Chapter 5 - The Reflection In The Glass
The woman standing in the doorway swayed gently, like a dead branch caught in an autumn breeze.
Emma stared across the six feet of hallway carpet, looking directly into her own face aged by twenty years of darkness.
The same hazel eyes, hollowed out by unspeakable neglect.
The same high cheekbones, now stretched tightly over a skeletal skull.
A long, jagged surgical scar ran from behind the woman’s left ear down into the collar of the faded hospital gown.
“Lily...” Emma whispered, the name tearing out of her throat like a piece of broken glass.
The woman didn't blink; her clouded eyes drifted past Emma and locked onto Arthur.
A low, guttural sound rose from her throat, an animalistic moan that had forgotten the structure of human language.
Arthur took a half-step backward, the .38 revolver shaking violently in his weathered grip.
“Get back down the stairs, Lily,” Arthur commanded, his voice betraying a terrifying, desperate tremor.
The woman raised the rusted kitchen knife, its pitted blade catching the yellow flicker of the kerosene lamp.
Noah didn't flinch; he stepped deliberately between the woman and Arthur’s trembling gun.
“She can’t understand your orders anymore, old man,” Noah said, his voice cold and steady.
“Ten years of living in a soundproof box behind the cedar paneling destroyed whatever mind she had left.”
David struggled to sit upright in the leather chair, his bleeding arm leaving thick streaks across the green blotter.
“Emma... take the knife from her... she’s dangerous when the lights go out,” David pleaded, his voice thin and weak.
Emma didn't grab the knife; she took one slow, agonizing step toward the sister she had mourned for two decades.
“You let me bury an empty box,” Emma said, her voice dropping into a terrifyingly quiet register.
She wasn't looking at the twin sister standing before her; she was looking at Arthur through the corner of her vision.
“You held my hand at the gravesite, Dad, and you told me she was in heaven with Mama.”
Arthur didn't lower the revolver, though his knuckles were turning white under the strain.
“We had no choice, Emma! The medical bills from that crash would have bankrupted this family three times over!”
“So you faked her death to collect the commercial insurance payout!” Emma screamed, turning fully on her father.
“And when the money ran out, you locked her under the floorboards like an animal!”
The gaunt woman let out another sharp, piercing shriek and lunged forward into the room.
She wasn't aiming for Emma; she was driving the heavy kitchen knife straight toward Arthur’s throat.
Arthur reacted with the cold instinct of a trained marksman, raising the heavy barrel of the .38.
Emma threw her entire weight into her father’s shoulder just as his finger squeezed the trigger.
The deafening roar of the gunshot detonated inside the confined study, blowing out the glass of the kerosene lamp.
The room plunged into sudden, suffocating darkness, lit only by the flashes of lightning outside the window.
A heavy body slammed against the oak desk, followed by the clatter of the rusted knife hitting the floorboards.
Noah moved in the dark with the terrifying precision of someone who had lived in total blackness for a decade.
Emma heard the sickening sound of flesh striking flesh, followed by an old man’s breathless gasp of pain.
Lightning flared through the blinds, illuminating the room in a strobe-like burst of stark blue light.
Noah had Arthur pinned against the brick chimney, his forearm pressed hard against the old man’s throat.
The .38 revolver was lying on the carpet near Emma’s feet, its cylinder still smoking faintly from the discharge.
The twin sister, Lily, was huddled in the corner by the bookshelf, clutching her bleeding shoulder where the bullet had grazed her.
David had collapsed forward entirely, his forehead resting in the pool of his own blood on the desk blotter.
Emma dropped to her knees and grabbed the heavy iron revolver before her father could reach for it.
She stood up, pointing the smoking barrel directly at Arthur’s forehead with both hands.
“Tell me where the other child is,” Emma demanded, her voice entirely devoid of fear, filled only with murderous intent.
Arthur choked against the pressure of Noah’s forearm, his eyes bulging as he stared down the barrel of his own gun.
“Noah... was talking about... the girl,” Arthur wheezed through his crushed windpipe.
“What girl, Arthur?” Noah snarled, pressing his arm harder against the old man’s throat.
“The girl we named Lily!” Arthur gasped, his heels kicking uselessly against the baseboard.
The room went dead silent, save for the torrential downpour battering the roof above their heads.
Emma felt her heart stop beating for a terrifying, endless second.
“What did you say?” Emma whispered, the gun wavering slightly in her grip.
Arthur managed a hideous, bloody grin through his cracked lips.
“The girl downstairs... celebrating her seventeenth birthday tonight...”
Arthur swallowed hard, a tiny trickle of blood escaping the corner of his mouth.
“She isn't your daughter, Emma.”
Emma stared at her father, the world dissolving into an incomprehensible nightmare of stolen identities.
“Lily was born in this house... I went through eighteen hours of labor in the county hospital!” Emma cried.
“Your baby died during the emergency cesarean section, Emma,” Arthur wheezed, his voice filled with cruel satisfaction.
“The doctor was on Julian Sterling’s payroll... he swapped the dead infant with your sister’s newborn child.”
Emma’s hands shook so violently that the heavy iron revolver threatened to slip from her grasp.
“The girl downstairs... is my twin sister’s daughter?” Emma whispered, looking toward the open doorway.
“She’s the sole legal heir to the Sterling estate,” Noah said softly, looking back at his mother.
“And that’s why Dad had to take me away ten years ago.”
Noah released his grip on Arthur’s throat, letting the old man slide down the brick chimney onto the floor.
“Dad didn't take me to sell me, Mom,” Noah continued, his eyes welling with deep, unhealed grief.
“Dad took me to protect me from Grandfather.”
“Because Grandfather was planning to kill me so there would be no male heir to challenge the girl’s trust.”
Suddenly, from the bottom of the staircase, the sharp, unmistakable sound of a shotgun cocking echoed through the house.
A sweet, youthful voice called out from the darkness of the lower hallway, entirely devoid of its earlier tears.
“Grandpa? Did you handle the boy yet?”
Emma froze, her blood turning to pure ice in her veins.
May you like
It was Lily’s voice.
“Because the sheriff’s cruiser just pulled into the driveway,” the girl continued from the bottom of the stairs.
