{"id":77,"date":"2026-08-27T15:24:38","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T15:24:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/horrorstories.online\/?p=77"},"modified":"2026-09-03T16:30:02","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T16:30:02","slug":"chapter-9-the-last-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/horrorstories.online\/index.php\/2026\/08\/27\/chapter-9-the-last-story\/","title":{"rendered":"CHAPTER 9 – THE LAST STORY"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n \u2190 Previous Chapter<\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/a>\n \n
\n Next chapter \u2192<\/span>\n <\/div><\/a>\n <\/div>\n \n \n
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I told the police a simple story. That\u2019s the trick. Complicated lies break. Simple lies borrow the shape of the truth. I was a burglar. I watched an expensive house for two days, thought it was empty, and broke in. I opened a wall safe. Found a head. Three people came back. I panicked and hid under the couch. After that, everything got out of control. Most of it didn\u2019t require invention.<\/p>\n \n

At the station, a detective read me my rights. I said I understood them. Then I told him I wanted to explain. He sat across from me with a legal pad.<\/p>\n \n

\u201cYou know any of the people from the house before tonight?\u201d<\/p>\n \n

\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n \n

\u201cMia Tran?\u201d<\/p>\n \n

\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n \n

\u201cThe man using Horseman?\u201d<\/p>\n \n

\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n \n

\u201cDaniel Mercer?\u201d<\/p>\n \n

I shook my head. \u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n \n

He watched me for a moment. \u201cLena Tran?\u201d<\/p>\n \n

I kept my face still. \u201cFrom the news.\u201d<\/p>\n \n

\u201cThat\u2019s it?\u201d<\/p>\n \n

\u201cThat\u2019s it.\u201d<\/p>\n \n

He wrote something down. The room was small and too bright. A paper cup of water sat untouched between us. My wrists hurt from the cuffs even though they\u2019d been taken off for the interview. I was alive. That was the important part. A burglar caught inside a murderer\u2019s house was still a burglar. But it was a much better story than the alternatives.<\/p>\n \n

\u201cWhat did Mia tell you in the bathroom?\u201d<\/p>\n \n

\u201cNot much I remember.\u201d<\/p>\n \n

\u201cShe wanted to contact police.\u201d<\/p>\n \n

\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n \n

\u201cWhy did you restrain her?\u201d<\/p>\n \n

I exhaled. \u201cI panicked.\u201d<\/p>\n \n

\u201cBecause of police?\u201d<\/p>\n \n

\u201cBecause of everything. I\u2019m a thief. I didn\u2019t want cops arriving while I was standing in somebody else\u2019s house with a bag full of burglary tools.\u201d<\/p>\n \n

Also true. The best lies need bones made of truth.<\/p>\n \n

\u201cThen you impersonated her.\u201d<\/p>\n \n

\u201cSo the other two wouldn\u2019t realize a stranger was in the house.\u201d<\/p>\n \n

\u201cAnd you claimed you killed Lena Tran.\u201d<\/p>\n \n

\u201cI needed them to think I belonged there.\u201d<\/p>\n \n

\u201cYou knew a lot about Lena\u2019s crime scene.\u201d<\/p>\n \n

Here it was. The answer I\u2019d been building since the ride to the station.<\/p>\n \n

\u201cI\u2019d been inside that condo before.\u201d<\/p>\n \n

His pen stopped. \u201cWhen?\u201d<\/p>\n \n

\u201cAfter the murder.\u201d<\/p>\n \n

\u201cTo burglarize it?\u201d<\/p>\n \n

\u201cYeah.\u201d<\/p>\n \n

\u201cIt was a crime scene.\u201d<\/p>\n \n

\u201cNot forever.\u201d<\/p>\n \n

He looked at me. I shrugged. \u201cYou want me to tell you I\u2019m a good person? I\u2019m not.\u201d<\/p>\n \n

Sometimes admitting the smaller crime makes people think you\u2019ve stopped hiding the larger one. The detective wrote again. For the first time all night, I began to think I\u2019d survived the hardest part. Daniel was alive. But Daniel had a dead man\u2019s head in a safe. Horseman was alive. But Horseman was a stalker who had gone online and pretended to be a killer. Mia \u2013 Mia wasn\u2019t going to tell anyone anything. I only needed my version to hold long enough for the police to drown in everyone else\u2019s.<\/p>\n \n

I stared at the water cup. Exhaustion settled over me. Not fear. Just exhaustion. And when I\u2019m tired, my mind goes places I don\u2019t invite it.<\/p>\n \n

Back to Lena\u2019s condo. Not the version I gave Daniel. The real one.<\/p>\n \n

That night, I entered while the condo was empty. At least I thought it was going to stay empty. I went through the bedroom. Stuck drawer. Jewelry. Beach photo. Brown journal. Then I heard the front door. I didn\u2019t have time to leave. I hid.<\/p>\n \n

Lena came in with another woman. Mia. At first they talked. Then they argued. Something hit the floor. Footsteps. A hard impact. Then silence.<\/p>\n \n

I stayed hidden. Not my problem. After a while, Mia began moving through the condo. Dragging something. Wiping things down. Opening the balcony door. I didn\u2019t understand what she was doing until she left.<\/p>\n \n

I waited another five minutes. Maybe ten. Then I came out.<\/p>\n \n

Lena lay motionless. I thought she was dead. Same as Mia. All I wanted was to leave. Then Lena took a breath. Small. Barely there.<\/p>\n \n

I stopped. Her eyes opened. I don\u2019t know whether she saw me immediately or needed a few seconds to understand there was a stranger standing in her home.<\/p>\n \n

I remember her face. The same slight pull at one corner of her mouth from the beach picture was gone. There was only confusion, pain, and then recognition. She tried to move.<\/p>\n \n

\u201cDon\u2019t scream,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n \n

She didn\u2019t. Maybe she couldn\u2019t. Her eyes went toward her phone on the floor. Then back to me.<\/p>\n \n

I understood. If she lived, she would remember my face. Police would ask why I had been there. They would find prints. Old cases. Other houses. Everything. I could have run. I could have let her reach the phone. I could have accepted that one burglary had gone bad. But in that moment, none of those options felt real. I saw only one thing.<\/p>\n \n

A witness. Just like tonight. Mia had looked at me that way. Lena had looked at me first.<\/p>\n \n

I moved toward her. And when I left the condo that night, Lena Tran was actually dead.<\/p>\n \n

I removed what I could that pointed to me and left most of Mia\u2019s staging untouched. An accidental gift. Police looked for a killer who had created the scene. Mia believed she had killed her sister. Horseman later volunteered to take ownership of the rest. And I went back to stealing. Until tonight.<\/p>\n \n

\u201cYou okay?\u201d<\/p>\n \n

The detective\u2019s voice brought me back. I looked up. \u201cFine.\u201d<\/p>\n \n

\u201cYou went quiet.\u201d<\/p>\n \n

\u201cLong night.\u201d<\/p>\n \n

He closed the pad. \u201cWe\u2019re done with this statement for now.\u201d<\/p>\n \n

I almost smiled. Not free. I had admitted to burglary, after all. But still alive. Still one story among several. I leaned back. Maybe that was enough.<\/p>\n \n

The door opened. A second detective entered carrying a laptop. He set it on the table. I looked from him to the first detective. \u201cWhat\u2019s that?\u201d<\/p>\n \n

The second one opened the computer. \u201cThe house had a concealed camera in the living room. Standalone unit. Local storage.\u201d<\/p>\n \n

Something cold began moving up through my stomach. I remembered the tiny red light beside the TV. I\u2019d seen it twice and never understood what I was looking at.<\/p>\n \n

The video appeared. The living room. The couches. The coffee table. A high angle looking down. For the first few seconds there was no sound. Then I heard my own filtered voice. I killed Lena Tran.<\/em><\/p>\n \n

The detective skipped ahead. Horseman taking the gun. Daniel restraining him. My fox mask being ripped away. My face filling the screen.<\/p>\n \n

Skip. Police entering. Flashlights. Mia falling behind the couch. Me leaning toward her.<\/p>\n \n

I stopped watching. I didn\u2019t need the rest.<\/p>\n \n

The detective froze the video with my hands on Mia. No accusation. No shouting. Just the image.<\/p>\n \n

For the first time, I understood why Daniel had never been afraid of anyone lying in that house. He hadn\u2019t only been listening. He had been recording.<\/p>\n \n

The first detective pushed the untouched cup of water toward me. Then he asked, \u201cWant to start again from the beginning?\u201d<\/p>\n \n

I looked at my own face on the screen. All my life, I\u2019d been good at finding an exit. A window. A lock. A sentence. Some way out. This time I looked for one for a long time.<\/p>\n \n

There wasn\u2019t one. And for the first time in my life, I couldn\u2019t think of a story.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n \n \n

\n \n
\n \u2190 Previous Chapter<\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/a>\n \n
\n Next chapter \u2192<\/span>\n <\/div><\/a>\n <\/div>\n ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2190 Previous Chapter Next chapter \u2192 I told the police a simple story. That\u2019s the trick. Complicated lies break. Simple lies borrow the shape of the truth. I was a burglar. I watched an expensive house for two days, thought it was empty, and broke in. I opened a wall safe. Found a head. Three Read More “CHAPTER 9 – THE LAST STORY”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-https-horrorstories-online-index-php-2026-08-27-i-broke-into-a-killers-house-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/horrorstories.online\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/horrorstories.online\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/horrorstories.online\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horrorstories.online\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horrorstories.online\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/horrorstories.online\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":203,"href":"https:\/\/horrorstories.online\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions\/203"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horrorstories.online\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/horrorstories.online\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horrorstories.online\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horrorstories.online\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}