Tell Me I'm Safe

Prologue
Where It Hurts

GEORGE

I’m sleeping soundly, dreaming of my dad for the first time since he died, when he tells me, emphatically, “it’s time to wake up, George. Be ready.”

I do wake up, abruptly, and am instantly alert. My pillow is wet with tears. I wipe my eyes and shake my head as if to shake off the haze which surrounded me in my dream.

It’s the middle of the night. All is quiet in the house other than the gentle hum of the dishwasher I started before going to sleep. I can see soft, falling snow out our large bedroom windows. It makes for a serene scene. But something’s happening. I can feel it. I instinctively reach across the bed to my wife. She's there, curled around her pregnancy pillow and sleeping soundly. A few seconds later, I find out why I was woken up.

Ethan screams. It’s an agonized scream like I’ve never heard from him before. It reminds me of screams I heard during tense special ops missions in war-torn countries. The kind of screams I’m not supposed to talk about. The kind of screams I’d hoped to never hear in a sleepy little town like Ithaca Falls. I certainly never dreamed I’d hear one from my child in my family’s own home.

He’s upstairs and I’m down. Leo is up there too, in their shared room. My rational brain tries to make sense of things and I wonder if Ethan’s having a bad dream. My body knows better. I leap out of bed, throwing the covers off in the process. I bolt through the bedroom door nearly ripping it off the hinges. I run down the hallway, gaining momentum. I clumsily slam the sides of the walls with my outstretched hands as I go, knocking down framed photographs and artwork. My socked feet slide as I round the corner at the bottom of the stairs, and the banister groans as I grab it and heave myself upwards. I don’t have anything on me. No gun. No knife. Not even a blunt object. There isn’t time.

Ali’s waking up slowly and she calls out to me from what seems like a far distance, “My God, Georgie, what are you after?”

Lady stirs from her spot on the rug beside the front door and cocks her head to one side to listen. Cautious woofs give way to full volume barks as she realizes the urgency of the situation. She scrambles up the stairs behind me.

It feels like we’ve all been thrust into slow motion. I’m conscious of everything around me. I hear the grandfather clock ticking downstairs. I see the light above the garage flickering at the next house down the road, and I notice the way it makes an angular shadow in the snow.

Ethan’s voice is muffled now. I can tell he’s sobbing. Every hair on my body stands up on end as I reach the top of the stairs and see that my little boy’s bedroom door is closed. It was open when we put him to bed. As I rush to the door, I hear shuffling and banging around, and then, a grown man. A stranger. A deep, sinister voice in my child’s bedroom.

“Daddy, Daddy!” my baby screams.

“Ethan, son, I’m coming in to get you.”