Sweet Like Candy (The Series)

Volume II, Chapter Two: Death in the Family

There was a death in the family. In my family. Carter was gone. The man who was my safety net. The man who carried my heart in his chest. The man I called my husband. I couldn't fathom his death. I felt absolutely numb. Never had I ever felt such grief before. I have had my fair share of loss but I had never felt so... hurt. We had unfinished business and I think that's what ached my soul the most. He was meant to stay with me. He was meant to fight with me.

Those are my thoughts and my thought process in hindsight. However, in the days following Carter's death, I was mad. I was determined to find out who killed him. Avery seemed like the perfect culprit but Addison swore that her sister didn't kill Carter. Addison was a pure child. She never uttered a word of a lie. So, I believed her. Even if Avery hadn't murdered her own father figure, I still felt a fog surrounding her. More on that later.

Four days after finding out about Carter's death, Mallory and I had planned all of his funeral arrangements. He was to be buried next to his parents at Everglades Cemetery, the graveyard which had Isaac's horror-infested home towering over it. His casket was wooden, with his name and birthday unscripted upon it. His wake was to be held in our family home, where I was only going to serve drinks on the rocks - just how he liked them. My aim for Carter's send off was to make everything perfect and to honor my fallen husband. Mallory and I sorted all of that heartbreaking stuff out in about four days and immediately after (on the day of Carter's funeral - October 28), I jumped straight into detective mode. I needed to distract myself. I had to.

I have a habit of getting answers to questions that I may have and the questions surrounding Carter's death were lodged right in my brain. Was it suicide? Who's 'homecoming' was it? Who killed him? I decided that my first port of call was to go back into Addison and Avery's bedroom, where he died, and see if there was any clues - anything. As I said, I needed to distract myself that morning from the fact that later that day I was going to say goodbye to my husband forever. What better way to do that than investigate his death, right?

I was already dressed in my funeral attire - a black, knee length gown, with my hair tied in a high ponytail and staggering dark heels. Mallory decided that she would help me with my investigation so she came to the bedroom with me. We arrived at the room (which I hadn't been in since I found Carter's body) at 11 AM on the perfectly sunny morning of October 28. It was incredibly eerie in there. The rope which Carter was hanging from was curled up in the corner of the room, with an unmissable police label: "EVIDENCE". I couldn't bare to look at it. I felt like bursting into tears at every waking moment but I needed to avenge Carter and bring myself some kind of peace.

Mallory and I searched the pink bedroom for over fifteen minutes without finding anything. "This is useless, Phoebe", Mallory frustrated.

"It's not, Mallory. I know I'll find something here. I just know it", I believed in my gut's intuition and actually... I was completely and utterly right.

Right behind the bed of Addison to the left of the room, which had a unicorn theme, stood an oversized stuffed animal - a unicorn. Mallory had bought that toy for the girls as a welcome home present the week prior. I felt an energy coming from that unicorn - a dark, heinous energy. I used my elongated, sleek nails to rip into the stuffed animal, stuffing flying through every angle of my sight until I found what I knew I had been looking for - real, hard cold evidence. I found a Nikon camera, which had a red light lit at the top right hand corner of it - it was recording and had been for a long time. "That's it!", exclaimed Mallory with overjoy. I didn't react. I simply took the camera into my hands, stopped it from recording and saw that it had over four days of footage on it - guaranteeing that Carter's death was on it. I forced the camera to rewind back to October 24 and see how Carter really died. I found the moment immediately.

I had to compose myself for a moment before I watched the footage. I was nervous as all hell, terrified of what I might find. I pressed play and this is what my eyes witnessed:

Carter raced, energetically, into the children's bedroom. Addison and Avery immediately hopped into their beds, as Carter, being the paternal man that he was, strolled over to the adjacent bookcase and took out Dr. Seuss' 'Oh, All The Places I'll Go' to read to Avery and Addison. As Carter was reading to the girls, he stopped and stared towards the bedroom door, which wasn't in the camera's shot. To my horror, Carter's neck was cracked without anybody touching him, right on Addison's bed. Addison started violently fitting, as Avery started crying. Something I thought would've been in reverse. A woman entered the frame of the video and wrapped a noose around Carter's neck and hung him from the ceiling fan —— Mallory. I was stunned and shocked. I stopped playing the footage and I looked over my left shoulder to find Mallory glaring at me with emotionless eyes and a pale face. She looked just like Harper did when she had her... episodes. I was standing in the room with my husband's killer - my own sister but at this point, familial betrayal was second nature to me. Mallory's eyes turned dark red as she uttered with a husky, deepened voice:

"Homecoming", as she fell to the floor.

Homecoming was the same word that Avery was writing on the wall. Who's homecoming? Before I had any time to process Mallory's statement, she woke up. But it was the real Mallory who woke. She didn't look... possessed anymore.

"What happened?", she questioned, scratching her head. I slapped her in the face and showed her the footage, to which she responded with a plea of innocence. For some reason, I believed her. I also couldn't believe that Carter's neck was snapped without any touch. That's impossible, right? Right? Mallory looked at me with such fear as she said, "I felt him controlling me".

"Him? Who?", I asked, fearing the answer. Before Mallory had time to respond, a male voice came thundering through our ear drums with a sinister:

"Missed me?"

The semi-burned Silas Maguire stood in my home, a man I saw burn in the electric chair. How was that even possible?

It wasn't. Nothing in this story was possible but somehow, it was.