dried his cheeks with her thumbs, and held his face in her hands.

All of her boys were so tough. The last time Brandon cried like this, he had broken his arm at a roller-rink birthday party, and even then, he'd managed to bite his lips and reign it in. What was so monumental about this moment that it would spur such an uncharacteristic reaction?

"Brandon. Do you really think I take Jared's side all the time?"

Brandon pulled away and wiped the tears with his Toy Story bedsheets. "No," he muttered.

"Then, honey, what's wrong?"

"I don't want you to go to Pennsylvania."

"Oh," she whispered.

He snapped away, tucking his fists into his elbows. "I don't like that girl."

"Who, Rayne?" Emma asked softly, stroking his wet face with her thumb again.

He nodded.

"But you used to play with her all the time when we had those little block parties down the road."

"Yeah, but she's different now. She's . . . a murderer. Like Ted Bundy."

She snorted a little. "Ted Bundy? Where'd you hear that name?"