Chapter 9 - The Midnight Hour
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The silence in the bedroom was heavy, broken only by the rhythmic ticking of the grandfather clock in the hallway.
At exactly 2:10 AM, the brass handle of the heavy mahogany door slowly, silently turned.
The door creaked open just an inch. A sliver of pale light from the hallway spilled across the hardwood floor.
Audrey slipped into the room. She was no longer wearing her elegant evening gown. She wore a dark, form-fitting tracksuit, her blonde hair pulled back into a severe, tight ponytail. She moved with a terrifying, calculated stealth that proved this was not her first time doing something horrific in the dark.
She did not turn on the lights.
In her left hand, she held a small, glass vial filled with the concentrated red liquid Elias had warned me about. In her right hand, she held a thick, white, down-feather pillow.
She stood at the foot of the bed, staring at the motionless lump beneath the duvet.
I watched from the shadows, barely ten feet away, my finger resting lightly against the trigger of my weapon. The sheer, cold-blooded malice radiating from the woman I had slept next to for a year made my stomach churn.
“I really did try to make this easy on you, Sylvia,” Audrey whispered into the dark room, her voice dripping with a sickening, mocking sympathy. “If you had just swallowed the pills like a good little invalid, we wouldn't have to do this the messy way. But you had to be stubborn.”
She took a slow step toward the side of the bed.
“Victor is asleep in the guest wing. He thinks you're just fading away peacefully,” Audrey continued, setting the glass vial down on the nightstand. She gripped the pillow with both hands, stepping right up to the edge of the mattress.
“Don't worry,” she hissed, leaning over the bed. “It will be over in just a minute. And by morning, I’ll be comforting your grieving son while counting your money.”
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Audrey raised the pillow high above her head. With a vicious, aggressive grunt, she drove the pillow down with all her weight, pressing it violently into the space where she believed my mother’s face lay.
She held it there, pushing her entire body weight down, waiting for the struggle that would never come.
