Chapter 5 - The Phantom in the Storm
Arthur climbed out of the dark cellar, stepping back into the warm, amber light of the main hallway.
The silence of the house was gone now, replaced by the howling fury of the storm outside. The open double doors of the grand foyer were banging violently against the interior walls, allowing the rain to blow deep into the grand entrance, pooling like dark blood across the white marble floor.
Eleanor was gone from the hallway.
Arthur walked slowly toward the front entrance, his wet leather shoes squeaking softly against the floor. He stepped out onto the sheltered portico, into the biting, freezing wind that whipped his wet hair across his face.
Out in the middle of the sweeping gravel driveway, completely exposed to the torrential downpour, stood Eleanor.
She was not running. She was not driving away in her car. She simply stood motionless in the center of the heavy rain, her white knit sweater and white trousers now soaked through, clinging to her thin frame, turning gray beneath the glaring white beams of Arthur's car headlights.
She faced away from the house, her body still as a statue, looking out toward the dark, invisible line of the ocean cliff where the waves crashed against the rocks below.
The scene was chillingly surreal. In the bright, unnatural light of the halogen lamps, surrounded by the vertical sheets of falling water, she looked less like a living woman and more like a specter—a ghost that had manifested within the storm only to tear his family apart piece by piece.
Arthur stepped down off the marble portico, his boots sinking into the wet gravel as he walked directly into the heavy rain toward her.
The water felt like ice against his skin, but the fire burning inside his chest burned hotter than any fever.
He stopped five feet behind her.
"Why, Eleanor?" Arthur demanded, his voice cutting through the roar of the wind and rain like a steel blade. "Why are you doing this to us? What do you want from me?!"
Slowly, deliberately, Eleanor turned around to face him.
May you like
Her blonde hair was plastered flat against her skull, water running down her pale forehead, over her nose, and dripping from her chin. Her face was completely devoid of emotion—no fear of the storm, no remorse for the child she had almost killed, no concern for her own freezing body.
"You never loved me, Arthur," Eleanor said. Her voice was surprisingly clear, carrying over the roar of the ocean below. "You didn't marry a woman. You hired a replacement."
