The Boy in the Burning House

by Tim Wynne-Jones

  Crawling on all fours up the steep northern slope of the pit, he came out on hardpack, a road of sorts, though overgrown and unused. But as he walked, his spirit quickened, for he could see from the broken and leaning grass that something — a vehicle of some kind — had passed through recently.

  He tramped past Poole’s boarded-up house, climbed another hill, forded another sand pit. He climbed out at another distant shore. He was putting continents between himself and his home. He reached, at last, the place where the rolling meadowland met the bush. He stopped to catch his breath. He turned to look at the valley below, saw the grass bend under the wind.

  He could see for miles — Ormond and Pat McCoy’s spread to the east, Lar and Charlotte Perkins’ land to the west, his own house tucked nicely into the maples below. If he shielded his eyes against the westering sun, he could even make out Highway 7 to the south and the tall towers of the calcite factory on the outskirts of Ladybank.

  He turned to face the road ahead, which stretched steeply before him. It was a narrow gash through the trees, mostly bedrock. Fists of granite stuck up through the earth like ancient buried giants trying to fight their way out into the air. The bush closed in on both sides.

  In a few minutes Jim’s legs ached from the climb, but if he looked at the low juniper growing in the nooks and crannies of the roadway, he saw broken branches and bruised clusters of berries where the chassis of something had passed over. He trod lightly, kept his breath a secret between himself and the air.

  He reached a clearing, a flat plateau stretching in low steps up towards the ridge, which was blocked from his vantage point by dense foliage. Crouching on the edge of the clearing, Jim looked for signs of life. The wind swooped down from the ridge, soughing through the pines, shaking the poplars, bending the saplings.

  Suddenly, Jim saw a flash — the glitter of light on metal where there shouldn’t have been any.

  It was a car. Not the Godmobile, but a green four-by-four hidden among the trees on the other side of the clearing. No low-sprung city car could have made it up such a rocky incline.

  Jim watched for signs of movement, saw none. He settled on one knee behind a fringe of high grass, yellow and dry, looking as if autumn had wrung the life right out of it.

  The four-by-four was a late model Ford Explorer, clean and, to Jim’s eye, vaguely official looking. Department of Natural Resources, maybe?

  There might be something written on the door. He decided to find out.

  As patiently and soundlessly as he could, Jim made his way north around the edge of the clearing. Under the canopy of trees it was cooler and still wet from the rain of the past few days. He was shivering a bit by the time he came to a track, open to the sky but dense with waist-high sumac, its leaves rust-red. The track curved up the hill to his left and disappeared around a bend, heading in the direction of the summit. The ridge loomed above Jim through the waving trees. To his right the track curved down towards where the four-by-four must be parked, though it was hidden from view now by a shoulder of land.

  He waited. Watched. Listened. The wind snatched away the blue jays’ songs, rattled the crows, whistled out of tune through some hollow place Jim could not see. He ventured on all fours into the sumac and poked his head up like a turtle above the red surface of leaves. Northwest a bit, he saw a caved-in shed of some kind. The door opened and slammed shut again, tugged at by gravity one minute and the wind the next, as if there were a stream of ghosts coming and going.

  Jim headed south down the track towards the Ford. He tripped and only just managed to keep his balance. He tripped again, and this time his knee landed hard on steel, on a rusted stretch of rail. He was following some kind of narrow railbed. He came upon the remains of a broken trolley car lying on its side, its metal chassis frozen with rust, its wooden box rotten and moss-covered. Must have been used to transport ore from the mine, he guessed.

  Keeping low but lifting his feet high, he caught sight, at last, of the four-by-four below. There was no insignia on the door. But he was close enough and alone enough, as far as he could tell, to risk taking a peek inside.

  There was a break in the trees that seemed to be the course of a dried-up stream bed. The rails crossed the stony bed on a bridge of stout, rough-hewn timbers and the stream bed formed a kind of rocky staircase down towards the clearing. Jim sidled down, step by step, through the dappled light until he arrived, at last, at the vehicle. He stared through his own reflection into the interior, saw nothing at first glance. It seemed show-room clean.

  He peered more closely. This time he noticed a dark stain on the back seat, a tiny tear in the upholstery revealing a tuft of stuffing. Then he looked again into the front.

  Lying on the plush leather of the passenger seat was a small white cylinder. Lip balm.

  He heard a tiny avalanche of gravel and instantly dropped to the ground. Someone was coming from the direction of the cliff. On his stomach, he slithered around the vehicle to the other side. The steps were distant and not in any hurry by the sound of it, but they were unmistakably coming closer.

  He looked around. To his left, the ground fell away gently down through a small stretch of open woodland and low ground cover towards the clearing. The clearing was a sprint away. He could probably not escape unseen, but if he could get out into the open he had a good chance. If it was Fisher, Jim was sure he could outrun him if he had a decent head start.

  He took another quick look and made up his mind. With a deep breath, he pushed himself off and, keeping low, dashed down through the woods. He had the advantage of surprise. With any luck he would not be observed until he had made the clearing, and then it was all downhill. No one could catch him.

  He hadn’t counted on the rubble. With lightning reflexes, he cleared the skeletal remains of some kind of steam pump, overgrown and half submerged in the forest floor. He stumbled over a rotted ladder, regained his balance, kept moving.

  He never saw the fly wheel.

  It was wooden spoked, as large as a cafeteria table and choked by carrion flower. One moment Jim was in full stride, the next he felt a searing pain in his ankle and he was falling. The last thing he saw was clumps of bluish berries in a putrid-smelling sea of dying vines. The last thing he heard were footsteps thundering in his ears.

  24

  The footsteps came closer, echoing in his head as if his head was empty of anything but footsteps. He should do something. Get up. Run. But his arms wouldn’t move, nor would his feet. If he could only stand, that would be a start. So, blindly, he stood and then he keeled over onto his knees.

  Strong hands grabbed him by the arms, lifted him, placed him back on a seat, where he fell backwards until he was leaning against stone, cold and wet. He opened his eyes.

  Everywhere was stone, even the face before him. Then it became flesh, a man, his features indistinguishable, the only light coming from behind him, a bright halo of light that pricked at Jim’s eyes painfully.

  The man stepped back a bit and Jim could see now that he had no halo. It was Father Fisher. The next minute he was kneeling before Jim. He had a thermos in one hand and a cup in the other. There was water in the cup. Jim saw the light glimmer on the clear surface of the water. Fisher brought the cup to Jim’s lips and he drank.

  For a moment, cool water was all there was in the world. Jim leaned back again, breathing hard. He rested. Leaned forward and the cup was there again. He wanted to hold it but for some reason he couldn’t. Then it dawned on him that his hands were bound behind him. He felt the rope tight against his wrists. His ankles, too. He started to panic but didn’t have the energy for it. He relaxed, opened his eyes, careful not to look into the light.

  Fisher’s face, what he could see of it, looked worried. His raven hair was mussed, the bruise on his cheek was livid. But then Jim’s attention was diverted, for behind Fisher’s left shoulder there was another man. He was sitting in what looked like a car seat. Except the car seat wasn’t in a car. Where were they?

>   A cave.

  Jim looked up. The walls rose around him, pale as flesh but veined with shining green stones. The same green as Father’s crucifix. But he wasn’t wearing it now.

  And the other man. He was nearer the light and his hair gleamed white — white as corn silk. It was long, tied back in a ponytail. He was looking at Jim, the light glinting off pale blue eyes.

  “Tuffy?” said Jim. The man looked pained and that’s when Jim noticed that he was tied up as well.

  Fisher’s hand came towards Jim’s face. Jim flinched, but the huge hand only touched his forehead. It felt cool and Jim closed his eyes and leaned against it. With his eyes shut it could almost have been his own father’s hand.

  “You’re all right,” said Fisher soothingly. “You had a bad fall.”

  Jim opened his eyes and squinted at the light that lit the cave. It was a hurricane lamp, kerosene, hanging from a bracket on the wall, a spike jammed into a cleft in the rock. It lit up the top of a large wooden spool, the kind they rolled telephone cable onto. But now it was on its side like a low table.

  There was other makeshift furniture: a crate, a shelf made of boards and piled stones, the car seat where the man who was not Tuffy sat.

  Jim stared at his fellow captive. He had a ratty sleeping bag draped around his shoulders. His face was cut and bruised. And it came to Jim who it must be. Stanley.

  But now Fisher turned Jim’s face towards him. “I didn’t want it to be like this,” he said. “It would all have worked out just fine.” The sincerity in his voice seemed so real. He was apologizing. “You shouldn’t have come here, Jim,” he said. And, unlike the threats of the night before, there was real sadness in his voice. Jim dared to speak.

  “What are you going to do?”

  Fisher lowered his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “I just don’t know anymore.” Then there was silence.

  Jim heard water dripping a long way off. It was impossible to tell how big the cavern was, for the lantern only lit up one small corner. Jim looked at the makeshift shelf beside him. There was an old peanut tin filled with odds and ends: a yo-yo, a chrome lighter. Beside the tin, a pile of soggy dime comics, a coiled length of string, a cigar box, a black phone with a dial.

  It was a clubhouse. His father, Eldon Fisher and Tuffy had come here, made this place their own. And, looking at Fisher now — still kneeling on the cold floor, his head still bent — Jim knew that it was to this underground room that Fisher had fled the night of the fire that killed Francis Tufts. It was here that God spoke to him, just like in the Sunday school picture. Except that Fisher had got it wrong. This far underground, it wasn’t likely God who had spoken to him.

  The parson sighed, took a deep breath and climbed slowly to his feet. He leaned forward, his hands on his knees, the better to look Jim in the eye. “I have to go up top again,” he said. “There’s a call I’m waiting for.”

  Jim’s eyes skittered to the black telephone, but it wasn’t connected to anywhere. He watched Fisher check on Stanley, check the ropes that bound him to his car seat.

  “You okay?” Fisher asked.

  “Oh, I’m just hunky dory,” said Stanley. “Thank you so much for asking.” His accent was southern, his tone dry. With one last aggrieved backward glance, Fisher headed off into the gloom beyond the lantern’s light. Jim heard his footsteps retreat, following the smaller beam of a pocket flashlight that finally disappeared around some bend in the deeper darkness of the cavern.

  “You’re Stanley,” said Jim.

  The man managed a painful smile. “At your service,” he said. “Well, truth to tell, not at your service.”

  “Where’s he going?”

  “Up top,” said Stanley. “The four-by-four has a cell phone in it. He borrowed it from some parishioner. Wonder if she has any idea what he wanted it for.” Stanley shook his head sadly. “He’s waiting for a call from the warden of the church to say a certain package has arrived. In it are some letters from my mother. When he’s got them in his hot little hands, then I get released. That’s the plan, anyway.” He glanced with some exasperation at Jim, but his voice was ironic. “Who are you, anyhow? What you want to do getting yourself in this mess?”

  “I’m Jim Hawkins. Hub’s son.” The good-natured frown on Stanley’s face tightened. “I’m sorry for what my father did,” said Jim, squaring his chin. “But he couldn’t have known he was doing it. My father would have never hurt someone on purpose.” His voice was shaking, but there was a kind of cracked pride in it.

  Stanley nodded slowly. “I know it,” he said. “Fisher tricked him.”

  “You know what happened?”

  Stanley sighed. “Well, according to our talkative captor, Francis came around to Wilf Fisher’s house on that New Year’s Eve back in ’72, wanting money, wanting revenge, even. I don’t doubt it. He’d been in that reform school. I suppose he figured it was time he collected. Fisher senior was out. Our holy friend here took my brother in, fed him Christmas leftovers, gave him his father’s finest rye — Francis was always partial to drink. Fisher promised him his reward and, when he was good and sleepy, he found him sleeping gear and led him down to our old homestead in the low field. Made sure he was warm and cosy.”

  He paused to make sure Jim was following.

  “Then I guess he went and roused Hub. There was a New Year’s gathering at your place as well. Hub snuck out without anyone knowing it. And that’s when Fisher tricked him. He complained about his old man, how Wilf, with all his money, kept him on a short chain, what a crab he was, etcetera, etcetera. He kinda threw Hub a bone, you see, and Hub, he gnawed on it. He hated Wilf Fisher and Fisher encouraged him to a white-hot hatred.”

  Stanley stared off into space for a moment. Jim didn’t need to hear the rest. “So he convinced my dad it would be a cool prank to burn down the old house.”

  Stanley nodded. He turned to Jim. “He lit his fuse, you might say.” He paused again in silent reverie. “Dry hay goes up real good,” he added. “It must have been quite a blaze.”

  Jim felt a calmness come over him. This was the whole of the sad truth. His own father was neither guiltless nor entirely guilty. He was the victim of a terrible trick, but also the victim of his own anger. There was no denying it.

  Stanley suddenly interrupted his thoughts. “You know what that devil Fisher believes, Jim Hawkins? He believes God sent that mighty snowstorm to cover their tracks. He truly believes the Lord loves him.” Stanley stretched the word love, made it two syllables long, a white snowstorm of Love. “I’m not a religious man myself, but that strikes me as the worst kind of blasphemy.”

  It was perverted. What there was left of faith in Jim was filled with revulsion.

  Stanley looked at Jim, and his battered face was a snarl of emotions: anger, remorse, bewilderment. “My mother and I — we kinda blew it, big time.” He appealed to Jim with his eyes. “I never wanted to do it at all. Not that I’m pleading innocence here. It was Mother’s plan. She had this wicked bee and it wasn’t in her bonnet, no, sir, but in her very soul. She had lost her son. She demanded justice. Can you see that?”

  “I think so,” said Jim. More hate, he was thinking. Hatred begat hatred. “But why so many years after it happened?”

  Stanley looked up. “It started with a letter. About two years ago. From an old-timer by the name of Jock Boomhower, a former neighbour of yours, I guess.” Jim nodded. “He wrote a kind of death-bed confession. He went out of his way to track us down, even hired a detective. Then he wrote to us. Told us he’d seen Fisher and your father at the old house the night of the fire. He didn’t say nothing at the inquiry. He was mad as hell at Francis. Glad to see him go. So he kept his mouth shut. But I guess he didn’t want St. Peter to bring it up when he was standing at the heavenly gates, if you catch my meaning.”

  Jim nodded. “Why’d Boomhower hate Francis?”

  Stanley shook his head. “Because Francis, God rest his soul, was an idiot. They were all idiots, the three of
them, and I don’t mind telling you that. But it was my brother — without a doubt the biggest idiot of the lot — who took it upon himself to burn down an old shed on Jock Boomhower’s spread. ‘Cept he didn’t know Jock had moved a cow and her new calf in there. Jock didn’t get them out. Anyway, Francis was arrested the same night. The others, I guess, were plum terrified. They hadn’t been with him that night, but it was enough to make them quit their arsonous ways forever.”

  “Almost,” said Jim.

  “Huh?”

  “Almost quit forever.”

  Silence descended again. Jim didn’t want to hear any more. He wanted out of the chain of events that had led him here. Out of everything. He wanted to return to the present. He wanted to return to the place where the future started.

  He wriggled his wrists tentatively. There was no give. He wriggled his ankles. It was impossible.

  “He’s good at knots, huh,” said Stanley. “A regular boy scout.”

  Jim tried again until his wrists were chafed and burning.

  Stanley didn’t watch. “Good luck,” he said, dispiritedly. “I been trying for as long as I’ve been down this God-forsaken hole.”

  Jim looked around the cavern for something sharp, saw nothing. The lantern flickered, caught his attention. They had lanterns just like that at home. When you lived in the farthest corner of the county, power outages were common, and it took hydro crews a long time to replace fallen lines. Jim knew all about hurricane lanterns.

  “I think I’ve got an idea,” he said.

  25

  Jim stood up. With two hops he made it past the shelf made of boards and piled stones to the cable spool. He sat down and shimmied around until he was facing the crate. He put his bound feet up against the crate and shoved.