Kevin O'Brien - One Last Scream

“Or maybe they’re just alcohol-related blackouts,” Karen muttered to herself. “And you’re making way too much of this twin thing.”

She passed a sign for Lake Wenatchee State Park, and knew she was on the right track, at least as far as her driving was concerned. According to Helene’s directions, she would be at the Faradays’ lake house in another fifteen minutes.

Amelia’s separation from her twin certainly explained other things: the nightmares and those phantom pains and “faked” illnesses that had plagued her all the way through adolescence. Karen had read accounts of twin telepathy when she was in graduate school. Some were rather dull, dry studies. “Though separated, both twins picked the red ball for the first two experiments, and the green ball for the third, and the red ball again for the fourth. The choice patterns of the separated twins matched in 96 percent of the test cases.”

Other accounts were a bit more like a Twilight Zone episode. Karen recalled one story about a 55-year-old businessman who woke up in the middle of the night in his Zurich hotel room with severe abdominal pains and a high fever. The doctors in the emergency room at the hospital couldn’t find anything actually wrong with him, and his fever went away by the next morning. He got back to the hotel to find a message from his sister-in-law in Columbus, Ohio. His twin brother had been rushed to the hospital the night before with a ruptured appendix.

Karen remembered one of her professors dismissing such stories, though apparently dozens of similar cases were on record.

Had young Amelia, with her unexplained maladies, been feeling the pains and illnesses of her twin sister? Karen remembered some of Amelia’s descriptions. It felt like someone was kicking me…. Like my arm was being twisted off…It felt like someone was putting out a lit cigar on me….

She wondered about the awful things being done to Annabelle Schlessinger when her estranged twin sister-miles and miles away-had felt those horrible sensations. What kind of violence had that child endured? Amelia had said she’d stopped experiencing the phantom pains and illnesses about three years ago, when she was sixteen. And Annabelle Schlessinger had died at age sixteen.

Perhaps Amelia’s violent nightmares while growing up had been the result of some kind of telepathy. Maybe she was picking up real incidents as they happened to her twin.

Karen could almost imagine her professor laughing at her for such far-fetched speculation. It might not hold up with an American Psychological Association review panel, but there were all sorts of phenomena that couldn’t be easily explained. And twin telepathy was one of them.

Karen kept a lookout for the street signs. Along the forest road, she could see the placid lake peeking through the trees. She finally spotted a sign, with a red and white checkered border:

DANNY’S DINER

Breakfast, Lunch, or Dinner

You’ll Come Up a Winner!

1 MILE AHEAD

That was the restaurant both Amelia and Helene had described to her-the one near the gravel road that led to the Faradays’ lake house.

Karen still didn’t know what she expected to find when she got to the cabin. She might have driven all this way for nothing. If Amelia was hiding out there, Karen would calm her down and talk to her. They certainly couldn’t put off going to the police any longer. Hell, they were both probably persons of interest in Koehler’s disappearance, and about a notch away from fugitive status, if not there already. But Karen was still determined to protect Amelia, and make sure she got the help she needed.

Up the road a piece, she saw Danny’s Diner, a small chalet-style restaurant with flower boxes in the windows and four picnic tables in front. The parking lot was big enough for a dozen cars, and at the moment, half full. As Karen drove by, she noticed the phone booth by the front door.

Eyes on the road, she reached over for her cell phone, and tried to dial her home number. A mechanical voice told her, “We’re sorry. Your call cannot be completed. Please hang up and try again.”

Helene was right, cell phones didn’t work around here. That would make things extremely difficult if she ran into trouble at the cabin. She had to prepare herself for the possibility that Amelia was indeed at the cabin, but not at all herself right now. She might even have Blade with her.

Karen noticed the turn off to Holden Trail, a gravel road that sloped down and wound through the forest. The tiny stones made a hail-like racket under her rental car, and the occasional divot gave her a jolt. Karen had an awful foreboding feeling in the pit of her stomach, along with nerves and hunger, too. She hadn’t eaten all day.

She spotted a turnaround on her left. Helene had told her to ignore that one. The inlet the Faradays used was up ahead. Karen slowed down. She could see a little plateau off the bay with enough room for two small cars. As she inched into the spot, Karen could see other tire marks in the gravel and dirt.

After the two-and-a-half-hour drive, Karen’s legs cramped a bit as she climbed out of the rental. Grabbing her purse, she took another look at the gun inside. Along with the tire tracks, she noticed a cigarette butt and footprints, too. It looked like more than one person.

So Amelia hadn’t come here alone this morning. She must have been with Blade.

Karen saw the footprints again as she made her way down the trail, which was mostly dirt, but some patches were covered in gravel. There were a few stone steps, too, and an old wooden railing at a few precarious spots. She caught a glimpse of the lake between the trees. Finally, the terrain started to flatten out. Karen could see a clearing and the Faradays’ house ahead.

A crude flagstone path led to the front stoop of the weathered, two-story Cape Cod home. Karen tried to peek inside the windows as she passed. But it was dark in the house, and she couldn’t see anything beyond her own timid reflection.

Strips of yellow police tape with CRIME SCENE-DO NOT CROSS written on them had been taped across the front door. But someone had torn past them, and the loose tape strips now fluttered in the wind. There was also a notice taped to the front door-a green sheet of paper with a police shield logo and CITY OF WENATCHEE POLICE DEPARTMENT along the top. Karen glanced at it. There were two paragraphs of legal jargon, but the last words were in bold print: NO TRESPASSING-VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECTUED.

Obviously, someone else had already ignored those warnings. Karen was about to knock on the front door, but hesitated. If Blade and Amelia were in there, did she really want to announce her arrival?

Biting her lip, Karen tried the doorknob. To her amazement, the door wasn’t locked. Slowly, she opened it. Reaching into her purse, she took out her father’s revolver, and then stepped over the threshold. All the blinds were half drawn, and the windows closed. It was dark and stuffy inside the house. Nearly every stick of furniture had been dusted for fingerprints. A dirt trail covered the carpet and floors, obviously from all the police traipsing in and out of the crime scene. By the fireplace, Karen noticed the rocking chair where Amelia’s father was found. Behind it, she saw the large splotch on the wall, now a rust color. There were bloodstains on the beige carpet, too, beneath the rocker, and also a few feet away, where George’s wife must have been shot. Everything was just as Amelia-and Koehler-had described it.

Karen followed the investigators’ trail toward the kitchen, but abruptly stopped at the sound of something creaking. It seemed to have come from upstairs, but she wasn’t sure. With the gun in her trembling hand, Karen listened and waited for the next little noise. She counted to ten, and didn’t hear anything. She told herself it was just the house settling. She crept into the kitchen. It had gingerbread trim on the shelves and a yellow, fifties-style dinette set. Through the window in the kitchen door, she noticed the yellow police tape again, only this time, it was intact and crisscrossed over the entry.