Isolation: a gripping psychological suspense thriller full of twists

by Sarah K Stephens

  Viruses don’t last on paper. Not for long, at least.

  Most of the titles are Ernest Hemingway or those huge fantasy books that everyone’s making TV shows or movies out of. No textbooks. No gardening books either. A few are written in a different kind of alphabet I can’t read.

  Okay, I have to refocus. I don’t have much time, and this needs to be done.

  The bed is made tight, with hospital corners and a small pillow fluffed at the head of it. I don’t want to mess up the neatness of it all, but I need to do this. I reach underneath the mattress and pull. It’s heavier than I expected—our mattresses are really light because they’re made of that new astronaut material, which makes them perfect for hiding stuff inside with a little sewn patch to cover it. I have to pull up twice before I’m able to get a look under it.

  The sun passes behind a cloud for a moment and the apartment gets dark really quickly. Below the mattress is a big pool of black shadow. I’m tempted to turn on the light, but I can’t have anyone know I’m here, obviously.

  I wait for my eyes to adjust to the change, and as I do I hear something rattle from the kitchen. I turn my head, the mattress still lifted in my arms, and listen harder.

  There it is again. It’s definitely metal against metal. But now it’s more of a scratching than a rattle. Like something hard moving against something harder, not small pieces jumbled up together.

  I scan under the mattress now I can see clearly in the darkness, but there’s nothing there, so I put it down and go through the tiny kitchen to the bathroom door. It’s closed, but when I pull at the knob it opens easily. The smell of damp air hits me like a wave, and steam rises up, clouding the air.

  There’s a window above the toilet, and it only takes a few moments for the air to clear once I open it. Glancing around the small space, I realize what the sound I heard was. The hot water handle on the sink is loose, and swings back and forth against its bearing. Water turns on and off as the handle swings. When I take a step towards it, the handle shifts back and water gushes out. Little swirls of steam rise up from the water as it pours down the drain.

  Weird, I think.

  Not just because the sink is broken in a way that seems odd, but because everything else in Darren’s apartment is so neat and organized. It doesn’t seem like he’d leave anything broken for long.

  I go back out into the kitchen and rummage around in the drawers until I find a rubber band. Back in the bathroom, I do a quick adjustment with the band around the handle and the scratching and wobbling stops.

  If only Mom could see me now, being so capable and bright. I feel like she looks at me differently since everything that happened at the school. Peanut butter. It had to be stupid peanut butter.

  Of course, Daphne loves the stuff.

  Before I can stop myself I open the few cabinets in Darren’s kitchen, searching. I find instant coffee, bags of rice and a few sugar and salt packets mixed in with canned soup. And then, hidden behind cans of tuna, there it is. A jumbo size generic container of peanut butter.

  Margot’s allergic to it. I haven’t forgotten that. In fact, it’s why I grabbed at it in the first place.

  And then, behind the peanut butter, I find what I came here for.

  It’s not hidden underneath the mattress, like I’d expected. Someone has shoved it in the pantry. Hidden in plain sight.

  Dad insisted that Darren have a key card. I overheard Mom and him arguing about it one night, when Dad could still shout. She didn’t think the outdoor employees should be able to get to Dad, and then he’d asked Mom where they’d all be if Darren hadn’t been able to get into the house that night. Mom didn’t have a reply to that.

  I grab the key card and slip it through the gap in the gown and into the back pocket of my jeans.

  I think someone’s been visiting Dad. Someone who isn’t supposed to. I’ve been thinking more and more about what he said the day Margot fell off the horse—how “they’re coming”. What if he isn’t imagining things? What if someone else figured out how to break-in to his rooms, like I did?

  Each key card keeps a record of when it’s used, and I know how to get the report right off my laptop, since I downloaded a copy of the security software back when it was first installed. Dad couldn’t protect us, and Mom was gone so often. I figured it was up to me.

  Now I can see who’s been using Darren’s card.

  It doesn’t occur to me until after I’m out of the apartment, I’ve burnt my “protective equipment” in the pit of the original bonfire from our panic room night, and I’m heading back to the house like some outdoorsy kid ready for a snack, that keeping the key card in Darren’s apartment doesn’t make any sense. Why wouldn’t the person leave it hidden somewhere inside the house? It’d be more obvious they were doing something wrong if they were caught going in and out of Darren’s apartment, rather than someone finding a key card on them.

  I don’t normally feel stupid, but when I feel the pressure on the back of my neck, followed by a quick and searing pain spread out into my shoulders and then blackness, I have a few seconds of total, utter despair that I’m the stupidest boy who’d ever lived.

  32

  Tobias

  The horses smell the burning glass and metal before I do. Of course they do.

  I run around the stable first, checking that somehow the hay or the spare planks stacked for repairs hadn’t spontaneously caught fire. Thinking of the dead fox I found, I also wanted to make sure no one had set a fire inside.

  Between the hay, feed, and wood stalls the stables are essentially a tinder box.

  Colleen was afraid of horses, which is partly why I stopped riding and going to the stables when we were married. She was convinced I’d fall off and become paralyzed, like a famous movie star-turned-paraplegic-turned-activist. I used to think it was really kind of sweet and loving, how she worried so much about me falling and getting hurt. I was happy to give it up for her.

  But then I realized, after I walked those leftover meatballs over to the guy who was banging my wife, that maybe she wasn’t really focused on trying to protect me, so much, as trying to protect herself.

  You can’t leave a husband who suddenly finds himself disabled, can you? Also, you don’t really have time for secret trysts in your marital bed if your actual husband is bedridden.

  The prison they sent me to, which was really more of a psychiatric clinic with bars—imagine my luck at finding the one system in the state that actually provided real mental health care for inmates—well, it had a whole therapeutic horseback-riding program. Equine therapy.

  So that’s where I learned how to love again. It just didn’t involve people.

  All my searching tells me that my horses are safe. But they’re not happy.

  Jasmine’s eyes roll to the side of her head and she rears up slightly as I get closer to her stall. I grip her bridle and stroke the long side of her jaw, and she calms enough to stand still. I whisper into her velvet ear that I’ll be back. That she’ll be safe.

  Don’t worry, I tell all my charges, their soft liquid eyes looking back at me with the most magnificent trust. I’ll keep you safe.

  I close the stable door behind me, and walk out into a drifting cloud of gray smoke. It smells like chemicals, different from the other fires we’ve had burning at Granfield recently.

  Over the tops of the trees blocking the main house from the greenhouse there’s a funnel of smoke spewing up into the sky. A sharp crack of glass shrieks through the air, followed by clattering metal.

  I take off running as fast as I can, and on the path to the trees and the fire I hear a door slam and footsteps coming from the house. I don’t waste time turning to look, and soon enough Brenna is holding pace with me. Her hair flies in the wind and she’s a blur of well-cut navy wool and cream silk. Her steps make an odd slap on the ground each time they touch, and I realize with a slight jolt that she’s barefoot.

  That’s not going to help, I think.

  When we a
rrive through the copse of trees the heat of the fire makes a wall that we can’t get past. Brenna and I exchange looks, and nodding wordlessly with each other I move behind one of the closest trees and try to navigate to the far side of the greenhouse where the rain barrels are stored. If they’re not already melted down, this will be the closest source of water we can use to try to put the fire out.

  Brenna shifts to the other side, both of us staying on the far perimeter of the fire’s reach, since neither of us can push past the forcefield of heat. There’s a rustling in the trees to my left, but I don’t wait to see which animal is escaping. I force myself to move forward. The air is charred and full of debris, so I pull the collar of my flannel shirt up over my mouth, hoping to filter out some of the toxins from the air.

  I’m really glad I closed the stable doors. None of this would be good for the horses.

  I don’t even try the rain barrels close to the greenhouse. I head straight for the backup barrels lined up neatly along the machine-shed wall.

  Brenna runs to the stream, where Darren had set up a bilge pump several years ago that was meant to help divert the water if the level of the stream and connected lake at the front of the house rose too high after big rains. They were having trouble with the ground flooding, and the lawn of the main house was getting too soggy and unpleasant for evening walks. I remember it was Mark’s idea, because he liked to walk around Granfield in the evenings, before he got sick.

  If Brenna can switch on the pump and direct it towards the greenhouse, she might be able to staunch the fire before it catches the forest line. I’ve already assumed that the copse of trees around the greenhouse is going to burn. There’s no stopping it.

  The rain barrels are full after several days of recent spring rain, so I have to really heave against them in order to manage to tip the first, and then the second, over. The water inside sloshes back and forth and the barrel almost walks itself on its side, like a drunk falling over but still insisting on dancing to some silent tune.

  I dig my heels into the dirt, and push with all my strength again the hard plastic side. I need to get it aligned with the road, so that the water will release into the path of the fire and hopefully put it out before it spreads to the other buildings on the grounds.

  The fire thunders in my ears. So loud it sounds mechanical. Manmade and deadly. The heat and the sound combine together and plow through the air, like a freight train aiming straight for Granfield.

  I remember that sound. I remember needing to fight against the push of the heat and the natural instinct to run as far away from the flames as I possibly could.

  But I didn’t. Colleen was inside our house, and the walls were dripping with flames. I heard her crying out my name, and so I didn’t hesitate. I rushed in. No tools, no plan.

  I went in to save my wife. And the baby.

  I knew at that point that it probably wasn’t my baby.

  I searched and searched, but the flames were too high by then. They were supposed to be smaller, more contained. The way our home was built, though, was different from older houses I knew. Ours was built like a matchstick house, with cheap boards in the floor joints caddy-corner to each other. Builders actually call them matchstick houses now.

  And they build them anyway.

  At the trial the prosecutor said I have a sort of hero complex. That’s why I ran into the burning building instead of calling for help. That’s why having Colleen cheat on me was so damaging to my ego. That’s why Colleen died.

  Only some of that is true.

  None of it mattered in the end, because Colleen was still dead.

  Fire licks the sky. I uncap the barrels and let the water flow over the dirt path and into the ravine of the greenhouse’s foundation, and the field beyond. The water evaporates before it even makes it to the lower fields. Steam rushes out of the fire, and a cloud of fog and smoke surrounds Granfield.

  I could slip away now, and no one would know I’d left. I realize that.

  I could probably live out in the woods for a time. I learned how to do that when I was a kid, going camping with my parents. Staying out late in the night with my friends, drinking by the bonfire. I have some money saved, stashed away in a bank that’s online and doesn’t ask a lot of questions. I live a pretty simple life, and the Stones pay well, so over the years I’ve accumulated a good chunk of savings.

  There won’t be enough food now, for Granfield. We’ve lost everything we’ve been growing.

  So that means that I have to stay. Someone has to protect the horses. Someone has to do the right thing.

  I don’t stay to watch the fire consume what’s left of the greenhouse. I leave Brenna to mess with the bilge pumps, knowing they won’t help. The fire’s too far gone, and everything around the greenhouse is going to burn.

  Instead, I walk back to the stable. I would pull up the loose board where I kept the shotgun, but after the night Mark was almost kidnapped Brenna told me it needed to go. She said I’d saved her husband, and she was so very grateful, but that it wasn’t okay that I’d kept a weapon at Granfield without telling them. What if Felix or Daphne had found it?

  Fair enough, I thought, so I got rid of it.

  I find a comfortable stool and tip it back against Jasmine’s stall door, so I have a clear view of the door. I’ve got my shovel next to me, hiding in plain sight. It could kill a man as easily as a gun, if you know how to use it right.

  Jasmine nuzzles my neck with her soft whiskery lips, and I shush her and feed her one of the last sugar cubes from the box.

  33

  Daphne

  Nobody likes a tattletale. That’s what Veronica said at school one day when I told Mrs. Kilpatrick somebody was stealing snacks from the snack cart by her desk.

  But I didn’t care. I just didn’t want to watch poor Tommy Winger stare at the pile of goldfish crackers on his desk anymore. He’d wait for a few seconds, and then he’d shove them all in his mouth in one swoop, while stupid Veronica would eat hers like she was the queen of something. One piece at a time.

  I asked Mom about Tommy once, and if we could have him over for dinner, but she said that his parents probably wouldn’t like that. They were both working a lot and Tommy lived with his grandmother and somehow I guess other parents for the school gave their own money so that he could go to school with us. Which seems weird, because can’t anybody go to school anywhere they want?

  Isn’t that why I had to deal with Veronica and her friends treating everyone like we were their servants. If we’re able to pick who goes to different schools, then why would anyone pick someone so mean?

  I’m glad I don’t have to see Veronica anymore. I hope I never have to see her again.

  Sometimes when I’d play with Teddy, and now with my other dolls, I pretend one of them is Tommy and then I put all the fancy cakes and cookies in my tea set in front of him and he gets to eat them all and take his time. He doesn’t have to rush through, worrying that another kid is going to take his treat.

  Lately I’ve been feeling a little like Tommy.

  I went outside this afternoon to try to get my mind off my growling tummy. Mom’s keeping track of all the food in the house, and we’re not allowed to get anything to eat unless she approves of it first.

  She’s excited about the vegetables in the greenhouse. She keeps talking about how Tobias is going to save us with the garden they’ve planted, but I’m not so sure. If I don’t like Veronica, then I absolutely hate vegetables.

  And I can’t find the peanut butter. Mom’s stashed it somewhere out of reach.

  Anyway, I went outside to try to stop thinking about how hungry I was and I heard someone around the corner from the stables. I thought it might be Tobias and that he was taking one of the horses out, so I rushed over to see and maybe pet them a bit, but when I got there nobody was around.

  It’s weird, because I really thought I heard someone on the gravel. That’s the thing about gravel. It crunches under your feet, like Rice Krispies.
Oh, I could eat a whole box of Rice Krispies. Mom made me eat beans for breakfast. I almost threw them up, but I didn’t because I’m so hungry.

  After looking around the stables—the horses were there, all cozied up, and Tobias wasn’t anywhere around—I walked over to the greenhouse to see what I would have to eat soon. I didn’t have to go far though, to realize what had happened.

  The closer I got to the greenhouse the more the air smelled like a bonfire. I didn’t think anything was wrong at first, because it seems like these days Mom and Margot and whoever else are always burning things in the fire pit, but this smelled different. It was stronger.

  And I swear, the closer I got to the greenhouse the hotter it felt. It was sunny, and I was wearing my hat like Mom always tells me to, because I have to protect my skin and “I’ll thank her when I’m older”, but this was different. It was like being too close to the fireplace in the library where Mom likes to work now.

  I didn’t see the fire until I got past the group of trees by the greenhouse where I like to play sometimes. There are all sorts of nice hiding places underneath the tree branches, and I’m tiny enough that I can spend hours and hours there pretending I’m somewhere else.

  After I came through the clearing though, the heat was more than just a fireplace. It was like being hit by something hard and hot. Whoomp, it smacked into me and I stumbled a little bit and cut my ankle on one of the paving stones.

  I had to back away, because the entire greenhouse was on fire. And it wasn’t just the glass building. All the ground around it was burning, too. It was like something out of a movie.