13.

There was a lot of confusion on the day the incident happened. Jerry Grady had been confronted standing in his bedroom as his wife Eve lay dead in their bed having been repeatedly and violently stabbed. The location of their daughter is an unknown. His demeanour and reaction was that as if he were only discovering all this moment holds right at the moment police officers were entering the bedroom.

There was blood on his person, and he would have no idea as to how this is so and no defense against accusations either for he swore he had yet to have had any contact with her other than a brief verbal conversation. As he sees it or states he sees it, she was fine one moment and a bloody mess the next.

Once he had regained himself to a certain degree after having dropped to his knees in shock Jerry was cuffed and forcefully removed from his bedroom. His wife is covered in, no drenched in blood and he cannot understand it, all he wants is to get to her.

Emergency services arrive and Jerry is kept in the back of a police vehicle until it is confirmed that Eve is beyond saving, in fact she has been such this way for more than a moment or two. Jerry is to be left to simmer alone in an interrogation room once one is reached. He is observed before questioning begins and his tears possibly lend to the fact that when he does get to answer questions that he might just believe every word he speaks.

His story of events does not add up, if anything they sound ... supernatural to the point he is thought crazy. It is believed that he has killed his wife no matter how he protests that he hasn't. The conversation he had in the bedroom with her is something that could not have happened for Eve Grady would have been long dead before the time Jerry Grady says he had arrived home. He could not have spoken with her as he says he had nor could she have called him like he is sure she had. Sure, that call which could not have happened is what had him rush home during inclement weather causing him to crash his own fairly close to home.

It is determined that he has lost his mind, a childhood condition quite possibly has returned. However it is he is, still it needs to be known where his daughter is and he is asked about such. Jerry Grady has no answers. He had not seen his daughter when he arrived home. It is put together that he had been home long before he said he was. The phone call he tells of having, the calls that prompted his journey home is confirmed as not having happened and such is put to him. Phone records state that the phone call Jerry says he received from his wife did not happen at all.

Truth, does it exist? Can it exist? Jerry may get towitness it to some degree at another time. Whatever did happen there issomething, a feeling, perhaps something more, urging the fact that his daughteris not dead. He knows not where his daughter is despite being sure that Maxeneis alive, and it will be years before this is proven as fact. 

To those in authority, it is obvious that Jerry is not a well man and it is obvious that his grief is real. Prison is not a place for him to be. Arrangements are made for him to spend time in a mental health facility, a heavily guarded mental health facility. No trial ever comes; no conviction is handed down though as it is, it may as well have been.

Yeah, there is no jail time other than to see thatfirst night through as it had been quite late in the day when police hadarrived at the Grady family home. His quite temporary cell had shadows, movingshadows, humanoid like shadows that never let up and when Jerry complained orexpressed fear it just added to the potential that he really has descended intomadness.

For Jerry Grady, his personal torture has only just begun ...

14.

Almost from the very moment Jerry Grady enters a mental health facility for the first time something is there ready and waiting for him, yeah plenty of torture is to come his way. If anything, the torture has been coming for some time and has already come to him prior to now. For the most part, the torture is not physical; it is his mentality which has, is and will be tortured, sure look where it has brought him. It has come to him, will come to him and will continue to stay with him a lifetime no matter what its plans may be.

Yeah, there is a torture coming for Jerry Grady. What is to come is not from guards or workers within the facility he is forced to reside within but from darkness, a shadow that visits his cell like room. This shadow will taunt him, it will test him, and it will be relentless.

'You killed your wife Jerry, you killed Eve' says the dark shadowy mass, not a reflection upon a floor but an entity which has taken a not so physical form up on off from that floor.

'No, I didn't ... I did no such thing ...'

'Jerry, don't lie to me.'

'I am not lying ... what did you do to me? What do you want from me? ... Why are you here?' Jerry reaches out and his hand passes through the darkness as if there is nothing there at all.

'You know why I am here Jerry, don't you?

'No, I don't ... no I don't ... you are not here at all. I'm alone ... I am alone.'

'You will never be alone again Jerry. I will always be with you. I need you and you need me.'

Jerry turns his back and faces a wall. 'You are not here ... you are not real ... I am ... alone.'

'You want to see your daughter again Jerry, don't you?'

Turning his upper body so he can bring his head around a one eighty, Jerry looks at his tormentor. 'What do you know about my daughter?'

'Actually, Maxene is my daughter but if you wanna see her again you will need to help me.'

An image appears on the wall and Jerry turns back towards it. The wall is just that, a wall, a plain white wall, no brick work or papering or anything of the likes and darkened with the current low level of lighting. There is nothing cut into this wall, or hanging upon it, no television or video screen, projection or anything of the likes but an image is there all the same as if a screen exists and as if a projector has been turned on.

What Jerry sees is not a projection, or at least not one emanating from an actual projector. If there were a projector in operation, then Jerry himself would be blocking the projected images but he is not blocking anything. What he sees is a car moving, a small red Toyota of some kind. There is a dark-skinned woman with hair tied up driving this vehicle.

This woman, she is approximately the same age as Jerry and is someone Jerry is sure he has never seen before. There is someone else within this car, a child in a child seat in the rear. The child is no more than thirteen months old.

'Maxene ...' Jerry says to himself. He turns back to the dark shadowy mass. 'What is it you want? ...'

***

The mothers of nine bore unimaginable pain. For the most part they did not survive past the deliverance of what had been required of them. Some lasted a little longer and those who lasted a lot longer, the likes of Lacey Ellis, continue to suffer long after they carried a darkness to term. The fathers don't get away scot free. No, Darkness has his plans for them too. In the battle that is to come there are many with parts to play.