Kevin O'Brien - One Last Scream

Karen shifted restlessly on the picnic table bench. She gazed at the darkening horizon, and then over the treetops in the direction of the Faradays’ lake house.

Helene Sumner had seen Annabelle, and her boyfriend, Blade, at the house just days before Amelia’s parents and aunt were brutally killed there. The Faradays would have opened the door to Annabelle, believing her to be their daughter. They may not have even lived long enough after that to realize their mistake. In Amelia’s all-too-accurate dream, she remembered her Aunt Ina’s last words before a bullet ripped through her chest: “Oh my God, honey, what have you done?”

Everything started to make sense, if Annabelle was indeed alive. She was the killer. But what was her motive? And what accounted for Amelia having these fragmented memories of her sister’s violent actions?

An SUV pulled into the lot by Danny’s Diner. Karen glanced at her watch again. She got to her feet and checked the phone inside the booth. Had she hung up the receiver improperly after her last conversation with George?

No, there was nothing wrong with the phone, except George’s call hadn’t come through on it yet.

“God, you’re right!” a girl shrieked. “My cell phone isn’t working. Shit! And I told Tiffany I was going to call her.”

Karen saw three young teenage girls, and the haggard-looking mother of one of them, coming around the corner from the Danny’s parking lot. All the girls were talking at once, and loudly, too. But Karen heard one of them over the others: “Look, there’s a pay phone!”

Karen quickly ducked into the booth and closed the folding door. She picked up the receiver, but kept a hand over the cradle lever, pressing it down. “Oh, yeah? Really?” she said into the phone. “Well, I’m not surprised….”

A gum-snapping girl with long brown hair stopped in front of the booth while her friends and their chaperone filed into the diner. She fished a credit card out of her little purse. What a 14-year-old was doing with a credit card was beyond Karen. She turned her back to the girl, and kept up her pretend conversation on the phone: “I had no idea. Well, she should take care of that right away.”

After a few moments, Karen heard a clicking noise behind her. She glanced over her shoulder. The girl was tapping her credit card against the phone booth window. She glared at Karen, and then rolled her eyes.

Karen opened the door. “Hey, I have another important call to make after this,” she said. “So, you may as well just buzz off, okay?”

“Bitch,” the girl muttered. Then she swiveled around and flounced into the restaurant.

Suddenly, the phone rang. Karen’s hand jerked away from the receiver cradle. “Yes? George?”

“Yeah, hi,” he said. “Listen, I think you’re right about Amelia’s twin. There’s every chance Annabelle is still alive….”

She stood in Karen’s kitchen, gazing at the housekeeper.

Outside, in the backyard, George McMillan’s children played with Karen’s dog. They hadn’t noticed her yet.

“Amelia, everyone’s been searching high and low for you, honey,” the housekeeper said. She furtively glanced over her shoulder at the children, then took another step inside and closed the kitchen door behind her.

“Where’s Karen?” she asked.

“She drove to the house in Lake Wenatchee, looking for you,” Jessie said. “She rented a car. Her own car’s missing. Did you borrow her car, honey?”

“No, I didn’t.” Her eyes narrowed at Jessie. “Do you know if Karen has been to the lake house yet?”

Jessie nodded, and moved over to the cupboard. “She called about fifteen minutes ago from some diner up the road from there. You just missed her.” Jessie pulled a container of lemonade mix from the cabinet. “I promised the kids I’d make them some lemonade. Would you like some, honey? Or maybe a nice cup of tea?”

“Don’t bother yourself,” she muttered.

“Sit down and take a load off, for goodness sake.” She moved over to the refrigerator and took the ice tray out of the freezer. “I’ll make enough lemonade for you, too. You have something cool to drink, and then we’ll call your Uncle George. He’s been worried about you, too.”

She sat down at the breakfast table. “Where is Uncle George?”

“He had to go down to Oregon for some research thingy,” Jessie said, retrieving four tall glasses and a pitcher from another cabinet. “He’ll be back tonight, though. Karen, too. I guess we have to wait before we can reach her on her cell-something about bad phone reception around there.”

Past Jessie’s chatter, she heard the children outside, laughing. The dog let out a bark now and then. She glanced down at the purse in her lap. Inside, something caught the overhead kitchen light, and glistened.

The serrated-edged, brown-leather-handled hunting knife in her purse was a souvenir from the ranch. It had belonged to her father. He’d skinned his kill with it on hunting trips. He’d also used it on some of his women once he’d finished with them.

She remembered back when she was just a little girl, those furtive trips at night had seemed like such long ordeals. But in reality he’d done a quick job on the women they’d picked up together. The longest he’d gone on with one of them had been close to two hours. He’d dug their graves ahead of time, and driven them out to the preselected spot. She remembered those nights alone in the car, listening to the screams, waiting. He’d come back, covered with sweat, and often blood. He’d pull a piece of candy out of his pocket, and toss it to her. “That’s a good girl,” he’d say. “You’re daddy’s little helper.” Then he’d pop open the trunk, get out the shovel, and promise to be back soon.

And he’d kept his promise. He’d always return within a half hour.

A few times, Uncle Duane came with them. Those nights always took longer. And he smelled bad in the car on the way home.

Her father always called it his work .

It wasn’t until a few years after her mother died that her father began to take his work home with him. The longest he ever kept one of them in that fallout-shelter-turned-dungeon was eleven days and nights and that was Tracy Eileen Atkinson. There was something about her that he liked more than the others. For a while, she’d thought he’d never grow tired and bored with Tracy. But he did.

She’d snuck down into the basement and peeked in on her father as he finished Tracy off with his hunting knife. One quick stroke across the neck. She still remembered the startled look in Tracy’s eyes, the thin crimson line across her throat that suddenly unleashed a torrent of blood.

That was when she first coveted her father’s hunting knife. She was thirteen years old at the time.

She still hadn’t tried it out on anyone, yet. Karen was going to be her very first kill with the old knife. She’d had it in her robe pocket when she’d accidentally stumbled into Karen’s bedroom late last night. But the joke had been on her. She’d had no idea Karen had been sleeping with a gun beside her.

Two days before, she’d thought she had Karen cornered in the basement of that rest home. But Blade had botched it.

Returning to Karen’s house this afternoon, she’d figured the third attempt would be the charm. But she hadn’t figured on finding Karen gone, and the housekeeper with those two brats here in her place.

She stared at Jessie, hovering over the counter, her back to her. Outside, the children were howling, trying to get the dog to bark. She glanced inside her purse again.

No reason she still couldn’t break in her father’s old hunting knife, no reason at all.

“So honey, where have you been all day, for Pete’s sake?” Jessie asked, pulling something else out of the cupboard. “Karen and your uncle have been calling just about everyone and asking if they’ve seen you. They didn’t leave one turn unstoned as my Aunt Agnes used to say….”