The sound of the boots on the porch steps stopped.
For a heartbeat, the only noise in Number 4 Bittersweet Court was the house itself screaming under the assault of the wind. The storm battered the siding like a frantic fist, and the rain lashed against the windows in sheets of grey violence.
Maya stood in the center of the living room, her flashlight beam trembling as she aimed it at the front door. Behind her, Chloe, Elena, and Sarah were statues carved from fear, clutching makeshift weapons—a heavy brass candlestick, a fireplace poker, a chef’s knife.
“He stopped,” Chloe whispered, the words barely audible over the thunder. “Why did he stop?”
“He’s blocking,” Maya said, her voice sounding foreign to her own ears. “He’s setting the scene.”
The heavy oak door, usually a symbol of suburban security, suddenly felt as flimsy as cardboard. The deadbolt was engaged. The chain was on. But locks were social contracts, and Elias Thorne had canceled his subscription to society.
CRASH.
The sound was explosive—a sharp, jagged detonation that sent shards of adrenaline spiking through Maya’s veins. It wasn’t the wood giving way. It was the sidelight window, the decorative panel of frosted glass running parallel to the door frame.
A gloved hand punched through the jagged hole.
Maya watched in paralyzed horror as the hand fumbled for the deadbolt thumb-turn. It was a mechanic movement, precise and calm. The lock clicked open. Then the handle turned.
“Back!” Maya screamed, shoving Sarah behind her. “Get back!”
The front door swung open.
The wind rushed in, carrying rain and dead leaves, swirling through the foyer like a physical manifestation of chaos. Standing in the threshold, framed by the violent purple sky and the strobe-light flashes of lightning, was Elias Thorne.
He wasn’t wearing his beige windbreaker. He wore a black raincoat, slick and shining like oil. And he wasn’t holding a gun. He wasn’t holding a knife.
He was holding his phone.
It was mounted on a small, handheld stabilizer gimbal, the kind Chloe used for house tours. The lens was pointed directly at them. The flashlight on the back of the phone was blindingly bright, pinning them in its glare like deer on a highway.
“Action,” Elias said.
His voice wasn’t the gravelly rasp of the podcast narrator. It was his own voice—reedy, precise, the voice of a man who cited bylaws at board meetings. But stripped of its bureaucratic cadence, it sounded hollow. Unhinged.
He stepped inside, kicking the door shut behind him to cut the wind. The sudden silence was worse than the storm.
“We have to move,” Elena hissed, grabbing Maya’s arm. “The kitchen. The back door.”
“No,” Maya said, backing away as Elias advanced slowly, the camera never wavering. “He’ll catch us in the yard. The mud… we won’t make it to the woods.”
“The sunroom,” Sarah gasped. “The doors lock.”
It was a terrible choice—a glass cage versus a dark house—but it was the only defensible position they had. The sunroom was separated from the living area by a set of heavy, interior French doors with an old-fashioned slide bolt.
“Go,” Maya commanded.
They scrambled backward, their feet slipping on the hardwood floor. Elias didn’t run. He didn’t lunge. He walked with the steady, measured pace of a cameraman ensuring the shot remained stable. He was tracking them. Panning.
“Beautiful,” Elias murmured, his eyes not on them, but on the screen of his phone. “The fear is very reading. Very authentic. Sarah, try not to look away from the lens. The audience needs to see your guilt.”
Sarah let out a sob, stumbling over the threshold into the sunroom. Elena and Chloe followed, dragging a heavy armchair to block the path.
Maya was the last one in. She grabbed the handles of the French doors and slammed them shut, throwing the slide bolt home just as Elias reached the living room archway.
He stopped five feet away.
The glass of the French doors became a barrier between two worlds. On one side, the frantic, huddled terror of the Club. On the other, the calm, terrifying authority of the Producer.
Maya backed away from the glass, chest heaving. They were trapped. Behind them, the floor-to-ceiling exterior windows looked out onto the black void of the wetlands, lashed by rain. In front of them, Elias stood in the dark living room, illuminated only by the harsh LED of his phone and the lightning.
“You can’t get in,” Maya said, her voice shaking but loud. “These doors are solid oak. The glass is tempered. The police are on their way.”
Elias lowered the phone slightly, peering over the top of it. He smiled. It was a smile that didn’t reach his eyes; it just stretched the skin over his teeth.
“The police aren’t coming, Maya,” he said gently, as if explaining a simple rule to a child. “The bridge on County Road 9 is washed out. The cell towers are jammed with traffic. We are in a blackout zone. A narrative pocket.”
He raised the phone again, zooming in on Chloe.
“Chloe, you’re out of frame. Move to the left. Good lighting near the lamp.”
“Go to hell,” Chloe spat, though she moved deeper into the shadows.
“Why are you doing this?” Elena demanded, stepping forward, the fireplace poker raised. “You’re the HOA president, Elias. You care about property values. You’re going to turn this house into a murder scene?”
Elias chuckled. “Property values are about story, Elena. A house with a tragedy? It sells. It has character. It has history.”
He walked closer to the glass, the phone lens pressing almost against the pane. Maya could see the red ‘REC’ dot pulsing on the screen.
“Besides,” Elias said, his voice dropping to a whisper that carried through the cracks. “This isn’t a murder. It’s a correction. A finale. Every season needs a bloodletting to cleanse the palette.”
“You’re sick,” Sarah wept. “You watched Juniper die. You lived next door. You saw my husband’s friends kill her, and you did nothing.”
Elias’s face hardened. The mask of the director slipped, revealing the wounded, angry boy beneath.
“I didn’t do nothing,” he hissed. “I watched. I remembered. I documented. My father… Rick’s father… the Doctor… they thought they could scrub the ledger. They thought if they painted the walls and planted hydrangeas, the rot would disappear.”
He tapped the phone screen.
“But I kept the receipts. And now, I’m balancing the books. You four… you’re just the interest payments.”
“We didn’t kill her!” Maya shouted. “We’re trying to find the truth!”
“You’re trying to monetize it!” Elias roared, slamming his free hand against the glass. The women flinched. “Just like me. Just like everyone. You think you’re heroes? You’re content creators. You’re gathering clicks on the grave of a woman none of you gave a damn about when she was alive.”
He pointed the phone at Maya.
“Maya Lin-Baker. The journalist who needs a headline to feel alive. You didn’t care about Juniper. You cared about the scoop. You poked the bear because you were bored with bake sales.”
He panned to Sarah.
“Sarah Vance. The whore who watched her lover assault a pregnant woman and went back to sleep because she wanted a tennis bracelet.”
Sarah sank to the floor, covering her ears.
“And you two,” Elias sneered at Chloe and Elena. “Collateral damage. Extras in the scene. But necessary for the body count.”
“Open the door, Elias,” Maya said, stepping closer to the glass, trying to hold his gaze. “Put the phone down. It’s over. We know about your father. We know about the Blue Suits. You don’t have to protect them anymore.”
Elias stared at her. The lightning flashed, illuminating his face in stark, blue-white relief. He looked exhausted. He looked thrilled.
“Protect them?” Elias laughed. “I’m not protecting them, Maya. I’m surpassing them. They killed in secret. They killed in the dark. I’m doing it in 4K. I’m giving the audience what they want.”
He reached into his raincoat pocket.
Maya tensed, expecting a gun.
He pulled out a lighter. A heavy, silver Zippo.
He flicked the lid open. Clink.
He spun the wheel. A tall, orange flame erupted, dancing in the drafty room.
“The script called for a fire,” Elias said softly. “A cleansing fire. To burn out the rot. The sunroom… it’s a chimney, isn’t it? All that glass. All that heat.”
Maya looked around the room. Wicker furniture. Linen cushions. Bamboo blinds. The room was a tinderbox.
“You’ll burn the house down,” Maya said. “You’ll burn with it.”
“That’s the twist,” Elias smiled. “The director always goes down with the ship. It’s poetic.”
He looked down at the floor. A liquid was seeping under the door from the living room. Dark. Pungent.
Gasoline.
He had poured it in the foyer. He had trailed it through the living room. And now it was pooling against the wood of the French doors.
“No,” Maya whispered.
Elias held the lighter up to the phone camera, framing the shot.
“Thank you for listening,” he said to his invisible audience. “And goodnight.”
He dropped the lighter.
The world went orange.
The roar was instantaneous. The gasoline ignited with a whoosh that sucked the air out of the room. A wall of fire erupted on the other side of the glass, climbing the curtains, licking the ceiling. The heat radiated through the panes instantly, searing Maya’s face.
Elias stepped back into the inferno. He didn’t run. He stood amidst the flames, filming the fire as it consumed the barrier between them.
“Break the glass!” Maya screamed, spinning around to the exterior windows. “Break the glass!”
They were trapped in the fishbowl. And the water was boiling.