Only a few blocks from home now. When he arrived, he would take a hot shower then grab an early night. He started a new job in the morning. A good job with real prospects. Prospects were something Nathan had never had before. He was looking forward to the challenge.
Suddenly, somewhere nearby a woman screamed.
At first, Nathan thought somebody just had their television set on too loud. Sound had a way of carrying long distances on quiet nights like this. Then he realized that the scream had an awful, chilling life-like quality about it that cut effortlessly through the night air. It wasn't the hampered, muffled tone that issued from a television set.
As he listened, the scream came again, this time punctuated with words.
“My baby! Please, somebody save my baby!”
There was an element of terror in the voice which made Nathan’s blood run cold. Somebody was in trouble. Serious, life-threatening trouble.
The screams seemed to be coming from somewhere up ahead. He broke into a jog, his running shoe-clad feet padding softly on the tarmac and his head flicking anxiously from side to side as he sought out the source of the screams.
Up ahead, there was a small knot of people huddled together in the road. They were pointing and looking anxiously up at something. A house, set back in a little cul-de-sac. Nathan could hear the low murmur of panicked conversation.
As he approached, Nathan saw that the front door of the house everyone was looking at was wide open. A small child was sobbing on the pavement outside, and there was a woman with long dark hair dressed in a nightgown. She was trying to get to the open door, but was being held back by two burly men. The woman was frantic.
“But Emma is still in there! My baby! She's upstairs! I couldn't get to her, I could only reach Josh. I have to get her out! I HAVE TO GET HER OUT!”
They two men were trying to calm the woman down.“No! It's too dangerous, love. Wait until the fire brigade shows up. They're on their way. We should close the front door until they come, the oxygen is feeding the fire. Please love, try to get a grip of yourself. See sense. It's the best way...”
The woman responded with rage,“No! Don't close the door! Don't shut her in there, she'll burn! Let me go! I'll go and get her, I have to get her out! Emma!”
Nathan could smell smoke, acrid and foul. He looked up and saw plumes of the stuff wafting up from the roof of the house and away into the night.
The house was on fire.
The woman must live there, he thought. And by the sounds of it, she didn't live there alone. Somewhere far away, too far away, he could hear wailing sirens.
The woman was saying there was a child trapped in the house. It could be dead by the time the fire engines arrived.
Without breaking stride, Nathan ran past the group of people, the two men and the screaming woman, through the open door and into the burning house. As he past, he heard a flurry of voices. A man bellowed,“Hey, kid! What the fuck do you think you are doing?”
A woman's voice called after him,“Please, get my baby!”
Nathan ignored them all. There was no time to argue.
Inside the house, he couldn't see any flames but could hear fire raging and spitting somewhere nearby. The heat was suffocating. Immediately, his eyes started to burn. Blinking back tears, he looked around.
He was in a passageway. Hadn't the woman had said there was a baby upstairs?
There was a staircase directly in front of him, smoke billowing around the upper half of it making it look like a stairway to heaven. Or hell.
Nathan pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and covered his nose and mouth with it. He had read all about what smoke inhalation could do to a person's insides. They said smoke was more dangerous than the actual fire.
He swiftly climbed the first half-dozen steps, hearing the staircase creak ominously under his weight. Now he could hear what sounded like a baby wailing pitifully. He had to save it. He had come too far to turn back now.
More cautiously, stepping on the sections of stair closest to the wall figuring that they would be less likely to give way, he continued, counting the steps as he went.
Thirteen. Unlucky for some. He hoped not for him.
Soon, he was at the top of the stairs. The smoke was everywhere, disorientating and almost blinding. It was impossible to tell where the source of the fire was. It seemed to be all around him at once. Nathan could hear the flames marching ominously closer, consuming everything in their path. Remembering that smoke rises, he knelt on the carpeted floor where the air was a little clearer, and began to inch his way along on his hands and knees.
The baby was still crying. Poor thing. Nathan paused and listened carefully. He had to get the right room, he knew he might not have enough time to look in more than one. He coughed, rubbed his watering eyes and shook his head to clear it. He was already feeling the debilitating effects of the heat and smoke.
The fire was now building to a roar, but the wailing seemed to be coming from a room immediately to his left. The door to the room was closed, which was probably a good thing. The closed door would protect the kid from the worst of the smoke.
“Don't worry! I'm coming!” Nathan called, hoping the kid was old enough and not too panicked to understand what he was saying.
The wailing stopped. His soothing words must have done the trick. Either that, or the baby passed out. Or worse.
Don't think about that! He scolded himself.
Nathan finally reached the door, struggled to his feet, and looked for a handle. Between the swirling smoke and his eyes, which felt as if they were swollen shut, he couldn't see much.
He fumbled for the handle, found it, and turned it, expecting a searing heat from the metal doorknob to burn his hand.
But it didn't happen. Instead, the door swung inward to reveal a bedroom miraculously untouched by the smoke and fire. It was like an oasis in the desert.
However, when he opened the door, the room seemed to suck in all the smoke from the landing and staircase and the fire below made a loud whoosh as it gathered momentum, almost as if it were an intelligent creature. The sound filled Nathan with dread. This was bad.
A cot stood in the middle of the tiny bedroom, and inside was a toddler, perhaps two or three years old. She was the cutest thing, with bright pink pyjamas and long blond hair tied up in a ribbon. Her hands were sticking out through the bars of the cot and her face red and puffy from crying, but she seemed unharmed.
Despite the unfolding drama, when the little one saw Nathan, a huge smile spread across her face.
“Hello there,” Nathan tried to say, but all that came out was a weak croak. His throat hurt. It didn't matter. They could be introduced later. Right now, they had to get out of the house, if it wasn't already too late.
He rushed over to the cot, swept the baby up in his arms, grabbed a comforter to wrap her in, and turned to head back the way he had come. Despite the heat, what he saw filled him with dread and made his blood run cold. Beyond the bedroom door now lay a wall of spitting flames.
Swearing to himself, for the first time Nathan felt panic beginning to well up inside him. Now he was starting to feel queasy and light-headed from the fumes, and the adrenaline rush that had fuelled him just moments earlier was wearing off fast. He knew he wouldn't be as quick making his exit as he had been when he burst in full of foolish bravado. He just hoped he would be quick enough.
But the situation had deteriorated quicker than he thought it would. The flames had spread. They were relentless.
That was the only way to describe fire.
Relentless.
If something was capable of burning and there was no one there to put out the flames, fire would take it. It didn't discriminate.
The house was now going up like a bonfire. It could only be a matter of time before the upstairs floorboards gave way, plunging them both to horrible, fiery deaths. For the first time, Nathan began to think that he had made a terrible mistake.
Time was short. The on
ly advantage Nathan now had was that he knew the rough plan of the house. He knew where the front door was, and he knew that beyond it lay salvation.
Under normal circumstances, he guessed the journey from back bedroom to front door would take no more than twenty seconds. But these were not normal circumstances. Not by a long way.
A million fragmented thoughts rampaged through his mind as he wrapped the whimpering child tightly in the comforter. He thought briefly about his family and whether he would ever see them again, and he thought about the job he might not start in the morning. The job with prospects. Then he thought about the hysterical mother waiting outside, and the precious cargo he held tight to his chest. Putting his head down, he held his breath and ran through the wall of fire.
Flames painfully licked his arm, and he jumped over an especially dangerous-looking patch of burning carpet, being ultra-careful to maintain his balance. Landing safely on both feet, he quickly examined himself for damage.
His leg was on fire! His tracksuit bottoms.
Nathan screamed in terror and held the child with one arm as he beat furiously at the flames with the other, trying to extinguish them before they spread. The material was melting under the heat, running down his leg and sticking to his skin where it burned like napalm.
The flames that had been marching up his leg were out, but his tracksuit was a ravaged mess and his leg was in agony. A quick self-assessment told Nathan that he wasn't seriously hurt, but if he didn't move quickly, he and his new little friend would be in a world of pain.
Now they were at the top of the stairs, the carpet around them a bed of flames. All Nathan could hear were crackles, spits and hisses, as the fire greedily devoured everything in its path. The staircase was far too dangerous. Even if he stayed close to the supporting walls as he had done on the way up, the carpet itself was ablaze.
Think, think!
There was only one option. Nathan would have to put his faith in speed, and blind luck. He had seen fire walkers on TV, strutting across red-hot coals in bare feet and emerging on the other side unharmed. The scientific theory was that if you didn't linger in one place too long, the heat didn't have time to do any real damage. It needed time to work.
It was worth a shot.
In this case, rather than going barefoot, he would be wearing socks and running shoes. Though not for much longer, he realized, as his footwear was already beginning to melt and stick to the floor. In fact, he felt as if his entire being was beginning to melt.
Taking a deep breath, Nathan stepped off the top of the stairs and onto the carpet of flame. He thought he heard the sound of splintering wood beneath him, but before his foot could go through the collapsing stairs he moved it onto the next step. And the next.
Thirteen steps.
No problem.
He could do this.
He was almost half way down the staircase when he first felt it.
It was a mere groan at first, then the whole structure seemed to jerk suddenly. At the same time, Nathan's whole world seemed to move, everything lurching forward a few feet, and tilting at an unnatural angle.
The child he was carrying wrapped in the blanket must also have sensed the danger because just then she began screaming again. Nathan instinctively tightened his grip, but his mind barely had time to register the cry before another sharp movement pitched him forward into the searing heat beyond.
As he was thrown forward, Nathan somehow managed to get some purchase with one foot, and thrust on that one leg with all his might.
Then, he was flying. Or at least it felt that way. It felt like he was airborne for an age, his legs and one free arm kicking and flapping to try and propel himself forward that extra couple of inches. It was almost as if he was swimming, swimming through the smoke to the safety of the shore.
He landed on his feet with a solid thump at the base of the staircase. Something gave out in his ankle, sending pain shooting up his leg. His good, unburned leg. Then, his knees buckled underneath him and he did an involuntary role onto his back. He had to protect the child. It would be a real pisser to come this far only to kill the little girl by squashing her.
Maybe he hit his head, or maybe all the smoke and fumes were finally having their way with him, because then everything around him turned hazy and grey. There was no pain any more. Instead, Nathan felt like he was floating on clouds.
Knowing he was losing consciousness, Nathan tried to hold on, fight the encroaching greyness, push the clouds away. But everything felt so nice, so serene, and so right. Eventually, he gave up and let the clouds carry him away to a better place.
The next thing he knew, a huge, black hulking monster was peering down at him from above.
Was this some kind of dream?
A nightmare?
He tried to squirm away, his flailing arms beating uselessly on the ground. He felt so weak. Only then did he realize that he wasn't holding the crying child anymore. He was suddenly overcome with anger.
“What have you done with her?” he tried to ask the monster, but this time no sound came from his lips at all, not even a weak croak. Instead, he coughed loudly and struggled to catch his breath.
The monster leaned forward and pressed something against Nathan's mouth and nose. Something cold and hard.
Nathan tried to push the monster away but then, suddenly, he could breathe again. No more wheezing or coughing. He filled his aching lungs with glorious fresh air, as rationality was returned. Gradually, he became aware of a heavenly soothing breeze blowing against his skin and ruffling his hair.
Warily, Nathan peered up at the monster towering over him, eager to take in more detail.
It wasn't a monster. It was a man. A man wearing a mask and protective clothing.
Nathan pulled the cold, hard thing from his mouth and nose and saw that it was an oxygen mask. The emergency services had arrived, and not before time.
There was a voice. It seemed to be coming from a long way away, but it was addressing him.
“Can you hear me, kid? How do you feel? Huh? Don't worry about the baby, she's fine. Thanks to you. You did a very brave, but stupid thing. Tell me, are you suicidal or something?”
Nathan tried to answer the question. No, he wasn't suicidal. But he could only splutter and cough some more.
“You could have died in there,” the man continued.“Another minute and you probably would have. This is what we are here for, you know. You should leave this kind of work to the professionals...”
Nathan sat up and looked around. His senses were beginning to come back. His right ankle hurt, and his head throbbed. He was on the pavement across the street from the house, which was now a raging inferno. Somebody, one of the firemen, must have dragged or carried him here. Lots of people were milling around, and the night was full of the sound of sirens.
The fireman who was talking to him seemed genuinely angry. Nathan mumbled an apology. This made the angry fireman soften, and he sat down on the pavement next to Nathan.
“Ah, don't apologize, son. Like I said, you did a very brave thing. Most people wouldn't risk their lives for somebody else's kid. You pulled that little girl out of a burning building. You're a bloody hero. I should really be thanking you. You saved us a job. Plus, chances are that the kid would have been dead by the time we got here, what with the amount of accelerant somebody tossed all over the kitchen...”
“What?” Nathan croaked.
“Yep,” replied the fireman.“Accelerant. Good, old-fashioned petrol, we think. Though we can't be positive until the investigation is over. Looks like someone poured it in through a window then set fire to it. The fire definitely started out back in the kitchen, and its pretty obvious it was started deliberately.”
“That's...” Nathan began. Then stopped. He didn't know what else to say.
“Fucked up,” the fireman finished for him.“That's what it is. Fucked up. There's been a spate of arson attacks in the area recently. Some maniac running around torching things. The ba
ck of the house went up first, like a damn Christmas tree. The mother and two kids were all in bed at the time. They're damn lucky nobody was killed. We just about have things under control now and managed to stop the spread, though it was touch and go there for a while. This is some world we live in, huh kid?”
“Yea, some world.”
“You sit tight kid for a few minutes. The paramedics will want to check you out, make sure you're okay. Then you can get on with being a hero. Get ready for your five minutes of fame.” With that, the fireman climbed to his feet and walked off across the road, back to where most of the activity was centred.
Nathan watched him go. He liked the sound of being a hero.
Alone now, he examined his injuries. His right ankle throbbed, though it was probably just a sprain, and parts of his other calf and shin were quite badly burned. It would probably require hospital treatment. Strange how just that one part of him went up in flames like that.
He had a lucky escape, Nathan thought, a faint smile tugging at his lips. He must have accidentally spilled some petrol on himself when he was setting the fire in the kitchen.
Stupid.
He would remember that mistake for next time.
Embracing Solitude
Rick Roberts turned off his computer and breathed a heavy sigh of relief. At last, the novel was finished. All the fine tuning had been done and he was free to return to his doting wife, Louise, and the family home.
He always preferred to write the final draft of his books alone in a sited caravan in the country, far away from the plethora of everyday distractions that cluttered his life. He needed quality time alone to think and embrace the solitude that the caravan offered. This was his seventh visit in as many years. It had become a routine for him. Even a ritual.
It seldom took longer than two months or so to write the final draft. Once he found his stride, he worked quickly, feverishly even. It was just a case of hanging meat off the bones of his outlines.
X2: Another Collection of Horror Page 4