The Bedroom in the Storm
The scream came between two thunderclaps.
Raymond Ellery had been in his study at the far end of the west wing, trying to finish contracts he had brought home from the city. Work had become his method of surviving the second marriage everyone else called a success. Seraphina moved through the mansion like polished gold, and from a distance their life looked enviable: the large house, the tailored dinners, the little blond boy from Raymond’s first marriage growing up in privilege.
Only distance makes many things look neat.
By the time Raymond reached the bedroom, Oscar was on the floor beside the bed, his good hand white around the carved bedframe. His right arm, encased in a rough white cast after a fall three days earlier, was pressed against his chest. Tears and sweat had made his golden hair stick to his forehead.
“Dad, Dad, please, cut it off!” he cried.
Raymond dropped to one knee. “Oscar, look at me. What happened?”
The boy could barely get air enough to speak. “Something’s inside. It’s biting me.”
Raymond felt the words land like ice.
The child was not acting. Pain had a rhythm to it, and this one was real. Oscar’s body flinched in involuntary waves.
Then Raymond sensed a second presence in the doorway.
Seraphina.
Tall, pale, and composed in her gold robe, one hand resting against the doorframe as if she were the calm center of a scene gone inconveniently wrong.
“This isn’t normal pain,” she said in that low, honeyed voice Raymond had once mistaken for gentleness. “If you cut the cast off now, you could damage the healing.”
Raymond looked at her, then back at the boy.
Oscar was already looking at her.
Not with annoyance.
With terror.
Slowly, trembling violently, he lifted one finger and pointed.
“She put something in it!” he shouted.
The room held still around the accusation. Even the storm seemed to pause between breaths.
Seraphina’s face changed too quickly for anyone but Raymond to notice. Surprise first. Then anger. Then a perfectly arranged hurt.
“How dare you?” she whispered.
May you like
But Raymond no longer heard her clearly. He scooped Oscar into his arms, ignoring the protests behind him, and carried him downstairs through the thunder.
The mansion had spent years teaching silence.
That night, for the first time, Raymond chose noise.
