The Killer Behind His Golden Smile Chapter 2

The first thing I did when I opened my eyes the next morning was frantically scan my body, terrified that whatever she had sprayed had already begun rotting me from the inside out.

Miraculously, I felt fine. No tightness in my chest, no coughing.

Mom knocked on my door to call me for breakfast, wearing the same stiff, plastered-on smile, acting as if she hadn't been creeping around my room in the dead of night like a grim reaper.

I looked at her across the dining table, a sickening cocktail of disgust and terror churning in my gut, but I was too afraid to confront her directly.

When I walked into the kitchen, Wesley looked up and offered a warm smile. "Sleep okay?"

Mom sat opposite us, her head bowed over her oatmeal, refusing to say a word.

"I slept fine," I lied, flashing a tight smile. I didn't dare mention last night.

For the next few days, it became a twisted nightly ritual. Deep in the night, I would hear the door creak open, followed by the hissing of the spray bottle and that increasingly noxious chemical odor.

I played dead every single time. I didn't dare move a muscle. I didn't dare breathe too loudly. All I could do was lie there in paralyzing fear, watching my own mother repeatedly douse my room in whatever poison she had concocted.

And every time, she would stand at the foot of my bed, staring at me for what felt like hours. Waiting.

On the fourth night, things took an even more bizarre turn.

I was tossing and turning, unable to sleep, when a sudden sound ripped through the silence. Thud. Thud. Thud.

It was a rhythmic, deliberate knocking. It sounded like someone taking a heavy, blunt object and striking it directly against my drywall.

One. Two. Three...

Every hollow impact struck directly against my chest.

I curled into a tight ball beneath my duvet, too terrified to breathe. The knocking dragged on for five agonizing minutes before abruptly stopping.

The next morning, I gathered my courage and asked Wesley, "Did you hear someone banging on the walls last night?"

He blinked, looking genuinely confused. "No? Maybe the neighbors are doing renovations?"

"Maybe," I muttered, dropping the subject.

But I knew the truth. Who the hell does demolition work at two in the morning?

I endured the psychological torture for two more nights. Finally, when the rhythmic banging started again, my frayed nerves snapped. I threw off my covers and sprinted to the door, yanking it open.

The hallway was empty. But my mother's bedroom door was cracked open, a flickering, sickly orange light bleeding out into the corridor.

Drawn by a morbid curiosity, I crept over and peered through the crack. What I saw made my blood run cold.

My mother was kneeling on the hardwood floor in front of a brass incense burner. A photograph of me sat propped up against it. She was muttering frantically under her breath, holding a crude little effigy made of paper over the candle flame, watching the edges curl and blacken.

My legs gave out. I stumbled backward, my shoulder slamming against the doorframe with a loud thud.

Mom whipped her head around. Cast in the twisting shadows of the candlelight, her face contorted into something utterly inhuman.

I scrambled back to my room on my hands and knees, slammed the door, and threw the deadbolt. I didn't close my eyes for the rest of the night.