The French doors that separated the sunroom from the living area were made of tempered glass and reinforced oak—designed to withstand the erratic tantrums of Midwestern weather, but never tested against the focused insanity of a neighbor.
Maya pressed her back against the wood, her boots sliding on the slate tiles. Beside her, Chloe and Sarah shoved the heavy teak coffee table against the handles, creating a barricade that felt pitifully decorative against the threat standing five feet away.
Lightning flashed, bleaching the world white for a split second. In that strobe-light instant, Maya saw him.
Elias Thorne stood in the living room. He wasn’t attacking the door. He wasn’t screaming. He was standing perfectly still, his wet windbreaker dripping onto the hardwood floor. In his right hand, he held his phone horizontally, the lens pointed directly at them. The tiny red light of the recording indicator pulsed in the darkness.
Pulse. Pulse. Pulse.
“He’s not trying to get in,” Chloe whispered, her voice trembling so hard it vibrated against Maya’s shoulder. She was huddled in the corner, holding her phone up to the storm-lashed exterior windows, praying for a bar of service that the storm had swallowed. “Why isn’t he trying to get in?”
“He’s filming,” Maya said, her breath fogging the glass. “He’s blocking the scene.”
On the floor near the exterior sliding door, Elena was kneeling over Sarah. Sarah had clipped her shin on the rattan ottoman during the scramble to retreat; the cut was deep, bleeding sluggishly onto the expensive rug. Elena moved with the efficient, terrifying calm of the ER, binding the wound with a linen napkin and applying pressure.
“Pulse is elevated,” Elena murmured, not looking up. “She’s going into shock. We need to keep her warm.”
“We need to get out,” Chloe hissed. “The window. We can break the window.”
“It’s hurricane-proof,” Maya reminded her, the words tasting like ash. “Double-paned impact glass. We’d need a sledgehammer. And if we go out there…” She gestured to the black void of the wetlands, thrashing under the wind. “We have nowhere to run. He catches us in the mud.”
Elias took a step forward. The floorboards creaked.
Maya spun to face the interior doors. She locked eyes with him through the glass. He looked like a man who had finally taken off a mask he’d been wearing for thirty years. His face was slack, devoid of the petty bureaucratic tension that usually defined him. He looked peaceful.
“Elias,” Maya said. Her voice was loud, projecting through the glass. “Put the phone down.”
Elias smiled. It wasn’t a sinister smile; it was the encouraging smile of a director coaxing a performance out of a difficult actor.
“The lighting is better in there,” he said. His voice was muffled by the doors but clear enough to chill the blood in Maya’s veins. “The lightning creates a natural strobe effect. Very dramatic.”
“You don’t have to do this,” Maya said, her mind racing, shifting gears from victim to interviewer. She needed to engage him. She needed to keep him talking while Chloe hunted for a signal. “You wanted us to know the truth. That’s why you made the podcast, right? To tell the story?”
“To show the story,” Elias corrected. He tapped the screen of his phone, adjusting the focus. “Telling didn’t work. Words are cheap in The Gables. People hear what they want to hear. But pictures… pictures are proof.”
“Proof of what?” Maya asked. She stepped away from the barricade, making herself visible. She became the subject. “Proof that you killed Juniper?”
Elias stopped. The smile vanished, replaced by a look of genuine offense. He lowered the phone slightly.
“I didn’t kill her,” he said. “I loved her.”
Maya frowned. “The Gardener loved her. You watched her.”
“I watched her because I was the only one who saw her,” Elias said. He stepped closer to the glass, his breath ghosting on the pane. “I was seventeen. I sat in my window next door. I saw her crying. I saw her dancing. I saw the way she touched her stomach when she thought she was alone.”
“You were the boy in the window,” Maya said softly. “The Watcher.”
“I was the audience,” Elias whispered. “But I wasn’t the villain. You think I wrote this script? I’m just directing the remake.”
“If you didn’t kill her,” Maya pressed, feeling the narrative thread loosen, “then who did? Who was the man in the blue suit, Elias?”
Elias laughed. It was a dry, rattling sound, like hail on a tin roof.
“You still don’t get it,” he said. “You found the photo. You saw the Blue Suits. You saw the committee.”
“Your father,” Maya said. The realization hit her with the force of the thunder cracking overhead. “Marcus Thorne. He was the President.”
Elias’s face contorted. A flash of the terrified boy he had been broke through the calm facade of the man.
“He was the King,” Elias spat. “He built this place. He wrote the bylaws. ‘Visual harmony. Moral fortitude.’ He thought he was God. And Juniper… she was a weed.”
“You saw him do it,” Maya stated. It wasn’t a question.
“I saw him walk across the lawn,” Elias said, his eyes losing focus, staring past Maya into the year 1994. “It was raining, just like tonight. He was wearing his blazer. He had the key—the emergency master key. He didn’t knock. He just… entered.”
Maya shivered. The image mirrored her own reality.
“I watched from my window,” Elias continued. “I saw them arguing. I saw him hit her. And then… I saw the knife. It was a letter opener. From his desk. He didn’t even bring a weapon. He just used what was at hand. Because to him, she wasn’t a person. She was just an envelope that needed to be opened.”
“And you did nothing,” Maya said.
“I filmed it,” Elias said.
The room went silent. Even the storm seemed to hold its breath.
“What?” Chloe whispered from the corner.
“I had a camcorder,” Elias said, lifting his phone again. “A Sony Handycam. My graduation present. I filmed everything. I filmed him walking in. I filmed the shadows on the curtains. I filmed him walking out with blood on his cuffs.”
“You have the tape,” Maya realized. “That’s the leverage. That’s why you control the HOA funds. That’s why you have the power.”
“I have the tape,” Elias agreed. “I showed it to him the next morning. I thought he would cry. I thought he would beg.”
Elias shook his head.
“He laughed,” Elias said. “He told me, ‘Good composition, Elias. Now burn it.’ He told me that if I ever showed it to anyone, he would tell the police I did it. He said, ‘Who will they believe? The President of the Board, or the weird kid who stares through windows?’”
“So you became him,” Maya said. “You took his job. You took his house. You took his rules.”
“I became the jailer,” Elias said. “I kept the neighborhood perfect. I kept the grass cut. I kept the secrets buried. Because if the perfection slipped… if the cracks showed… then what did she die for?”
He looked at the phone screen, framing Maya’s face.
“But the cracks are showing now, Maya. You made them. You and your little club. You started digging. You started asking questions. You were going to ruin the aesthetic.”
“So you decided to kill us?” Maya asked. “To protect a dead man’s reputation?”
“No,” Elias said. “My father died ten years ago. This isn’t about him anymore. This is about the ending. Juniper didn’t get an ending. She just faded out. No justice. No climax.”
He pressed his hand against the glass, his palm aligning with Maya’s.
“This time,” he whispered, “we get it right. This time, the neighborhood sees the blood. This time, you don’t just disappear. You broadcast.”
“We aren’t characters in your movie, Elias,” Maya said, stepping closer, putting her own hand against the glass, mirroring him. She needed him close. She needed him focused on her so Chloe could keep working. “We are people. Sarah is bleeding. Leo is crying in a hotel room. We are real.”
“Nothing in The Gables is real!” Elias screamed. The sudden burst of rage shook the doors. “It’s all stucco and lies! You think you’re safe because you have a gate code? You think you’re good because you recycle? You’re rot! All of you! You lie to your husbands. You drug your neighbors. You forge signatures.”
He backed away, pacing the living room.
“I tried to warn you,” he said, his voice dropping back to the eerie calm. “I gave you the podcast. I gave you the script. ‘The Liars.’ ‘The Poison.’ I gave you a chance to confess. To leave.”
“We didn’t leave,” Maya said.
“No,” Elias said. “You stayed. Which means you chose the finale.”
He reached into the pocket of his windbreaker.
Maya flinched, expecting a gun.
He pulled out a lighter. A silver Zippo. He flipped the lid open with a metallic clink. The flame flared up, illuminating the madness in his eyes.
“The Sinks was a limestone quarry,” Elias said. “But before that, it was a forest. And do you know how a forest renews itself, Maya?”
Maya smelled it then. Seeping under the door. The sharp, chemical tang she had missed earlier because of the ozone.
Gasoline.
He had poured it in the living room before he showed himself. The rug was soaked. The hallway was a fuse.
“It burns,” Elias said.
“Elias, no!” Maya shouted, slamming her hand against the glass. “You’ll kill yourself! You’re in the house!”
“I’m the Producer,” Elias smiled, holding the flame high. “The Producer always goes down with the ship. It’s artistic integrity.”
“Chloe!” Maya screamed, not looking back. “Tell me you have a signal!”
“I… I have one bar!” Chloe yelled, holding her phone to the ceiling. “I’m calling 911!”
“Too late for the critics,” Elias said.
He dropped the lighter.
It fell in slow motion, tumbling end over end. When it hit the gasoline-soaked rug, the world didn’t explode. It whooshed. A wall of heat and light erupted on the other side of the glass, turning the living room into a furnace instantly.
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.