The fire did not behave like a natural thing. It didn’t grow; it exploded.
One second, the living room floor was a lake of gasoline reflecting the recessed lighting. The next, it was a solid wall of orange violence. The heat hit the glass doors of the sunroom with a physical force, a concussion wave that rattled Maya’s teeth.
“Back!” Maya screamed, shoving Chloe and Elena toward the far wall of the sunroom. “Get back!”
The sound was deafening—a roar like a jet engine taking off inside the house. The French doors, the only connection to the rest of the home, were instantly swallowed. The wood frame blistered and blackened in seconds. Smoke began to curl under the jam, thick and oily, smelling of accelerant and burning varnish.
“He locked it,” Chloe shrieked, coughing as the first tendrils of smoke hit her throat. “He locked us in!”
“He didn’t lock it,” Elena shouted over the roar. “He sealed it. The fire is the lock.”
Maya spun around, scanning the room. Her sanctuary. Her glass box. It was designed to be an observatory for nature, a place to watch the birds and the weather. Now, it was a kiln.
The temperature was spiking rapidly. 90 degrees. 100. Maya could feel the moisture evaporating from her skin. The air grew thin, the oxygen being sucked out to feed the beast in the living room.
“The doors!” Sarah yelled, running to the sliding glass door that led to the patio—the one she had stumbled through weeks ago with the threatening note. She clawed at the latch.
“It’s jammed!” Sarah cried, rattling the handle. “The heat… the frame warped!”
“Move!” Elena grabbed a heavy rattan chair. She swung it with surprising strength, smashing the legs against the glass pane.
THUD.
The chair bounced off. The glass didn’t even chip.
“It’s hurricane-proof!” Maya realized, the horror washing over her cold and sharp despite the heat. “We upgraded it last year. Impact resistant. Rated for a Category 4 storm.”
“We built a cage,” Chloe whispered, eyes wide with panic.
The fire in the living room ate through the drywall. The paint on the interior wall of the sunroom began to bubble. The smoke layer was dropping, a black ceiling descending to suffocate them.
“We need something heavy,” Maya coughed, pulling her shirt up over her nose. “Something dense.”
She looked around the room. Rattan furniture. Cushions. A wicker table. Everything was lightweight, designed for breezy afternoons.
“The table!” Elena grabbed the edge of the coffee table. It was teak. Heavy, but flat.
They rammed it against the glass. THUD. The pane vibrated, but the laminate held. It was designed to flex, to absorb the blow of a flying tree branch. It was mocking them.
The heat was becoming unbearable. Maya’s hair felt brittle. The skin on her face felt tight.
“We’re going to cook,” Chloe sobbed, sliding down the wall. “We’re going to die in here.”
“No,” Sarah said.
Maya looked at her neighbor. Sarah Vance stood in the center of the room, staring at a pedestal in the corner. On it sat a bronze sculpture—a jagged, abstract piece of “modern art” that looked like a twisted torso. It was ugly. It was heavy. And it had been a housewarming gift from Sarah herself, three years ago.
“I always hated that thing,” Sarah said, her voice low and dangerous.
“Sarah?” Maya stepped toward her.
Sarah didn’t look at Maya. She looked at the sculpture. She looked at the fire.
“I bought it because it was expensive,” Sarah muttered, walking toward the pedestal. “I bought it because the designer told me it represented ‘containment.’ I bought it because I thought it would make you like me.”
She grabbed the bronze torso with both hands. It must have weighed forty pounds. The muscles in Sarah’s arms corded. The veins in her neck popped.
She lifted it over her head.
“Sarah!” Elena shouted. “The recoil—”
Sarah didn’t hear her. She turned toward the glass wall facing the cul-de-sac. The firelight danced in her eyes, reflecting a madness born of thirty years of silence. She wasn’t just holding a statue. She was holding every lie, every compromise, every moment of polite suppression she had endured in Bittersweet Court.
“I quit!” Sarah screamed.
She hurled the bronze sculpture with a primal roar.
It hit the center of the pane with the force of a cannonball.
CRACK.
The sound was sharper than the fire. A spiderweb of white lines exploded outward from the impact point. The safety laminate held for a fraction of a second, bowing outward, groaning under the stress.
Then, physics took over. The structural integrity failed.
The glass wall shattered.
It didn’t break into shards; it crumbled into a billion diamonds, cascading outward into the storm.
A rush of cold, wet air slammed into the room, feeding the fire behind them. The flames roared in approval, surging forward, licking at their heels.
“Go!” Maya yelled, grabbing Chloe by the back of her shirt. “Out! Now!”
They scrambled over the jagged threshold. Maya felt the glass biting into her palms and knees as she crawled, but she didn’t feel the pain. She only felt the desperate need for air that didn’t taste like death.
They tumbled out onto the lawn of Number 4.
The storm greeted them with a violence of its own. The rain was torrential, driving sideways in the wind. Thunder cracked overhead, shaking the ground.
Maya rolled onto the wet grass, gasping, the cold rain mingling with the sweat and soot on her face. She dragged herself away from the house, pulling Chloe with her.
“Is everyone out?” Elena shouted, crawling on her hands and knees. “Sarah! Sarah!”
Sarah stumbled out of the hole in the wall last. She fell onto the grass, coughing, her expensive blouse ruined, her hands bleeding. She looked back at the hole she had made.
Inside, the sunroom was fully engulfed. The flames licked out into the rain, hissing as the water hit them. The bronze sculpture lay in the mud, half-buried.
“We made it,” Chloe wheezed, rolling onto her back. “Oh my god, we made it.”
Maya pushed herself up to her knees. She wiped the mud from her eyes and looked around.
The cul-de-sac was dark. The power was out—Elias had cut the line, or the storm had taken it. The only light came from the burning pyre of her home and the occasional flash of lightning.
“Get up,” Maya said, her voice raspy.
“We need to call 911,” Chloe said, fumbling for her phone. “My phone… I dropped it inside.”
“Mine too,” Elena said.
Maya patted her pockets. Empty. They had left everything on the table when the fire started.
“The fire will attract attention,” Sarah said, looking toward the other houses. “Someone will see. The Gables… someone will see.”
Maya scanned the circle. The other houses were dark monoliths in the rain. No lights. No movement. The storm was masking the fire for now, the thunder drowning out the roar of the flames.
“He’s out here,” Maya whispered.
The realization hit the group like a bucket of ice water.
Elias hadn’t burned with the house. He had set the fire and left. He was the director of the finale, and a director doesn’t die in the second act. He watches.
“Where?” Elena hissed, spinning around in a crouch.
Maya looked toward the gazebo in the center of the cul-de-sac. A flash of lightning illuminated the white structure.
It was empty.
She looked toward the tree line. The Sinks were a black void, thrashing in the wind.
“He could be anywhere,” Maya said. “He has a gun. The one from 1994.”
“We need cover,” Elena said. “The cars. Get to the cars.”
They began to move, low to the ground, heading toward Maya’s Volvo parked in the driveway.
Crack.
A bullet struck the pavement six inches from Maya’s hand, kicking up a spray of wet asphalt. The sound of the gunshot was swallowed by a peel of thunder, but the impact was unmistakable.
“Sniper!” Elena yelled. “Move! Move!”
They abandoned the crawl and scrambled, sprinting across the slick lawn.
“The gazebo!” Maya shouted. “It’s brick at the base! Go!”
It was a terrible tactical position—surrounded on all sides—but it was the closest cover. They splashed through the puddles, diving behind the low brick wall of the flower beds surrounding the gazebo.
Maya peeked over the hydrangeas.
Another shot rang out. This time, she saw the muzzle flash.
It came from Number 5. The empty house. The Cursed House.
“He’s in the house next door,” Maya said, ducking back down as a bullet chipped the wood of the gazebo railing. “He’s shooting from the second floor.”
“He has the high ground,” Elena said, checking Sarah, who was bleeding from a cut on her forehead. “We’re sitting ducks.”
“He’s herding us,” Maya realized. “He didn’t want us to burn. He wanted us out in the open. He wanted to hunt us.”
The rain hammered against the roof of the gazebo. Maya looked at her house. The fire was spreading to the second floor. Soon, the roof would collapse.
“We have to move,” Maya said. “If we stay here, he picks us off one by one.”
“Move where?” Chloe cried. “He sees everything!”
Maya looked at the layout of the street. The shooter was in Number 5. To their left was the entrance to the development—too far, too exposed. To their right…
To their right was the easement. The path to the shed. The blind spot.
“The trees,” Maya said. “We have to get to the trees.”
“He’ll see us cross the street,” Sarah said.
“Not if he’s blind,” Maya said.
She pointed to the transformer box near the streetlamp at the edge of Number 5’s property. It was humming loudly, damaged by the storm or the power surge.
“If that blows,” Maya said, “it kills the streetlights. It kills the ambient light. He’ll be shooting into pitch black.”
“How do we blow a transformer?” Chloe asked.
Maya looked around the gazebo floor. There were loose bricks from the retaining wall repairs Elias had ordered last month.
“We throw,” Maya said.
“That’s fifty feet,” Elena said. “In the rain.”
“I played softball in college,” Sarah said unexpectedly. She wiped the blood from her eye. “Pitcher. State champs.”
Maya handed her a brick. It was heavy, rough red clay.
“One shot,” Maya said. “When the lightning flashes, he’ll be blinded for a second. You throw. We run.”
Sarah weighed the brick in her hand. She looked at the burning house. She looked at the dark window of Number 5 where the muzzle flash had come from.
“No mercy,” Sarah whispered, repeating the pact.
Thunder rumbled, low and long. The air charged with static.
“Wait for it,” Maya commanded.
A blinding white flash split the sky.
“Now!”
Sarah stood up, exposing herself. She wound up and hurled the brick with a grunt of effort.
It sailed through the rain, a dark projectile against the storm.
CRASH. SPARK.
The brick slammed into the transformer casing. A shower of blue sparks exploded, followed by a loud POP. The remaining streetlights on the cul-de-sac died instantly.
“Go!” Maya screamed.
They broke cover, sprinting across the wet asphalt toward the darkness of the tree line.
Behind them, from the window of Number 5, a gun fired blindly into the night. Pop. Pop. Pop.
But the bullets hit the pavement.
They hit the mud of the easement, slipping and sliding, crashing into the wet brush of the wetlands. They didn’t stop until they were deep in the reeds, hidden by the storm and the dark.
Maya leaned against a tree, gasping. They were out. They were alive.
But as she looked back through the trees, she saw the front door of Number 5 open.
A figure stepped out onto the porch, illuminated by the flames of Maya’s house. He held a gun. He looked toward the woods.
And then, he stepped off the porch and began to walk toward them.
The hunt wasn’t over. It had just gone off-road.