Chapter 30 – June 23, 1994 – Camille
The drive to Belham, Mississippi, was long—about fifteen hours. That didn’t include the strategic stops for gas, food, and naps while my hog-tied brother lay in the backseat of his own Rolls-Royce, duct tape sealing his mouth to keep him from screaming.
We refined the plan somewhere past Missouri.
Reed woke around then, groaning and thrashing against the tape, but we ignored him until he wore himself out and passed out again.
Timing mattered. We needed to arrive after eight, when the staff would be gone for the night.
The mansion sat in a secluded part of town, with the nearest neighbors miles away, so we didn’t have to worry about being seen.
And since we were driving Reed’s car, anyone who did see us would assume he was coming home.
After that, it would be simple. Tie him to a chair. Do what needed to be done. Douse the dining room in gasoline. Light it.
Erich had raised the issue of the car, but I assured him Reed had several. We could take this one and dump it once we got back.
Still, the closer we got, the more the anxiety crept in. I hadn’t been back to Belham in over a year. I didn’t know what would hit me harder—the task itself or the memories waiting inside that house.
It was 9:15 at night when we turned onto the familiar red dirt driveway. My heart pounded like a war drum.
Erich parked at the base of the grand staircase leading to the wraparound porch. We both paused, taking in the mansion.
No lights. No other cars. Nothing but the heavy Mississippi air and the steady hum of cicadas.
He moved first.
Erich circled the car, opened the back door, and dragged Reed out by his ankles. He slung the extra rope over his shoulder while Reed struggled weakly, muffled sounds escaping through the tape.
I stayed frozen at the bottom of the steps.
Staring.
This is it, I told myself. This is the ending.
House and brother—gone. And I would be the last Chambers.
Erich passed me, hauling Reed up the steps. Before he could fumble with the door, I moved past him and turned the knob. It opened easily.
The smell hit me first—sterile, polished, untouched. The kind of clean that came from years of hired hands maintaining appearances.
Erich hesitated just inside, unsure where to go.
“This way,” I said quietly, the grandfather clock ticking in the entryway like a countdown.
I led him to the dining room.
The same room where everything had begun unraveling a year ago.
Nothing had changed.
If anything, it was preserved—frozen in time. I wondered, briefly, what Reed had done here alone. Whether he sat at that table each morning or avoided it entirely.
I pulled one of the chairs away from the table and dragged it into the corner.
Erich dropped Reed to the floor and pulled out his pocketknife, cutting the rope binding his wrists and ankles together. Reed groaned as he stretched, then let out a muffled cry when Erich flipped him onto his back with his foot, pressing it into his stomach.
I stayed in the corner, gripping the back of the chair as I watched.
Erich lit a cigarette, shielding the flame with his hand. He took a slow drag, then removed his foot from Reed and crouched beside him, blowing smoke directly into his face.
Reed choked, twisting away, his face flushed beneath the tape, tears leaking from the corners of his eyes.
Then he looked at me.
Pleaded.
For a moment, doubt flickered.
The house pressed in around me, dragging memories up from places I thought I’d buried. My best memories—all of them—were tied to him.
My chest ached.
“You can change your mind.”
Erich’s voice cut through it cleanly.
I realized I was biting my nails, staring at Reed the way I had when I was younger—when I’d run to him instead of my mother.
Because it had always been him.
Until it wasn’t.
My gaze shifted to Erich. His gray eyes were steady, watching me—not pushing, not pulling. Waiting.
A tear slipped free. I shook my head.
No.
Reed whimpered again, and Erich crushed the cigarette into the carpet before crossing the room to me.
“You’re in control,” he said, pulling me against him. His lips brushed the top of my head. “This ends when you want it to.”
I leaned into him, breathing in the faint scent of smoke and something that was only him. The tear disappeared into his shirt.
And I steadied.
I pulled away and walked back to Reed.
He tracked every step, panic rising in his eyes as I knelt beside him. I peeled the tape from his mouth in one sharp motion.
“Son of a—” he gasped, rolling onto his side.
“Any last words?” My voice sounded hollow, even to me.
But I knew what I wanted.
He had to die.
And I needed to be the one to do it.
“You can’t kill me,” he said hoarsely. “You love me.”
“I did.” I sat back, drawing my knees up, arms wrapping around them. “But you didn’t have to do what you did.”
“Of course I did,” he murmured. “God willed it.”
“What God?” I snapped, anger cutting through the haze. “Any decent God would’ve let us choose. You made your choice.”
“I always loved you,” he whispered. “We were meant to be.”
My fingers picked at a loose thread in the rug.
“Did you always know?” I asked quietly.
“That I loved you? Yes.” His eyes searched mine. “That we’d be together? No.”
“When?”
“When I graduated high school. A year before.”
I swallowed, staring at the thread between my fingers. “How did you know I was—”
“You underestimate what it means to be watched,” he said.
Cold spread through me.
“The church?” I said slowly. “That doesn’t—”
“It does,” he interrupted, almost amused. “Think. What did we do that Sunday after you told me you were dying?”
My mind scrambled, digging through fragments.
“…The Calendar of Eve.”
That strange activity was so minuscule in my mind because of the new knowledge of a woman’s body. I didn’t think anything of it when the creepy priest gifted me a calendar, thick as a bible, going out ten years, and had me mark the days I bled.
Reed’s smile grew as he rolled onto his back and gazed up at the ceiling. He sneered. “Six years of tracking that and you’d think our parents and priest wouldn’t establish a pattern?”
Of course they would have. I should have known the gift wasn’t for my own knowledge. I felt a sarcastic laugh bubble up in my throat, and Reed’s eyes darted over to me before his laugh also burst through his lips.
I cut myself off, feeling the newly ignited fury erase the ironic humor. I raised my hand and slapped him across the face, feeling my cheeks burn. “You do not get to share this with me.” My voice turned cold as I spat at him through gritted teeth.
Reed growled in response, his eyes narrowing in on me as his left cheek burned red from my hand. “You dumb cunt.” He whispered at me as I rose from my place on the floor and turned my back on him.
“You stupid, bipolar, vicious bitch.”
I stood, turning away.
His voice followed me—louder, uglier—but I blocked it out as I crossed to Erich.
“I’m ready,” I said, fists clenched. “I want this.”
Erich said nothing as he passed me, brushing my shoulder with a gentle hand—a reassurance.
When he reached Reed, he buried his fingers in Reed’s hair and lifted his head by the knotted strands tangled between them.
Reed snarled and spat at him, but the spittle barely cleared his dry lips, instead sliding down his chin.
He was downright humiliating, drool and bubbled spit clinging to his face.
“You pussy-whipped fuck.” Reed cackled as Erich dragged him by the hair to the chair in the corner.
“Just Cami’s bitch boy… For the lips of an immoral woman are as sweet as honey…
But in the end, she is bitter as poison.
” Reed hurled the quote at him, his eyes raking Erich for any sign of hesitation.
Erich gave him little more than a weary glance as he forced him into the chair and began unraveling the rope again.
Reed’s lips trembled, his eyes darting from the rope to Erich. “Strangers will consume your wealth, and someone else will enjoy the fruit of your labor.”
The corner of Erich’s lip twitched into a half-smirk as he began wrapping the rope around Reed and the ancestral chair I used to sit in at dinner.
As Reed continued spewing pious nonsense, Erich finished winding the rope around his chest before dropping to one knee to secure his ankles, tightening it to bind both Reed and the chair.
“Aren’t you listening?” Reed snapped, his voice rising. “What does this bitch have on you? She’s not a virgin. She aborted her child. She’s covered in sin—destined for Hell!”
Erich rose slowly, staring down at my brother through narrowed eyes. Even from where I stood, the tension in his jaw—and the low, dangerous edge in his voice—made the hair on my arms stand up.
“Your God wouldn’t save me, either.”
Reed’s sneer deepened, his head tilting as he locked into the stare. “Why are you so protective of my dear sister?” His lips curled. “I loosened her. Ruined her. There’s nothing left for you. She was made for me—and I took it. She belongs to me. You’re stuck with what’s left of a common street—”
Erich’s pocketknife flashed in his hand and drove straight into Reed’s shoulder with brutal force. I heard the tear of fabric—and skin—before Reed’s scream filled the room.
Erich’s eyes were smoldering, bereft of any humanity or emotion other than pure rage as he yanked the plunged knife out of Reed’s shoulder. A trail of dark red blood spurted out, and Reed shrieked as the blood dribbled to the ground.
“You mother fu—” Reed choked, his voice breaking as he stared down at the blood soaking his shirt. Then his gaze snapped back up. “You’re psychotic. A monster. This is how I die? You deserve my jezebel sister.”
Erich turned away from him, facing me. He flipped the knife in his hand, gripping the blade, blood staining his fingers, and held the handle out toward me.
I hesitated—then took it.
Our eyes met. My lips parted, words catching somewhere behind my teeth.
“Take it,” he said, his voice low and rough. “Do what you need to do. Before I do it for you.”
This was his promise. I was in control. Erich would never take anything from me that was mine. My consent, my free will…
My story to end.
I would’ve loved to do this the original way we planned, but instead I quietly made my way to Reed. Reed’s light green eyes followed my movements, and I tuned out his begging as my tunnel vision drove me to do the one task I set out to do.
The knife trembled in my hand as I raised it to my chest. I drew in a shaky breath—
Then lifted it over my head and drove it down into his heart.