by J L Bryan
“Like I said, she didn't tell me where she was going. But she had a couple of paperback books with her. She was reading up on the Great Chicago Fire.”
“Did she happen to mention anything about wanting to go to Chicago?” I asked. I'd heard of the famous Chicago fire of 1871, but I was fuzzy on the details. The city had been devastated, but I wasn't sure how many had died. The only thing I really knew was the story about Mrs. O'Leary's cow knocking over a lantern and starting the fire, which sounded more like folklore than fact.
“She said it sounded like a fun city,” Brent said. “Which seemed like a strange thing to say in the middle of reading about it burning to the ground, and people dying in the fire. She asked if I'd ever been, which I haven't. Maybe she wanted to go there. Maybe she was reading up on it for school. I didn't ask.”
“Yeah, why start faking an interest in her now?” Michael said.
Brent looked at the whirling fire outside his windows. “I did talk about the Chicago fire with her. It's something we all know about, everybody who fights the wildfires. They studied it during World War II, too, for the firebombings of cities in Germany and Japan. The military wanted to recreate that perfect storm of destruction, and they did.”
“You don't just mean Chicago,” Michael said. “You mean the whole event.”
Brent nodded. “The Great Chicago Fire is the part of it everyone remembers, but it was just part of a pattern of fires that erupted all over that day. Some of the worst wildfires in history. There were fires in Michigan and Wisconsin like you wouldn't believe, wiping out logging camps and towns. Old-growth pines a hundred feet high exploding like bombs. You had a constant dry wind hitting forests that were already so dried out the rivers were barely running. Whirlwinds of fire the size of tornadoes picked up and threw houses and train cars like they were toys; fire devils, those are called. I've seen a few out there. They only come out of the big fires. And when you've got one of them rushing at you, picking up and burning everything in its path...well, that's about the most terrifying thing in the world.”
“I'm sure,” I said, looking out the window. I couldn't see anything but fire and smoke out there now. “What are the odds that one will come up that canyon, grab this trailer, and throw it aside like one of those houses or rail cars?”
“It's possible,” he said.
“Okay, great. Let's get out of here. Michael?” I moved toward the door.
“Come on.” Michael grabbed his father's arm, pretty roughly. “We're going.”
“I'm not,” Brent said. “You said you'd leave me alone if I answered your questions. This is my time. This is how I'm choosing to go. You can give me that much.”
“No,” Michael said. “I'm not giving you anything. Not even that.” He pulled harder, and his dad stumbled forward, losing his balance on his metal-stick leg. Michael caught him and stood him up. “Get moving, or I'm carrying you out.”
“Don't try it,” Brent said.
“If I have to knock you out first, I will.” Michael grabbed for him.
Brent threw the first punch, his fist cracking into his son's jaw. Michael looked stunned more than hurt, though the impact had been fairly loud.
Then Michael hit back, ramming a punch into his father's solar plexus. I could hear the air whoosh out of Brent's lungs, just before the middle-aged man toppled backward. There was no one to catch him this time; fortunately for him, he toppled back into the sagging couch, which was a shorter fall than the dirty carpet below, and a less gross place to land, too.
“Now, come on.” Michael started toward him, holding out a hand.
“Just leave me alone!” Brent snapped. “Leave me here.”
“Why? So Michael can be stuck with this memory for the rest of his life?” I asked. “If you want to die, pick another time. Not now.”
“Now was working fine for me,” Brent said.
“Sorry to ruin your fun,” I said. “But we have to go. Where are your truck keys?”
He gestured at the cluttered coffee table. I knocked over a few empty beer cans on my way to finding the Chevy keys.
“Last chance to walk out under your own steam,” Michael said. “Or I can crack this lamp over your skull and drag you out. Your choice.”
“I'm coming. You brats.” Brent heaved himself to his feet, waving me off when I tried to help him up. “And I had a perfectly decent death lined up.”
“Yeah, if not for us meddling kids,” I said. Then I stepped out the door, ready for some fresher, cooler air.
Unfortunately, there wasn't much of that waiting outside—just more acrid smoke, and that horrible rushing, roaring sound of the wildfire, louder and closer than ever.
Flames had spread to the weeds under the trailer, scorching it from below, making me think of a cauldron or a spit roast over open flames. I could even see glowing red between the wooden steps as I descended them to the weedy gravel earth.
“You guys need to hurry!” I yelled over my shoulder. The fire was already spreading around the trailer park, helped along by hot ash that fell like burning snow flurries from the sky. I yelped when one of them touched the back of my hand.
Fire seemed to be rising on every side of me. The window boxes on the next trailer over were in flames, as though the fire flowers from Super Mario World had come to life.
I wrenched open the door to the old S-10 and climbed into the driver's seat, then turned the key in the ignition to get things going. Brent was just hobbling down the wooden steps, Michael behind him as if to make sure the man didn't turn back.
The truck wouldn't start. I tried turning the key again. And again.
I screamed at it and punched the dashboard, which didn't help.
If we left on foot, we wouldn't be going back the way we came; that way was full of burning trees now.
“It's not starting!” I shouted, leaning out toward Brent as he hobbled toward me.
“Scoot over, kid,” Brent grumbled.
“I'm telling you, the ignition—”
“Is moody. Like a woman. Now scoot over.”
I glared at him but scooted away, toward the passenger side of the bench seat. Brent heaved himself up to the driver's side where I'd been.
Michael climbed in through the shotgun door, which left me stuck in the middle between the two of them. Not great. I hoped they didn't get into another fistfight.
“Can you get this heap started or not?” Michael asked.
“You gotta know how to touch her to get her going,” Brent said, reaching under the steering wheel and tossing me a grin. “Just like a woman.”
“So glad to be pinned in here with you,” I said.
Brent twisted a couple of exposed wires together. The engine finally turned over and started rumbling, though it sounded like the old truck had a pretty severe case of bronchitis, choking and gagging on itself.
We started off along the trailer park's lumpy, cheaply paved road. Clumps of weeds alongside the road were already burning, as were spindly trees around the edges of the trailer park. Flames burned on some of the trailer roofs, too.
We drove through the narrow alleys and lanes of the park. Little fires rose everywhere. The sky was a pulsing, glowing red, and that wasn't from the sun beginning to rise. If the sun had been coming up, we wouldn't have seen it through the smoke. It was probably too early for that, anyway.
Flames lined the road into town, with trees burning on both sides. We drove down the center of the road, away from the burning limbs. One fiery limb broke loose and slammed into the passenger side of the truck, cracking Michael's window as it exploded into a hundred burning cinders. Michael recoiled a little at the impact.
Suddenly, I was glad to be riding in the middle of the seat. My heart was pounding; any normal person would have been scared, I would think, traveling in a rickety old truck on a road that was being quickly swallowed by a growing wildfire.
Little tongues of flame rained onto the windshield, turning to gray ash as they burned out. I would have been tempted to use
the wipers if I'd been driving, but I guess they wouldn't have accomplished much.
Then a whole wall of fire billowed out toward us from Michael's side of the road.
“Wind's picking up,” Brent commented, as flames washed the side of the car. Michael drew back against me.
“Not enough to create fire devils, though, right?” I asked.
“Hard to say,” Brent replied.
Something about the idea was extra terrifying for me—fire that not only consumes, but picks up and throws entire buildings like some kind of demonic giant? That was beyond my worst nightmare. I hadn't known such phenomena existed.
It did feel like the wildfire was an almost conscious, actively hostile entity out there—roaring, smashing, destroying. Feeding.
As more burning debris clattered against the truck, I began to wonder if Anton Clay was somewhere nearby, controlling the fire, making it reach out toward us.
I looked into the next gout of flames that swelled out from the side of the road, as though I expected to see his face outside the window, laughing at us while we burned.
We weren't actually burning, not yet, but it felt like the flames were getting larger and more aggressive as we drove. My clothes were damp with sweat from the heat; we were all sweating, but we didn't dare open the windows and expose ourselves to the burning debris and falling cinders.
Michael's father drove at an easy pace, not racing down the road with the pedal to the metal. This was frustrating to me, as someone who wanted to get out of that area as fast as possible, but it enabled him to avoid fallen, burning limbs that littered the road. I don't know whether this was a deliberate strategy on his part, or if the truck just couldn't go much faster.
We drove onward, past walls of flames rising higher and closer on either side.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Clay
It was not truly morning, not quite yet, but the sky glowed red. It always did above these modern cities where it never grew truly dark.
The world had changed during his long imprisonment in the soil, at the site of his death, where he'd once set the fire that took down his beloved Elizabeth and her family. Pieces of them remained with him, broken fragments of spirits held within his soul.
The others were there, too, a piece of each person he'd managed to kill while trapped in place. These were perhaps smaller and fainter than those he'd taken while he was alive, but he could hear their voices and relish their agony as they burned within him.
In life, Clay had once seen a production of Marlowe's Dr. Faustus at the Savannah Theatre. He now felt as though he were living out that play—but he was not the famous doctor who'd foolishly sold his soul for a life of power and personal amusement.
Instead, he was Mephistopheles, collecting the souls of the living. Or perhaps he was Lucifer, the ultimate recipient of the souls collected by unholy bargains. Clay understood now that each one strengthened him.
He hadn't always understood that. For the longest time, he'd existed in a slumber, dreaming the same dreams again and again, The presence of a woman would stir him, especially those with children, their fertility and maternal energy reminding him of Elizabeth. Then he would watch, and listen, letting his hunger grow until he could resist no more.
Even during those times when he was roused, however, he'd still been caught in the same loop of actions, like a music box that could do no more than repeat the same song every time. He would relish in the killing, the burning, the death...then, at last, spent, he would shrink away into the earth, slumbering among his long-buried remains, his own bones and ash.
Now things were different. Now he was fully awake, and he was free.
The ancient wisdom of the ring, the old spirits, had given him that. And they promised him so much more.
Still, the old familiar hunger was rising. Being flesh again had only increased his appetite. When he'd stopped for food at some awful eatery deep in Oklahoma, he'd watched a tall, curvy young mother at another table feeding her infant. He'd had to fight the urge to follow them out and burn them both; he'd imagined the harmony of their screams as the fires of his soul consumed their soft, innocent flesh.
He'd held himself back that time.
This time, things were different.
Clay had noticed the woman in the Cubs cap when he'd stopped for gas. He'd been shivering in the freezing wind as he filled Michael's antique truck with fuel—one of many skills for which he depended on Melissa's captive mind, the reason he needed to keep her at least partially awake inside of him, even though she mentally kicked and screamed and had to be crushed into submission.
She was a bulky, thick woman, which meant she would burn well. Two kids had been strapped into the seats in the back of her van, a boy of six or seven who cried and kicked the whole time she was fueling, and a girl of four who'd stared at a tablet in her lap. Both of the children were thick and soft, like their mother; the three of them, he knew, would burn beautifully.
So he had followed them home, and now stood in their back yard, inside of their privacy fence, watching them through their bright, warmly lit windows.
They moved like silent actors on a stage, eating dinner, the mother and boy yelling at each other, the little girl ultimately growing frightened at this conflict and running away up the stairs, crying. The mother followed the little girl upstairs to yell at her, too, perhaps for running away or crying. Clay could not be sure, since he heard nothing.
However, the woman's passionate anger at her children aroused him, so much so that he wished he'd chosen a male body for himself so he could fully express his desire. Melissa's body had many advantages—youth, speed, beauty, even quite a bit of strength—but it certainly had limitations.
Perhaps he could have moved to another body, but he wasn't quite ready to chance it. He'd barely made the jump from Michael to Melissa. Back then, he'd been as weak as a fledgling, after being cut down by the Hessian horseman's ghost, a turn he'd certainly not expected.
Crossing over to Melissa's form, he'd momentarily found himself exposed on all sides, vulnerable in ways he'd never felt.
Those enormous nameless primordial spirit-things had moved in particularly close then, in that interval between his possession of Michael and of Melissa, closer than they'd ever been before, their vast unholy jaws clacking in the darkness that lay beyond the land of the living.
Then he'd been safe again, wrapped in living flesh that seemed to protect him against the world of spirits. And the soul fragments he'd brought with him helped restore his power and eventually to gain the upper hand in controlling Melissa's body.
But he had no weakness anymore. His most recent acquisition ensured that—he was fantastically energized by the girl phantom's fiery ghost, her soul like a red-hot coal searing him deliciously from the inside.
He had never captured a dead soul like that before, but new horizons had opened to him since moving out of his body. In Michael's form, he'd begun take time and learn what he could about the dark arts, necromancy, and the powers and abilities sometimes ascribed to the souls of the dead. He'd continued these studies using Melissa's eyes and hands.
True inspiration had come when he'd first encountered the ancient Phoenician ring. He'd immediately felt the powers lurking within; they'd seemed to call to him, tempting him to greater aspirations than he'd ever held.
The ring had enabled him to find the girl, whose high energy had combined with the horrific circumstances of her death to create a powerful spirit.
Powerful, but aimless. Clay had found an aim for her, a purpose for all that power.
Now he felt a sweet intoxication as he watched the woman put her children to bed, snuffing out the light in each room as she went.
“Amil,” he whispered, and he felt the stirring of his other captive soul, his strong slave who could appear as an innocent boy or hideous reptilian monster. Both forms had their uses. “Prepare to grab her for me.”
He felt a touch of reluctance, even resentment, on the part
of the captive boy-soul, but it did not matter. The ring made the boy-ghost powerful, but also made him the servant of whoever wielded the ring.
Clay waited a bit longer, watching the curvy woman unbutton her blouse, make some tea, and sit on the couch in front of the television. Everyone in this future world seemed to spend their waking moments staring at one screen or another, basking in moving pictures and artificial light.
He circled around to the front of the house, then paused to check his reflection in a dark window. He pouted, trying to make Melissa's freckled face look as pathetic as possible.
He didn't find the look convincing, so slapped Melissa's face a few times. In the dark window, he couldn't discern whether this made much difference.
So he raked Melissa's nails down the side of her face, digging in deep, relishing the feeling as the skin split and the flesh tore. Every fleshly sensation was a delight to him, pleasure or pain.
Once his current venture was complete, and Ellie was dealt with properly—in a way that enabled Clay to keep a large, juicy slab of her soul for himself—he would be free to indulge and indulge, and his powers would be immense. He could play with Melissa's body until it died from the extremes of his depravity, and simply take another for himself, and another, and another.
Clay leaned closer to inspect Melissa's reflection. The blood was trickling down the side of her face, impossible to miss, or to mistake.
He ascended the brick steps to the front door. He rapped his knuckles on the glass, hard and fast, trying to convey panic. He knew he could ring the doorbell—that information leaked out of Melissa's bound and gagged mind, so common to her world that it was almost an instinctive reflex—but he held back, not wanting to wake the children.
Victims were easier to take one at a time.
The woman looked out through a small window in the front door, a suspicious look on her face, until she saw Melissa's blood. Then her eyes widened, her mouth formed a surprised “O” shape, and she reached for the lock.
The deadbolt thunked as it slid open.
“You poor child!” the woman said, swinging open the outer glass door. She looked from Melissa's bloody face to the suburban street in front of the house, as if searching for the assailant. “Who did this to you?”