Kevin O'Brien - One Last Scream

“I’m sorry,” Amelia murmured, with one hand on the thick, heavy door. She pushed it shut.

“Amelia, no!” her sister cried, her voice muffled.

Amelia set down the piece of glass. Then she grabbed a square-edged, short-handled shovel from the floor, and propped it under the door handle. “I’ll be right back,” she called to her sister. She had a deja vu sense about this moment, about talking to someone locked in a bomb shelter. Amelia didn’t remember ever experiencing this before-certainly not here in the basement of the lake house. She wondered if something similar had ever happened to Annabelle.

Ascending the basement stairs, she felt slightly winded and dizzy. Between the pain in her gut, the slash across her hand, and everything else, it was a wonder she hadn’t fainted yet. In the kitchen, Amelia went to the sink, and slurped some cold water from the faucet. She splashed her face, and felt a little better. Then she grabbed the revolver off the counter.

Annabelle’s purse, a large leather satchel, sat on the kitchen table. Amelia peeked inside it to make sure her sister didn’t keep a gun of her own in there.

Annabelle didn’t have a revolver, but she had a blackjack and a hunting knife. Amelia glanced around the kitchen for a place to hide them. She finally stashed them in the refrigerator inside the crisper drawer. She dumped the purse’s remaining contents onto the tabletop to make sure she hadn’t missed anything. Amid the junk, she noticed Annabelle’s wallet: her lipstick and compact; several loose bills, some twenties among them; chewing gum; and a beautiful black onyx ring.

It was Shane’s ring. He’d loved it. That ring had belonged to his grandfather.

Amelia felt a pang in her gut, and she started to cry. Clutching the ring in her wounded hand, she wandered toward the living room. She’d forgotten Karen’s warning not to go beyond the kitchen. She hadn’t been prepared to see all the dried blood on the wall behind the rocking chair. Another large bloodstain marred the carpet. In both cases, she knew whose blood she was looking at, because she’d seen it happen through her sister’s eyes. She’d seen Annabelle murder her mom and dad, and Ina, as well as Collin, and Shane.

Amelia tearfully gazed at Shane’s ring again, then she kissed it and tucked it inside the pocket of her flannel pajama bottoms.

Now the only thing she held was the revolver.

Her sister knew about guns. But Amelia didn’t. She’d never really fired a gun before. She’d only experienced it secondhand.

Amelia forced herself to go halfway up the stairs, until she saw the bloodstains on the wall by where Annabelle had shot her mother. Almost in a trance, she walked back down the steps and out the front door.

She needed a practice shot. She didn’t want to screw it up when she did it for real. Though barefoot, and dressed in only her pink T-shirt and flannel pajama bottoms, Amelia barely felt the cool night air whipping at her. She didn’t even notice that the ground was wet and cold, and hundreds of stars were out tonight. All she thought about was showing Annabelle that she could kill, too. She picked out a target-a pine tree about thirty feet from the house. Aiming the revolver at a branch, she squeezed the trigger. On the branch, there was a small explosion of bark, wood, and pine needles. She felt a jolt in her hand, and the sound made her jump.

But she hadn’t dropped the gun.

The shot still echoed across the lake.

She could do this, Amelia told herself. It was easy.

She turned around and headed back inside the house. She would tell Karen and the police that Annabelle had suddenly attacked her. They’d believe her, too. Amelia couldn’t help smiling a tiny bit. She was already thinking like her sister.

With the gun in her hand, she passed through the living room, and then into the kitchen. Once again, she glanced over at Annabelle’s purse and its contents strewn on the kitchen table. She wondered if she’d missed anything, perhaps some jewelry belonging to her mother or Ina.

All at once, she started to feel faint again. She couldn’t get a decent breath, and she was deathly cold. The only thing keeping her going was her anger. Amelia tried to ignore the signals, the strange feeling that her sister was already slipping away.

She didn’t notice anything familiar amid the debris from Annabelle’s purse. She opened up the wallet, and saw some fake ID’s and credit cards that were obviously not hers. Amelia didn’t recognize any of the names on the cards.

She found a photograph in the wallet, creased and worn as if it had been carried around for a long, long time. It was a picture of two identical, dark-haired little girls in overalls, holding hands and smiling at the camera. The color was so faded, and the images nearly washed out. But Amelia remembered those overalls were a very pretty shade of green.

She remembered, and she started to cry again.

Karen ran as fast as she could.

Somewhere along the way, she’d stumbled over a tree root and hit the ground hard. She’d banged her knee, but dragged herself up and relentlessly pressed on toward the sound of that gunshot. Her throat had gone dry, and it hurt every time she tried to breathe. Still, she didn’t slow down.

She kept hoping to hear the police sirens. But there was nothing except Helene’s dog barking in the distance. She couldn’t even see the Faradays’ house yet.

Karen kept wondering who had fired the gun. At this point, it could have been either Amelia or Annabelle. And at this point, she was probably already too late.

All of a sudden, she stumbled again and hit the damp sand. It knocked the wind out of her. Pulling herself up once more, her hand brushed against a piece of weathered driftwood. It was almost the size of a baseball ball-with a few rounded-off knobs where branches had once been. Karen picked it up off the ground, and then caught her breath for a moment. She wondered if this piece of wood was anything like the plank Annabelle had used to bash in Collin Faraday’s skull.

Clutching the makeshift club tightly in her fist, Karen hurried toward the Faradays’ house. She could see it in the distance now. The lights were on in the living room and the front hall. As she came closer, Karen could see the open front door and the silhouette of someone sitting on the front step. “Amelia?” she called.

Shivering and pale, she’d thrown a blanket over her shoulders. Even closer, Karen recognized the flannel pajama bottoms. She noticed the bloodstained dishtowel wrapped around her hand.

But Karen abruptly stopped when she saw the revolver in her other hand. “Amelia, did you-did you fire the gun?”

Tears in her eyes, she nodded.

“Did Annabelle attack you?” Karen asked.

“No. I didn’t fire it at anybody,” she replied with a tremor in her voice. “Annabelle-she’s dead. I left her alone for a few minutes, and when I went back down there, she was dead.” She let out a little cry. “I never had a chance to talk with her-to understand….”

Karen sat down beside her on the front stoop. She didn’t know what to say. She just gently patted her back and let her cry.

Hearing a noise behind them, Karen glanced over her shoulder. She didn’t see anyone in the doorway, but she noticed some drops of blood on the floor. There was a trail leading out to the front stoop, and it wasn’t old, dried blood, either. It was fresh.

Earlier, they’d managed to suppress the bleeding from the cut across Amelia’s palm. Mystified, Karen glanced at the dishtowel around her hand. Then she glanced down toward the stoop at the small puddle of blood. Another drop hit the puddle. And it wasn’t coming from Amelia’s hand.

It wasn’t coming from Amelia at all.