by Ike Hamill
“Go faster, Nicky,” Eric said, awkwardly shifting the bundle in his arms. There was still smoke coming off of it and Eric was blinking it away from his eyes.
“Sorry,” she said. Nicky tried not to look around as they crossed the barn floor. They had tried to cover up their activities, but the ghosts were still there. At the far end, they ducked through the hole where the drowned man had crashed through. Eric struggled to get through the opening. Part of the blanket fell and fresh flames burst out from the corpse of the monster. He beat the flames back with his hands and then secured the bundle again.
“Whatever is burning in the house, it’s making this burn too,” Eric said.
Nicky froze, pointing the flashlight at the blanket while she tried to make sense of what he had said.
“Just go, Nicky. This thing is going to burn.”
She turned and hastened across the overgrown field. The grass was wet and it was easy to see where they should go. There were no footprints, but the grass was parted in a way that clearly showed where Eddie and Brett had gone before them. Up ahead, where the field transitioned to dense woods, she thought they would have a problem. Nicky pushed low branches out of the way and ducked under. Eric was panting and grunting behind her.
The disturbed leaves on the ground were darker and stretched out in a line. She could practically see Eddie shuffling his lazy feet along as he and Brett carried what had remained of the Trader. It crossed her mind that they might not be on the right trail at all. It was completely possible that something else—a deer maybe?—had left these tracks and she was following a false lead. She almost opened her mouth to say that to Eric and then she thought better of it. He needed to feel like he had completed this mission. He was practically obsessed. The best way to help him might be to play along.
When the path led over some rocks, she cast around with the light until she found it on the other side. When they had to climb over a fallen tree, Nicky steadied Eric’s arm until he was safely on the other side. Heat was baking off of the blanket, but Eric didn’t complain.
It felt like they had been walking forever when Nicky realized that there wasn’t going to be a way to trick Eric into thinking he had accomplished his goal. He was going to keep going until they found the grave that Eddie and Brett had said they dug.
“We’ve been too far,” she said. “There’s no way they would have come this far.”
“We’re almost there,” Eric said. “I know it.”
“You don’t,” Nicky said, letting the flashlight drop. She couldn’t see his eyes. It was easier to tell him the truth when she didn’t have to look at his face. “I know how important this is, but we’re probably going to have to just dump that thing somewhere and call it good.”
“Nicky…”
“No, Eric. This has gotten so out of hand. It’s absurd that we’re even discussing it.”
“Nicky.”
“What?”
“Just a little farther. I promise. If we don’t find it, we’ll do it your way.”
With a sigh, she let her shoulders fall and turned back around. Lifting the light again, she saw that the trail of dark leaves led up over another hill. Wind shook the branches overhead and drops began to fall. For a moment, she held out hope that it was just water shaking from the trees.
The rain started really coming down, drowning that idea.
Just over the hill, she saw bootprints in the mud. They could have easily been from someone else, but Nicky was sure that Eddie and Brett had made them. The trail zigzagged down the hill and then was lost in more low branches.
“Down there,” Eric said, panting.
# # #
Turned sideways, she skidded down the hill as the rain came down harder. She pointed the flashlight back at the bank so Eric could see where he was going. When he slipped, he went down on his side, propped up by his elbow. Before Nicky could reach him, he had struggled back to his feet.
“We’re almost there,” he said.
Nicky didn’t bother to argue that he couldn’t possibly know.
Pushing through low branches of pine and cedar, her flashlight found the bank of a pond. She pointed the light out across the water’s surface. It was jumping and boiling in the falling rain.
Eric shouted to be heard over the sound. “Over here!”
She pointed her flashlight at his feet so she wouldn’t blind him and then he gestured with a toe towards what he had spotted.
The mound of loose dirt was being washed away by the rain. Near it, she saw a boot print like the one from the hill. This one was filled with muddy water.
Eric crouched down low before he set down the blanket bundle. Where his shirt was clinging to his chest, it was black. For a moment, she thought that dye from the blanket had seeped into the shirt, but there were holes in it as well.
He turned away from her before she could get a good look. Eric was snapping a stout branch from the trunk of a pine tree. Gripping it in both hands, he hunched over the muddy grave and began stabbing at the dirt, pushing the soil to either side.
“Eric, are you burned?” she asked.
“What?”
When he turned, his eyes shone in the flashlight’s beam. For a moment, they were glowing rubies, shining red in the light.
“Your shirt,” she said, pointing.
When he pulled at it, chunks of the fabric stayed plastered to his chest. The rest of it tore away, leaving a charred hole in the shirt.
“It’s fine,” he said. He returned to clawing at the ground with the branch. When the end hit something solid, he dropped to his knees to dig the mud with this bare hands. Nicky moved closer with the light. She wasn’t pointing it at the hole. She had the flashlight trained on his chest where the cloth was burned into his skin. In the places where the rain washed the ash away, his skin was red, but looked like it had healed over already. It was old scar tissue that the hole in the shirt revealed.
“Eric,” she said.
The look on his face drove her back a pace. Anger and madness seemed to light him up from within.
“What? We’re almost finished.”
She stammered as she tried to form the question. “How… How did you get those scars on your chest?”
Nicky struggled to think of the last time she had seen his bare chest. There was a trip down to the ocean when they had gone swimming, but that was years before. She had never seen scars as bad as his. His chest was criss-crossed with bands of shiny skin that barely covered areas riddled with pock marks. It was a web of trauma, burned into his flesh. One of the scars stretched up to his neck. The collar of his shirt just covered it.
“It’s a burn,” he said. Eric turned his attention back to the hole. With a few more scrapes, the bucket was revealed. He pulled the handle, freeing it from the shallow grave. Eric set it to the side before he pulled the metal lid from it.
The wind flared and more rain pounded down on them.
“Why are you taking it out?” she yelled.
“They all have to be together,” he said.
Her light was still pointed at the bucket. She leaned forward to see what the light was reflecting off of. The rain was beating down the ashes and she saw a handful of coins. On top of one was a tooth. It was a molar with metal fillings on the top and in the side.
There was something weird about the collection of coins and the tooth in the ashes, but she couldn’t put a specific name to the weirdness.
“Eric?” she called. Turning the beam towards him, she saw his hunched shape through the rain. Eric was peeling the blanket away from the remains that it enclosed. She didn’t know exactly why he would want to unwrap the bundle so far away from where it had to go. It occurred to her that maybe he wanted the rain to put out the fire before he tried to lift it again.
If that was his idea, it was a horrible one.
As soon as the blanket revealed what it contained, the flames consuming the monster’s body flared back to life. The orange fire blasted upwards, lighting up th
e shore of the pond. Eric took a step backwards with a shocked scream.
Fire wrapped around his head and hands.
“Eric!” she screamed. Dropping the flashlight, Nicky ran towards him. The heat coming from him and the monster was unimaginable. Flinching back from it, she raised her hands and arms to shield her face and eyes. Eric’s hands flailed, trying to put out the fire that was consuming his face.
“The pond!” she screamed, hoping that he might hear her over his own yells.
# # #
Nicky stood, feeling utterly helpless as Eric waved his arms and tried to beat away the flames. She circled to his left, trying to get an angle so she could push him into the water. Even several paces away, the heat and light made the skin on her face tighten, like it was going to split apart and wither away. As Nicky rushed forward, she imagined that her hair would go up first, lighting her like a human candle.
Eric ran from her. Splashing into the shallows of the cold pond, sense returned to him and he threw himself down into the water.
The light was nearly snuffed and the sound of boiling water bubbled in the dark. Nicky could see an amber glow coming from the surface though. The monster’s body was still flickering with flame as well. Nicky thought about how the Trader’s flames had spread telekinetically to the drowned man. She thought about how the burning of the house had burned the monster. Now, those same flames had spread to Eric. They were connected.
Moving fast against the heat, Nicky doubled the thick blanket over the flickering lump of flesh that had been the monster. At the same time, Eric’s flame diminished and he broke the surface gasping in a breath. He wasn’t completely out. She could see a faint glow from him. The water still hissed where it touched him.
Nicky glanced back to where she had dropped the light. It was pointed at the bucket. Ignoring the heat, she grabbed the ends of the blanket and dragged it backwards, covering the distance to the hole. Eric was under water again. The flames were slowly regaining their momentum. Nicky dragged faster.
She kicked the flashlight out of the way and pulled the monster’s remains up and over the lip until they settled into the bottom of the hole. Moving fast, she scrambled to the bucket and then dumped that on top and tucked the corners of the blanket over everything.
She had to point the flashlight at the water to see Eric. He was nearly snuffed, but his glow was creeping back again.
“Please,” she whispered.
Dropping to her knees, Nicky pushed big handfuls of dirt on top of the grave to suffocate the flames. Between panting breaths, it sounded like the chaos in the water had diminished. Nicky didn’t stop to look. Instead, she dug from the hillside with Eric’s stick, pulling more and more soggy dirt onto the pile as the rain tried to wash it away. Her digging undermined a flat rock perched on the hill and Nicky doubled her effort. The rock was about the size of a manhole cover—she figured it would make a good cap against the erosion.
An image of the Trader popped into her mind. His greed when he took the pizza from her had been unmistakable. At the time, she thought that he had coveted the thing because it was of her world and not from his. Now, she wondered if that was true. Maybe he had wanted it because it was something that she had produced. In a way, it contained a part of her—the sweat from her brow and the energy from her hands.
Staggering to her feet, she worked her scratched and torn fingers around the edge of the rock.
“Here’s another pizza for you, motherfucker,” she grunted as she pulled.
The rock was way heavier than she had thought. In her arms and chest, her muscles strained and tendons pulled against their moorings. The rock teetered for a moment, unwilling to relinquish its agreement with gravity, and then it began to fall.
When it hit the grave, the thump echoed in her chest. Nicky fell backwards into the bank. She rolled over and clawed towards the light, picking it up and pointing it towards the water.
The rain still jumped off the surface. Amidst that chaos, she saw no sign of Eric.
“Eric!”
Holding her breath, she clicked off the light and searched the dark for his glow.
The night closed in around her. Nicky’s heartbeat raced as she imagined all the things that might be creeping towards her in the darkness, but she forced herself to keep the light off so she could search for any sign that he was still burning.
In the darkness, something breached the surface of the water with a desperate gasp.
Nicky’s trembling hands almost dropped the light as she fumbled with the switch. Clicking it on, a nightmare greeted her eyes. Through the rain, across the choppy surface of the pond, Eric was emerging from the water. Singed hair still hung in clumps from parts of his scalp. In others, the flesh had been consumed by the flames. A patch of bone glittered pink on his forehead, just above the place where his eyebrow should have been. One ear had been eaten by fire. The other hung at a strange angle.
His eyes reflected the light with the same amber glow that she had seen before. Nicky had the idea that if she turned off the light again, she would see that they were emitting light. She had no intention of testing that theory.
His nose was mostly intact, although his nostrils now sat higher and were a little wider than she remembered. The lips had shrunk back, exposing white, hungry teeth.
“Eric?” she asked.
Nicky immediately regretted it. The sound of her voice focused his eyes on her. As his shoulders broke the surface of the water, Nicky pushed herself backwards, squirming through the mud to put some distance between herself and this thing.
“Levi,” he said.
Her lips had gone numb and her jaw trembled. “Whuh-what?”
He didn’t say it again. Inch by inch, he continued to emerge from the water. Bits of charred clothes were stuck to his skin in places. Some flesh was burned away and in other places it appeared that the burns were decades old and had already healed into disastrous scars like the ones she had seen on his chest.
Years later, Nicky would have a conversation with a therapist who would say, “This is your rock bottom, Nicole. This is the point from which everything is up.” She would laugh at that. Nicky recognized her rock bottom as it was happening. It was the point at which she made the decision to drag herself up the muddy bank and leave Eric behind. From that point in her life, everything would be up.
# # #
Nicky broke through the tree limbs, back into the field, soaked and streaked from head to toe in mud. She staggered through the tall grass and had to make a wide sweep away from the flames. Her skin still felt seared, so she couldn’t get too close to the burning police car. The sight of it solved a mystery. Through the woods, as she gasped for air and forced herself to keep running, she had heard the explosion. Now she understood—the police car had kept burning even after Eric had dragged the monster from the rear seat. Eventually, the flames had consumed it.
She didn’t like that word—consumed. It gave the fire a mouth and hunger. Skirting the flames, she wanted to believe that they were just a chemical reaction with no evil intent.
Nicky stayed at the edge of the field and then crossed the ditch before climbing up to the road. The flashlight swung from one side of the road to the other. Her body shivered uncontrollably every few seconds. The rain had nearly stopped, but she was soaked and it couldn’t be much more than forty degrees.
Nicky was almost too tired to care. She had shriveled up into a place deep inside herself. The road, stretching out in front of her, was nothing more than a boring movie projected on a distant screen. Her numb fingers dropped the flashlight as her feet continued to shuffle. The edge between the road and the shoulder was sandy. When her feet encountered the lip of the pavement, she veered slightly right. When she slogged through grass, she veered back to the left.
The flashlight beam was chasing her, casting her shadow large against the trees in the distance. It also seemed to be strobing red. Nicky’s weary eyes didn’t care. Even as the shadow shrank, came into focus
, and then disappeared as the light passed her, Nicky continued to shuffle.
“Jeezum Crow,” a voice said. “What are you… Nicole? What are you doing out here?”
The answer that came to her lips wasn’t planned. It just rolled out from her burning lungs.
“It was raining so I tried to take a shortcut. I guess I got lost.”
“Was that your flashlight… Never mind, young lady, get in the car.”
She stood there, looking at the way the red light strobed against the trees.
“Nicole, I’m on my way to a fire. Get in if you want a ride.”
The door hit her hip as it swung open. Nicky moved around it, gripping it to find her way, and slumped down into the seat. The window went up with the hum of an electric motor as Nicky pulled the door shut.
“You’re soaked,” he said, hitting the gas.
Nicky glanced over. It was Mr. Del Rossi. In the winter, he came into Dottie’s on Thursdays to get sandwiches for his poker night. The order was always the same, so she usually made them before he even showed up. On the turkey club, Nicky would write mustard messages on the toast before she assembled the sandwich.
“There’s a fire in town. They’re calling in everyone. I can’t drop you home, but I can get as close as Elm Street.”
“That’s fine,” she mumbled. “Thanks.”
“With this rain, at least we don’t have to worry too much about it spreading. I always say that one good fire could wipe out half of the damn town.”
Nicky was watching the way the red light from his dashboard swept across the road in front of them. She was waiting for it to light up the eyes of something coming out of the woods. After clawing her way up the muddy bank and then making it to the top of the hill over the pond, she had wanted to look back. A voice inside her said that Eric—or Levi—would stay there. He would be bound to that little grave that Eddie and Brett had started and he had finished. It was easy to imagine him parking himself on that rock and staying with the remains of the Trader and the monstrous offspring.
Eric was connected somehow to those two. The scars on his chest had whispered of a story that she had never heard. Eric had told her about what had happened down in Ohio. At the time, he had been so raw and weary that she hadn’t pressed him for more, but there had been more. She was certain that he had left part of the story out. Maybe the untold story included how he had gotten those terrible scars.