Kevin O'Brien - One Last Scream

Annabelle nodded.

“Okay,” she said. Then she slashed the piece of glass across her own hand.

Annabelle let out a shriek. The gun flew out of her grasp.

It happened so fast, Karen wasn’t sure if Annabelle had dropped the gun in a moment of panic or if she had actually felt the glass, too. Karen only knew that the revolver dropped on the floor right in front of her. She dove on it.

All at once, Annabelle was on top of her, frantically clawing at her, struggling to retrieve the weapon. Karen fought back. She wouldn’t let go of the revolver. With her elbow, she smacked Annabelle on the side of her head, but the young woman was relentless. She tugged at the revolver and scratched at Karen’s hands. Suddenly the gun went off.

An earsplitting shot echoed in the tiny gray room.

Jody went limp and fell to the kitchen floor at the man’s feet.

George quickly put Stephanie down and started toward his son.

“No way!” the man said in a loud voice, glaring at him from behind the dark glasses. He had his.45 trained on Jody’s crumpled body. “First you show me the safe, then you can tend to the kiddies.”

Crouching down, George carefully pried the duct tape from Stephanie’s mouth. He watched her eyes tear up with the pain. Once he pulled the tape off, she gasped for air, and then started crying. She threw her arms around his neck. “Daddy, Daddy…” was all she could say.

The young man grabbed Jody by the collar, then dragged him across the kitchen floor as if he were a bag of laundry. Then he dumped him at Jessie’s feet. George could see Jody was still breathing. But he was afraid his son might have a concussion.

“We need to get him to a doctor,” Jessie said.

“Shut the fuck up!” the man snapped. He turned to George, and pointed the gun at him. “I want to see where this safe is,” he said. “C’mon, show me, and bring the little brat with you.”

“It’s in the living room,” George lied. He took one more look at Jody, still breathing, but not moving a muscle. The blood from the gash on his forehead had trickled down to his jaw.

“ Where in the living room?” the man pressed. “I’ve been all over this dump.”

“Around this corner,” George said, shielding Stephanie’s eyes from the sight of Mrs. Bidwell’s corpse on the sofa. Steffie cried softly. Her whole body was trembling. George patted her on the back. “When I say go , run as fast as you can out the front door,” he whispered. “When I say go. Okay, honey?”

She sniffed, then nodded her head.

“Good girl,” George said under his breath.

“So where is it, man?”

George nodded to an antique oval mirror on the living room wall. It was 24 by 18 inches, with a very ornate, pounded-tin frame.

“The mirror?” the young man said. “Shit, I already looked behind there, asshole.”

“Well, then you weren’t looking very carefully,” George replied.

“Show me.”

George patted Steffie on the back again. “I need to put you down for a minute, sweetie,” he said, setting her on her feet. “Be a good girl, and remember what I told you.”

Stephanie clung to his leg.

Swallowing hard, George reached for the mirror on the wall. “The money’s not in the wall, it’s in the back of the mirror,” he lied. He glanced back at the man with the sunglasses, and then lifted the mirror off the wall. It was lighter than it looked, only a few pounds. “There’s about six thousand dollars back here, sort of an emergency fund. It’s yours. Just take it and go . Do you hear me? Just go !”

All at once, Stephanie scurried toward the front door.

The young man turned his gun on her.

He didn’t see that behind the mirror frame, there was nothing. He didn’t see George swinging the mirror at him with all his might.

A shot rang out. The young man howled in pain as George hit him in the face with the mirror. There was an explosion of glass.

Squeezing his eyes shut, George turned his head away for a second.

When he opened his eyes again, Stephanie was gone, and the front door was open. The.45 lay on the carpet amid shards of reflective glass.

In a stupor, the young man stared at George. His sunglasses had been knocked off his face. His eyes were listless. Blood dripped from several little bits of broken mirrored glass embedded in his face. One large piece was stuck in his neck. In a daze, he pried it out. Blood gushed from the fatal wound, cascading down the front of his white shirt, tie, and the shiny black jacket.

He remained standing, looking stunned.

George heard the sirens from police cars coming up the street. He realized Jody’s friend, Brad, must have called the police. The searchlights and beams from the red strobes poured through the windows. For a few seconds, the same light danced off the mirrored fragments in the young man’s face.

Then he collapsed dead on the floor.

Through the sheer window curtains, George could see four police cars pulling in front of the house. One policeman ran across the yard and scooped up Stephanie.

George started toward the kitchen, and stopped dead.

His forehead still bleeding, Jody stood near the kitchen counter with a tired smile on his face. He staggered toward his father, and threw his arms around him.

Dazed, George embraced his son. He glanced over at Jessie, a bit unsteady on her feet, slowly making her way into the living room. George realized Jody must have untied her. He kissed the top of Jody’s head. “God, you-you sure had me fooled,” he murmured. “I thought you were practically dead.”

“Me, too,” Jody said, with a weak laugh.

“We still need to get you to a doctor,” George said. With an arm around his son, George dug the cell phone out of his pocket. He checked for messages. There were two Jessie had left on the home phone and two more from that sheriff in Salem. No one else.

“Are you calling Karen?” Jessie asked.

He nodded. “It’s been nearly two hours.”

It rang and rang. No one picked up. It didn’t even go to her voice mail.

Jessie gave him an apprehensive look. He just shook his head at her.

When he’d last talked to Karen, she’d been on her way to meet Amelia at the restaurant near the lake house.

George stayed on the line. He didn’t want to hang up just yet, not even as the three of them started toward the front door.

Jessie paused for a moment and looked down at something on the carpet amid the mirrored fragments. Frowning, she kicked it out of her way and then moved on.

The bent, broken sunglasses skittered across the floor.

Breathless, Karen ran along the water’s edge.

Her head was still throbbing, and her lungs burned, but she pressed on toward Helene Sumner’s house. She could see the lights on inside her cottage farther up the beach.

She’d left Annabelle Schlessinger in that grimy, little fallout shelter with a bullet in her stomach. Annabelle’s black knit top had been soaked with blood by the time Amelia had staggered back down to the cellar with several dishtowels from the kitchen. They’d managed to move Annabelle to the cot, and pulled off her blood-sodden sweater. Karen had told her to lie still and keep the towels pressed against the wound.

But Annabelle wouldn’t stop screaming and squirming. Her shrill cries echoed off the walls of the little gray chamber. Her legs were curled up toward her stomach as if some shifting in her organs had locked them there. Pale and trembling, she seemed very afraid. “Don’t let me die in here!” she cried several times. She’d lost a lot of blood, and Karen noticed her breathing was shallow. She wasn’t sure about her chances. At the same time, she couldn’t help wondering if Annabelle was stronger than she let on. Was it an act to throw them off guard?