I never really knew her.

BBOOOOOMMMMMM!!!!

I shot up in bed drenched in sweat from a nightmare I couldn't recall, my heart was still beating fast and I couldn't shake the sense of terror I felt. I wiped the sweat off my forehead and looked at my peacefully sleeping wife laying next to me. The moonlight flooded through our bedroom window and shined directly on her as if nothing else in the room matter. Our marriage was perfect and she was the pillar of my world. I turned to hug her for comfort and hopefully get back to sleep being careful to adjust myself as to not wake her. I failed because at that moment she rose up and turned to face me.

"Honey what's wrong? Can't sleep sweetheart?" She said in her soothing voice. I looked at her face and was struck with terror. It wasn't the face I had grown to have known for over 20 years of my life. It had been replaced by something evil and sinister. A mask that could have been surgically sewed on to the top of her delicate skin. It was grotesque and demon like, her teeth were rotted and sharp, two large black gapping holes devoured her green eyes and glowed red instead.

"AAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!" A scream over took the room and blared in my ears and head before I realized that sound boomed from my own lungs. Without realizing it I had fallen to the floor kicking myself away from her in overwhelming fear. I sat huddled next to the wall feeling cornered as she made her way to my side of the bed her voice not matching the grotesque demonic stare that gazed at me.

"Baby! What's going on with you?" She asked again as she crawled towards me off the bed. Her head twisting in an unnatural state and I couldn't help but stare into the glow of her red eyes as I sat there cowering in indescribable fear! Her hand reaching for me as I closed my eyes waiting for the end...

I shot up in bed again drenched in sweat realizing it was all a dream. I shuttered and didn't bother looking at my wife this time as I was to scared by the horrors of my nightly vivid imagination to even move. Instead I chose to turn to my side, with my back facing her hoping this wasn't still a dream as a lay in fear praying for any sign that none of it was real.

The next morning, I awoke groggy but was relieved to be engaged in our normal routine. Our children skirted through the kitchen hurriedly ate their breakfast, grabbed their things and ran out the door, regular normal school day. My wife came from behind me, hugged me and I felt the warmth of her lips kiss me at the nape of my neck. I shuddered a bit remembering the horrible dream and took a deep breath, reminding myself that it was only a nightmare. More then likely created by my lack of good sleep and stress. I turned to face her, held her and kissed her as I relaxed and thought about things a bit more clearly.

"Dear, lets take a vacation. Lets clear out our schedules, leave the kids at grandmas and take a few days to ourselves. I'm in need of some real R & R! Does that sound good to you?" She agreed and we snuggled for a minute before she hurried out the door waving as she ran off to work. I didn't realize right then but that would be the last day of normalcy in my life. I stood there waving goodbye unaware the real nightmare was about to begin.

I received the call later that day that my wife had been shot and the rest of the days was a heartbreaking blur. I sat next to my wife in the hospital bed as she desperately clung on to life only to take her last breath as I knelt by her bed crying. I went into an auto pilot mode as we made the funeral arrangements, spoke with detectives who were in deep investigation to my wife’s murder and comforted my children the best I could. It had been a few weeks when I found myself in her home office sitting at her desk just in and out of my own thoughts. People had so many questions they would want to ask me but treaded on thin ice when approaching the subject. Mainly, what now? I didn't know myself how to answer. My heart was completely broken. I had endless thoughts and emotions that I became completely numb. The hours had passed as I sat in her chair as daylight faded and darkness overtook the room. I didn't want to move nor touch anything as everything was a reminder of the good times and my loss.

As I sat there in the dark I saw something I hadn't seen before. Something alien to the world I was used to. A light omitting from the sides of a book shelf on the wall next to the desk. I went to inspect it as the voice inside my head screamed...

"RUN AWAY!!! RUN FAR!! YOU DON"T NEED TO KNOW!!!" I ignored that screaming voice and moved the shelf with an effortless ease. I was surprised to find the shelf had wheels. Even more surprised to find the shelf hide the outline of an unmarked door on the wall. I didn’t find an easy way to pry it open it so I ended up running to the tool shed and with a sledge hammer in my hands started busting through it, thanking god my kids were at their grandmothers house! When I tore open a hole wide enough to peer inside I saw yet another office space with filing cabinets and weird figurines, odd décor and yet another desk with a huge almost cult like looking crest hanging on the wall behind it. I stood there taking a break from continuing my demolition of the door thinking how could this exist? I remembered she had gotten some work done in her office when we had bought the house 15 years ago but never had I realized she was able to hide an entire room, how could I have been this ignorant about my own home, about my own wife? I walked out of the room inspecting the hallway and it made sense there was another room hiding. I was in complete disbelief and questioning everything I knew about the women I married. Why didn’t she tell me? What was she hiding from me? So many questions powered my curiosity to give me the strength I needed to rip the rest of the way through the door. As I stepped into her office I took a deep breath mentally preparing myself for what I would find.

I went straight to her desk only to find a small black leather book with the same crest on the cover. I opened it to find names, ages, cash amount, and abbreviations I couldn’t decipher next to each one. It was troubling and puzzling who was this women I just buried? It couldn’t have been my wife. My wife was a wonderful compassionate aspiring wife and mother. What was she hiding and involved with? I opened her drawer to find a stack of cash and a receipt.

Jason & Kelly (Twins) 3 years old

$20,000 for NFA

I was perplexed. Jason and Kelly? My wife had spent her career in children services and had worked her way to being one of the directors. She hardly brought her work home but I had met those children. She was on her way to take them to a couple for adoption. I didn’t know the couple but she spoke about them as if they were familiar and seemed really happy to be helping create a new family.

She routinely brought home injured animals or helped out the homeless always offering the few loose dollars she had in her wallet. Did she blur the lines to illegal adoptions? Maybe she felt this was the only way to help certain cases. I brought home 7 figures a year with my position in my company we were very financially set with my income alone. She routinely volunteered her time and was over all an admirable women, there has to be a reasonable explanation for this hidden side I had never seen. The only thing I could think was that none of this made sense.

I looked at the art work and décor of this room and it was all ominous, I am not saying my wife was a girly girl type but she never showed herself to have a dark side as this room suggest. I won’t say it was gothic but more satanic in nature. I shuddered as I studied each piece; demonic rituals, sacrifices, tortures. It was as if my wife had an evil twin and I had found her secret lair. I looked through the books on the shelf and they were about cults, history, and the dark side of human nature. I went towards the filing cabinet and there were hundreds of files of people of all ages. I picked up a file the label had a name and date.

Samantha Young, age 25, $25,000 (organs). I opened the file to see a picture of a young women. She was a young white woman slightly heavy, limp red hair and very sad eyes. The file went on to contain medical history and a brief summary of her past. She was from a poor family that couldn’t meet her medical needs and special services had been contacted. There was a medical report from another woman about the same age stating Emily Smith And Jane Doe were a perfect match. A letter of appreciation to my wife from Amelia Smith for the donors mother as the heart transplant had been a success. My head started spinning, things were starting to connect. Unbelievable things that I wasn’t ready or able to absorb. I dropped the file as the weight of what I had just read was hitting me all at once. Samantha's records littered my floor as they flew out of the file. Her photo landing on the toes of my feet as I stared at the face of... a victim of my wife?

I peeled my eyes off the photo, my hand shook as I reached for another file. Aden Ramos, Age 12, $15,000 (Servitude). I couldn’t read the file as his image seared in my brain. I dropped it and reached for another… and another… and another… different ages, sexes, prices, and purposes. These were files of transactions, for servitude, organ harvesting, sacrifice, and once in a while normal family adoptions (NFA). I couldn’t keep looking through those files seeing those faces as everything connected in my head that I had married a monster! I didn't know this person I had laid next to for over two decades. This person who for all our marriage showered my children and me with love and affection.

I walked back to the desk and grabbed that black book again gazing at the red crest. I finally understood this was a log. This was a log of human transactions of hundreds of victims written in my wife's perfect penmanship. Her hand calmly wrote the destiny of each victim with so much ease that it only required just an abbreviation for her to keep her records in order. The abbreviations didn't show the true nature of horror of what was inflicted on these people. Org stood for organ donation. Srv stood for Slavery and servitude. So many abbreviations, I couldn't keep looking at it.

I found myself reaching for the phone... Do I call my lawyer? Do I call the detectives working on her murder investigation? This is going to destroy my children! I feel completely helplessly destroyed. How do I....? WHAT DO I ... WHAT DO I DO? I stopped my hand from picking up the phone. I opened another one of her drawers to find a gun. Somehow I JUST knew there would be a gun! I reached for the phone but found myself grabbing the gun instead...

BBBBBOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMM!!!!

A loud sound rang through my ears as I sat up in my bed drenched in sweat from what was a horrific nightmare. I couldn’t remember what I had dreamt as I looked next to me at my wife who lay there peacefully sleeping moonlight pouring over her calm sleeping body…