My name is Emily Serim, I am 35 years old. Until yesterday I was the happy mother of two children, a son Duncan and a daughter Raine. I was happily married to my husband Michael for fifteen years. We met when I was twenty years old. He was so odd when I first laid eyes on him at a college dance. He was sitting watching everyone dance with amusement, but there was something so serene about him. I had to get to know him.
We ended up dating for only a few weeks before we got married, some may have thought that was way too quick but when family and friends saw us together they knew we were meant to be. Our relationship was a happy one filled with passionate love making and many nights cuddled together on the couch watching television. When I was 25 we welcomed our first child. We named her Raine for the dreary day in which she was born. I will never forget the labor pain I endured with her, Michael was there holding my hand and whispering encouragement into my ear. My mother was on my other side telling me to push while my father was in the waiting room with an unlit cigar in his mouth and a look of fresh new grandparent joy spread across his thin lips. He had been a great father and would be an even greater grandfather.
With such a loving home I am at a loss to explain what my daughter had become. The evil, the lies. How could she have hidden this all from us? My son Duncan was born on my 30th birthday. It was an easy pregnancy and delivery. He was born on a day of fresh spring air and sunlit beauty. He was a child of pure innocence. Although he was born two months early he was strong and adapted to the world quickly.
Raine took to being a proper good sister and even at the tender age of five she did all she could to help with the care of her little brother and the upkeep of the house. I used to laugh when she would try and sweep the floors for us. It was adorable. This little girl trying to use a broom three times her height. She tried so hard, she was a constant joy. Was it an act? Was she like this from the beginning? When did she fall? No. No child could be that deceptive from such a young age. Could they?
When the detectives explained their case and the evidence they had uncovered I could not bring myself to look and when I finally did I was in denial that the images of my daughter with the butchered and disfigured bodies of multiple men. The pictures looked so mundane at first glance. Just a smiling child, but that was all. Upon closer inspection you could see that what she was sitting beside was a gruesome and almost hellish scene. It was as if someone had photoshopped my daughter into some suicide bombing scene in Iraq. At first this is what I had believed had been done but the detectives assured me that was not the case. There was my perpetually happy daughter sitting in a scene of absolute carnage as if she was on a trip to the park. This picture alone was not enough to convince me of the evil monster I had given birth to. This could not be her. This could not be my Raine.
They took the time to explain to me what was happening. I could hear them but they were like muffled voices a long way off, I just kept staring at the picture they had showed me. I did not notice one of the detectives had taken out an Android Tablet and began setting it up on the table. He smelled of spearmint gum and cigarettes. He looked as if he never showered and shaved only about once a week. My home felt invaded and even as I sit here in my socks typing this on an old typewriter sipping coffee I still have that feeling. This is what a rape victim must feel like. Exposed, scared, alone. I am alone now in this house. It seems so much bigger when it’s empty.
The pungent detective brought me back to the reality of my situation as he set the tablet before me with a video queued up. The picture was still, an image of Raine, she wore a face I had never seen before, and it was one of exquisite evil, the type of look that would haunt a person for the rest of their life. The play button hovered over her face. He eyes seemed so dark, empty, soulless. The detective told me to press play whenever I was ready. I wish I could have sat there permanently. I never wanted to press that button. The image of my daughter on the screen mocked me, I tried many times to reach for the screen but I pulled my hand back unable to bring myself to cross the threshold of ignorance into understanding. Finally the detective felt he had waited long enough, his restlessness became apparent as you could begin to hear the tapping of impatient fingers on the wood grain of the kitchen table. He reached for the tablet but before he could press the button my finger darted to the screen and pressed play. It felt as if a force had used me to do that. I felt outside myself. As the setting sun began to sink below the hills and the magic hour light faded from my kitchen the video began to play.
The video began with Raine standing there looking into the camera, it was obvious someone else was there as well, holding the camera for her. “Are you ready?” she asked the person behind the camera and to my astonishment the voice of a child not an adult answered back. “Yes, I think so.” It was the voice of another little girl, a little girl I was very familiar with. She was Hannah, a playmate of my daughter. The two were joined at the hip when it came to school but in everyday life they seldom played together. I was not aware of Hannah having been here in at least two months, despite the video clearly showing a date of one week ago.
“Move the camera around so our audience can see our lair.” My daughter spoke eloquently, far advanced of her tender years, she sounded like another person, the stumbling bubbling speech of a child had been replaced by that of a cold and calculating monster. The tempo of her voice was soft and even, there was no emotion in the tone. It was as if something had possessed this child, but this was reality and I could see the familiar glint of my daughter, this was her true self, the deception was who she presented to her family.
“Why are we making a video Raine?” Hannah asked meekly. It was clear Hannah was the subordinate one.
“I want a memento of this day, to watch when I get bored.” She said with a chilling smile to the camera. “My mom won’t be home until six so we have a few hours.”
It was clear this event was taking place in my basement. But I frequently went down there and never found anything to be amiss. After a moment the reasoning became all too clear. Our house was an old one and there are some place in old houses that only children knew about. She watched as the camera followed Raine to a spot under the stairs. In the corner was a small door which she disappeared through, a moment later the camera followed her in. When the camera adjusted to the dimmer light a room became apparent on the video. It was a room built underground off the house, it must have been used long ago to store food items to save them from the summer heat. I had not been aware that this room existed but was not surprised, it was tucked away beneath the stairs.
Inside the room, was a bed, a dresser and a small table in the corner. There was no covering on the wall and the beams looked like ribs painted a dusted white that gave the whole room an ethereal look. Everything appeared just a bit too small for a normal person, the ceiling was low, an adult would have to stoop down to navigate the room. This was a place designed for a child. The camera panned around and I was able to see more of the room. There was a mirror on the opposite wall by the door. A dirty rug that had the obvious browned stains of blood was frayed on the corners with an image of a child playing in a garden embroidered on it. This room was like something from another world, something you would see in a nightmare or a horror movie, I could not believe this place had been beneath my feet for months, and who knows how much longer. Raine had lived in this house her entire life but there had never been any indication of her disappearing down here or anything out of the ordinary for that matter. I didn’t want to see anymore, I didn’t want to see what my daughter was going to do down here. I wanted to run from the house but I couldn’t move I was transfixed on the screen, the whole world had disappeared leaving only me and this video, the images consumed me, drawing me in.
“Ok set the camera up over there, he won’t be able to see it there and we’ll be able to capture everything.”
“Did Allie do this for you last week?” I could hear Hannah ask as the picture went crazy with the fiddling she was doing.
“Another girl was involved in this?” I asked the detective.
“It appears she had at least three other girls beside her were involved in this. All have been taken into custody and will be questioned later when things calm down a bit. The media is going haywire about this.” He had said.
The jerking movement of the camera stopped and the whole of the room was now in full view of the camera. “Where should I go?”
“Just wait at the top of the stairs until I call you ok?”
I could hear Hannah leave and a moment later I could hear the quiet shuffling of her feet on the stairs but the door did not open or close so it was obvious she was sitting at the top of the stairs just out of sight but within ear shot.
When Hannah was gone Raine went to the camera and looked into the lens, her eyes were wide and crazed like a rabid animal. These were not the eyes of a child anymore but those of a predator. After inspecting the camera she smiled into it as if nodding to a future audience. “Enjoy the show.” She said. She then walked over to the bed and sat down. She remained there motionless and silent for the next fifteen minutes until a knock on the door brought her out of her own head and back into the world. She glanced at the camera before getting up and walking out of the room, a few minutes later she came back in but she was not alone. There was a man accompanying her now, he was about 5’10 but that was hard to tell because he had to stoop over in this child’s secret room. He was thin and at least between forty and fifty years of age with a short gray haircut. He wore khaki pants and a blue and white plaid shirt. She took him by the hand and escorted him to the bed.
“I didn’t think you were real.” He said as he sat down on the bed and she stood in front of him holding his hands in hers. “I can’t believe this is real, I’m so glad I answered your message online.
My daughter pushed him gently back on the bed until he was lying down crossways with his legs planted on the floor. Even in the dim room you could tell the man was aroused and he was expecting a taste of forbidden fruit. Raine stepped away from him and walked across the room as the man began to unbutton his shirt preparing to indulge in the festivities yet to come. As he was busying himself Raine was opening the dresser drawer. From the angle of the camera I could see a strange looking knife she had taken from the top drawer of the dresser. It looked to be a jagged blade with a bone handle, I had never seen anything like it. She hid the knife behind her back as she turned back toward the man now lying on the bed shirt open and pants unbuckled. Raine walked toward him moving seductively hiding the blade behind her back. She walked up between the man’s legs that were still hung over the bed planted on the floor, the man reached for Raine still thinking this was his lucky day. As he reached for her, he hand moved in a flash from behind her back, the fingers that had been reaching for the forbidden flesh of a child were instantly severed, before he had time for a reaction Raine had turned the blade and thrust it into the man’s chest right below the sternum. A blood curdling cry filled the small room and Raine looking right into the old man’s eyes pulled the jagged knife, slicing from sternum to groin. This silenced the man as he went into shock and the only noise escaping from his mouth now was a gurgling sound of him drowning in his own blood.
I was shocked, horrified… sick. I jumped from my chair and rushed to the sink. The vomit was thick and smelled of coffee and bile. When I was done I turned on the faucet to try and wash it down the sink. I couldn’t watch anymore, the detectives seemed to understand this and put the tablet away. They told me the rest of the video was my daughter bringing Hannah back in and having her help clean up, she had convinced the neighborhood girls that what they were doing was a good thing by riding the world of men who would prey on children. She had them thinking they were doing God’s work. These girls thought their parents would be proud of them. Hannah was clearly shaken by what she had seen and done I knew she would be traumatized for life, but they explained Raine had just been humming away as she began wringing a sponge and wiping away the blood. They said they had never seen anything so disturbing especially from a child.
I could no longer think, I had no idea the response expected from me or if I would have to defend myself against accusation of my complicity in my daughter's actions. There is no possibility of people feeling sympathy for me because there is no one who could believe I knew nothing, I would not even believe it myself if I were not the one to experience this horror myself, my daughter had been so cunning and absolute in her deception that forever people would ask when exactly did I know that Raine had fallen into evil?
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