Jean entered the side door using the flashlight on her phone and shut the door behind her. Her beam flicked around the workshop and stopped on the one standing sculpture. The finished product looked cleaner, more professional on its display stand. They were fascinatingly ugly. She shined her light at the eye-holes. She’d thought he would make eyes for them, but he said that would “detract from the fright factor.” She stepped closer and moved the phone so she could look inside the eye-holes.
Snap! and the workshop flashed with light. Jean’s eyes teared up while trying to adjust to the sudden glare. “Oh!” she gasped.
Across the shop, Diana stood in the laundry room doorway wearing black silk pajamas. Jean backed away from the sculpture.
Diana’s voice was deep, commanding: “What are you doing in here?”
Jean backed farther and tripped over an electrical cord. She caught herself on a packing crate.
“Oh, Jesus!” she blurted. “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m waiting for Daniel. I mean, I came to start dinner for him. I thought you opened the side door for me.”
Diana didn’t speak.
Jean’s heart rate and breathing hit top speed. “Give me a minute to catch my breath. You really scared me.”
Diana made no move toward Jean but assessed her for a moment, like a scientist studying a specimen.
“You want to talk. You think we should get to know each other better.” Flat statements, not questions, no emotion, no tone.
Jean stammered, still trying to calm herself. “Well … I … yes, that’s right.”
Diana swept an arm in an exaggerated invitation into the house.
“Well, then. Come in. We’ll talk.”
Diana’s gaze was fixed on Jean as she stepped around the sculpture and the rolls of wire toward the laundry room door. Jean felt captured in a sci-fi tractor beam that pulled her forward. She wanted to get along, be nice, do the right thing. Jean reached the doorway, and Diana took her by the hand to lead her inside to the stairway to her room.
“Set your things here,” Diana said, indicating a small parlor table.
Jean left her purse and jacket, then followed Diana up the stairs. The cold from Diana’s hand remained. Dim red lights cast bloody shadows in the dark blue living room. Diana’s room was black. Completely black—walls and ceiling—except for the hardwood floor. A single red nightlight beside the bed revealed a huge bedroom half-filled with barbells, treadmill, stepper, stationary bike. A slick drop cloth covered the king-sized bed and most of the floor. Jean stood in the doorway.
Diana heard Jean’s breathing and pulse, smelled … apprehension, not quite fear.
“Come here.”
Jean said, “But I …”
“Come inside. Close the door. I will explain everything.”
A voice, Tom’s voice, whispered in Jean’s head, “Be careful.” She considered entering the room, then took a step back.
Diana attacked in a blinding rush. She pinned Jean against the hallway wall with a smothering grip on her trachea. Jean uttered a few squeaks through her tight throat and thrashed wildly at Diana, with no effect. Diana clamped her other hand over Jean’s nose and mouth. Jean fought clumsily, furiously, but ran out of air quickly and slumped to the floor. Diana didn’t stop to feed.
“Something special for you, sister,” she whispered.
Diana dragged her across the threshold and into her room, then wrestled her onto the bed. From the bedstand, under the red nightlight, she picked up her mother’s ivory-handled tool, and flicked open the blade.
“Let’s not make a huge mess,” she said. “Brother Dear has an important decision to make.”