The kitchen window didn't just break; it exploded inward.
A chaotic, glittering wave of shattered glass blasted across the granite countertops and rained down onto the tile. The heavy velvet curtains tore away from the rod, collapsing to the floor and letting the harsh, grey daylight flood the room.
Through the jagged teeth of the broken window frame, a hand reached in.
It was thick, pale, and completely shredded from beating against the brick, the fingernails torn entirely off. It grasped blindly at the inside of the wall, followed by the wet, gurgling snarl of Mr. Henderson trying to drag his torso over the glass-covered sill.
"Move!" Justin roared.
The command broke the paralysis. Tally spun, her designer bag sliding off her shoulder, and sprinted blindly toward the mudroom. Mari was a split-second behind her, one hand clutching her stomach, the other locked in a death grip around the black handle of the chef's knife.
They crashed into the narrow mudroom, Tally hyperventilating as she slammed past the heavy teak porch furniture they had stacked against the secondary doors.
Justin came through the threshold last. He grabbed the heavy brass handle of the kitchen door and slammed it shut, throwing the deadbolt just as something heavy and wet slammed into the other side. The wood shuddered violently under the impact.
"Garage!" Justin yelled, shoving them forward. "Go!"
Tally hit the garage door and tumbled out onto the cold concrete step. The automatic lights snapped on, flooding the space in harsh, clinical white.
The smell hit her before the sight did. It wasn't the usual scent of motor oil and old cardboard. It was a thick, gag-inducing stench of hot copper, scorched hair, and rotting meat.
Tally looked up, her breath catching in her throat.
Justin's salt-stained Jeep Wrangler was parked in the center of the garage, but it wasn't just dirty. It was a rolling slaughterhouse. The heavy steel front bumper was completely caved in on the passenger side, caked in thick, blackish-red gore. Ropes of dark, gelatinous viscera were literally baked into the radiator grill. The hood was heavily dented, and a massive, smeared bloody handprint dragged all the way down the passenger-side window, drying into a rusted brown crust.
"What the fuck is that?!" Tally shrieked, physically recoiling against the mudroom door. "Justin, there's blood everywhere! I am not getting in that!"
"Get in the Jeep, Tally!" Justin barked, sprinting past them.
"Take the Suburban! The keys are right there!" she screamed, pointing at their mother's pristine SUV. She couldn't stomach the idea of touching the Jeep's door handle. It looked like it had been driven through a meat grinder.
"The Suburban will bottom out on a curb if we have to jump the median!" Justin yelled, ripping open a heavy metal storage cabinet mounted above his father's workbench. He hauled out a dark green metal lockbox—their father's gun case—and shoved it violently into the back seat of the Jeep. "Clearance matters! Get in!"
Mari didn't hesitate. She scrambled into the passenger seat of the Jeep, ignoring the blood smeared on the glass, and pulled her door shut.
Tally reluctantly grabbed the rear handle with just two fingers, her stomach churning, and slid into the back. She pulled her knees tightly to her chest so her pristine sneakers wouldn't touch the floorboards.
Justin jumped into the driver's side and slammed his hand onto the garage door opener mounted on the visor.
The heavy metal door groaned upward, the chain rattling loudly. Cold December air rushed in under the rising metal, clearing out some of the slaughterhouse stench of the Jeep.
The daylight crept up the concrete driveway, revealing a pair of sensible, orthopedic shoes.
Then, floral patterned slacks.
Justin slammed his foot on the brake before he'd even shifted into gear.
"Wait," Mari whispered, her hands pressing flat against the dashboard.
Tally leaned forward from the backseat, her amber eyes squinting against the daylight.
It was Mrs. Gable.
The nanny was standing dead-center in the driveway. Her floral blouse was torn open at the collarbone, the delicate fabric stiff with dark, drying blood. One sleeve hung shredded, exposing skin that looked chewed and grey. Her hands twitched uselessly at her sides, the fingers curled into tight, rigid claws.
Her jaw hung open, letting out a wet, broken sound—a rattle of air through a punctured lung.
Tally stared at the horrific, animated corpse of the woman paid to raise her sister. A cold, calculating realization clicked into place perfectly inside Tally's sociopathic little mind.
If Mrs. Gable was dead, and Ella was at the school, then Ella was probably dead too. And if their parents somehow survived this, they were going to blame Tally for leaving her there. They would ruin her life over it. She needed to control the narrative right now. She needed Justin to view her as a victim of circumstance, not the selfish bitch who had abandoned a six-year-old to save her own skin.
Tally instantly weaponized the moment, twisting her face into a mask of absolute, hysterical devastation.
"Oh my God!" Tally screamed, pointing at the windshield. "That's her! That's Mrs. Gable! Where is Ella?!"
Mrs. Gable lurched forward as the garage door cleared her head. Her empty, bruised-purple eyes didn't look at the bloody Jeep. Her gaze drifted past the open garage entirely, fixating on the second story of the house.
"If she's here without her..." Tally shrieked, performing for Justin's rearview mirror. "Ella is stranded! Or what if Mrs. Gable did get her?! What if she brought her home before she turned?! Justin, you didn't check the playroom!"
Internally, Tally felt absolutely nothing for her sister. In fact, a dark, quiet part of her was intensely relieved. Thank God I didn't pick her up, she thought. She'd be dead weight right now. She'd be crying and slowing us down. "Tally, stop," Justin said, his hands shaking on the steering wheel. "She's not Mrs. Gable anymore."
"You don't know that!" Tally sobbed, forcing tears into her eyes and frantically clawing at the back of Justin's seat. "I have to go back! You have to check!"
Mrs. Gable slammed into the hood of the Jeep.
The sound was sickening. Flesh slapped against the windshield right over the old bloodstains. Her torn palm smeared across the glass, leaving a fresh streak of blackish-red fluid.
She didn't flinch. She just began to rhythmically beat her own forehead against the reinforced glass, her purple eyes staring blankly through the windshield at the interior of the house.
Thump. Thump. Thump. Mari screamed—a high, thin sound of pure animal panic—and scrambled backward in her seat, her knuckles white around the chef's knife.
Justin threw the Jeep into reverse.
"She's not thinking, Tally!" he yelled, drowning out the horrific thumping. "She's just drawn to the noise!"
"We left her! We left Ella!" Tally wailed, burying her face in her hands, putting on the performance of a lifetime.
Mrs. Gable slid off the hood as the Jeep violently jerked backward, hitting the concrete of the driveway with a dull crack. Bone ground audibly under her skin as she immediately pushed herself back up, her purple eyes never leaving the second-floor windows.
Justin slammed the shifter into drive. He didn't look back. He floored the accelerator. The heavy tires spun on the pavement with a loud screech, rolling directly over Mrs. Gable's legs with a sickening double-thump before catching traction. The Jeep burst out of the driveway, the back bumper clipping the edge of the mailbox and sending it spinning into the manicured grass.
They tore into the cul-de-sac, the engine roaring, drowning out the overlapping sirens bleeding in from the highway.
Tally twisted around in the backseat, dropping the fake tears the second Justin couldn't see her face. She stared at the receding image of her home through the blood-spattered rear window.
And then—she saw it.
On the second floor. Standing perfectly still behind the sheer curtains of the guest bedroom window.
A shadow.
It wasn't small. It wasn't a six-year-old girl. It was tall, broad, and its silhouette was jagged against the light of the upstairs hallway. It stood perfectly still, watching the Jeep drive away.
Something had been inside.
A spike of pure, selfish terror finally pierced Tally's chest. They hadn't been alone in the house. While they had been sitting on the kitchen floor, while she had been worried about her phone and her leather seats, that thing had been standing right above them.
I was almost in there with it, she realized, her breath turning shallow and fast. It could have come down the stairs. It could have eaten me. "If Ella was there," Justin said, his voice hoarse and raw as he gripped the steering wheel, desperately trying to absolve them both of the guilt Tally didn't even feel. "She would've come to us. She would have seen the Jeep."
Tally didn't answer. She just stared at the house until it vanished behind a bend in the road. She didn't care about Ella. She was just intensely, selfishly glad that she was in the car, and the monster was in the house.
Justin didn't slow down. He blew straight through the stop sign at the entrance to the subdivision, his eyes fixed dead ahead on the horizon, where the black, oily smoke was getting much thicker.
"Where are we going?" Mari asked, her voice trembling so badly her teeth chattered.
"The bridge," Justin said, his tone entirely hollow. "If Fort Stewart is still open, we get to the bridge."
Inside the bloody Jeep, the silence returned, heavy and suffocating. Outside, the world continued to burn. The sun was high, a cruel, bright eye in a perfectly clear blue sky. It was only 12:05 PM.
They had been on the road for less than a minute, but the illusion of Tally Leesburg's perfect, untouchable life was permanently dead.