The smell hit Maya before she saw the liquid.
It was a sharp, chemical punch that cut through the scent of ozone and damp earth, stinging the back of her throat. It smelled like gas stations and lawnmowers. It smelled like an accelerant.
Maya pressed her hand against the glass of the French doors separating the sunroom from the living room. The glass was cool, but her palm left a sweaty print. On the other side, in the shadowed gloom of the house, Elias Thorne moved with the jerky, staccato rhythm of a marionette whose strings were being pulled by a madman.
He held a red plastic jerrycan—the kind every suburban dad kept in the garage for the snowblower.
“Elias,” Maya said, her voice vibrating against the pane. “Don’t.”
Elias didn’t look at her. He unscrewed the yellow nozzle cap with precise, gloved movements. He tilted the can.
The amber liquid glugged out, splashing onto the expensive white oak floorboards. It pooled dark and slick, spreading like a shadow that moved too fast. It ran along the grout lines, seeking the lowest point.
It seeped under the door.
Maya scrambled back as the gasoline bled across the threshold, staining the slate tiles of the sunroom. The fumes were instantly overwhelming, dizzying in the enclosed space.
“He’s pouring it,” Chloe screamed, backing into the wicker furniture. “Oh my god, he’s pouring gas!”
Elena grabbed a throw blanket from the sofa and rushed to the door, jamming it against the gap at the bottom to stem the flow. “Block it! We need to block the fumes!”
But the liquid soaked through the wool in seconds. The smell grew stronger, thick and suffocating.
Elias finished emptying the can. He tossed it aside. It clattered against the fireplace hearth, a hollow, plastic sound that echoed in the silence before the storm.
He stood in the center of the living room, ankle-deep in the fumes. The lightning from the storm outside flashed, illuminating his face. He wasn’t grimacing. He wasn’t crying. He looked peaceful. He looked like a man who had finally finished a long, difficult project.
He looked at Maya through the glass.
“You can’t scrub the stain out, Maya,” he said. His voice was muffled by the door, but the words were clear enough. “My father tried. The Board tried. They scrubbed and they painted and they renovated. But the rot is in the wood.”
“Elias, listen to me,” Maya pleaded, coughing as the fumes burned her lungs. “You don’t have to do this. The police are coming. You can tell them everything. You can tell them about your father.”
“The police?” Elias laughed softly. “The police work for the rot. Garrett works for the rot.”
He reached into the pocket of his windbreaker.
Maya saw the glint of silver. A Zippo lighter.
“No!” Sarah shrieked from the corner, where she was huddled on the floor. “Elias, please! I’m sorry! I’m sorry I didn’t help her!”
Elias flipped the lid of the lighter. Clink.
“Fire is clean,” he said. “Fire is honest.”
“Elias, you’ll die too!” Maya shouted, slamming her fist against the glass. “You’re standing in it! You’ll burn!”
Elias smiled. It was a terrible, beatific expression.
“I know,” he said.
He spun the wheel.
The spark was tiny. Insignificant. A flicker of yellow in the dark.
He dropped the lighter.
The world turned orange.
There was a whoosh, a sound like a jet engine inhaling, and then the living room ceased to exist. It was replaced by a wall of fire. The flames roared up the curtains, licked the ceiling, and raced across the floorboards toward the sunroom door.
The heat was instantaneous. It radiated through the glass, searing Maya’s skin even from a foot away. She stumbled back, shielding her face.
“Get back!” Maya screamed. “Get back to the windows!”
The fire slammed against the French doors. The glass held, but for how long? The flames danced on the other side, hungry and violent. They consumed the blanket Elena had stuffed in the crack. Smoke began to curl into the sunroom, black and acrid.
Elias didn’t run. He didn’t scream.
Through the distortion of the heat waves and the fire, Maya saw him. He was standing in the middle of the inferno. The flames were climbing his legs, catching the hem of his jacket.
He raised his phone.
He was filming. He was recording the end of the show.
“He’s insane,” Chloe sobbed, clutching Elena’s arm. “He’s burning himself alive.”
The fire alarm finally triggered—a piercing, shrill shriek that added a layer of auditory chaos to the visual nightmare.
The temperature in the sunroom spiked. It went from humid to tropical to oven-like in seconds. The air was becoming unbreathable. The smoke was pooling at the ceiling, descending like a dark curtain.
“We need to get out,” Elena coughed, pulling her shirt up over her nose. “The oxygen is going to burn off.”
Maya looked at the exterior walls. Floor-to-ceiling glass. The architectural feature she had loved so much. The feature that promised a view of nature.
Now, it was a cage.
“The sliding door,” Maya choked out. She ran to the exterior slider—the one that led to the patio. She yanked the handle.
Locked.
She fumbled with the latch. It was hot to the touch. She threw it open and pulled.
The door moved an inch, then stopped with a metallic clunk.
“It’s jammed!” Maya yelled, pulling harder. “The track… he must have wedged it from the outside!”
She looked down. A piece of rebar was jammed into the track on the outside. Elias had prepared the kill box before he came inside.
“Break it!” Sarah screamed. “Break the glass!”
Maya looked around for a weapon. The room was furnished with wicker and soft cushions. The wine bottle was empty. The cheese board was slate, but heavy.
She grabbed the slate board.
“Move back!” she ordered.
She swung the heavy stone slab with all her strength against the center of the glass panel.
THUD.
The slate bounced off. The glass didn’t shatter. It didn’t even crack.
“It’s hurricane-proof,” Maya realized with a jolt of horror. “It’s impact-resistant safety glass. Double-paned. Laminate core.”
She had paid extra for it. She had bragged about the safety rating to Dan. It can withstand a Category 4 storm, the contractor had said. Nothing gets in.
Nothing gets out.
Behind them, the French doors groaned. The wood frame was burning. The glass panes were turning black, spiderwebbing with the heat.
“Try the other window!” Elena shouted. She grabbed a heavy ceramic planter, dumping the fern onto the floor. She hurled the pot at the side window.
CRACK.
The pot shattered. The glass remained intact, marred only by a white starburst scar.
The smoke was waist-high now. They dropped to their knees, coughing, eyes streaming.
“We’re going to die,” Chloe whimpered. “We’re going to cook in here.”
“No,” Maya rasped. “We are not dying in a fishbowl.”
She looked at the fire again. Elias had fallen. His silhouette was a dark lump on the floor of the living room, consumed by the orange beast he had unleashed. He was gone. But his script was still running.
The heat pressed against Maya’s back like a physical weight. Her hair felt brittle. The skin on her arms was tight and red.
She crawled toward the corner of the room. There was a sculpture there. A piece of modern art Sarah had given her as a housewarming gift. A heavy, bronze abstract shape that looked like a twisted knot. Maya had always hated it. It was ugly. It was heavy.
It was dense.
“Sarah!” Maya yelled over the roar of the fire. “Help me!”
Sarah crawled over, her face streaked with soot and tears.
“Grab the other side,” Maya commanded.
They gripped the bronze sculpture. It weighed at least fifty pounds. The metal was hot.
“On three,” Maya said. “We aim for the corner. The weakest point. Near the frame.”
“One.”
The interior doors buckled. A tongue of flame licked into the sunroom, crawling across the ceiling.
“Two.”
Maya thought of Leo. She thought of the bug in the nursery. She thought of the red dress swaying in the wind.
“Three!”
They swung the bronze knot. They put their backs into it, driving it with the desperation of women who refused to be characters in a tragedy.
The metal struck the glass right at the seam where it met the aluminum frame.
CRASH.
The sound was beautiful.
The glass didn’t just crack; it exploded. The pressure differential between the superheated room and the cool storm outside blew the shards outward in a shower of diamonds.
Rain lashed in. Wind howled.
“Go!” Maya screamed.
She pushed Chloe toward the hole. Chloe scrambled over the jagged teeth of the broken pane, cutting her hands, falling onto the wet grass outside.
Elena followed, dragging herself through the opening.
“Sarah, move!”
Sarah hesitated. She looked back at the fire. At the dark shape on the floor of the living room.
“He’s gone, Sarah!” Maya grabbed her arm. “You can’t save him! Move!”
She shoved Sarah through the glass.
Maya was the last one. The heat was blistering now. The rug under her knees was smoking. She threw herself at the opening, the bronze sculpture tripping her. She scrambled, feeling glass slice into her palm, her knee.
She tumbled out onto the patio, landing in a puddle of mud and glass.
The cold rain hit her skin like a shockwave. She gasped, sucking in lungfuls of wet, clean air.
“Get away from the house!” Elena yelled, pulling Maya to her feet. “The gas line!”
They ran. They scrambled away from the patio, slipping on the wet grass, running toward the center of the cul-de-sac.
They reached the gazebo and collapsed, huddling together under the white wooden roof.
Maya looked back at Number 4.
The house was a torch. Flames poured out of the broken sunroom window, licking up the siding. The living room was a glowing orange box.
It was terrifying. It was magnificent.
“We made it,” Chloe sobbed, hugging her knees. “We got out.”
Maya stared at the fire. She wiped the soot from her eyes.
“He’s dead,” Sarah whispered. “Elias. He didn’t come out.”
“He wanted to burn it down,” Maya said, watching her home crumble. “He wanted to purify it.”
A sudden movement in the firelight caught her eye.
Not in the house. Behind it.
Through the smoke and the rain, a figure emerged from the side of the house. From the shadows near the wetlands.
He wasn’t burning. He wasn’t dead.
He was walking.
He wore a charred windbreaker. He held one arm against his chest. But in his other hand, glinting in the light of the flames, was a gun.
It was the service revolver missing from 1994.
Elias Thorne had walked through the fire. And he wasn’t done with the cast.
“He’s out,” Maya whispered, standing up. The dread that filled her wasn’t cold anymore. It was hot. It was rage.
“He’s out,” she screamed. “Run!”
But there was nowhere to run. They were in the cul-de-sac. And the only way out was past him.