Behind the Fire: A Dark Thriller

by Susan May

  Bobby had said the list time was 10.28 and point something. She figured the extra point something was neither here nor there and had forgotten it.

  Bobby shook the last drops of kerosene onto a stack, throwing the empty container after it, and moved back toward her. She wasn’t sure where to stand. She was afraid she’d get in the way, so she had moved closer to the back wall, nearest the door through which they’d entered.

  As go-time neared, she kept thinking her preferred position was outside the door and as far away as possible from this crazy setup. She wanted to remind Bobby how dangerous this was, how afraid she was, how much she wished he’d never found that list. When he turned toward her, she saw a steely look in his eyes that hushed her. No matter what happened in the next few minutes, she knew she wouldn’t leave his side.

  Meanwhile, her stomach had begun twisting into tiny knots, and she wondered if the Can Produce restrooms still functioned. Of course, there wouldn’t be time.

  As Bobby took a position near her, she grabbed his arm and asked, “What happens now?”

  “We wait,” he said, his gaze roaming the room.

  Emily placed her hand into his. It felt rough and worn from handling the wooden pallets, and she knew they’d be tweezing splinters out of his skin for days.

  Bobby stood motionless. The cavernous interior was so still, so dead, she could hear his steady breathing beside her. Her stomach knots had become tangled, electrified threads, and she felt panic and nausea in equal proportions rising within her.

  “Bobby, I think I’m—”

  Suddenly her husband dropped her hand and took a step forward.

  “Do you hear that, Em?”

  Emily twisted her head to the side, straining to hear. All feelings of nausea or anything, for that matter, instantly disappeared.

  “There. There’s the wind. Hear it? Do you feel it?”

  She felt something. It seemed nothing more than a slight movement of air, like the brush of a faint summer breeze. So slight it would barely rustle a leaf.

  Emily peered in the direction of Bobby’s stare. Maybe there was some movement there.

  A few scraps of paper floated across the floor toward them, gently dancing across the surface, kicking up into the air for a beat before descending down again.

  Just as she was speculating how the paper could suddenly float, she felt the air movement instantly increase, as if an ocean-side window had been opened to a squall.

  “Here it comes, Em. Stay back.”

  Bobby bent over The Dragon, twisting the lid on the gas bottle. Dragging the trolley behind him, he took several strides closer to the epicenter of the wind, which emanated near the right side of the line of pallets.

  Something was there, something dark and moving. Where there had been empty air, a murky blackness, shaded on the edges with blue, began to emerge and grow. Emily thought back to her science class more than a decade ago and the image of an amoeba swimming slowly through its watery home under a microscope.

  “Bobby, careful,” she called after him.

  Without looking back, he put up a hand behind his back and signaled for her to stay. The wind had kicked up a notch, and over the howl of it she thought she heard, “Don’t worry … under control.”

  Emily fought the urge to back out of there, run to the car, lock the doors, and hide. She was a housewife for heaven’s sake. A mother. Bobby—he was just a middle-of-the-road guy. A husband. A father.

  Under control? None of this was under control.

  She couldn’t move. The wind now tore through the place. The dust it kicked up filtered through her nose and coated her throat, forcing her eyes to squeeze into slits against the microscopic assault.

  What looked like a blue-black version of a face appeared only a few feet above a pallet pile very close to Bobby. Emily shoved her fist into her mouth, stifling a scream. She wanted to shout for him to run, so she could run.

  At the least, she should have a weapon. She felt exposed and vulnerable watching her husband standing before the huge, ugly black thing that belonged in a nightmare.

  Some kind of long spindly thing—maybe an arm, but not quite—began reaching through the dark hole, twisting and turning, reaching out above Bobby. Panic gripped her. Could it reach down, pick him up and hurl him against a wall like monsters did in movies? Unable to stop herself, she began to run forward screaming Bobby’s name.

  That’s when she heard the voice.

  Wait.

  It stopped her mid-stride. At first she thought it was Bobby, his voice distorted by the wind and the adrenaline and the waves of nausea rampaging through her body.

  “Bobby, I can’t hear you. What?” she shouted.

  He didn’t turn. He just stood there staring up at the thing, the long thin wand of The Dragon poised at the pallet stack below the face.

  Wait. Help!

  No, it wasn’t Bobby. She was certain now. Not a human voice. It sounded like a thousand whispers combined; the thrumming of a disturbed wasps’ nest. The voice sunk beyond her ears, deep into her head like a burrowing drill. Somehow the words were inside her mind.

  Through.

  Now it hurt. The voice pierced her skull, vibrating her brain, it seemed like. The wind accelerated, tearing through the building like it a desperate creature trying to escape. Shreds of paper flew up, swirling, thrashing around midair, only to be dashed again to the floor. Emily leaned into the wind, her hair streaming behind her. She was standing in a tornado.

  “Bobby!” she screamed, running toward him. “It’s in my head.”

  Bobby turned, and the look on his face made her breath catch. His eyes were wild and panicked. He had heard it, too.

  “You hear it, don’t you?” Emily said, holding her hands over her ears. Bobby nodded and slowly looked back at the thing, which now looked down on them.

  Oh God, it’s seen us, she thought.

  She wanted to grab Bobby. She really wanted to scream at him to run, but talking with the buzz inside her head had become impossible. She couldn’t hold a thought with those words burrowing away in there. The idea they were about to die was all she could hold, until it too was lashed away by the onslaught of the words.

  Carbon. Help. Neeeed.

  She managed to scream, “Oh my God, Bobby.” The rest of the words she’d meant to say—These things are real—disappeared.

  Time. Gooone.

  The words echoed inside and outside her head, a tsunami of thought. Overwhelming. Terrifying. She’d pray if she could just string even one sentence together.

  The buzzing increased in intensity, growing louder and more piercing as the words began repeating. The sound had reached a level above shrieking pain. Emily knew she couldn’t take much more. She’d die if it didn’t stop, her brain exploding inside her head with the pain.

  Carbon. Wait. Need. Help. Through. Time. Gone.

  Emily tried to concentrate, to understand what it meant, but the more the words repeated, the more uncertain she became of the message. There was no order to the words: they seemed thrown out there like answers in a game of charades.

  The thing was still growing. Its red-black sunken eyes and hollowed nose were now the size of a small car. The long, twisting arm-things sprawled across the ceiling moved outward. Good thing Bobby had built so many stacks.

  Need. Through. Carbon. Wait. Time. Gone.

  A sudden burst of bright blue-white startled Emily, causing her to stagger backward, jolting her heart along with her vision. For one horrible second she imagined the black thing had exploded, but when she opened her eyes and looked, the black arms were still above them, prodding and twisting.

  She realized then the flash was Bobby igniting The Dragon. He bent forward, lowering the flame shooting from it to the pallets. The wood and cardboard ignited and then exploded into a blaze. She rushed instinctively forward to grab her husband and pull him away. This was rapidly descending into dangerous chaos—like it had really been so orderly before. Then suddenly she
saw the real danger.

  The roof could easily collapse with the fire flaring so quickly.

  Up until now, she’d convinced herself this was some kind of grand adventure. But grand adventures were camping, and staying up late, and sneaking into the bedroom with Bobby when the kids were still awake. Not this. Not standing in the middle of a mini-tornado, fighting things that crawled through black holes and could get inside your head.

  She tried to signal to Bobby, point to the ceiling and the advancing flames.

  “Hang on, Em,” Bobby yelled over the wind and the buzzing.

  She heard his words as though they were filtered through a thin wall. She tried to pull at him, but he shrugged her hand away and walked The Dragon up the row of pallets, stopping methodically at every stack to set fire to wood. With each touch, flames burst from the dried heaps and leaped upward as though desperate to escape their wooden bonds.

  The droning voice in Emma’s brain had grown in increments, an orchestra of words and emotions building to a crescendo. If it didn’t stop soon, a collapsing ceiling wouldn’t matter.

  Carbon. Need. Through. Wait. Time. Gone.

  The entire row of pallets now burned, leaping, and connecting into a wall of flame. It took only thirty seconds for the heat to become uncomfortable and terrifying. Emma backed away from the blaze, but she did not intend to leave Bobby. If they died, they died together.

  Bobby turned, running toward her, whirling back to face the creature when he reached her side.

  “See how it likes that little welcome.”

  Emma looked at her husband, his face red not only with the exertion of running, but infused with what she realized was the heat of the battle.

  He was enjoying this.

  Just like on Old River Road, the change in the black thing occurred almost immediately. The dark hole behind the creature began to shrink, as with each writhing movement it dissolved back into the blackness. Very quickly all that remained was a shimmer behind the wall of flame.

  The row of crates was completely ablaze. Flames roared and jumped to the beams above, which ignited instantly with the mere touch of the hot white-yellow licks.

  To Emily’s relief, the voices receded with the shrinking of the creature, the pressure in her head diminishing with each passing second.

  As Bobby put his arm around her and turned them both toward the door, Emily could have sworn she heard the faintest of words echo in her mind before tailing away to silence.

  Time … gone …

  Then, as they burst through the doorway into the calm freshness of the night, away from the heat and smoke and the exploding and cracking of wood, one last word entered her mind.

  Help.

  Chapter 17

  Bobby gripped the arms of the chair so hard he felt the metal studs in the leather imprinting his skin. If he didn’t hold on for dear life, any minute now he’d lose it and leap out of the chair to rush at the state prosecutor mercilessly harassing Em.

  His wife was becoming more distressed, twisting her hands like she was wringing sweat from her palms, the way she always did when she got herself worked up. Who could blame her, with everyone in the courtroom staring at her like she was an amusement arcade freak, while this joker laughed at everything she said?

  It was her idea to hide the truth. He didn’t know why she’d suddenly snapped and spilled everything. A mistake. There is none so blind as those who will not see. He’d always told her that. Then again, he’d almost done the same thing, so how could he blame her?

  Once she’d started talking he’d realized by the reactions of those in the courtroom it was pointless. Nobody would believe them. Everyone wanted to believe up was up, the world was round, and coal seams occasionally collapsed and disappeared of their own accord.

  Although according to the Karlgarin Miner, a world expert scientist, who’d stayed in the town and studied the accident for weeks, still couldn’t explain what had happened down there. His expert guess was a chemical trapped within the coal and released during the mining process had dissolved it clear away.

  Good luck when you send those samples for further testing, Bobby thought.

  “So what do you think these messages meant?” the joker asked Em. “These words buzzing inside your head, what did you take from them? Buzzing, that was the word you used, if I’m not mistaken.”

  Em squared her shoulders against his mocking and met his stare. As distraught as Bobby knew she was, he noted a straightening of her posture, a boldness as she answered.

  “Bobby said he didn’t care what the words meant. He said whatever their troubles were, they could take them somewhere else. After what they’d already done to the mine. To Jimmy. The only way we were helping them was to travel back to hell.”

  “But what do you think, Mrs. Jessup? Didn’t you say you heard the word … help?” He paused before saying help, so everyone understood he didn’t believe a word she’d said, or would say.

  Bobby closed his eyes and imagined what the future would be like for their children if they couldn’t finish what they’d started—if they couldn’t stop the black thing at the final address. One more. He believed that’s all it would take.

  That’s what he and Em thought. Somehow—and he could never say how they knew—he and Em understood whatever these things were, these invaders, it was their time that was gone.

  Maybe they had a spaceship with only enough energy left to get them through these last few black holes. Or there were only thirteen of the things, and each time they stopped them, they didn’t just go back to their world, or their dimension, or hell; they just died. Bobby knew these black things, with no business in their world, were running out of time.

  They’d figured this out because each time they set fire to houses, mobile homes, and even the supermarket, and stopped them, the buzzing words grew more insistent. They had become screams. What was acutely recognizable was the sound of desperation.

  Now they were one fire short of capping the whole thing and finishing the job. There was so little time and their plans were more guesswork than solid preparation. So they were left working with what they’d been dealt.

  Bobby glanced at the clock on the wall, one of those analog ones with big numerals clicking down, which fell into place at the change of the minute. The all-important clock, ticking down life as they knew it, seemed to hang there, a larger-than-life version of itself.

  Another digit clicked in. In his head, he heard it like the sound of a falling metal board, clanging as it fell into place.

  3.25 p.m.

  Bobby’s heart filled with pride, as he heard Em answer the joker’s last question with such grace. He even smiled. God, he loved that woman.

  “Bobby is the bravest man I’ve ever known,” said Em. “You know, it doesn’t matter if you believe us or not, it won’t stop it from happening.”

  “Oh, and what’s going to happen, Mrs. Jessup? I’m sure everyone would like to know.”

  The joker then walked back to the table and with a flourish sat himself down in his chair, stretching his legs straight out into the aisle. If anyone wanted to pass they’d need to step over him and pardon themselves to the king.

  He spread his arms wide. “Tell us, Mrs. Jessup. We are all ears.”

  “You’ll find out,” said Em.

  The joker turned toward the Judge and asked, “Your Honor, can you please direct the witness to answer the question … especially since it sounds like we may all be in danger.” He snorted out a chuckle.

  Em glanced at the clock just as Bobby had done only a minute ago. He followed her gaze. Now a minute later. 3.26. When he looked back at her he saw her hands clenched impossibly tight, held before her mouth. At least she’d stopped wringing them together.

  Em tore her stare away from the clock, leaned forward, and looked over to Bobby. When their eyes met, the murmurs of the courtroom, the voice of the joker, everything that wasn’t them, became white noise.

  Em nodded. Bobby nodded. Simple a
ctions, but both understood in the next seconds their nightmare would end or a new one would begin.

  Em’s attorney called, “Objection. Badgering the witness.”

  In complete contrast to Em’s attorney, Bobby’s wore a K-Mart suit, unfashionable tie, and too-short pants. He would seem an odd choice for legal representation, losing more cases than he’d won. They’d chosen carefully after following him through several lunch breaks and after work—where he spent many nights at Rooklen’s Bar.

  He was perfect.

  Bobby smelled the thick, stale tang of cigarettes on the man’s rumpled jacket. The fingers touching Bobby’s sleeve in acknowledgement were tinged nicotine-yellow.

  Inside the attorney’s briefcase lay a pack of Marlboros and a lighter. Bobby knew this because he noticed them each time they’d taken a break over the past few days. In fact, at every recess the man would rush from the courtroom to stand on the steps outside. Sometimes he did this before he even spoke to Bobby. Bobby didn’t care.

  His performance didn’t matter.

  Bobby’s eyes focused again on the clock as the new minute number dropped into its slot.

  3.27.

  As the moment ticked in, an almost imperceptible movement of air in the front of the courtroom began.

  Then it was gone.

  A beat later, it came again. This time stronger. A few papers fluttered on the judge’s desk and the attorney’s tables.

  A murmur of voices arose around Bobby. He looked over at Em. Her hands were clasped together and pressed against her lips as though she were praying. Then she pushed them forward, blowing him a kiss and a silent good luck.

  Bobby returned his focus to the attorney beside him. In his periphery, he glimpsed and heard people begin to rise from their seats and move. The room filled with the sound of falling bags and other items, which seconds before had been held on laps or perched on benches.