Behind the Fire: A Dark Thriller

by Susan May

  Bobby had arrived good and early this time, and was prepared and raring to go. Finally, there were only minutes left before game time. 9.03:26 p.m.

  He was ready with the blowtorch, having practiced setting piles of wood alight in a dirt bike track area ten miles from the town. Already laid out were several pyres of wood, newspaper, and Heat Beads, all liberally doused with the kerosene. He’d placed the combustible material in strategic places around and inside the house. It had taken some time to distribute, and he’d spent time to check and recheck his work. If necessary, he’d set the whole place on fire, and he needed enough fuel to make this happen. He was careful not to make the piles around the outside too high in case they were seen.

  He couldn’t afford to fail.

  At any given hour, multiple shifts of men and women were belowground in the mine. Their lives were in his hands. Nobody was dying on his watch. He almost laughed. He sounded like Sylvester Stallone.

  He wondered if Mr. Average had thought the same. He’d often asked himself why the man had abandoned the list. Was it too much of a burden to shoulder? Or maybe, in the end, he had felt it was a hopeless battle. Bobby could certainly see how you could reach that conclusion.

  Sitting on the doorstep waiting, he compulsively checked his watch as the time slipped past nine. He dropped the cigarette he’d been smoking—only to calm his nerves, he really was giving up—and ground it out on the bottom step. He stood, turning toward the interior of the house, and raised the blowtorch, holding it up and out, both his hands tightly gripped around its barrel. His lighter was in his top pocket. He’d checked it about ten times.

  He hadn’t seen or heard a car in a while—a stroke of luck for which he was grateful. If someone spied him, he had no reasonable explanation for standing here with a flame-thrower.

  He spread his feet and bent his knees, ready to move toward wherever the black thing appeared.

  Breathe in three. Breathe out three.

  He counted to move his mind away from what was coming. He needed to remain calm. While he was breathing and counting and beginning to sweat, he wished he were wrong, that the thing wouldn’t come, and he could go home and laugh about his wasted time.

  Tonight he wasn’t getting his wish.

  At 9.03 p.m., exactly as the list predicted, it began.

  Inside the house, air moved where a breeze shouldn’t be, gently blowing his shirt. The dark shimmer emerged. The sunken darkness, so deep it ate up all the moonlight piercing the broken apertures of the house, appeared large before him.

  Bobby flicked the lighter open and held the flame to the torch. The innocuous orange bud glowed steadily, awaiting his command.

  The black thing was growing in the corner of the room, seemingly oblivious to his presence. The arms moved, flailed, and twisted through the hole, which was now turning that odd, thick, dark blue. Bobby noted all these things in his mind, uncertain what would later prove important.

  One of his pyres was almost directly in front of the thing, but he waited. This time the metamorphosis was not so shocking to him. Though his heart still banged against his chest, he wanted to know something before he set the flames upon it: did this thing look anything like the other two?

  He had thought long and hard about the second one, comparing it in his mind to the one at Connolly Street. He was almost positive it was different. What that meant he didn’t know, but if he was stuck attempting to defeat these things, then he at least wanted to know if he was dealing with the same one or if it had friends. If they were different, maybe he wasn’t just turning them back each time he stopped them; he could be killing them. He could even be sending a message to their homeland: this is not a good place to visit.

  He’d turned the idea of an invasion over in his mind a dozen times until it began to make a kind of bizarre sense. If you were going to conquer Earth, a good place to start would be ripping out the coal seams. That, in turn, would take down a good chunk of the power grid. In this age, no electricity spelled mega-disaster. During a freak storm years ago, half the town had lost power for two days. It had felt like the world was ending.

  In fact, it surprised Bobby terrorists hadn’t worked that one out yet. A bomb kills a dozen people, maybe, but power shortages could cripple society big-time. Perhaps these things were a new form of terrorism. Who knew what those bastard terrorists had been working on?

  The face solidified and became fully formed, the dark smoky image turning to a moving black liquid. He looked hard at the thing, studying it. Its eyes were elongated this time, as opposed to the round orbs of the other two. The nose looked similar, perhaps a little smaller. The mouth, definitely bigger. Instead of being open, it stretched like a tight Mona Lisa-smile. There was nothing beautiful about this thing, though.

  Standing so near Bobby was struck by the sheer enormity. This one, though not as big as the mine-site one, was still huge. It stretched to the ceiling and was the width of a whole wall. The head turned from side to side as though looking around. It appeared more alert, although perhaps at this up-close-and-personal distance, he was simply taking in more detail. It possessed facial features like the others but the expression was empty and emotionless.

  The tendril appendages, now completely through, reached toward the doorframe leading to the outside. They stretched almost across the room. Damn, if these weren’t longer and thinner in comparison to the others. He should have brought a camera so he could compare later.

  He figured he only had a few more minutes before it emerged fully from the hole. As its black, writhing limbs stretched toward him, it was time his investigation ended. Time the black thing said “bye-bye” and head back to its buddies and wherever or whatever they called home.

  He flicked the lighter on and held it to the blowtorch, feeling a lot like that Die Hard guy. Immediately a gush of blue flame burst from the head and Bobby pointed it toward the stack of paper and wood only a few feet from him. The kerosene he’d doused over earlier, caught, and the pyre instantly erupted. Flames shot to the ceiling, spreading out across the flat surface above as though they were a glowing red and orange liquid. They quickly grew in size and ferocity as eager licks of flame fed them from the stack below.

  The heat cascaded toward Bobby, accompanied by the ferocious roar of fuel consumed quickly. Forced back by the intensity of the heat and the swirling wind, he staggered backward toward the door where he’d left his bag.

  The moment the flames reached the black thing it reacted, retracting its twisting appendages like a startled turtle. Its eyes flickered, and its gaze traveled wildly around the room until it found him. Its stare pierced through him, and for a long second Bobby felt connected to it, like it had somehow reached inside his head and was prodding in his mind.

  Then the feeling was gone as its mouth yawned open. This time, it wasn’t silent. A scream erupted, high and frantic like a thousand birds startled from a tree. Bobby shoved his flattened palms over his suddenly aching ears.

  Then it dissolved in on itself, fading from blue-black to black in the same beat as the fire intensified, as though it and the flames were in a synchronized dance. The fire now engulfed the room’s back wall, becoming its own monster, ferocious and hungry.

  The show’s over, thought Bobby. As much as he wanted to stay and watch the finale, the house’s dry timber was fuelling the fire, and it was now out of control.

  “Yeaahh. Take that, ya monster,” he cried, but the howl of the wind snatched the words away.

  He turned and ran for the door, grabbing his bag as he exited into the fresh night air. Smoke and heat followed him into the yard. Bobby ran and didn’t stop until he reached his parked car, several streets away. In the distance he heard the lonely, wailing siren of what he assumed was a fire engine.

  Throwing his bag onto the passenger seat, he slipped behind the wheel. He found it difficult to breathe as the realization of what he had just done kicked in. Slowly he breathed in for three and out for three and waited for his heart to ret
urn to its normal beat.

  Inside the car, his hands resting on the cold grip of the wheel, everything felt normal, safe, and real while only streets away some kind of insanity had just played out.

  He had learned a great deal from tonight. He now knew two things as absolute facts. The black things could be stopped. And, after destroying that house, he was in this totally alone.

  Chapter 15

  Smarty Pants sat behind the table, chuckling into his hand. He feigned an attempt at making it sound like a cough, but it was obvious he was laughing.

  Emily bit her bottom lip. She wanted to jump out of the witness stand and confront him, face to face, without this distance between them. Nothing about this was funny. Nothing about those things made you want to laugh. Nothing could be farther from comedy than people dying. It crossed her mind if Smarty Pants was down in a mine when a black thing came it might not be such a terrible situation.

  Still seated, he said, “So, Mrs. Jessup, you’ve just shared quite the fantastic story. In that story, you’ve admitted your husband willfully set fire to the vacant house at fifty-one Hopkins Drive. You do realize you’ve just described for the court the act of arson?”

  Smarty Pants turned to the Jury and said, “Just to recap, the defendant’s wife has testified her husband set fire to both this house at Hopkins Drive and another at twenty-six Connolly Street with intent to cause malicious destruction of property.”

  Then he turned back to Emily. “Have I got that right?”

  Emily felt little beads of sweat forming below her nose making her lip itchy. She yearned to reach up and wipe the droplets away, but she didn’t want Smarty Pants to know he was frazzling her. She looked over at Bobby, hoping to attract his attention and connect with him. Look for some reassurance. His head was bowed, though.

  What had she done? Was he angry with her? She’d broken their agreement, yes. In the beginning, she was the one who was firm on keeping their mouths shut. Smarty Pants had got to her. She wasn’t having anyone think this brave man she loved was insane. No way.

  Emily hunched her shoulders and took a deep breath, twisting and turning her head in an attempt to relieve the ache between her shoulder blades.

  Breathe. Breathe.

  With one final deep inhalation, she looked at Smarty Pants. She would ignore his smirk and match it with her own. She could play that game, too.

  “Yes, that’s correct, but it’s not right,” she answered.

  “Sorry, Mrs. Jessup, we’re a little confused. Do you mean that isn’t your testimony? You certainly have shared in great detail exactly how your husband committed several acts of arson.”

  “No, what I meant was … he didn’t willfully”—she spat the word willfully into the air between them—“set fire to anything.”

  Smarty Pants raised an eyebrow.

  That made her livid.

  “He wouldn’t have set fire to anything if he didn’t have to. There was no will about it. He had to do it. If he didn’t, who would? Who would save all those men and women at risk in the mines?”

  “Oo-ohh,” he said, turning the one word into two long singsong syllables as he got up from his chair and walked toward her. “What you’re saying is—he did do it. But he had a good reason. He was … ‘saving the world,’ as you put it.”

  He held his hands up and made imaginary quotation marks around “saving the world.”

  “Well, that’s pretty lucky for us, isn’t it?” Then he turned to the jurors and smiled. “He’s an arsonist of good intent.”

  A couple of the jurors sniggered.

  He looked back at her while still leaning on the edge of the jury box.

  “Tell me, when you started helping him and hiring babysitters to look after your children while you and your husband drove around town committing acts of arson, were you also an arsonist of good intent?”

  Emily hesitated, attempting to calm the temper blazing inside her.

  “Yes. We were trying to stop those things. Do you think I would leave my babies if I didn’t have good reason? Do you think I would be that crazy? After that night on Old River Road, I couldn’t let him go out alone. Face those things alone.”

  “But Mrs. Jessup, you stated in your earlier testimony you yourself thought your husband was crazy. You were going to get him to a doctor. What could possibly have changed your mind? After all, this is about as far-fetched as stories get.”

  “Because the next time he went, I went, too, and this time, this time was different. This time the black thing spoke.”

  Chapter 16

  Emily stood behind Bobby as he pulled the maroon sports bag and what looked like a flamethrower from the trunk of the car.

  “What is that?” she said pointing to the long green pole connected by black tubing to a propane bottle, which was fixed into a hand trolley.

  “It’s called a Weed Dragon but I’ve found a better use for it. It packs more punch than the blowtorch I was using. I call it The Dragon.”

  As Bobby heaved The Dragon out from the trunk and swung around holding it, Emily took a step back to avoid him bumping into her. He was so focused on gathering everything she saw that she suddenly wasn’t there to him.

  The night wasn’t cold, yet a shiver suddenly caught Emily. She wrapped her arms about her body. Her mind kept drifting back to the kids snuggled in bed at home. She couldn’t help but imagine what would happen if something went wrong and they didn’t come back.

  Bobby wheeled The Dragon a few feet from the car and then returned to the trunk. Emily wanted to suggest they go home, forget about this, and come back another night— anything to get back to the safety of their home. One look at his face told her his mind couldn’t be changed.

  He leaned back into the trunk and pulled out a four-gallon container of kerosene.

  “Em, is this too heavy for you to carry?”

  He lifted it up and down to check the weight, before hefting it toward her. Reaching further in to the trunk, he retrieved a large green sports bag and hoisted it over his shoulder.

  “Bobby, what if we get caught?”

  “I haven’t been caught yet. Anyway, who’s going to catch us here?” He waved his hand around like a host on a game show presenting the prizes. “There’s nobody for miles. This is an easy one.”

  Emily looked around at the darkened buildings of the abandoned Market Street Canning factory. With its shattered windows and rotting wood walls, it could be the set of a Scooby Doo film. In fact, it was the perfect setting for a horror story, which seemed appropriate imagery to her, since it felt like they were living in one.

  A half-moon cast shadows among the rows of bleached-gray pallets stacked in piles around the U-shaped courtyard the building complex formed. Signs hanging over doorways and roller doors, some with intact doors and some without, announced Produce Delivery, Foreman’s Office, Dispatch, and Restroom. Someone had painted a line across Restroom in red paint and written in Can Produce.

  Bobby checked his watch and then reached for Emily’s hand. “Come on, Em, let’s go. We have only forty minutes and a lot to do.”

  Emily followed him through the maze of pallets and up the concrete steps into the nearest building, which according to the sign was the entrance to Produce Delivery.

  At the doorway, Bobby dropped her hand and reached inside his bag to pull out a flashlight. Switched on, its light revealed a cavernous interior with crisscrossed wood beams towering above them. Silver lamps hung in a neat line running the length of the ceiling. Cardboard boxes and crates lay strewn about the deserted space. Along the back wall were stacked more pallets. These ones were a straw-pine color; protected from the elements, they were in better condition.

  “At least there’s plenty of fuel,” Bobby said, marching across the expanse as Emily stood in the doorway wondering how long it would take for this place to burn to the ground once Bobby lit a match. She guessed only minutes. Everything in here was wood, except for the metal roof. This factory was one big bonfire stack.<
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  Bobby began pulling crates from the piles and dragging them to the center of the room, putting them in stacks of three. He very quickly created a horizontal wall, which ran directly under the hanging lights.

  Emily left the doorway, walked over near Bobby, and began to help him, grunting and coughing as the movement of the crates dislodged a fog of accumulated dust.

  “Em, leave it. They’re too heavy for you.”

  “I want to help. I can’t just stand here doing nothing. It’s making me nervous.”

  Bobby pointed to cardboard boxes with fruit pictures on their side lying scattered across the concrete floor.

  “Grab some of those. Try to break them into pieces. Then shove them into the piles I’ve made.”

  Emily pulled at the boxes, tearing through the creases, grunting with the effort. Once she’d torn enough pieces, she went down the line of ramshackle crates and pallets, inserting the cardboard.

  Every few minutes Emily checked her phone for the time. Time seemed to be moving too quickly. She hoped Bobby knew what he was doing. It seemed so. In twenty minutes, he’d built quite a wall of fuel. Finally, he stopped and stood back admiring his handiwork. Then he moved down the stacks, pushing newspaper into the bottom rows around Emily’s cardboard.

  He then moved along the line, swinging the kerosene container, and splashed the fuel over the pyres in long sweeps. The smell of the liquid filled the air and, as the fumes reached Emily, she started to gag. She reached into her pocket, pulled out a hanky and held it to her mouth. Bobby seemed immune to everything except the job at hand.

  Emily was mesmerized by the way her husband moved with such conviction, with a determination on his face she had never before seen, except for that night on Old River Road.

  Again, she checked the time. 10.27 p.m.