Chapter 7 - The Deputy At The Door
Emma stepped out from behind the door, the heavy .38 revolver held firmly in both hands, leveled straight at the girl she had raised.
Her heart felt as if it had been carved out of her chest with a dull blade, leaving only a hollow cavern of ice.
“Lower that shotgun, Lily,” Emma commanded, her voice steady, stripped of all motherly tenderness.
Lily’s smile did not waver; instead, her eyebrows arched in amused defiance.
“Or what, Emma? You’re going to shoot the girl whose school lunches you packed for ten straight years?”
“You’re not my daughter,” Emma said, the words tasting like ash and bile on her tongue.
Lily let out a short, airy chuckle that echoed unnervingly down the dark hallway.
“Thank God for that,” Lily replied, shifting her weight effortlessly.
“Imagine having your pathetic, weeping weakness coded into my DNA.”
Noah stepped into the amber glow of the study, placing himself half an inch in front of Emma’s gun line.
Lily’s eyes drifted toward him, flickering with mild curiosity, as if examining an unexpected stray dog on the porch.
“Look at you, Noah,” Lily purred, tapping the steel barrel of the shotgun with her manicured fingernail.
“Ten years in a damp basement, and you still look like the pathetic little brat who used to cry when his train set broke.”
Noah didn't flinch, his jaw set like an iron vice.
“You were only seven when you handed Uncle David the keys to the station wagon,” Noah stated flatly.
Lily’s smile broadened, showing straight, white teeth.
“You were always in the way, Noah.”
“Grandpa told me months before that only one child would ever get to go to the private academies in Boston.”
“I didn't want to share the bedrooms, I didn't want to share the inheritance, and I certainly didn't want to share the spotlight.”
From the front yard below, three heavy thuds echoed through the house.
Someone was pounding their fist against the thick oak wood of the front door.
“Emma Collins? County Sheriff’s Department! Anyone inside?”
A deep, commanding voice carried through the broken kitchen window down below.
It was Deputy Vance Miller, a man who had gone to high school with Emma and Mark.
Arthur struggled against the baseboard, trying to raise his voice to scream for help.
Noah reacted instantly, stepping hard on Arthur’s wooden cane, snapping the polished oak in half with a sickening splinter.
He grabbed the broken, jagged half of the cane and pressed the sharp wooden point against Arthur’s carotid artery.
Arthur choked, his scream dying in his throat as his eyes widened in sheer terror.
Lily didn't even glance down at her grandfather’s peril.
“Deputy Miller isn't here to save any of you,” Lily said quietly, her finger resting lightly against the shotgun trigger.
Emma’s brow furrowed in sudden suspicion.
“What did you tell him down there, Lily?”
Lily tilted her head toward the stairs, listening to the heavy thud of Miller’s boots entering the lower foyer.
“I told him that Noah came back out of the woods with an axe.”
Emma felt her stomach plunge into a freezing abyss.
“I told him that the missing boy had gone completely feral in the mountains,” Lily continued, her voice practically glowing with malice.
“I told him you and David were already dead upstairs, and that he needed to come in with his weapon drawn.”
The heavy footsteps downstairs accelerated into a dead run, heading directly toward the central staircase.
“Emma? David? I’m coming up!” Miller’s voice bellowed, the sound of leather holsters unbuttoning clearly audible.
Lily adjusted her aim, pointing the 12-gauge barrel directly at Noah’s chest.
“One shot through your heart, Noah,” Lily whispered, her eyes widening with manic excitement.
“Then I scream, Miller bursts through that door, shoots you dead on the spot, and writes it off as officer defense.”
“And I walk away with five million dollars and a grieving orphan’s sympathy card.”
Before Lily could tighten her finger on the trigger, a sudden, horrifying screech ripped through the room.
The gaunt woman in the corner—the real Lily—threw herself forward from the shadows behind the bookcase.
With the feral, desperate strength of a mother who had lost her mind in isolation, she lunged directly at the girl.
Her filthy, blood-stained fingers clawed straight into the teenager’s face, tearing into her smooth cheeks.
Lily shrieked in utter horror, the shotgun swinging wildly toward the ceiling plaster.
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BOOM!
The deafening blast of the 12-gauge shattered the upper hallway, sending clouds of white drywall dust and buckshot raining everywhere.
