Page 63 of Last Hand

“Check the bedrooms,” someone barks. More footsteps. More banging.

I shift slightly, trying to ease the pressure on my shoulder where a nail juts down from the floorboards. My hand sinks into the dirt—and touches something hard. Something smooth. Not a rock. I run my fingers along it, feeling the curve, the hollow spaces. Recognition hits me like a punch to the gut.

Bones. I stifle a gasp, jerking my hand away, but morbid curiosity pulls it back. I trace the shape in the darkness—a forearm. Ribs. And then, unmistakably, a skull, half-buried in dirt and torn fabric.

I clamp a hand over my mouth, bile rising in my throat. It clicks into place. No funeral. No answers. Just silence from my father whenever I asked where Grandma went. She didn’t leave. She was buried right here, rotting beneath the kitchen all these years. It explains why we never went to her funeral, why we never heard Dad speak of her again or why he never took us to visit her. Most of all it explains why he never sold this place, the land would have had to have been worth something, yet he said no one ever showed interest; maybe this is why, he couldn’t sell it knowing his mother was beneath a house that would have been knocked down if he had.

“Nothing in the bedrooms,” a man reports, his voice muffled through the floorboards.

“Check under the house,” Mikhail orders, and my heart stops. “Tear this place apart if you have to.”

I need to move. Now. I crawl silently away from my grandmother’s remains, inching toward where I remember the foundation vent to be. It was beneath the porch steps, a small opening barely big enough for a child to squeeze through.

The space grows tighter as I near the edge of the house, the floor lower, pressing down on my back until I’m flat on my stomach, pulling myself forward with my elbows like I’m in some hellish military training exercise. I reach the vent—rusted metal slats that give me a narrow view of the yard beyond.

Just as someone drops to their knees on the porch above, flashlight beam cutting through the darkness beneath. I freeze, not daring to breathe as the light sweeps inches from my feet.

“Nothing under here,” the man calls after a cursory check. “Just dirt and spiders.”

Thank god for lazy thugs. A door slams. An engine revs. They’re leaving? That can’t be right. Mikhail doesn’t give up that easily.

Then I hear it—a scream. My mother. I inch toward the broken foundation vent beneath the porch steps, blinking through the slats as movement catches my eye. He’s dragging her. Mikhail has her by the hair, yanking her toward the clearing like she weighs nothing.

“Where are they!” he bellows, his voice carrying across the silent forest.

She says nothing. Her face is already bloody, one eye swollen shut. She spits in his face.

He backhands her so hard I hear the crack of his hand against her cheekbone. She crumples to her knees.

“Tell me, or I’ll gut you open and dump your insides across this fucking yard!” he screams, kicking her in the ribs.

She curls into herself, coughing blood, and still, she doesn’t speak. I bite down on my fist to keep from screaming.

“Come out, Fallon!” he yells, voice echoing across the trees. “Come out now, or I’ll beat your mother until she stops breathing.”

I freeze. He knows. He knows I’m her daughter. How?

The porch rattles. His men crash inside again, roaring orders and splintering furniture. Glass shatters. Cupboards slam. I hear footsteps right above me, dust raining down into my eyes.

“She’s not here!” one of them shouts.

More footsteps. Curses. Then…

“Burn it,” Mikhail says.

No.

“No, no, no,” I whisper, already scrambling back toward the crawlspace entrance that is beneath the kitchen. The girls. I have to get to the girls.

The first flames lick the edge of the porch. Smoke drifts under the boards, stinging my eyes and throat. I crawl fast, heart slamming and blood rushing in my ears. I can’t let them burn alive.

My shoulder hits something hard. I glance down—my hand landing on a skeletal forearm. I should be horrified. I should be screaming. Yet all I feel is a cold, creeping certainty that I’ll end up just like her if I don’t move faster.

I shake it off. No time. I reach the trapdoor and slam my fists against the pantry floor. It’s hot. Burning. I grit my teeth and push. The floor creaks open just enough. I throw myself upward, coughing violently as smoke rolls around me only to glance down to see I was right about it being her, I recognize the old frayed dress, the necklace around her skeletal neck, it’s my grandmother. Not having time to process that information, I rush for the girls.

“Anya! Mila!” I choke crawling to the closet wall. I claw it apart. I rip through the nailed-up slats and insulation. Their wide eyes blink back at me. “Come on! Now!”

They don’t question. Just crawl out. Their faces are streaked with tears and soot, eyes wide with terror as flames lick up the walls around us. I grab each of them by the arms and pull them through the thick smoke, coughing, stumbling toward the back entrance. The heat presses against us like a living thing, hungry and vicious. My lungs scream for clean air. My eyes burn. I don’t let go.

---