AN: This is a request. A bit of unfamiliar territory for me, so I would love any feedback, any feedback at all. Please review whatever you think.
In Coal Run, Ohio, Michael Wyatt and his wife Sarah move to Coal Run with their daughter Abagail and their son Brayden. Their house is just off the path of the tour of haunted houses, but other than that, there aren't many neighbors for a few miles. There isn't much going on in the small town A few sparse bushes of wiry briars populate the landscape, but other than that, there is only sand for miles. Michael had reached a low point in their hometown of New Orleans, and moved there to start a new life for himself. Stone cold sober for the first time in months, Michael took a job at a nearby power plant, renowned in the area as a dangerous source of mercury because of the coal, near the combustion chamber. As he began to experience shortness of breath and episodes of extreme tremors, Michael thought these symptoms were just withdrawals from his decision to avoid alcohol, and continued at his job for many months.
One night, as he arrived home, his wife had prepared salmon for the second night in a row.
"She's trying to kill me with all this fish" his frantic thoughts running over how many conspiracies she could have planned with his children there, who she was forced to homeschool because they were the only children in the area. What if she was spreading her hatred for him to his children? As his poisoned brain tried to come up with a plan, he moved the fork around his plate as he listened to his children's idle chatter at the dinner table. Abagail was laughing merrily at a funny face Brayden was making, but in Michael's mind, they were laughing at him.
At how stupid he was.
For trusting them when they were planning to kill him!
Convinced that his wife and daughter were conspiring to kill him, William excused himself from the table, and after calmly resting his plate in the microwave, he grabbed the car keys and drove into the city.
As he drove back home, he glanced over into the passenger's seat with a confident grin. Eight shots should be plenty to quell this little uprising. They would stop laughing soon enough.
He waited until his wife and children had fallen asleep, wiping the fingerprints of the bullets and congratulating himself that he had enough patience to wait until they would never see him coming.
BANG!
His ears rang a little.
He shook his head.
How dare she bleed all over his sheets? Didn't she know he would have to clean that later? And the brain matter added to the blood. The nerve of her. Now he would have to throw out the mattress. He pushed her over so that she was on her back. The fleeting thought of shooting her again passed through his fevered mind, but he knew there was still one more person to handle.
Abagail.
Michael stalked down the hallway, bumping into the walls louder than he thought he was.
The loud noise of the gunshot had awoken Abagail suddenly, and she had climbed into bed next to Brayden, snuggled under his arm for safety as they had assumed it was just some noise from the house. Michael opened the door and walked in, the light behind him from the hallway preventing their sleepy eyes from fully seeing the revolver. Seeing that it was their father, Abagail closed her eyes, laying on her sleeping brother's chest with the confidence that she was safe. Safety would be the last thing she felt.
BANG!
The ringing was back.
And the bleeding and the brain matter, just like her mother, Michael shook his head. Brayden awoke suddenly, feeling a sticky, chunky substance spread out behind his shoulder. His face sprayed with a fine sheen of blood spatter from the initial entrance of the bullet that rested in his shoulder blade, the pain of the secondhand bullet wound was stymied by his shock that his sister was now motionless and cooling as the sticky substance washed over him. His father moved from his position in front of the hallway's light, and Brayden saw the blood, his sister, and the gun in one instant. The pain hit him first, and then the panic.
Brayden scrambled out of the bed, running out the front door just as a car was passing by.
What were the odds that the Sherriff of Coal run would be out at this hour? A screaming, blood-covered child waved down his patrol car with his good arm, and the sheriff stopped to open the door, confused as the child grabbed his shirt and shrieked something unintelligible. Seconds later, an angry man came storming out of the house shooting blindly, taking out his rear tires as the sheriff screeched away, squawking into his radio for backup as the child grabbed around him blindly, crying. After he had reached the station, he realized that the child was injured. Calling on his fellow officers, they processed all the evidence on the child quickly and sped him to the hospital. In all the confusion, the shrieking silenced, and the child passed out from the pain and blood loss. Flashes of the muzzle of the revolver haunted Brayden as he flinched repeatedly without an apparent cause.
Meanwhile, as the patrol car sped away, Michael chased after it for a few seconds, only to come to a sudden, breathless halt. Snarling angrily at the tail lights, he vowed, he would get his son back. He would rescue Brayden from the evil clutches of his wife and daughter, if it was the last thing he did.