Melody Burning

by Whitley Strieber

  And yet I stood on the edge barely a week ago! How stupid that seems now. How incredibly, totally stupid and self-centered. Poor little rich girl.

  Right here and now, I pledge that if I survive this I will become a better person. I go to my knees.

  “God, if I live, I will change my life.”

  Mom comes down beside me, kneeling also, and she bows her head. “Forgive me, Lord. I tried so hard, and I made mistakes.” She sobs, tries to say more, and can’t.

  “We did it together,” I say to her.

  We hug each other, and I think what I bet she is thinking, too, that ambition can make you great or it can make you evil, and if we get out of this, we are both going to change. We’ll use our ambition and my celebrity to do worthwhile things.

  There is the chugging of a helicopter again, and we both hold out our arms, begging for rescue.

  There is a sling under the chopper and a woman in it. We can see her face clearly.

  They have rescued our neighbor in 5052.

  “HELP US,” Mom shouts, “OVER HERE!” Then her voice breaks. “Oh, God, they can’t see us!”

  “We have to risk it,” I say. I go toward the doors.

  “NO!”

  The voice that comes out of me is almost primal, it’s so big and furious and powerful. “WE WILL RISK IT!”

  She closes her eyes. We both know our situation. Die here because nobody can see us, or go out on the balcony and risk burning to death or having to jump.

  For a second, I feel this other person inside me, and I discover a truth about myself—I am what I am at sixteen because I am no innocent little girl. I might be a kid, but I have power, and I feel it now.

  Mom pulls open the door to the balcony and we run out, but before we can close it, there is a ferocious wind and the whole inside of the apartment fills up with flame.

  She shuts the door, but the glass starts crazing as flames boil against it.

  There is no time, I know that now, there is no time! I run to the edge, she runs to the edge, and we lean over because there is smoke behind us—if we do not lean out, we will suffocate. It’s hot, it hurts, and it’s getting hotter fast.

  A helicopter appears. It thunders, bounces in the air fifty feet away, and comes closer—but suddenly the fire blows it back away from us. Then another one comes, higher up, and I can see a long hose dangling from it. It hovers in the smoke overhead, and there is gushing water, and I feel the coolness of the spray.

  But it misses! Most of it just goes down past us and into the street!

  Mom screams. She holds out her hands, begging, and then something else—a sling—comes down out of the smoke. It is orange, attached to a rope.

  Mom grabs it and comes toward me, but at that same moment the rope tightens and she is pulled off the balcony and into the air.

  She doesn’t have it on. She’s going to fall. Mom, Mom!

  She disappears upward into the smoke, still clinging to it.

  I drop down to the tile floor, where I used to dance, where I was supposed to prance around in that robe for the papis in another world, on another planet, in a distant age. I can’t watch Mom’s body fall. I will never forget the look on her face as she swung out, her eyes so full of pain and terror.

  But here comes the sling again! Did they save her? Is she alive? Did she not fall?

  “Mommy!”

  The sling bobs, sways, and comes closer, closer still! I reach for it, but it swings away. I reach for it, grasp it—yes! I grasp it and pull it toward me, but there is a low, hungry sound, almost as if the fire has a voice, and that voice is saying “noooo.” There is searing heat, and I throw myself to the tiles as the entire glass wall disintegrates. I am lying seven feet from the glaring, flaming maw of the blast furnace that our apartment has become.

  And the sling—the sling is a molten blob of burning plastic.

  It disappears into the smoke.

  Now it’s quiet. I am alone, me and the fire and God. “Please don’t mind if I jump, God, please don’t mind because I don’t want to burn, and I am, oh, God—I am burning—ow—ow—”

  Then—what?—hands on the balcony, hands coming up. On the edge, somebody is coming over somehow, but from where? It’s impossible.

  And then I see his blond hair and his big, pale eyes and his huge muscles, and I realize that it’s HIM! Jesus—it’s my beautiful boy! Oh my God, he’s trapped, too.

  He slithers across the railing and down, staying under the smoke and fire that are boiling out of the apartment. He lies on me, and instantly it’s cool. His shirt and pants are soaked with sweat.

  “Now, listen,” he says. “I am going to carry you. I want you to close your eyes, love.”

  “Yes, I will close my eyes.”

  “It’s going to be very hard, and we might fall.”

  “Yes, love.”

  His arms come around me. I realize that he is breathing really hard, grunting.

  He lifts me into sudden heat, terrible heat, but I force back my screams. All I can think is that my magic boy is here, and I wonder, is this a dream given to me by God? Am I really burning right now?

  I am under one of his arms, and he is carrying me like a bag of potatoes; he is lifting me. It’s getting cooler.

  He told me to keep my eyes closed, but I do not do that.

  I open them.

  At first I don’t understand what I am seeing—a long, gleaming black cliff disappears into the hazy distance.

  Then I see movement, and I realize that all those red things are fire trucks, their lights flashing, and those white pillars are streams of water hitting the lower floors of the building. There are also TV vans down there, dozens of them.

  He is carrying me down the side of the building. And he’s having trouble; I can hear him gasping, and I feel us—oh, God—I feel us starting to slip.

  Then, no, we go another floor, and I see how he’s doing it with the tips of the fingers of one hand, then with his toes, climbing the ribbing between the panels that make up the side of the building.

  We will fall. I close my eyes and pray, “God, give him a chance. He is so young. He hasn’t had much in his life, please. . . .”

  We slip and he cries out, but somehow he gets us steady again. I hear helicopters everywhere. Another rescue sling comes down, but then it goes away. We can’t get to it.

  It’s terrible to be in this, but he is so strong—his arm around me is beyond steel. I love this boy with all my heart. I want him to be rescued, to be saved—I want this with all that I am.

  He stops. He is breathing hard. His muscles are like marble, hard and suddenly cold. Sweat pours out all over him. I open my eyes. I see the side of his head and his other arm, his fingers clinging to the wall . . . and his fingers are purple.

  When he lets go, we die. I close my eyes again, trying to be as still as possible, to imagine myself as light as a feather, as light as air. I think, the first guy who ever loved me died for it, and I just want to bawl. It’s so unfair to him, it is so unfair.

  Now we are moving again. Incredibly, he is bending his legs, going down another floor somehow. Oh, it’s impossible, it must be—and then we slip. . . .

  We are falling. The wind is screaming and I am screaming. Time has stopped, and I see in his face total love. Looking at me. Total love.

  Then wham. Black. Thud.

  We are lying side by side in a rescue net. There are faces all around us, staring. Men in helmets.

  Suddenly I understand: he got us close enough to the ground to drop into a net.

  We’re alive!

  “Don’t move, now. We’re just putting the net down—don’t move. Let EMS come to you.”

  A moment later, I feel a hardness come up under me, and the men stand up. They are tall, like sentinels in their black coats.

  Then a woman in an orange smock bends over me.

  “Do you hurt anywhere, honey?”

  “I . . . my hand . . . I burned my hand.”

  They lift m
e and put me on what feels like the most comfortable bed in the world. It starts moving, and I see above me the gigantic, towering side of the Beresford with a massive plume of smoke above it. Helicopters are circling, dropping water loads onto the roof, which seems to be where most of the fire is.

  There’s a thunder of engines all around me as countless fire trucks pump water into the shattered lower floors. I’m rolled under the building marquee, and he’s beside me, also on a gurney, and then suddenly I’m wheeled away. I cry out for him.

  There are dozens of people from the fire in the hospital. A woman looks down at me. Her face is covered with soot, her hair is burned into little melted knots, but her eyes are swimming in silent tears.

  “Mel? Mel, honey?”

  “MOM!”

  We touch, our hands grasping. There’s so much between the two of us.

  Then, like a flash, she’s gone and I am no longer in a hallway. I am in a room. Time passed. How much time, I don’t know.

  I try to figure it out, but I keep drifting away. Am I drugged? Yeah, there’s an IV . . . plastic gleaming in the light. Am I burned? My face? No . . . hand. I remember, my hand was burned.

  The TV is on. There is a video playing.

  Mom’s voice: “That’s you, honey, you and Beresford.”

  Beresford? Beresford? “Mom, what—where—”

  “It’s the most incredible rescue ever recorded. He carried you forty-five stories down the side of the building. Nobody knows how he did it.”

  “Beresford! BERESFORD!”

  “Sleep now . . . sleep.”

  “No! I want him! Where is he?”

  They are silent. I see a nurse’s long hand move toward my IV. And I feel sleepy, but I don’t want to sleep. I must see him now!

  “He’s not dead—he can’t be!”

  Screaming. I hear terrible screaming. I don’t want to hear it. I try to cover my ears and scream back.

  Hands touch my face, powerful hands. I realize that it’s me doing all the screaming, and I fight for control—and then there are lips against my mouth, lips covering my screams.

  Deep breaths, one after the other. I feel long hair drifting along my cheeks. I see his face, those big, wonderful eyes. Oh my God, he is alive!

  I cry harder than I have ever cried in my life as Beresford wraps his big arms around me. I just sink into his amazing strength, so happy to be alive and with him. It seems like a miracle that we’re both still part of the world, and Mom, too. I hear music in my soul.

  He isn’t there long, though, and I can’t tell if he’s leaving on his own or being taken away; there are so many people in here. I see uniforms and scream after him, but he’s gone just like that, absorbed in the riot.

  A warm feeling spreads through me, and I shout, “No, NO,” but I can’t fight it. It’s total peace, and I know they have hit me with a knockout punch of some sort of sedation.

  But my heart keeps screaming, screaming for him.

  Then I’m floating. I don’t want to float, but I just can’t stop myself. He disappears into a cloud of sleep, and I fear that this time, for sure, he’s gone forever.

  EPILOGUE

  More people watched the blurry figure crawling slowly down the side of the burning building than watched the first landing on the moon. As Beresford’s impossible struggle unfolded, an entire world stopped and looked to their TVs at home, in bars, in store windows, on planes, everywhere there was television. And then came the last, perilous jump, the boy and girl like two rag dolls flopping out of the sheets of smoke and onto the huge inflatable cushion the firefighters had deployed.

  “They’re being rushed to the hospital. Nobody knows their condition.”

  Everyone waited, millions upon millions of people from Los Angeles to London to Tokyo.

  The director of emergency services at Downtown Receiving Hospital came to read a statement.

  “One hundred and fifty-three emergency cases have been accepted at this hospital from a structural fire at the Beresford Downtown Apartments. We have eighty patients in critical condition with burns, and they are being relocated to hospitals throughout the region.”

  Reporters yelled about Melody and the boy, but the doctor still didn’t have any information.

  It turned into a siege, with cameras, reporters, news anchors, bloggers, and columnists all waiting for the answer.

  Finally, the doctors were sure of themselves. Melody McGrath and the unidentified young man who had rescued her were alive but in critical condition. Melody had a broken leg, a burned hand, and internal injuries, and the unidentified young man had second-degree burns, was suffering from smoke inhalation, and had a dislocated shoulder.

  Beresford was in a charity ward with five other homeless patients. Each day, he got a little better.

  Melody drifted in and out of consciousness. She was aware of pain, then of painlessness, then of a deep loneliness that filled her eyes with tears.

  She struggled with infection and a heart murmur, and three days after the fire, the doctors told her mother that she had a cardiac infection.

  Her mom stayed with her day and night, sleeping in a chair, listening to the heart monitor, praying and worrying and resolving again and again to repair her relationship with her daughter.

  Her dad came and made a promise to be in her life more, and she hoped it was true.

  Down in the charity ward, there came a day when two caseworkers from Social Services arrived, and Beresford was released into their custody.

  Eleven days after she had been admitted, Melody found herself staring at what at first she thought was a fog bank, but then realized was a ceiling.

  Was there smoke? What was happening?

  “Honey?”

  “Beresford. Please, Mom, where is he?”

  Hilda was embarrassed because she had been so concerned about Melody’s state that she hadn’t thought about him for days. When she finally called patient services, she was told that he had recovered. “He’s fine,” she said. “I’m sure he’ll come see you when he can.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He’s in a group home.”

  Melody was heartbroken, a devastated angel lying in her ever-changing sea of flowers, hollow-eyed and silent.

  “You did this, didn’t you?”

  “What?”

  “You got rid of him. You had him sent away. Oh, Mom, where is he? I need him!”

  “I didn’t. I didn’t do—” And now Hilda realized her mistake. She hadn’t done anything. She’d just let Beresford get sucked up in the system.

  She had often been outraged at this complicated, talented daughter of hers. But now, and perhaps for the first time, she was outraged at herself. Ashamed, really.

  “I’ll find him. I’ll bring him back to you, Mel.”

  In these terrible weeks watching her daughter hover between life and death, Hilda Cholworth learned a lot of things, about love and how it must give—and also forgive. She had seen Mel glow when Beresford came in the room, a joy that she herself had never known.

  Social Services had just been doing its job. They had no idea that they had inspired an attack from a one-woman army.

  Hilda learned about the fostering process. She hired a lawyer, fired him, hired another. She went before judges, shuffled papers, signed documents, sucked her plastic cigarette, and worked far into the night in her cluttered hotel room near the hospital. No matter what it took, she intended to fulfill her promise to Mel.

  It turned out that Beresford was in a group home in West-lake. He wasn’t a prisoner, not exactly, but he wasn’t free to come and go, either. She talked to the manager of the home, who e-mailed her the house rules. She bit her cigarette to pieces and fumed.

  Then she found a new judge, who was willing to listen to a crazy story. By gently questioning Mel, Hilda had discovered enough to track down Beresford’s identity. His name was Robert Langdon. His father had been murdered, almost certainly by Luther Szatson, when he discovered that dangerous viola
tions were being intentionally built into the Beresford.

  Before the fire, Mel had been a rising star, just beginning to shine. Now she was a mega superstar. Her concert recording had led to three top positions on Billboard, her downloads were slowing iTunes, and the checks were beyond belief. Suddenly, they were looking at a seven-figure income. Monthly.

  Hilda told herself it wasn’t success that made her so grateful to Mel. She finally felt love in its true and unselfish form. In her mind, there had crystallized one thought: make it up to Mel. Give her what she wants.

  So now, at last, she was ready. With Mel waiting and the entire world watching, Hilda turned onto the street where the group home was located. Ten carloads of paparazzi followed.

  She strode down the block, pushing reporters and camera crews aside. She marched up onto the weathered porch of the big old house, where she was greeted by a hard-faced man backed by two large teenagers and what looked to her like a Great Dane with filed teeth.

  “You need to leave him alone. Let him get his bearings.”

  “I want to hear him tell me that.” She shouted, “Beresford, dammit, get out here!”

  The manager stepped in front of the door. “Ma’am—”

  “Don’t you ma’am me, little man.”

  The dog started barking, a series of great, roaring woofs. She glared him down, then stepped across the porch, brushed past them all, and entered the house.

  “Beresford! Beresford, it’s Mom. Where are you?”

  Silence. To her right, there was an empty living room; to her left, a family room where the TV was on. A CNN reporter was yammering into the camera about Melody.

  “BERESFORD!”

  The manager had come in behind her. “Ma’am, this is private property!”

  She marched upstairs and went from bedroom to bedroom.

  She found him about where she’d expected to, hiding in the back of a closet with the door closed.

  His big eyes looked up at her, full of fear but also the power she’d seen in him before. This was an unusual person, but not a weak one. In fact, he was incredibly strong. This kid had raised himself in the damn walls of a building. He was resourceful and highly intelligent.