The Burning

by Jonas Saul

  “Who knows?” Clayton bit into a gala apple. “People go missing all the time in the mountains.”

  “Yeah, but I heard his rifle was found on the porch of this house.”

  “Ghost stories,” Clayton said. “That’s all it is.”

  “I don’t think so,” Arthur chimed in. “There’s something wrong with this house. I can feel it in my bones. Can smell it in the air.”

  Clayton swallowed the chunk of apple and took a deep breath. “That’s just somebody nearby with a campfire. Probably roasting marshmallows or hotdogs.”

  “I smell something burning,” Arthur said. “And it ain’t marshmallows.”

  “Okay, folks. Let’s finish this up and get the rest of the search done. I want to be home in time for dinner.”

  They gathered their garbage, tossed it into a bag Clayton had brought and assembled at the opposite corner of the property.

  After two more search lines were covered, they came upon the old well near the back of the property line. In order to walk around the raised stones that marked the well, Clayton would have to move away from one of the volunteer’s on either side of him.

  “Everyone, slow up. I want to scan the base of the well so we don’t have to revisit this spot.”

  The line stopped. Clayton got down and circled the well, seeing nothing but overgrown grass and stone. He rose to his full height and looked down into the open hole of the well. Darkness covered the bottom. As far as he remembered, the old wells in these parts had dried up years ago.

  He grabbed the flashlight off his belt, flicked it on and shined the beam down the hole. Something reflected off it near the bottom.

  “What was that?” he asked out loud.

  A moment later Mike stood beside him, leaned down and scanned the bottom of the well.

  “I can’t make it out, but from here it looks like a woman’s purse.”

  “What would a purse be doing at the bottom of a well?” Clayton asked no one in particular.

  “No idea,” Mike answered.

  “Okay everyone, continue the search without me. I’m going to get my fishing rod out of my trunk to see if I can hook that purse and bring it up.”

  The group of volunteers formed their line again and moved away as Clayton walked out to his car.

  Minutes later he stood at the lip of the old well, a large lure with a double hook at its base affixed to the ten-pound line.

  He let the line go until the lure touched bottom and then began the monotonous work of trying to hook the purse in the little to no light at the bottom of the well.

  The volunteers finished scanning the property and came up empty. There was no indication anyone had spent time at the house in the last few years.

  Just as it was beginning to seem a fruitless effort, the hook caught in the front flap of the purse.

  Gently, he pulled the fishing line up and began to reel it in. Mike grabbed the tip of the rod to stabilize it and reduce sway.

  “You’re getting it. Slowly, slowly.”

  Clayton paid attention to the line, making sure he didn’t jerk it.

  “Five feet left. Someone reach down and grab it when it gets close.”

  Clayton didn’t look up to see who volunteered. He just kept his attention on the rod. To get this close and accidentally drop the purse back into the well would really piss him off.

  “Got it!” Barbara shouted.

  Clayton let out a pent-up breath. He set the rod down and reached for the purse. It didn’t look old, but the strap was broken and the outside leather worn. However long the purse was in the well, it had been weathered beyond repair.

  “Everyone, thanks for coming out. Time to go. I’ll have this and its contents analyzed and let you all know what I find, if anything. Thanks again. See you all in town.”

  Clayton walked away, but not before Arthur grabbed his arm.

  “I don’t think you’ll find anything in that purse. The house doesn’t want you to know.”

  Clayton stopped walking. “What makes you say that?”

  “Up there,” Arthur pointed at the second story windows with his cane. “When you got that purse into your hands, something was in the window, watching you.”

  “What are you talking about? You think someone is in the house?”

  “No, not someone. Something.”

  “Now Arthur, I hope you’re not seeing things,” Clayton said as he turned to go.

  Arthur grabbed his elbow with surprising strength and spun him back to face him. “Whatever it was I saw, I can tell you it was real and it was angry. I didn’t see eyes, but I felt it watching us. Then it glowed a fire-red and orange color. When you touched the purse, for a brief moment the whole second story of the house looked like it was on fire. Flames licked up the window panes — then turned a deep shade of red and by the time I was ready to point and tell you to look, it all went away.”

  “Arthur,” Clayton lowered his voice and leaned in. “You didn’t see anything of the sort. Go home and get some sleep. Thanks for your help today.”

  Officer Clayton walked away with the purse in his hand, wondering what he’d find in it.

  He also wondered if Arthur had started brewing his moonshine again or if he was finally losing his mind to age.

  When he reached his car, he stopped to look back at the house and saw Arthur in the open door.

  “What are you doing now?” he asked.

  “Going inside to investigate what I saw.”

  Arthur snarled on the word investigate and Clayton knew what that meant. Clayton had heard that some people in the area didn’t think he did his job well enough.

  “Hold up, just one sec.”

  He set the purse down on the passenger seat and walked to the front door. Arthur stepped in ahead and Clayton followed.

  It was dark and dismal with a nasty smell of burnt flesh. Sitting on the floor by the door was a small pile of luggage. On top of two suitcases sat a VHS videocamera.

  Clayton examined it as Arthur stepped farther into the house.

  “Hey, Arthur, hold up. Don’t go too far. We shouldn’t even be in here.”

  “I’ll do what I want,” Arthur said.

  Clayton hit the eject button and popped the cassette tape out.

  More evidence.

  “Hey Arthur, look at your shoes.” Smoke came off of Arthur’s feet.

  The old man leaned on the wall to lift his foot. Half of the sole was missing.

  “What the hell—”

  Clayton felt heat in his boots too. Smoke also came out from under his feet.

  “Arthur, we need to leave. Now!”

  At his age, Arthur could still move fast. He skipped across the living room and together, they walked out the front door and down the steps to the gravel drive.

  “What was in the floor?” Arthur asked.

  “I have no idea,” Clayton said. “But I’ve got a VHS tape to watch. Maybe there’ll be something on here.”

  Both men walked away with half their footwear still intact, but Clayton’s confidence wavering.

  Chapter 5

  Friday, May 18, 2012…

  Tessa finished the first coat of paint in their bedroom. While washing her hands, she heard Eric pulling up to the front of the house.

  Eager to hear what Eric had found out in town, she ran down the stairs, gave the kitchen a wide berth, and opened the front door.

  Right away she could see the anger on his face.

  “What happened in town?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” he said, his voice confirming her suspicions of ire.

  He had gotten out of the car and fiddled with something in the trunk.

  “What do you mean, nothing? Wasn’t the real estate agent in? Did you get to the library?”

  He popped his head out from behind the open lid of the trunk. “No, and no.”

  He doesn’t have to be so bitchy to me.

  “What happened then? Tell me. You sound pissed.”

  “I am piss
ed.”

  He slammed the trunk and she jumped at what he held in his hands.

  A silver hand gun.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, her voice weak and feminine. “We don’t believe in guns. We’ve talked about this.”

  “Yeah, and look how many kilometers we are from town.” He walked around the car. “Someone came into our house and burned a rat in our oven. We’re so far out of town that the local sheriff offers us his personal services if we need a cop. Tell me that doesn’t spook you just a little.”

  “There are two things that have me spooked. One was the rat in the oven. And the other is you, right now.”

  He walked up beside her and slid the top of the gun until it clicked. “Well, Tessa, I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to get used to it. I will protect you and this house, and I won’t allow you or anyone else to dictate to me how I choose to do that protection.”

  He walked past her and disappeared inside.

  What the hell has happened to my Eric?

  She found him in the kitchen checking to see if the window over the sink was secure.

  “Where did you get the gun?” she asked.

  “Officer Clayton had an extra in his trunk.”

  “What?” she asked and then slapped her forehead. “Are you serious? That was smart, real smart.”

  He stopped sliding his hands along the frame and turned to her. “What does that mean?”

  “Tell me what happened in town.” She crossed her arms. “Everything.”

  “Okay. The real estate agency was closed by the time I got downtown. With all the tourists in town for the long weekend, it took forever to get to the library. It, too, was closed. I missed it by five minutes.”

  “Then what?”

  “Officer Clayton pulled up in his cruiser and asked me to get in. I did.”

  “Why? Did he have an issue with you or is this his way of making friends?”

  Eric raised both hands and said, “I have no idea. He said I looked scared, so I told him about the rat. He offered the weapon and I took it. Coming from a cop, I thought it was safe.”

  “This is insane. You didn’t consider my feelings—”

  Something snapped upstairs, and the house shuddered with the bang.

  Her eyes wide, Tessa whispered, “What was that?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.”

  Eric ran past her, the gun held high. Tessa was still scared about the cop’s gift of a gun. If Eric shot someone and ended up in court, there was no way a member of the RCMP would take the fall by admitting he offered a weapon to someone as untrained as Eric. Something was wrong with Clayton. Had to be.

  Why would he give Eric a gun?

  She ran into the back storage room and opened three different boxes until she found her old video recorder.

  She could hear Eric calling for her to come upstairs.

  “In a minute,” she shouted.

  “Now,” he yelled back down.

  What the fuck?

  She opened the tape drawer and saw it held a VHS tape.

  Whatever is on this tape is about to be erased.

  She grabbed the cord and plugged it into the back of the recorder as she ran for the stairs. When she got to the top of the stairs, she saw why Eric had called her.

  She gasped and almost dropped the recorder.

  “Who did this?” Eric asked. “Did you?”

  She shook her head in an exaggerated twist back and forth. “Never,” she whispered.

  “How did it happen?” Eric asked, his words coming out in tight, short beats.

  “What? You don’t think I had anything to do with this, do you?”

  “Look, Tessa, I drove into town and when I come back, the room you were painting is ruined. Unless we have company, you did this. And don’t suggest otherwise. Unless you really want to get crazy and say this house is haunted, but we both know that’s not the case. We don’t believe in that shit.”

  She stood, stunned at what she saw and at Eric’s words. His tone hurt her. Eric had never talked like that before, and now he stood in their new home with a gun in his hand. For the first time in a long time, Tessa felt real fear.

  “Eric, we should leave.”

  He threw his head back and laughed. “You know, you’re a real fucking joke. How could you say that?” Spittle flew from his mouth at the last word. His face reddened and the sclera of his eyes lost their white to a red hue. “Someone is fucking with us, and you want to leave. Give me a fucking break!”

  “I’m sorry. Please stop shouting.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do,” he screamed and stormed past her.

  What’s happening to us? This morning when we arrived with the paint and set up, he was so happy. We were so happy. What has changed?

  Tessa stepped into the master bedroom and looked at the first coat she had spent seven hours applying. It had bubbled up and flaked off like she’d tried to paint the side of a barbecue. Flakes of charred paint lay around the room at the bottom of every wall that had been covered.

  The original wooden wall showed through in all its ugly brown and black surface. The room had lost the smell of paint too.

  Only the faint odor of burnt hair remained.

  Chapter 6

  Friday, June 1, 2012…

  Officer Clayton poured himself a glass of wine and sat on his couch. The purse had come up empty. He’d kept it sealed at the house so the volunteers would think it would be opened in a lab. Everyone watched CSI nowadays and were amateur scientists. When he got to the station, he’d walked into his office and opened the purse to see there was nothing in it.

  He had fast forwarded and rewound the VHS tape to loosen it up. It took him more time to locate his old player in the garage than it took to get the tape ready.

  With it hooked up and the tape ready to play, Officer Clayton sat back and sipped his wine. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to see the tape or not. Should he just let it go? How many more people would go missing before someone else noticed and raked him over the coals for not doing more?

  Maybe it was time to deal with The Burning House. Ever since that fire in 1978, no one had ever done a thing about that house. Why did it have to fall on Clayton’s shoulders?

  He pushed play on the remote and drank more wine.

  The tape started with the man and woman who had bought the house, Eric and Tessa, playing at a beach somewhere. He leaned forward to speed the tape up. Then the scene changed.

  As far as he could tell, Tessa held the camera. A man’s voice in the background was too far away to be holding the camera. The image on the screen was of one of the bedrooms. The room was quite sizable.

  “This is the master bedroom,” Tessa’s voice said. “I finished painting the first coat fifteen minutes ago and after cleaning up and going downstairs, this happened.”

  The camera moved closer to the wall. The paint had chipped off the wood, leaving behind a mess on the floor. What didn’t surprise him was the way the paint had come off. It had burned off wherever it covered the wood.

  The camera slowly panned down the wall to the floor. Littered around the baseboards were blackened chips of paint, their charred edges sending a chill down Clayton’s back. He shivered, jolting the wine glass in his hand.

  The picture on his TV broke and went back to another time at the beach. Then it broke again and he was back in the house.

  To protect his sanity, Officer Clayton almost turned off the tape. But he couldn’t. The rest of his life, he would wonder what came next. Halfway through the scene, his stomach gave way. Officer Clayton vomited into his wine glass and across his coffee table.

  “I’m damned to hell,” he said to himself as he watched Tessa do the unthinkable.

  Chapter 7

  Friday, May 18, 2012…

  Tessa finished filming the bedroom and headed downstairs to see what Eric was doing. If someone was in their house, she didn’t want to be too far from Eric.

  Eric
was in the kitchen with his head in the stove.

  “What are you doing now?” she asked.

  “I’m looking for holes. Anything to explain how the rat got in here.”