Kevin O'Brien - One Last Scream

It was a cool, crisp May afternoon. The sun glistened off Lake Whatcom, and across the calm water he could see the mountains in the distance. The wooden dock was slightly neglected, because they didn’t have a boat. But it was still sturdy, with an upper deck that had a railing, and a lower platform that had nothing between it and the water directly below. Ever since they were kids, he and Amelia and their friends often used the dock to sun themselves, and Lake Whatcom was quite swimmable.

Collin glanced over his shoulder. She was following him with the stubby wood beam in her hand. One moment, she had it slung over her shoulder like a baseball bat, the next, she used it like a walking stick as she made her way down the grassy slope. Her black hair fluttered in the wind, and she grinned at him. She seemed to enjoy seeing him inebriated.

Though he might have felt more secure up on the dock’s upper platform-with the railing-Collin ventured down three steps to the lower, open tier. The water lapped up almost to the edge of its wooden planks. He could hear her stepping down behind him. “Boy, the lake is beautiful today,” he murmured, squinting out at its glimmering surface.

“You’re slurring your words,” she said. “You got drunk a lot faster than I expected you would.”

He wasn’t sure exactly what she meant. She’d been expecting him to get drunk? But Collin nodded anyway, and kept gazing at the lake and mountains. “Yeah, I am pretty hammered. Do me a favor, okay?”

“What’s that?” she asked.

“Please make sure I don’t do anything stupid. I hear all these stories about dumb-ass teenagers getting drunk and they somehow end up getting themselves killed. I don’t want that to happen to me.”

“Oh, I’m afraid it’s too late,” she replied.

Collin froze. That wasn’t his sister’s voice.

“You’re not Amelia,” he murmured.

He swiveled around to see her raising the wooden beam over her head. Collin didn’t even have time to react, or ward off the blow. All of a sudden, that thing came crashing down on him, and Collin Faraday heard his own skull crack.

While hosing the blood off the dock, she thought about the funny, garbled cry Collin had made before falling into the lake. He’d sounded like a feeble old woman. And that strange, gurgling noise, it must have been the blood in his throat when he’d tried to scream out. Whatever it had been, she snickered as she remembered it now.

Her brother’s foot had caught on some of the pilings under the dock, and he was floating facedown in the water just below her.

He was their favorite, the child they’d been hoping and trying for until deciding to adopt, and she’d been a mere compromise.

They would mourn him. But they wouldn’t have to grieve for very long. Soon enough, they would be dead, too. Soon enough, she would have no family-or friends. She would be the only one left.

And that was exactly the way she wanted it.

Seattle-six months later

Karen woke up, and suddenly she knew someone else was in her bedroom.

Lying in bed with the covers up to her neck, she’d been lightly dozing for the last three hours. She hadn’t heard a peep from Amelia down the hall, just that machine churning out the sounds of waves and seagulls. Rufus had fallen asleep at the foot of Karen’s bed, but now she heard him sitting up. His dog tags jingled. He started to growl.

She heard a floorboard creak. For a moment, she couldn’t move.

Finally, and very slowly, Karen reached under the extra pillow beside her and found her father’s revolver.

She could almost feel someone hovering over her.

She quickly sat up in bed. “I’ve got a gun!” she said.

Rufus started barking furiously.

“God, Karen, no, wait!”

Blindly reaching for the nightstand lamp, she fanned at the air for a moment before she found the light and switched it on. “Amelia,” she murmured, catching her breath. “Rufus, hush! That’s enough.”

“Oh, Karen, I’m so sorry,” she whispered, a hand clutching at the lapels of her robe. “I got turned around. I thought this was the bathroom….”

Rufus kept growling at her, punctuating it with an occasional bark.

“Rufus, cease and desist,” Karen said. Her heart was still racing. She tried to smile at her. “It’s the next door down, Amelia.”

“Thanks. Sorry I woke you.” She hesitated in the doorway, and frowned at her. “Do you always sleep with a gun? Or do you think I’m dangerous?”

Karen shook her head. “No, I don’t usually sleep with a gun. And no, I don’t think you’re dangerous. This is about something else, Amelia.” She was thinking of the young man who called himself Blade. That was why she had the gun at her side tonight; and why Rufus was sleeping in her bedroom instead of his own little bed in the corner of the kitchen. But part of her still couldn’t trust Amelia-not if she was sick.

“Think you’ll be able to get back to sleep?” Karen asked.

Yawning, she nodded and turned toward the hall. “G’night, Karen. Sorry I scared you.” She gently closed the door behind her.

Rufus let out one last growl, and then settled back down at the foot of her bed. Karen listened for a few moments until she heard the toilet flushing. It was strange. Earlier tonight, Amelia had come down to the kitchen in her T-shirt and pajama bottoms. But she’d put on a robe in the middle of the night, just to go to the bathroom?

Karen checked the digital clock on her nightstand: 4:11 A.M. She switched off the light, slipped the gun back under the pillow beside her, and lay there for several minutes. She thought she heard murmuring. She peeled back the covers, quietly crept out of bed, and then listened at the door. “She’s got a gun, for chrissake…I can’t…goddamn mutt…”

It was a woman’s voice, but it didn’t sound like Amelia.

Karen crept back to the bed and retrieved her father’s revolver again. Rufus scurried to his feet and looked at her. “Stay!” Karen whispered to him. Then she opened the door and gazed down the darkened hallway. She held the gun tightly. The guest room door was open, but the light was off. Past the waves and seagulls from the sound machine, she could hear the woman whispering again: “We’ll just have to take care of it tomorrow…”

Karen tiptoed down the corridor, but the floorboards creaked and she froze. Rufus poked his head past her bedroom doorway and let out an abrupt bark. The murmuring down the hallway suddenly stopped. Karen heard a rustling sound. “Amelia?” she said. She had the gun poised.

She skulked toward the guest room. She could hear whispering again, only this time, it sounded more like Amelia: “I want two baskets of flowers. Yes, you can…But I’m taking my dog…”

Karen peeked into the doorway. In the darkness, she saw the silhouette of someone in the far twin bed, nestled beneath the covers. “But I have a ticket…” she said in a sleepy voice-Amelia’s voice. “That train doesn’t leave for a while…”

With a sigh, Karen retreated back to her own room, and crawled back into bed once again. She shouldn’t have been surprised Amelia talked in her sleep, in addition to everything else. Karen tried to go to sleep, but merely tossed and turned. She told herself everything was okay. She’d be taking Amelia to a specialist in just a few hours.

She kept checking the clock on her nightstand. The last time she looked it was 5:17. She could hear birds chirping. An unsettling thought occurred to her: What if that wasn’t Amelia under the covers? What if it was someone else?

But Karen told herself she was being silly. And she finally drifted off to sleep.

The clock on Shane’s nightstand read: 6:02 A.M. Barely lifting his head from his pillow, he squinted at it. He wondered what the hell that tapping noise was. He and four other guys shared a dilapidated house on Forty-third Street, just a few blocks from the campus. His bedroom was on the first floor, right off the kitchen. It took him a moment to realize the tapping was on his window. Against the faint light of dawn, he could see the silhouette of someone on the other side of the old venetian blinds.