Number 5 Bittersweet Court did not look like a fortress of terror. It looked like a bad investment.
The “For Sale” sign in the front yard was listing to the left, half-swallowed by overgrown ornamental grasses. The windows were dark, reflecting the streetlights in glassy, indifferent stares. To the casual observer, it was just another piece of overpriced inventory in a cooling market.
To Maya, it was the mouth of the beast.
“Keep the lights off,” she whispered, her voice barely audible over the wind coming off the wetlands.
The four women crouched by the front door. They were a motley assault team. Maya gripped a canister of bear mace she’d bought after the first threat. Elena held a surgical scalpel wrapped in a handkerchief—stolen from her medical bag. Sarah clutched a heavy brass candlestick she had grabbed from her foyer. Chloe held her phone, her thumb hovering over the Supra key app.
“Do it,” Maya commanded.
Chloe’s hand trembled. She tapped the screen. “Connecting… If they changed the firmware, this won’t work. If the bank re-keyed it…”
The digital lockbox hanging on the doorknob whirred. It was a mechanical, grinding sound that seemed deafening in the silence.
Click.
The faceplate popped open. The physical key dropped into Chloe’s palm.
“We’re in,” Chloe breathed, looking terrified of her own success.
Maya took the key. The metal was cold. She jammed it into the deadbolt and turned. The lock tumbled with a smooth, well-oiled slide. For a house that had been empty for six months, the hardware was suspiciously well-maintained.
The door swung open.
The smell hit them first. It wasn’t the musty scent of abandonment Maya had expected. It was the smell of ozone, stale coffee, and the distinct, cloying scent of the vanilla mulch that permeated the entire neighborhood.
“He’s been here,” Sarah whispered, stepping into the foyer. She gripped her candlestick like a club. “It smells like… like living.”
“Stay close,” Maya said. She clicked on her flashlight, keeping the beam low to the floor.
The beam swept across the hardwood. The floor was dusty, but there was a clear path worn through the grey film—a trail of footprints leading from the front door straight to the back of the house.
“He didn’t even take his shoes off,” Elena noted, her voice tight. “Arrogant.”
They moved down the hallway, passing the empty living room and the ghost of a dining room where a chandelier hung wrapped in plastic. The house felt hollow, amplifying the sound of their breathing. Every creak of the floorboards sounded like a gunshot.
Maya led them to the kitchen. The path in the dust didn’t go to the fridge or the sink. It went to the pantry door.
“The basement,” Maya said. “In these models, the pantry hides the stairs.”
She reached for the handle. It was a simple round knob, but it felt heavy. She turned it.
The door opened to reveal a gaping black throat. Cool air rushed up to meet them, carrying a low, rhythmic hum.
Whirrrr. Whirrrr. Whirrrr.
“Servers,” Chloe whispered. “That’s the sound of cooling fans.”
Maya stepped onto the first landing. “I’m going down. If I scream, run.”
“If you scream,” Elena said, stepping up right behind her, the scalpel glinting in the flashlight beam, “we charge.”
They descended into the dark. The stairs were carpeted, muffling their footsteps. The hum grew louder with every step, a vibration that Maya could feel in her teeth.
At the bottom of the stairs, a heavy steel door blocked their path. It looked like the entrance to a bank vault or a panic room.
“It’s reinforced,” Maya said, running her light over the frame. “Fire rated. Soundproof.”
There was no handle. Just a keypad.
“Chloe?” Maya asked.
Chloe moved forward, raising her phone to scan for signals. “I can’t hack a hardline keypad, Maya. That’s movies. That’s not real life.”
Maya shone her light on the keys. The numbers were rubber. Four of them were worn down, the white paint faded from repeated use.
1. 9. 9. 4.
Maya felt a chill ripple through her blood. “Of course.”
She punched in the code. 1-9-9-4.
The lock beeped—a cheerful, affirmative chirp. A magnetic latch released with a heavy thud.
Maya pushed the door open.
The room beyond was not dark. It was bathed in a soft, red emergency glow, sourced from the power strips lining the baseboards.
It was a studio.
The walls were lined with acoustic foam, identical to Chloe’s pantry but black. In the center of the room sat a massive, U-shaped desk dominated by a mixing board that looked complicated enough to launch a shuttle. Three monitors were mounted on the wall, currently dark.
But it wasn’t the technology that made Maya stop breathing. It was the walls.
Every inch of space not covered by foam was covered by paper.
Photographs.
Maya swept her flashlight across the gallery of violation.
There was Chloe, arguing with Rick in her driveway, her face twisted in tears. There was Elena, sitting on her back patio at 3:00 AM, smoking a cigarette with a shaking hand. There was Sarah, taking out the trash, looking over her shoulder with terrified eyes.
And there was Maya.
Maya sleeping. Taken through her bedroom window. Maya feeding Leo in the nursery. Maya arguing with Dan in the kitchen.
“Oh my god,” Chloe whimpered. “He has everything. He has my whole life.”
“He wasn’t just listening,” Sarah said, walking toward a photo of herself. “He was watching. From here. From the birdhouse. From the street.”
Maya walked to the desk. The leather executive chair was pushed back slightly, as if the occupant had just stood up.
She reached out and touched the seat.
“It’s warm,” she said. The words felt like stones in her mouth. “He’s not just gone. He just left. He might still be in the house.”
Elena spun toward the door, raising the scalpel. “We checked the upstairs. He must have gone out the back.”
“Look at this,” Maya said.
On the desk, sitting next to a vintage RCA microphone that looked like a chrome pill, was a stack of paper. It was neatly aligned, the edges sharp.
The title page was typed in the same Courier font as the threatening notes.
THE GABLES GHOST SEASON 1: THE FINALE “THE PURGE”
Maya’s hand shook as she turned the page.
It wasn’t just a narration script. It was a screenplay. It had scene headings. Dialogue. Action lines.
EXT. CUL-DE-SAC - NIGHT
The storm breaks. The power fails. DARKNESS swallows the street.
MAYA (30s) runs from her house. She is bleeding.
Maya read the line again. She is bleeding.
She flipped the page.
INT. SUNROOM - NIGHT
The glass shatters. The FIRE starts in the corner, fed by the accelerant. The smoke is thick, sweet.
MAYA is trapped against the glass. She screams, but the sound is drowned out by the roar of the flames.
NARRATOR (V.O.) Fire cleanses. Fire purifies. The rot must be burned out to save the root.
“He’s going to burn us,” Maya whispered. “He’s going to burn the houses down.”
“When?” Chloe asked, looking over her shoulder.
Maya turned to the last page.
TIMECODE: 00:00:00 ACTION: IGNITION
“Midnight,” Maya said. She checked her watch. It was 11:14 PM.
“We have forty-five minutes,” Elena said. “We need to call the police. Now. We have the lair. We have the proof.”
“Wait,” Sarah said. She was standing by a corkboard in the corner, away from the photos of the women. This board was different. It was covered in old, yellowed newspaper clippings and blueprints.
“These aren’t photos of us,” Sarah said. “These are blueprints of the cul-de-sac. The original infrastructure.”
Maya moved to join her. The blueprints showed the gas lines. The sewer pipes. The electrical grid.
Red marker lines traced the gas main that ran under the street. Circles were drawn at four specific points.
Number 1. Number 2. Number 3. Number 4.
“He’s not going to use gasoline,” Maya realized, tracing the red line with her finger. “He’s going to blow the main. He’s going to level the entire cul-de-sac.”
“That’s why he needed the empty house,” Chloe said. “Access. The main valve for the street is probably in this basement. It’s the lowest point.”
Maya looked around the room. In the far corner, behind a rack of servers, was a large industrial pipe painted yellow. A wheel valve the size of a steering wheel sat on top of it.
Attached to the valve was a digital timer. A bundle of wires connected the timer to a small, brick-sized device taped to the pipe.
The timer counted down in bright red LEDs.
00:44:12
“It’s a bomb,” Elena said, her voice flat. “Or an automated valve opener rigged to a spark.”
“He didn’t leave,” Maya said, looking at the timer. “He set the stage. He’s gone to get a good view.”
“We have to leave,” Chloe shrieked, backing toward the stairs. “We have to get out!”
“We have to stop it,” Maya said. She ran to the valve. “If we run, he blows it early. He’s watching. He has cameras.”
She looked at the monitors on the wall. They were dark, but a small green light on the bezel indicated they were in standby.
“He’s watching us right now,” Maya yelled at the ceiling. “ Aren’t you? You sick bastard!”
The monitors flickered to life.
All three screens showed the same image.
It was a live feed. But not of the basement.
It was a feed from inside Maya’s sunroom.
The room was dark, lit only by the moonlight coming through the glass. But in the center of the room, sitting on the coffee table where they had made their pact, was a single object.
A red canister. A gas can.
And standing next to it, illuminated by the flash of lightning from the storm outside, was a figure.
He wore black. A hood obscured his face. But in his hand, he held a lighter.
The figure looked up at the camera—Maya’s own security camera—and waved.
A voice boomed through the studio speakers. It wasn’t the gravelly narrator voice. It was distorted, high-pitched and mocking.
“You’re in the wrong house, ladies.”
Maya stared at the screen. The figure wasn’t here. He was in her house. He was waiting for her.
“Run!” Maya screamed.
She didn’t wait for the others. She sprinted for the stairs, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs. The script was wrong. The finale wasn’t an explosion.
It was a trap.
And she had left the front door unlocked.
As they scrambled up the stairs, the heavy steel door at the bottom slammed shut with a mechanical clang. The magnetic lock engaged.
They stopped on the landing. Chloe threw herself against the door. It didn’t budge.
“He locked us in,” Chloe sobbed.
“No,” Maya said, shining her light up the stairs. “He locked us down. But the way out isn’t through the door.”
She pointed to the top of the stairwell. The door to the pantry was closed. But light was leaking underneath it.
And smoke.
“He lit the fire here too,” Elena coughed, the smell of burning accelerant reaching them instantly.
“The script,” Maya choked out. “The fire starts in the corner.”
He wasn’t just burning Maya’s house. He was burning the evidence. And they were the evidence.