The silence in Number 4 Bittersweet Court was heavy, pressurized, and absolute.
Outside, the police cruiser sat empty at the curb, its doors open like a dead beetle’s wings. Officer Miller was gone—taken by an ambulance that had screamed away into the night, followed by the tactical retreat of the entire Gables precinct. They had called it a “containment strategy.” Maya knew it for what it was: abandonment.
The cul-de-sac was now a closed circuit. Just the women, the houses, and the man watching from the dark.
Maya stood in the center of the living room. The curtains were drawn and taped shut with duct tape. The furniture had been pushed against the doors. It was a siege, but they had one weapon left: information.
“Put it on the TV,” Maya ordered. Her voice was hoarse, stripped of panic, left with only a cold, metallic resolve.
Chloe sat on the floor near the coffee table, her laptop connected to the massive OLED screen mounted above the fireplace. Her hands were shaking, but her fingers moved across the trackpad with muscle memory.
“I took twelve photos,” Chloe said. “Before we ran. I just held the phone up and burst-fired.”
“Show us,” Sarah said from the sofa. She was hugging a throw pillow, her eyes wide and dry. “Show us where he lives.”
The screen flickered to life.
The first image was a blur of motion—the concrete floor of the empty house’s basement.
“Next,” Maya said.
The second image was clearer. It showed the desk. The soundboard. The microphone with the pop filter that had captured the narrator’s gravelly voice. Seeing it—the physical altar of their torment—made Maya’s stomach turn. It wasn’t a supernatural void; it was a desk from IKEA.
“Next.”
The third image showed the wall. It was covered in photos. Their photos. Maya saw herself walking Leo to the bus. She saw Sarah checking her mail. She saw Elena smoking on her back patio.
“He cataloged us,” Elena whispered, standing behind the sofa. “Like specimens.”
“We know that,” Maya said, forcing herself not to look at the picture of Leo sleeping in his crib. “Look for him. Look for a mistake.”
Chloe clicked through the gallery. A stack of scripts. A row of hard drives. A half-eaten apple on a napkin.
“Stop,” Maya said. “Go back. The one with the monitors.”
Chloe cycled back to image number seven.
It was a wide shot of the workstation. Three monitors were arranged in a curve. The center one was active, displaying a waveform audio file. The two side monitors were black, powered down.
“Zoom in,” Maya commanded. “On the right monitor.”
Chloe pinched and zoomed. The image pixelated, turning into blocks of digital noise.
“Enhance it,” Sarah said. “Like on TV.”
“That’s not how it works, Sarah,” Chloe snapped, her nerves fraying. “I can’t add pixels that aren’t there. But I can sharpen the contrast.”
She typed a few keys. The image shifted. The blacks got blacker, the greys separated.
On the glossy, curved surface of the powered-down monitor, there was a reflection.
It was distorted, stretched by the curvature of the screen, but it was a face. A man’s face. He was sitting in the chair, leaning forward, his hand reaching for the mouse.
“It’s him,” Maya breathed. “He took a selfie by accident.”
“It’s too blurry,” Elena said, squinting. “It could be anyone. It could be Rick. It could be the Chief.”
“Look at the light,” Maya said, pointing at the screen. “The reflection is catching the light from the center monitor. It’s illuminating his glasses.”
Twin glints of light sat on the bridge of the figure’s nose. Wire-rimmed frames.
“Elias,” Sarah whispered.
“Lots of people wear glasses,” Chloe argued, though her voice lacked conviction. “We need more.”
“Look at the hand,” Maya said. “The hand on the mouse.”
Chloe panned the image down. The hand was pale, the fingers long. On the wrist, catching a stray beam of light, was a watch.
It wasn’t a smartwatch. It wasn’t a Fitbit.
It was a vintage Casio calculator watch. Black rubber strap. Tiny keypad.
Maya felt a jolt of recognition so sharp it felt like an electric shock.
“I’ve seen that watch,” she said.
“Where?”
“At the library,” Maya said. “When we were staking him out. When he was playing poker. He was wearing it. He kept checking it.”
“And at the shed,” Elena added. “When he caught us breaking in. He checked the time on a calculator watch. I remember thinking it was weird for a grown man.”
Maya stared at the face in the monitor. The distortion couldn’t hide the narrow jaw, the receding hairline, the tight, pursed mouth of a man who lived by rules he enforced on everyone else.
“It’s Elias,” Maya said. The certainty settled into her bones, heavy and cold. “It was always Elias.”
“But the library…” Sarah stammered. “We saw him. He was playing poker. The upload came from the SUV.”
“A script,” Maya said. “He scripted it. He knew we were tracking the IP. He knew Chloe would find the library. He hired someone—or tricked someone—to drive the SUV and send the file while he sat in the window, looking pathetic.”
“Why?” Chloe asked. “Why go to all that trouble?”
“To clear himself,” Maya said. “He gave himself an alibi in front of an audience. He made us look at him and dismiss him. ‘He’s just a sad gambler,’ we said. ‘He’s a decoy.’ And while we were looking away, he went back to the empty house—his childhood home—and kept working.”
She looked at the photo of the studio. This wasn’t just a workspace. It was a cockpit. From here, Elias Thorne flew the drone of their destruction.
“He’s not a pawn,” Maya said. “He’s the Director. The Producer. The Writer.”
“He lives next door to you,” Elena said, the horror of proximity dawning on her. “Maya. He shares a property line.”
“He has the blind spot,” Maya realized. “The birdhouse camera in the woods… it doesn’t look at Number 5. Because he’s in Number 5. Or he moves between them.”
“The script,” Chloe interrupted. “The finale script we found on the desk. What did it say?”
Maya closed her eyes. She could see the typed words clearly.
SCENE: THE BURNING. CHARACTER: MAYA. ACTION: THE TRUTH IS REVEALED IN THE FIRE.
“He’s going to burn us,” Maya said. “Tonight.”
A sudden, loud thump came from the roof.
The women screamed, huddling together.
“The storm?” Sarah asked, trembling.
“No,” Maya said. She looked at the ceiling. “That was heavy. That was footprints.”
The power went out.
The TV died, plunging the room into sudden, suffocating darkness. The hum of the refrigerator cut out. The house held its breath.
“He’s here,” Maya whispered in the dark.
“He cut the line,” Chloe whimpered.
Maya reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone. She turned on the flashlight. The beam cut through the dust motes, illuminating the terrified faces of her friends.
“He knows we know,” Maya said. “He saw us take the photos. He knows we identified him.”
“What do we do?” Elena asked, grabbing a heavy brass candlestick from the mantel.
Maya looked at the glass doors of the sunroom, now black voids against the night. They weren’t just windows anymore. They were entry points.
“We don’t hide,” Maya said. “He expects us to hide. He expects us to cower in the closet like Juniper did.”
She walked to the kitchen drawer and pulled it open. The flashlight beam glinted on steel. She grabbed the largest chef’s knife.
“We know who he is,” Maya said. “He’s just a man. He’s a man who plays poker and wears a Casio watch and measures grass. He’s not a ghost.”
She turned to the others.
“Elias Thorne wants a finale?” she said, her voice steady in the dark. “Let’s give him one.”
Outside, thunder cracked, shaking the foundation of the house. Or maybe it wasn’t thunder. Maybe it was the sound of a door being kicked in.