Chapter 56 - The Coldest Smile in Maine
The scent of cordite and bitter winter air filled the shattered cabin as Eleanor cocked the hammer of her revolver.
Vance lay crumpled against the stone hearth, crimson soaking through his flannel shirt where the high-caliber bullet had gouged his ribs.
Arthur pressed his spine flat against the cast-iron stove, his breath hitching in his chest like broken glass.
Eleanor did not glance at the blood pooling across the hardwood floor.
Her eyes, glacial and dead, stayed fixed on her husband’s trembling hands.
She shook the fresh snow from her white fur collar with the delicate grace of a woman attending a Sunday brunch.
Behind her, Dr. Davenport lowered the pneumatic dart rifle, his breath steaming inside the ruined room.
The mercenary Vance had blown back into the doorway groaned once before falling completely silent in the drifts.
Eleanor stepped forward, her leather boots crunching over the jagged shards of the front window.
She pointed the barrel directly between Vance’s eyes, her lips curving into that familiar, sickeningly sweet smile.
She told him he had always been clumsy with deadlines.
Vance coughed, spitting dark blood onto the hearthstones, his fingers clawing for the shotgun just inches out of reach.
She kicked the weapon away with effortless precision, sending it skittering across the slick floorboards.
Davenport warned her that state police reinforcements were likely already rerouted toward Route 9 despite the downed lines.
Eleanor dismissed him without turning her head, telling the doctor that dead men rarely file incident reports.
She turned her gaze slowly toward the shadows behind the cast-iron stove.
Arthur felt every nerve in his body scream as her shadow stretched over him like an iron shroud.
She called his name softly, using the exact melodic cadence she had used to tuck him into bed as a boy.
She told him it was time to come home and stop playing games with broken old men.
Arthur clutched a heavy cast-iron poker hidden in the soot beside his leg, his knuckles whitening to the bone.
Vance wheezed from the floor, telling Arthur not to look at her face.
Eleanor sighed with theatrical disappointment, tightening her finger on the trigger to silence Vance once and for all.
Before she could fire, Arthur lunged from behind the stove with a raw, guttural roar.
He swung the heavy iron poker with every ounce of terror and hatred buried in his soul.
The iron struck Eleanor’s outstretched forearm, knocking the revolver off course as the deafening gunshot blew a chunk of cedar from the ceiling.
The shockwave tore through the confined room, raining burning plaster and sparks down upon them.
Davenport lunged forward, raising his tranquilizer gun, but Vance rolled onto his side and drove his hunting knife deep into the doctor’s boot.
Davenport shrieked in agony, dropping the weapon as blood spurted onto the white snow blowing through the doorway.
Eleanor staggered back, clutching her bruised arm, the mask of maternal perfection cracking into pure demonic fury.
She snarled an order to the shadows outside the cabin, and two red laser sights instantly danced across the pine walls.
A volley of automatic fire erupted from the snowdrift outside, shredding the wooden walls of the lodge to kindling.
Arthur grabbed Vance under the armpits, hauling the bleeding detective backward toward the narrow trapdoor behind the stove.
The embers from the hearth caught the chemical fog from the smoke canister, detonating in a flash of blinding orange fire.
Flames leaped hungrily up the dry pine beams, turning the cabin into an inferno within seconds.
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Eleanor shielded her face from the backdraft, screaming Arthur’s name through the roaring wall of smoke and flame.
Arthur pulled the iron ring on the subfloor hatch, dragging Vance into the freezing blackness below just as the ceiling collapsed into hell.
