End of Eternity 3 Read Free

birthday cake?
    One thing’s for sure:
    Long before Brad turns to dust, I am going
to make him suffer.
     
     

Chapter Two

    “You can rest here,” the old woman says as
she guides me into a small bedroom and turns on a lamp. “This was
Grayson’s room. I’ve kept it clean over the years, in case he ever
wanted to come home. It’s not much... but you can see that all his
things are still here. Just as he left them, a decade ago.”
    For the most part it looks like the normal
room of a young boy. The furnishings are cheap and simple, and
there are some old toys lining the shelves. However, there is one
thing that catches my attention. In one corner of the room, near an
old writing desk, there is a wall covered in sketches and
paintings. They are very similar to the ones that Brad showed me in
the attic. The same young girl with light brown hair is depicted,
over and over. At first, the images are simple. They are even so
true to life and perfect that I believe they might have been
sketched from a photograph. But then, they change. They become
morbid, with plenty of blood and darkness. The color scheme changes
as the art grows more and more sinister.
    Finally, I see the angel wings beginning to
appear. That was a common theme in the drawings I saw in my
house.
    “My son was a talented artist,” the old
woman explains. “It was one of the many things he excelled at. His
art teacher gave him private tutorials after school, and frequently
encouraged him to become an artist. But we had no money, and he
knew he needed to pay more attention to his other skills if he
wanted a strong career someday. This took a backseat as his
hobby.”
    “He’s drawing her?” I ask softly. “The girl
that died. Helen.”
    “Yes. It was the only way he could cope with
what happened,” his mother explains. “I told him to trust that she
was with God, and that she was now an angel looking down on him.
That she would be watching over him for all the days that he lived.
He found peace in that thought at first, but he later grew a little
obsessed with it. He sometimes told me that he could see her
standing in the shadows, watching him from afar. He often said that
he could hear her voice.”
    Nodding, I look around sadly. This whole
room is like stepping back in time to visit my husband as a child.
There is a bookcase that is only half-filled with books, for the
rest of it contains trophies. There are medals hanging from the
wall, for both sports and academics. It’s really quite
heartbreaking to think of how wonderful Grayson could have been. He
could have been great. He could have been happy. He would have been
an amazing father.
    “You should get some sleep, dear,” says
Grayson’s mother softly. “Please let me know if you need anything.
The bathroom is right down the hall.”
    “Thank you,” I tell her as I move toward the
bed. She exits the room and gently closes the door.
    Placing my purse down on the small bedside
table, I pull the covers of the bed back and crawl underneath them.
I really am exhausted. Reaching to the side, I switch off the lamp
to plunge the room into darkness. Letting my head fall back onto
the pillow, a little gasp escapes my throat.
    Apparently, Grayson liked to create his best
artwork with glow-in-the-dark chalk. Every inch of the walls is
covered in pale phosphorescent drawings of his dead girlfriend. But
the worst of it is on the ceiling. I don’t know how he was even
able to reach that high—perhaps he was tall enough, or maybe he
stood on a chair—but the entire ceiling is covered in repetitious
writings of her name.
    Penned in multiple sizes and every kind of
font imaginable, the word Helen is repeated over and over and over
again. Sometimes the word is written backwards, or upside down. My
eyes scan the glowing letters as chills run down my spine.
    Helen. helen. Helen. neleH. HELEN. helen.
neleh.
    The words blend together in a chaotic
jumble, sometimes overlapping and crisscrossing. It is