Page 1 of Monsters

Prologue

THEN

I hit the floor hard, bones and skin angrily protesting. The raging storm was drowned out by the sound of my pounding heart, the pressure throbbing in my ears. Wide-eyed, I stared ahead into the darkness, barely noticing the shadows of oak leaves dancing hauntingly on the far wall of my bedroom.

What did I just see? The images played over and over, my mind questioning and denying.

I blinked hard and swallowed harder. Turning, I placed my sweaty palms flat against the wall for balance.

“Get up,” I demanded of myself. “Don’t be a coward.” A sense of foreboding hung thick in the damp stormy air, tree branches angrily scraping the side of the house with each howl of the wind, the house shaking with every rumble of thunder. Reluctantly, I crawled back up to the window, just high enough to peer over the ledge and look down to the neighbors’ driveway.

They were expecting me.

Our stares locked as the lightning flashed once more.

One looked terrified, the other glaring through narrowed eyes.

They were brothers I’d known for years.

Brothers I’d spent my afternoons with, riding in the streets and playing house on the weekends at our cabin.

Brothers who were now loading something long and heavy, something wrapped in a tarpaulin into the trunk of their mother’s car.

Brothers who were now covered in blood that not even the midnight light could disguise.

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