One Last Scream. Kevin O'Brien
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.
Chapter Four
“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.
“Remember how when Collin died, I knew before everyone else?” she’d asked. What George remembered was Amelia claiming after the drowning that she’d seen it all—in her mind. She didn’t think Collin had accidentally fallen off the dock and hit his head on those pilings. She insisted there was more to it than that. She had a feeling.
George remembered when Amelia had made all those wild claims. He and Ina figured their sweet-but-screwed-up niece was looking for some attention. Amelia must have felt like an also-ran alongside her winning younger brother. Back in 1992, Mark and Jenna had been trying to have a child. Finally, after weeks of foster parenting, they adopted beautiful four-year-old Amelia. They didn’t think anyone could eclipse her—until two months later, when Jenna learned she was pregnant.
Amelia adored her little brother. But apparently she became a handful. Mark and Jenna lost more sleep on account of Amelia’s nightmares than the baby’s feedings. And even when Collin was supposed to sleep through the night, Amelia always woke him up when she jumped out of bed shrieking. The nightmares hadn’t yet subsided when Amelia started developing phantom pains and faked illnesses. “It feels like someone’s twisting my arm off, Uncle George!” he remembered her screaming during a family Thanksgiving at his and Ina’s house. It took several minutes for her to stop crying. According to Jenna, two days later, Amelia claimed her arm was still sore, though she didn’t have a mark on her. Other times, she said it felt as if someone were hitting her or kicking her. There were several trips to the doctor and the hospital emergency room for absolutely no reason. By early high school, certain phantom aches and ailments prompted Jenna to rush Amelia to a gynecologist. Jenna had confided to Ina that she thought someone might have been molesting Amelia. But the doctors found no physical evidence of this whatsoever.
Amelia started drinking in high school, too. Despite all her problems, she was a near-A student, and extremely sweet. She had a good heart. If someone sneezed in the next aisle at the supermarket, Amelia would call out, “God bless you.” George guessed that her eagerness to please, along with peer pressure, must have started her drinking. She’d been to several therapists, but none of them really worked out until she recently started seeing this one, Karen Somebody. Amelia liked her a lot, but George wasn’t sure if this Karen person was doing any good.
The one who seemed to get through to Amelia best was Ina. Since Amelia had started school at UW, they’d seen a lot more of her. Ina relished the admiration of this college girl. They had their Girls’ Nights Out together at trendy restaurants and college bars. They also teamed up for shopping expeditions and the occasional pedicure/manicure at Ina’s favorite day spa. She got to be Amelia’s fun aunt and confidante.
George wondered if Ina was better at being a fun aunt than a serious wife and mother. It was a terrible thought to have. And just an hour ago, he’d made a deal with God that he would try once again to make it work with Ina.
George continued to listen to the dead air on the phone, and he stared out the window. One of the neighbor kids—Jody’s friend, Brad Reece—joined the children on the front lawn. And now the boys were tossing around a Frisbee and ignoring Stephanie.
“Uncle George, are you still there?”
“Yes,” he said into the phone. “I thought I might have lost you.”
“The old lady’s name is Helene,” she said. “Helene Sumner in Lake Wenatchee. I’ll call directory assistance and get the number—”
“No,