Kevin O'Brien - One Last Scream

“That’s a good girl,” Helene Sumner said, holding the leash tightly. A chilly autumn wind whipped across the lake, and she turned up the collar to her windbreaker. Helene was sixty-seven and thin, with close-cropped gray hair. She was an artist, working with silk screens. She had a studio in her house, about a half mile down the lake from the Faradays’ place.

Helene had hardly gotten any sleep last night. When those shots had gone off at 2:30 this morning, Abby had started barking. She leapt up from her little comforter in the corner of the bedroom and onto Helene’s bed. The poor thing was trembling. So was Helene. She wasn’t accustomed to being woken up in the middle of the night like that.

Hunting was prohibited in the area, and even if it were allowed, what in God’s name were they hunting at that hour? The tall trees surrounding the lake played with the acoustics, and sounds traveled across the water. Those shots rang out so clearly, they could have been fired in Helene’s backyard. But she knew where they’d come from.

She’d just started to doze off again when another loud bang went off around five o’clock. Helene dragged herself out of bed and threw on her windbreaker. Grabbing a pair of field glasses, she walked with Abby to the lake’s edge, and then peered over at the Faradays’ house. No activity, no lights on, nothing.

She retreated to the house, crawled back into bed and nodded off until 10:30-very unlike her.

An hour ago, while having her breakfast-coffee and the last of her homemade biscuits-Helene had figured out who must have encroached on her sanctuary. Those three loud shots in the early morning hours must have been some kind of fireworks-bottle rockets or firecrackers.

Now, walking with Abby along the lakeside path, Helene gazed at the Faraday place and thought about the daughter, Amelia. She used to be such a polite, considerate girl-and so beautiful. But there was an underlying sadness about her, too. And talk about sad, it was such a tragedy when the Faradays’ son drowned. It had been around that time, maybe even before, when Amelia and her lowlife boyfriend had started showing up at the weekend house without her parents. They were so obnoxious. Helene didn’t care about the skinny-dipping, but did they have to be so loud? She heard their screaming and laughing until all hours of the night, and sometimes it was punctuated by bottles smashing. They trashed the lake, too. Helene would find food wrappers, cigarette butts, and beer cans washed up on her shore after each one of their clandestine visits. Those kids were making a cesspool out of her lake.

About a month ago, when the Faradays had come for a weekend, Helene stopped by with a Bundt cake and offered her belated condolences about Collin. Then, privately, she talked to Amelia about her secret trips there with her boyfriend. “It’s none of my business what you do with him, Amelia,” she told her, walking along the trail beside the water. “But I wish you’d be a little less noisy about it. And so help me God, I’m going to say something to your parents if I see one more piece of garbage in that lake. It’s my lake, too, and I won’t let you and your boyfriend pollute it.”

Amelia stopped and gaped at her with those big, beautiful eyes and a put-on innocent expression. “Oh, Ms. Sumner, I–I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she murmured. “I haven’t come here with my boyfriend. I swear. Shane’s never been here. You must be mistaken.”

Helene shook her head. “You can deny it all you want. I know what I saw, Amelia. I’m really disappointed in you….”

Now, as she approached the Faradays’ front porch, Helene figured she’d get the same Little Miss Innocent routine from Amelia as last time. She would probably wake her up-along with her boyfriend-since they’d been lighting off firecrackers until the wee hours of the morning.

But something suddenly occurred to Helene that made her hesitate at the Faradays’ front stoop. Why didn’t she hear any laughing or screaming? People always laughed, yelled, or cheered when they let off fireworks. But there hadn’t been a human sound-just those shots.

Abby sniffed at the front door to the Faradays’ old Cape Cod-style house. She started whining and barking. The collie backed away. She had that sixth sense.

Something was wrong inside that house.

Although Abby tried to pull her in the other direction, Helene stepped up to the door and knocked. Abby wouldn’t stop yelping. “Quiet, girl,” Helene hissed. She tried to listen for some activity inside the house. Nothing. Helene knocked again, and waited. She wondered if she should take a cue from Abby and get out of there. But she knocked once more, and then tried the doorknob. It wasn’t locked.

Abby let out another loud bark, a warning. But it was too late. Helene was already opening the door. From the threshold, she could see up the stairs to the second floor hallway, where a messy brownish-red stain marred the pale blue wall. Baffled, Helene started up the stairs, having to tug at Abby’s leash. Only a few steps from the landing, Helene stopped dead. She realized now that the large stain on the wall was dried blood. Beneath it, Jenna Faraday lay on the floor, her face turned to the wall. The oversized T-shirt she wore was soaked crimson. Her bare legs looked so swollen and pale-almost gray.

Helene gasped. She and Abby retreated down the stairs, and then she noticed what was in the living room. Helene stopped in her tracks. A second dead woman lay sprawled on the floor-a few feet from the kitchen door. She had beautiful, curly auburn hair, but her face was frozen in a horrified grimace. Her burgundy-colored robe and nightgown almost matched the puddle of blood on the floor beneath her. The shotgun blast had ripped open the front of that lacy nightgown. Helene could see the fatal, gaping wound in her chest.

Not far from the second woman’s body, Mark Faraday’s corpse sat upright in a rocker. At least, Helene thought it was him. Blood covered the robe he wore. The butt of the hunting rifle was wedged between Mark Faraday’s lifeless legs, with the long barrel slightly askew and tilted away from his mutilated, swollen face.

One hand remained draped over the gun, his finger caught in the trigger.

“What about that woman who lives down the lake from the cabin?” George asked. “Your dad told me they’ve used her phone in the past for emergencies. Do you know her number?”

“Oh, God, Ms. Sumner,” Amelia murmured on the other end of the line. She sounded as if she were in a daze. “I forgot all about her. We have her number written down someplace, but I think it’s shoved in a desk at home in Bellingham.”

“Do you know her first name?”

“Hold on for a second, Uncle George. I’m about to go through a tunnel.”

“I thought you’d pulled over. You shouldn’t be on your cell while driving-”

“God, you sound just like Dad. It’s okay. I have friends who text-message while driving.”

“Well, then they’re idiots,” George said to dead air. She must have entered the tunnel.

Holding the cordless phone to his ear, he glanced toward the living room windows. From this spot in the kitchen, he could see through the sheer curtains to the front yard. He’d sent Jody and Stephanie outside so he could phone Amelia and talk to her without the kids hearing. They didn’t need to know he was worried about their mother.

While driving home from downtown, George had gotten more and more concerned. Ina had promised to call and check in with him this morning.

There were no messages on the answering machine when he’d gotten home with the kids, except two from a panic-stricken Amelia, both within the last hour. Her premonition that Ina, Mark, and Jenna had all been killed seemed preposterous, but unnerving, too.