Near the mountains and forests of Sacred Drear lies a house. The house is near the middle of a vast forest, one that sits almost on the borderline of Sacred Drear’s limits. There is a single road that leads to the house, which extends about twenty miles away from the city. The house itself is aging, its once refined features now waning with exhaustion. Nobody has inhabited it for about four years. The once sleek, grey rooftop is slowly fading away from its prior glamour. The wooden paneling on the second level of the house is starting to deteriorate from the inactiveness of the house. The grey bricks on the ground base are starting to be covered in vines and other plants. The once radiant garden greeting the visitor to this once heavenly home is now withering.
Yet, the house still has some type of morbid beauty to it. As she leans against a nearby tree, surveying her old domain, Naomi Proot can’t help but slightly feel appreciation. She had lived here for eleven years of her life, and is now coming back after four years. She is coming back to her home, coming back to her past, coming back to her old life...The one she had before all of this madness...Before her so called “perfect” life got stabbed repeatedly in its back.
She is wearing a light blue plaid button up shirt with her regular pair of light blue jeans. Her gym shoes are worn and dirty, but still comfortable. Her phone is in her side pocket, as is her iPod. She didn’t feel a need to bring her side bag.
Her bike is parked beside her. She could have asked Elliot to drive her, but decided to ride her bike and let the wind brush through her light brown hair and let the rising sun shine into her grey eyes.
As the morning sun shines its morning rays on the house, she takes a deep breath and decides that it is time to go in. She retrieves the key from her pocket, and slowly walks through the graveyard of flowers to the porch steps.
She sighs; breathing in the air the house is surrounded in. She steps up the stairs as if on a death march. Why is she dreading this? It’s just her home, there’s nothing to be afraid of...
Because nobody has to be afraid of their own crime scene...Naomi thinks to herself sarcastically.
Fear is the first emotion Naomi had ever truly experienced. Since birth, she has never been able to feel emotion--true emotion. When she was raped by Carl, she felt fear for the first time in her life. And since then, she has begun to vaguely feel, vaguely express true emotions.
She grabs hold of the door knob and thrusts it open. Immediately, she is immersed in a light fog from the house. Again, it has not been occupied in years. The air is old, musty. There is dust everywhere. Everything is just as it was that night. The blood is still dried on the floor from her flight from Carl. A chair is out of place from her nearly knocking it over on her way to the back door. The back door still looks broken from her thrusting it open as wide as it can go so she could just run away.
Naomi decides to stop being so observant of the remains of the incident that occurred four years ago, and instead looks at everything else. The living room is the way it was that night. A book on the couch that she had been reading, the TV remote on the coffee table next to some probably flat soda, the pillow pushed against the side of the couch for her to lay against...It’s all coming back to her...
She shudders involuntarily; refusing the flashback and pushing it back deeply into her subconscious.
The kitchen was fresh from the cleaning she had done. There were no dishes in the sink, the garbage taken out, and the dishes in the dishwasher as clean as they can be. She had done all her chores as quickly as she could that night, so she could relax a little before watching her favorite TV shows.
As she moves toward the stairs, she sees a family picture of her parents, her uncle, herself, and her grandfather. She was only four back then, but she looks mostly the same. Her eyes are wide and empty. Her mouth is not smiling nor frowning. The corners of her mouth twitch into a small, wry smile. Only two people from that picture are alive today...
She walks to the stairs, and sees the dry, fading bloody handprint on the light grey wall of the room. She had imprinted on the wall as she tried to make her escape.
She turns her attention to the stairs, and climbs slowly, again as if on a death march. The first room on the left is her bedroom. She opens the slightly closed door. The white walls are still white. The white carpet is stained with a dry crimson red. The sheets are stripped off of the bed. Other than that, her room is exactly as she left it...almost. The closet and dresser are emptied of clothes, from when she moved to her uncle’s. Her bookshelf is also empty, as are most of the things she decided to take with her.
She takes a deep breath, finally getting used to the ice-cold water that floods the house.
See, that’s not too bad, now is it? Naomi remarks in her head, reminding herself of how her mother used to say that to her father, after she would give him medicine for whatever annual sickness he acquired. Her father would in turn mockingly say the same to her, when she got sick. But neither of them got the pleasure of saying it to Naomi...
Suddenly, Naomi hears a groan. A loud groan. It sounds as if somebody was waking up from a hangover.
She slowly walks out into the hallway, her ears straining to hear the direction of the noise.
She hears another groan, this time more strained. It is coming from down the hall, the room after her parent’s room. She passes by the bathroom and steps into her parent’s bedroom. She doesn’t reminisce on the features of the room, but instead shoots toward the hidden safe her father had in this room. She opens it on the first try with a combination she has kept locked in her head for eleven years. She takes out the gun, and then sees a pocket knife. She marvels at it’s shininess for a second, and then stuffs it in her pocket.
Naomi runs to the door, and stands next to it, leaning against the wall, holding the gun ready. She cocks it, knowing it’s loaded. She takes a quick look around the corner, and sees that there is no pressing danger. She points her gun toward the noise as she sidesteps her way to the next room. It seems like forever as she uses the wall as support. The door is closed, but not completely. She steps to the other side of the hall, and kicks the door down, just for her own entertainment.
Nobody is in the room. The room is actually stripped, from what Naomi can see. But then she takes a closer look as she steps in.
This room used to be full of TVs and computers and other machines her parents would use as a lab away from their work lab. But now, there are just TVs, all up against the wall. One single equipment panel sits in the corner, concealed by a locked black tinted glass door. There is a single desk front and center, giving the perfect view of all the monitors that spread over two consecutive walls. There is one big projector screen on one wall, in the middle of two large speakers. The desk loops around into an upside down U formation. There is one chair with wheels.
This room is not like the others. Somebody has been in this room, recently. Naomi finally clicks into what the monitors are showing. She feels like she is in a surveillance room, due to the camera angles. The many monitors show different angles of what seems to be a large house, bigger than the size of this house. The large projector shows what some of the other, medium sized monitors are: A man with his hands tied behind a chair. He seems to have just woken up, and there doesn’t seem to be much light on his end. But the camera is showing it in night vision, making the picture slightly distorted yet clear.
“Hey...! Any-Anybody? Where am I?” the man yells helplessly, trying to free himself from the chair.
She drops the gun, the situation slowly sinking into every portion, every little crack in her brain.
The man is none other than Nick Stroix.