Fawn’s body fell to the ground, still impaled on the poker, a ribbon of blood snaking out of her parted lips and dripping soft onto the floor.
I stood up from where I’d been kneeling by the sarcophagus, and rushed to where she lay.
“Fawn,” I said, panicked, my own heart pounding as I frantically felt her wrist for a pulse. Her eyes had rolled back to the whites. They fluttered once, twice, three times, before a gurgle popped a bubble of blood in her mouth, and everything went still.
I took my violently shaking hands off of her skin. They had already turned sticky with the drying fluid that covered them.
Slowly, I brought my head up. Forrest was standing above us both—his face held the same expression of hollow shock that his sister’s had when she realized she had fired that final bullet at her brother’s chest.
Then, Forrest opened his mouth, and out came the loudest, most mournful wail I had ever heard.
He lunged at me. It seemed instinctual. I think the image of me, a stranger, kneeling next to his sister’s dead body made more sense to his mind in that moment than what he had actually done.
He quickly was on top of me, hands pounding my chest with fists of rage and grief. I tried to fight him off, but he had the advantage as soon as he decided to attack. I looked to my right, where Fawn’s white eyes stared back at me. I had little doubt that if I didn’t find a way to stop Forrest soon, that would be me in a few short minutes. Then, I turned to my left--
I brought my hand up quickly, striking Forrest across the face with the object I had felt. He immediately fell backwards, clasping his hands over his right eye as red seeped between his fingers. Glancing down at my own palm, my blood intermingling with the stain of Fawn’s, I could see what I had found—a particularly large shard of crystal, from Ander’s dropped brandy glass, when he had first discovered his father’s death. That seemed like so long ago.
Before Forrest recovered, I took off.
By some miracle, I remembered the path back to the study. I burst into the room, but everyone was already staring at the doorway, no doubt because they had heard Forrest’s outburst.
I stood there for a moment, out of breath, the soreness in my chest making it hard to fill my lungs. William, Wendy, and Ander still stood around the room, forming a half circle around Greta, who was on the floor. Her jar was still closed, and she cradled it in her arms like a child.
“Sam,” William said cautiously, “What’s happened?”
I realized how it must have looked. Me, the unknown guest, barging into the room, my hands covered in blood. “Forrest, he...” I was surprised at how hard it was to actually say.
“He killed Fawn.”
Greta got up off of the floor, and the room quickly separated. Me, standing by the door, and the other four, gazing at me with mistrust. Ander looked as though he might pass out. “He did?” he croaked, and I nodded. If I’d gotten the correct impression that he had been under the influence of something at the start of all of this, he was definitely sobering up now.
Four sets of eyes collectively scanned my hands for blood and my eyes for truth.
Then, without a sound, Forrest walked in.
He wasn’t covering his head anymore, and I could see the full extent of the damage I’d done. The shard of glass I had raked across his face had made a deep gash, from his right temple all the way to the left side of his jaw. His one eye was staring at me, bloodshot and angry, while the other was just...gone. I couldn’t tell if it was somewhere destroyed within the mottled flesh that hung from his face, or if we would find it later, rolled under some chair in the parlor.
Slowly, he raised his hand, and pointed directly at me, the two of us so close his finger brushed the end of my nose, causing me to flinch. I was too frightened to move, my legs suddenly heavy and useless.
Bits of spittle flecked red came from his mouth as he spoke three remarkable words:
“He killed Fawn.”
I swallowed hard, my stomach turning. “Forrest, you killed Fawn.”
I stole a glance at the rest of the group. This couldn’t look good. I was literally red-handed.
While my gaze was turned, Forrest stepped forward, and before I knew it, his hands were around my throat. He began to squeeze.
There immediately was yelling. I tore at his grip, but it was too powerful, and the lack of oxygen was making me weak. Ander and William pulled at Forrest, yanking him by the waist backwards, but it wasn’t working. Forrest was looking into my eyes as I lost feeling in my face, the one remaining eye so much like Fawn’s, who still lay dead on the floor in the parlor.
Then, just as I was starting to see spots, the grip loosened.
There was a great thump, but I was too busy spluttering and coughing to look. I gingerly rubbed my neck as my vision sharpened, and I was able to make out the sight in front of me:
Forrest, on the floor, the one intact eye closed. There was so much blood and viscera in a pile on his head and the carpet that I thought, for a moment, that his head had actually exploded.
Then, I looked up. Greta stood, one jagged half of her canopic jar raised above her head, ready to let it swing at Forrest’s head again.
We decided to tie Forrest up in the dining room. It seemed like the best course of action—the parlor had the sarcophagus, the broken glass, all sorts of things in it that he could potentially get into trouble with.
Plus, his sister’s dead body.
The contents of Greta’s jar had been much of the same as everyone else’s—a photograph that seemed to cause her deep emotional pain, a piece of folded paper, and an envelope. She hadn’t opened the paper yet, nor the envelope. But the photograph she stared at for quite some time.
It was a little creepy to me. It was a picture of one of those corn husk dolls, the kind you see in books about colonial times. It looked old, and was smudged with dirt. The worst thing about it—a crude red smile drawn onto the face with a shaky hand.
After Greta had been able to set down her jar’s contents, she had expertly wrapped a bandage across Forrest’s eye, a long piece of gauze that wrapped around his head. William went back to the master bedroom and used some of Regis’ old neckties to tie Forrest’s wrists and ankles to the chair he sat in. The one at the head of the table, where he had last spoken with his sister.
He had stayed unconscious from Greta’s blow until after William was done tying him up. Then, his head began to roll, and his eye fluttered open. It darted from person to person as he saw everyone watching him. It settled on me, and his hands and feet jerked, like he was trying to move towards me. I immediately took a step back, even though I knew he couldn’t get up.
“What is this?” He spat angrily, looking at his bonds. “What’s happening?”
William spoke softly and slowly. “There was an... accident, Forrest.” He paused, his hands nervously intertwining in front of him. “Fawn has died.”
His gaze turned back to me. “That was no accident. He killed her.”
“No, I—I didn’t,” I said, my voice weak and raspy from Forrest’s throttling. I couldn’t tell if Forrest was just trying to pin his own murder on me, or if he had genuinely experienced a mental break.
“It was him, he’s a liar,” Forrest said, and it was clear that he was getting more and more worked up. He began writing in his chair, the legs scraping slightly against the floor boards. Red was bleeding through the gauze now, and the sight was nightmarish.
Ander looked at me skeptically. “What’s he talking about?”
“I don’t know,” I croaked back, but that wasn’t necessarily true. There were a number of things I had kept quiet about, and at this point, it was only a matter of time before they came out.
“Perhaps we should go to the parlor to talk,” William said. “And, of course, to attend to Fawn’s body.”
The rest of the group nodded, Wendy looking grim, and Greta still cradling the one un-shattered half of her jar. At the mention of his sister’s corpse, or perhaps at the sight of the rest of us exiting, Forrest began to writhe even more. Foaming spit began to seep from his mouth, tinged pink from the blood of the wound on his face. “Wait, wait, wait,” he let out in an animalistic scream, but we didn’t stop.
“Ask him about the tape.”
That was the last thing we heard before we left the room. We stopped, and everyone’s attention turned to me, and an even more powerful sense of dread spread throughout my body. Each person looked at me in a mix of confusion and apprehension. William, however, appeared more curious than anything else.
“Yes, we definitely need to talk.”
---
Credits
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