Behind the Fire: A Dark Thriller

by Susan May

  The thing continued to struggle and contort, as Bobby lay there, watching horrified at this alien birth—although the thing emerging was the farthest thing he could imagine from a defenseless baby.

  As each second passed Bobby considered and reconsidered his actions until his mind alighted upon probably his most sensible idea: get the hell out of there.

  This plan meant turning his back on the thing and scaling the fence, leaving his body in full view and exposed. What if those hands reached for him, clawed him down, and ripped him to pieces? Nobody would know the black thing was responsible—that was if they even found his body. Maybe it didn’t leave bodies. He imagined the pain Em would endure wondering what had happened to him. It felt like a tremendous risk.

  Even with the wind roaring around him, he still heard the mad thumping of his heart in his ears. At least at Connolly Street the neighboring properties surrounded him and, if push came to shove, he could call the police. Out here in this desolate place he was on his own, and nobody was coming to save him. He was no hero. In fact, he was an idiot to have even contemplated coming here alone. If only he’d told Em and created a back-up plan.

  Wishing wasn’t going to help him, though. All he had left was to pray and, if he saw a chance, run away.

  As Bobby watched, the black thing began to squirm violently like the desperate wriggling of a hooked fish. It seemed to him it was close to freeing itself and emerging fully into this world.

  That’s when he saw that chance; while the thing was distracted with its final push, this could be the opportune time to escape. He didn’t want to know what would happen once it exited the hole. Well, he did, but not this close up.

  Pulling his bag toward himself, he began inching backward, pushing with his hands as he crawled on his stomach. His stare never wavered from the black thing, partly out of curiosity and mostly from something he’d read about bears: if you stood your ground, met their eyes, they are less likely to attack. Yeah, like this was anything like a bear.

  The continuing dust storm whipped sand and grit against his face and exposed arms, stinging and scraping his skin. The makeshift hood provided little protection. The dust clogged his mouth and nose, choking him. When he tried to cough, he only swallowed more of it, causing him to cough even more violently. The idea he might die of asphyxiation seemed real and possible.

  When his feet bumped into something solid, which gave a little when he pushed against it, he realized he’d reached the fence line. Now he had to decide to turn and climb, or to stay put and wait and see. Neither idea appealed.

  Only thirty feet away, the head had begun to expand alarmingly like an inflating carnival balloon. The eyes bulged, the nose grew, and its red-black mouth stretched even wider. Bobby expected to hear a scream; it looked painful to him. But only the wind’s roar and the dry smell of the red dust permeated the air.

  He was now pressed hard against the fence with nowhere to go. With the wind battering his body, Bobby decided no way would he make it over the fence. In case the wind turned into an instant tornado, he turned and huddled his body against the wire, clinging to the shaking fence. He could barely see through the grit and the resultant tears.

  He closed his eyes and angled his arm across his face. Whatever happened next, he wasn’t going to see it coming. Bobby braced, prepared to probably die. For a moment he considered screaming out to the night sky a declaration of his love for Em and the kids, but he knew all he’d get was a mouth filled with cursed red dust.

  The growl of the wind increased to a crescendo of chaos, and Bobby pushed his face harder into his arms. He sensed something was about to happen.

  What came next, he didn’t expect.

  Silence. Sudden and sharp.

  As quickly as the tumult had begun, it ended.

  Bobby opened his dust-coated eyes to find the black thing free, hovering a few feet above the ground, a big blob of rolling dark mass. It had no body, as he had initially believed. The stumps he imagined were arms were actually tendrils of a viscous green-black matter, constantly moving, solidifying and then liquefying again. It reminded him of the images of astronauts spilling water into their cabins, the lack of gravity turning the liquid into floating balls.

  The enormous hole behind the black thing began fading and shrinking, absorbing itself while its passenger hung in the air before it.

  Bobby stood ready. If it came toward him, without the wind to rattle him, he would make his best attempt to scale the fence in Olympic-record time. The lack of wind might even make it possible to set fire to something, scare the thing away like he’d done with the other one. His hand moved across the earth reaching for the bag. He grasped a handle and began to pull it toward himself.

  Then the creature turned and more swiftly than a human could hope to run, travelled toward the opening of the mine. It had no hesitation, seeming to know exactly where to head.

  In the seconds it took Bobby to understand he was safe—that it wasn’t coming for him and, in fact, seemed unaware of his presence—it entered the mine and disappeared.

  Bobby pulled himself up and stood staring after it for as long as it took his heartbeat to slow and his breathing to ease. The newspapers he’d pulled from his bag earlier lay strewn around the mine entrance, making the area look even more derelict than when he’d arrived.

  Why the thing had ignored him and what it was doing here were just more unanswerable questions to add to the growing mountain. Those questions could be pondered later, away from here, far from the dark and the shadows. And the thing.

  He looked down at the lighter still clutched in his hand and thumbed it about in his palm. His experiment was a failure. He still didn’t know if fire had any power over the thing. He still didn’t know what it even wanted here. Even more key, he was no closer to understanding what the hell the thing was.

  One thing he did know. Next time he would be completely prepared.

  Chapter 11

  “Wake up, Bobby. It’s, it’s … terrible, God, terrible news.”

  He felt breath on his cheek and a hand rocking his shoulder. The words only half-entered his mind. They entwined inside his dream, and for a second he saw Em hovering above the ground, wearing a boy’s blue baseball cap, a satchel over her shoulder, and waving a newspaper.

  “Shouldn’t you say, ‘Read all about it’?” he asked the dream Em. She continued to float there, tears streaming down her face, repeating his name. “Bobby. Bobby. Bobby.”

  Even though the dream Em’s words confused him—he couldn’t understand why she kept calling his name even though he answered her—what he did recognize was the anguish in her voice.

  Last night, when he’d slipped into the warm bed next to her, after his encounter with the black thing, she’d been fast asleep, snoring away with those cute little clicks that always lulled him to sleep. He’d wanted to wake her and tell her about the black thing, but he was too afraid she’d think him crazy. No, this must be his secret.

  Around five—which was the last time he checked the clock—he must have dozed off.

  Sleep did not want to release him, but the dream Em’s tone compelled him into consciousness, pulling him from the crying paperboy Em.

  He opened his eyes and instantly knew something was very wrong. Em’s face was a sickly ash-gray, her eyes red and raw. As she spoke, her lips quivered. Her words came in disjointed sentences he struggled to understand.

  “Twenty-two trapped. They can’t get to them. The mine. I can’t. Stop. Shaking. Jimmy, oh, my God, Jimmy … may be dead. Oh no—”

  The mention of his brother-in-law’s name acted like an adrenaline shot, snapping him awake. He threw back the covers and pulled Em down to sit on the edge of the bed next to him. She half fell, as though all the energy had instantly drained from her body. He threw his arm around her shoulders and pushed her hair back from her face. Her chin rested on her chest, bobbing up and down as she sobbed in hefty gasps.

  “Who Em? Get to who?”

 
Between heaves, she could barely speak the words. “Them. The miners. Bobby, Jimmy is down there. They’ve just rung me.”

  Jimmy was Em’s younger brother. As far as brother-in-laws go, he was an all right guy, quick to lend a hand and not bad company on the couch during football season. At least he brought his own beer.

  Having been in the mines since he was sixteen, Jimmy, now in his thirties, managed one of the three around-the-clock shift teams, working in the main shaft. Since they’d found a particularly prosperous seam five years back—apparently one of the richest finds in the history of the company—they’d mined it non-stop.

  The digging crew jobs were not for the fainthearted; the deposit lay a thousand feet under the surface. If you could handle the claustrophobia and the mind-games that came with working at that depth, after a few years the pay was a life changer. Due to strict safety codes only minor accidents had occurred.

  No fatalities. Mine collapses were near on impossible.

  Although Bobby didn’t understand the technology they utilized these days, Jimmy had mentioned once the possibility of a cave-in was minimized to a factor of point zero seven percent or some figure meaning close to no chance. Surely Jimmy couldn’t be the point zero seven percent That made no sense. In fact, as a crew manager Jimmy was rarely down in the drilling area of the mines.

  “Trapped where? What are you saying, Em?”

  Em calmed a little, at least enough to talk, although big round tears still rolled down her face, to pool under her nose and chin.

  “The mine—he’s in a collapsed mine. He was on the 2 a.m. shift. It just suddenly came down. He went down to check on something. Jimmy shouldn’t have been there. They don’t know if they’re … dead … or alive. Oh, Bobby, what’ll I do?”

  Em started crying again. Her body shook with the emotion. He felt useless, completely out of familiar territory. All he could do was hold her and pray it was all some terrible mistake.

  “Come on, Em. He’ll be okay. Let’s go down there. See what’s happened. One thing for sure, your brother’s tough.”

  As he stroked his wife’s hair, his mind was far away painting a different picture: of rocks and men and suffocating blackness. Something else, too: the image of a black thing disappearing into a mine only a few miles from where his brother-in-law and twenty-one other innocent men lay trapped.

  Chapter 12

  It took three days before they reached Jimmy and the other men. Three days of Em wringing her hands, crying, digging into her reserves of optimism, only to have her hopes dashed as each attempt to free the men failed.

  The company flew in experts from Canada, along with some new-fangled drilling tool, which finally allowed the rescuers down there.

  All too late. All the men except one were dead. The cave in had damaged a gas line and poisonous gas had quickly leaked into the area where the men were trapped. The men died in the first few minutes.

  Joseph Eldon, an eighteen-year-old apprentice, managed to survive by sheer luck. He was standing near the emergency oxygen tanks when he saw the men gasping for breath.

  When rescuers finally got to him there, he was down to the final tank with remaining air enough for two hours. He was dehydrated, starving and saying his prayers. When he began to tell a rather strange story, everyone presumed he was, also, in shock. Understandable with his ordeal. All who heard his story dismissed it.

  All except Bobby.

  Bobby’s stomach squeezed and a bitter bile taste filled his mouth as he watched Joseph’s local news interview from his hospital bed. He sat bolt upright intently listening as the young man shared what sounded like the rambling story of a man in shock who’d endured a terrible event. He talked vividly of a dark-blue shadow passing through the group of workers right before an entire section of coal instantly disappeared.

  “The coal just disappeared into thin air,” he said, clapping his hands together as though he were describing a magic trick. “There was nothing left to hold up the roof … it all came down.”

  The female interviewer looked horrified and asked what he meant by a shadow.

  “Must have been some kind of gas,” said Joseph, who then quickly added, “I’ve never seen gas act like that. It’s usually invisible. This gas seemed to have a mind of its own. It moved around the drill site as if it were looking for something. Then, bam, went straight through a wall.”

  The story sounded like nothing more than excited ravings of a man who’d watched his coworkers die and then spent three days trapped with their bodies. Everyone understood someone experiencing trauma would sometimes make no sense.

  To Bobby, though, Joseph’s story had a crazy logic. To him, it made perfect sense. That’s why moments later he was in the bathroom retching like he’d swallowed something rotten.

  Chapter 13

  This time he came prepared.

  He had a flame-thrower—borrowed from Pete Marshall who used it for controlled burns on his farm twice a year—a box of matches, a can of fuel, a fire extinguisher, and his trusty lighter. Who would have thought a lighter would become the first line of defense against … against black aliens. Against creatures from hell. Against science experiments gone wrong.

  He didn’t know what he was fighting—would it make any difference?—all he knew was these things weren’t meant to be here. They killed people. They killed Jimmy, and he felt responsible.

  If only he’d done more that night at the mine.

  It took two weeks for life to settle down to a new kind of normal. After Jimmy’s funeral Em became more fragile than he’d ever seen her. It took everything he had to give emotionally to care for her. A constant stream of neighbors and friends offering food and help visited their home. Bobby played the perfect host, while inside the guilt ate at him like a hungry dog wolfing down its chow.

  Everyone shook their heads as they left. How could this happen? Each time Em would nod and say, “Yes, bad luck.” Sometimes she’d cry and sometimes she’d be okay. Bobby could never tell which it would be, so he was always at hand. He’d taken a week off work to look after the kids, but mostly to take care of Em. The whole time, his mind raced ahead, as fast as the wind that brought the black things.

  He made plans and played with ideas.

  When Em went to bed each night, he spent hours checking and rechecking the coordinates from the paper, working to reveal the three missing addresses. He looked for patterns, clues—something to give him an advantage. Sometimes he stared at his notes so long all he achieved was a piercing headache. Only by constantly swallowing painkillers could he keep going.

  Finally, he thought he found something. He had discovered a geological map of the area one night while googling. When he overlaid that map with an area map, he noticed the coal seam displayed on the geological map stretched for several hundred miles. What he hadn’t known was that it was deepest directly below Karlgarin. He could be totally off the mark but it made sense.

  It had never occurred to him—why would it?—the seam actually surrounded the town, as though the town were the cherry on top. He’d always imagined when they said “coal seams” the coal ran in straight lines somewhere farther afield. The other interesting discovery was the seam ran thickest at the list’s coordinates.

  He sure wanted to ask Mr. Average how he gained this information. Even more, he wanted to know how the guy knew the exact times the black things would appear. Was he a not-so-average scientist? Was it some kind of genetic modification? Cloning? Who knew what these scientists were up to? And why hadn’t he turned up at the last two coordinates? Had he just given up, deciding to let the creatures have the world, or the coal, or whatever they wanted?

  Science was doing insane things with genetics. The local paper had recently run an article on serious allergic reactions caused by genetically modified food. Some poor folks even died. Local farmers told tales of these GM seeds blowing into their organic fields causing issues. Maybe GM seeds did something to the livestock and the black things were the result.<
br />
  A little crazy, yes. Then what wasn’t crazy since he found the list? Of course, he had nothing really; just theories and ideas and a notion he needed to stop these things.

  What he figured—and he wasn’t sure if he’d figured correctly—was the black things arrived at the times on the paper, that they were after the coal, and they didn’t care who got hurt. The one thing he knew, with more certainty than anything else, was none of his story would sound sane to anyone. Heck, even he struggled to believe.

  The surviving miner was still hospitalized, being treated now for emotional stress. Physically he was fine. When he continued to insist a black shadow had eaten the coal, the diagnosis became post-traumatic stress disorder. The newspaper even included an article next to his picture alerting readers to common PTSD symptoms and coping strategies. Bobby figured, Not being trapped in a mine collapse for three days would be a good start.

  There were many times when he wished he could forget he’d picked up the paper and all that followed. He couldn’t, though, because of Em and the kids. Karlgarin was their home and they wanted their kids to grow up here, too. It may be a dry little red-dirt town, but it had a community spirit they valued. He’d be damned if anything, including black things from Hell, would drive his family away.

  The next time he wouldn’t run away. Next time he’d be prepared.

  Chapter 14

  This address was a vacant house; if you could even call what was left standing a house. That happened out here. Houses vacant longer than a few months, became stone-throwing target practice for kids. Weeds only needed a few weeks to set up shop; and the red dust just got into everything, everywhere, always.

  Fifty-one Hopkins Drive must have stood vacant for a long, long time. Years. The windows, and even the front door, were gone. The paint peeled like bad sunburn. Roof tiles were missing, some having fallen into the shambles of a garden below lay broken and scattered like a dropped deck of cards. Shrubs and small trees on the periphery of the property grew unkempt and now resembled wild foliage. A wreck in need of a bulldozer.