Prologue: Nightmare

Mikael awoke with a start to the familiar, blaring alarm downstairs signalling the opening of the front door. A worrisome sense of wrongness droned on his quickly rousing his drowsy mind for reason unapparent. A quick roll to the side and the bright glow of a screen later and he'd found out what. It was normal for him to be disturbed by his mother's late return, the single woman accustomed to late night escapades. That was normal. This, over a quarter an hour past three, was far from the norm.

He swallowed, now noticing his parched mouth and dry lips. 'Maybe she's just running late,' he thought, his consideration interrupted by sounds of shouting from old Ben. His heart rate accelerated, throbbing with the ever growing sense of wrongness slowly consuming him as he honed in on the low timbre of the other man's voice that decidedly wasn’t Jacob or Eian. 'Should I go see what's going on?' He considered, as a ruckus from the master bedroom indicated his mother doing just that.

He could now hear clear sounds of struggle now. 'Should I go help,' he contemplated in a panic, his mother's warning shrieks haunting his ears, as if futilely begging him to take action. 'Can I help? Old Ben is there, but he’s ancient. Where’s security?’ His shaking legs felt like lead, heavy and unresponsive to his desperate urges.

'Can I do anything?' Darkness set in as a solution presented itself, his phone abruptly growing black. Trying to calm his unsteady hands, his mind continued to whirl as he stared at his mobile, the small device suddenly unwieldy and estranged in his hands as each increasingly hopeless attempt at composure was more lacking than the last.

The fear of being heard fuelled his indecision long after the disconcerting quiet had set in, his mother's distressed calls now only present in his overwhelmed mind. He didn't notice the deafening sirens climaxing before giving way to the flashing of red and blue light piercing the dark of his room. Nor did he notice the rush of footsteps meticulously checking each room of the large, three-story house. If anything, when an officer entered the room, gun briefly pointed at the teary-eyed, sweat-soaked, trembling teenager, he felt more muddled than anything else. Each second pounded on his mind like hundreds of other seconds merging into one continuous beating that prevented any stray thoughts. Then, with a pop like a bursting bubble, everything came rushing back once again.

He was Mikael and his mother died 3 years ago.