The truck tore through the Oakhaven Shroud like a bullet through wool.
I had the pedal pressed to the floor mat, the engine screaming a high, mechanical whine that vibrated in my teeth. I wasn’t driving; I was fleeing. I was running from the playground, from the slide, from the magnetic tape that had just stripped a layer of skin off my soul.
Did you want him dead?
The question from the tape recorder bounced around the cab of the truck.
Admit it, Elara. Tell the dark.
I gripped the steering wheel until my hands cramped. The speedometer climbed past sixty. The trees on either side of the road were just blurs of black ink, smearing against the peripheral vision of my headlights.
I needed to get to the bridge. Station Two. If I got to the bridge, I could find the next clue. I could find Julian. I could fix this.
But the mind is a traitorous thing. It doesn’t care about forward momentum. It only cares about gravity. And the gravity of my confession was pulling me back, down, into the deep strata of 1999.
The heater in the truck was blasting, but I was freezing.
The smell of the wet road changed. It wasn’t asphalt and rain anymore.
It was floor wax. And scotch. And the metallic, dry scent of a radiator heating up dust.
Flash.
The road vanished.
I was standing in the foyer of the Glass House.
It was November 12, 1999. The night of the “accident.”
I was twelve years old. I was wearing my flannel pajamas, the ones with the clouds on them. I was standing at the bottom of the floating staircase, my bare feet cold on the polished concrete floor.
Upstairs, the Dragon was roaring.
“Elara! Where did you put it?”
Richard was drunk. Not the sleepy, stumbling drunk that sometimes happened on Tuesdays. This was the Friday night drunk. The angry drunk. The kind where he threw things because the noise made him feel powerful.
He was looking for his architectural drafts. I hadn’t touched them. I never touched his things. But that didn’t matter. He needed a reason, and I was the only reason available.
“Elara!”
I heard a crash from the master bedroom. The sound of a lamp shattering.
I didn’t cower. I didn’t run to my room and hide under the bed. I was done hiding.
Since the Fourth of July—since the coal cellar, since Elias had killed the dog—something had changed in me. The fear had calcified into something harder. Something sharp.
I looked at the front door.
It was a massive slab of steel and glass, secured by a heavy brass deadbolt. Richard always locked it at 6:00 PM. To keep the trash out, he said.
But I knew who was outside.
I could feel him.
I walked to the door. My heart was beating a slow, heavy rhythm. Thump. Thump. Thump.
I looked through the narrow pane of glass next to the frame.
The porch light was off. Richard had smashed the bulb last week in a fit of pique. The darkness outside was total, absolute.
But I saw the shadow.
He was crouched by the planter, a dark shape darker than the night. He was waiting. He was always waiting. He listened to the house like a doctor listening to a chest, waiting for the arrhythmia that signaled danger.
He heard Richard shouting. He heard the crash.
He was waiting for the signal.
I reached out. My hand was small, shaking slightly.
“Elara, if I have to come down there…” Richard’s voice boomed from the landing.
I didn’t look up. I looked at the lock.
If I left it locked, Richard would come down. He would grab my arm. He would drag me into the kitchen. He would lecture me until his spit hit my face, and then, when the words ran out, he would use his hands.
If I unlocked it…
I knew what Elias had. I knew about the oil from the shed. We had talked about it through the vent. We had whispered about gravity.
Gravity is a good weapon.
But Elias couldn’t get in. Not unless I let him.
Richard’s footsteps hit the stairs. Heavy. Unsteady. Thud. Scuff. Thud.
“Don’t make me count to three, Elara.”
I gripped the cold brass of the deadbolt.
I wasn’t a victim. Not in that moment. I was the gatekeeper.
I turned the lock.
Click.
The sound was deafening in the silent foyer. It sounded like a gunshot. It sounded like a guillotine blade dropping.
I didn’t open the door. I didn’t need to.
I stepped back. I turned around.
I looked up at the landing. Richard was there, swaying slightly, his face flushed red, his eyes glassy and mean.
“What was that noise?” he demanded, squinting down at me.
“Nothing,” I said. My voice was steady. “I was just checking the lock.”
“You better not be trying to run away again,” he sneered. “You know what happens.”
“I’m not running,” I said.
And I wasn’t. I was standing my ground.
Behind me, the door handle turned. Slowly. Silently.
A draft of cold air hit the back of my neck. The smell of wet earth and pine needles drifted in, overpowering the scotch.
Richard sniffed. He frowned. “Is a window open?”
He looked past me. He saw the front door easing open. He saw the shadow slipping inside.
“Who the hell…” Richard started, stepping forward.
He moved toward the railing. He leaned over, trying to see who had invaded his fortress.
He put his hands on the banister.
The banister that Elias had slicked with motor oil ten minutes ago, climbing the trellis to reach the balcony before dropping back down to the porch to wait for me.
I watched Richard’s hands slide.
It happened in slow motion. His grip failed. His weight shifted forward. His eyes went wide, the anger replaced by a sudden, comical confusion.
He didn’t scream. He just tipped.
He went over the railing.
I watched him fall. I watched him turn in the air, a clumsy pirouette.
CRACK.
He hit the marble floor of the foyer, six feet from where I stood.
The sound was wet. Final.
He didn’t move. A halo of dark red began to spread beneath his head.
I stood there, staring at him. I felt nothing. No horror. No relief. Just a cold, clinical observation. The Dragon is dead.
I turned around.
Elias was standing in the open doorway. He was holding a rag, wiping his hands. He looked at Richard’s body, then at me.
He didn’t smile. He looked terrified. Not of the body, but of me.
“Princess?” he whispered.
I walked over to him. I reached out and took the oily rag from his hand.
“Go,” I said.
“But…”
“Go back to the woods,” I commanded. “I’ll call the police. I’ll tell them he fell. It was an accident.”
“I did it for you,” he said.
“I know,” I said. I looked him in the eye. “And I opened the door for you.”
He nodded, understanding the pact we had just sealed. He backed out into the night, vanishing into the fog.
I closed the door. I locked it.
Then I went to the kitchen phone and dialed 911. I forced my voice to shake. I forced the tears to come.
Flash.
I screamed, jerking the steering wheel.
The truck swerved, tires screeching on the wet asphalt. I slammed on the brakes, skidding to a halt sideways across the center line.
The headlights illuminated a wall of mist.
I sat there, hyperventilating, clutching the steering wheel like a life raft.
“I opened it,” I whispered to the windshield.
The memory had been locked away, buried under layers of “survivor” narrative. I had told myself for twenty years that Elias acted alone. That he was a feral guardian angel who intervened without my permission.
But that was a lie.
I let him in.
I knew he was there. I knew what he was going to do. And I unlocked the deadbolt to make sure he could get inside the house if Richard tried to run, or if Richard tried to fight.
I wasn’t just a traumatized child. I was an accomplice to murder.
“I killed him,” I said, the words tasting like ash.
Elias was the weapon. But I was the hand that aimed him.
And now?
Now Elias was doing exactly what I had taught him to do. He was removing threats. He was clearing the board.
Ms. Albright. Becca Trent. Even Sarah Miller, in some twisted way.
He wasn’t a monster that had invaded my life. He was a monster I had raised, fed, and unleashed.
The tape recorder back at the slide… Elias had put it there. He wanted me to remember. He didn’t want me to feel guilty; he wanted me to feel powerful. He wanted me to remember that we were partners.
E + E.
The initials carved in the tree weren’t a romance. They were a signature on a death warrant.
I put the truck in gear. My hands were steady now. The shaking had stopped.
The guilt was still there, a cold fire in my gut, but it had changed shape. It wasn’t a burden anymore. It was a fuel.
If I was the architect of this nightmare, then I was the only one who could dismantle it.
Julian couldn’t save me. The law couldn’t save me. Innocence couldn’t save me, because I wasn’t innocent.
I drove toward the bridge.
Station Two.
I knew what I would find there. I knew what the game required.
Elias wanted his partner back.
“Okay,” I said, staring into the dark tunnel of the road. “You want the girl who opened the door? You’ve got her.”
I pressed the gas. The truck roared, surging forward into the night.
I wasn’t running to save Julian anymore.
I was running to bury the past, even if I had to bury myself with it.