Chapter 14: In My Arms

He heard the whimper first, and then the creaking of wood as it cried under the strain of weight. At first, he thought an animal had somehow found its way into his home, a beach house he had built a few miles away from the resort where his first home, his mother’s home, had once stood. The one bedroom shack that had been his mother’s pride and joy, but for Reno it had been a reminder of his painful past. So he replaced it with a two story, four bedroom home, with floor to ceiling windows for walls in the living room and dining area at the bottom level.

He heard the whimper again, but this time it was louder and coming from one of the guestrooms. He climbed off his bed and moved to the door, paying keen attention to the noise again. A few minutes of silence passed and Reno turned around to go back to bed when an ear piercing scream had him rushing out of his room and into the opposite one. It was Loraine’s room.

She was thrashing and crying, fighting the man in her nightmare, her body