He heard Sheri grunt in pain as he began to kick frantically, his body searching for some foothold that would allow him to push up, to get to his daughter.
His foot found something to push against. He didn’t know what. Didn’t care. He pushed. Pulled on Sheri, pushed on his feet. Sheri groaned. He pulled harder. Managed to let go of one of her hands and in the same jittery movement slap his palm down on the edge of the attic entrance hatch. The wood bit into his palm, and the pain was sweet.
Sheri switched her now-free hand to his back, yanking on his shirt while continuing to pull on his other hand. Jerry kept kicking. Felt his shoe smash through drywall. Didn’t care. The house was doomed already. Had been for a long time, whether he realized it or not. He wedged his foot into the drywall and levered up, up. Wiggled higher. Now Sheri had two hands on his back and he was a third of the way into the attic. Daring to hope he would make it in. Him, a surgeon who hadn’t done a pull-up in probably twenty years, and he was going to make it.
Halfway in.
Inching higher.
Almost far enough to throw a leg over the lip of the hatchway, and then he’d be home free.
Then his eyes widened.
“What?” screamed Sheri.
Jerry didn’t answer. Couldn’t.
Something yanked him down, out of the attic, and he plummeted away from Sheri and back into smoke and flame.
95
“Run, Sheri, get out!”
Jerry felt like the words almost disappeared behind him, he was pulled away so fast. He slid out of the attic, the rough edges of the hatchway digging deep scratches in his belly and chest, then fell. But before he had even hit the floor below it felt like he was being yanked out of the closet by the seat of his pants, like a toddler being hauled ignominiously out of a supermarket while in the middle of a tantrum.
He found himself in almost total darkness. Not the same inky black that had followed the family through this ordeal, but a new kind of blinding force. This was a cloying, choking darkness. A darkness that forced its way down your throat and yanked the air out of your body in superheated blasts that left you feeling cooked from the inside out.
All this was Jerry’s impression in the instant before something whipped around him. It went around his shoulders at first, and Jerry felt something hot and somehow wet and dry at the same time. Pieces of it sloughed off on his shirt, leaving black and red trails behind, then the thing moved to his throat and tightened and Jerry realized it was an arm and that arm was choking him.
Then the arm yanked back and Jerry was hurled backward, thrown down with stunning force to the floor and he felt hands around his neck. But the hands were wrong somehow. Too short, like the fingers ended halfway to the first knuckle.
The Killer looked down. Hazy, wreathed by smoke and firelight like a demon come to herald the final Apocalypse.
“I don’t match,” he said, his voice so calm it was jarringly at odds with everything else going on.
He slammed the back of Jerry’s head against the floor and Jerry felt his eyes cross even as the Killer began choking him in earnest.
There was no question of his fighting back. He was at the Killer’s mercy.
The Killer leaned close. “Don’t worry,” he said. “You were the only one who came clean.” He blinked, as though unsure of his surroundings, then refocused on Jerry. “But I can’t let you save the little whore. Those are the rules.”
He bore down on Jerry. Jerry’s eyes fluttered.
This is it.
Then, a sickening thud.
96
Nothing changed. Nothing, but everything.
The fire still blasted. Heat still flowed over and around everything, drying it and getting it ready to burn. Smoke still roiled in dark clouds that made Jerry’s lungs spasm.
The Killer still looked down at him.
But his eyes… his eyes changed. They had been angry, intense, manic. Now: empty.
A thin trickle of blood streamed down the other man’s forehead and Jerry felt the charred hands loosen from his neck.
The Killer slumped.
And Jerry saw his daughter, standing above the other man. She held the broken remains of the heavy mahogany box in which Ann had hidden the evidence of her adultery. Now the box was in splinters and the letters curled and flew, born on waves of heat until they fell to fire or simply exploded into flame in midair. Destroyed.
The secrets gone.
Sheri managed to smile at Jerry before she sagged, the last of her strength exhausted.
Jerry pushed out from below the Killer’s form and managed to grab her before she fell. He held her tightly. “You came back,” he said.
She nodded, even that small movement seeming to cost her. “You saved me before.” She looked down at the sprawled, still form of the Killer, steeled herself, and kicked him hard. “And I don’t like being called a whore.”
97
Jerry thought for the first few seconds that they wouldn’t be able to get back into the attic. And even after Sheri dug deep and managed to find some hidden surplus of strength sufficient to pull herself up and help her exhausted and sadly out-of-shape old man to do the same, he wasn’t sure they were much better off.
The attic was a disaster.
The house had visibly started to buckle, canting to the side. Firelight poured in through the attic hatch, but it illuminated little since the attic was full of smoke that had tried to flee the house and instead ended up trapped in this, its highest point.
Just like us.
Jerry tried his best to throw that thought out. How ridiculous would it be to give up now? So close to escape?
What if there is no escape up here?
“Come on,” he said, holding Sheri’s hand and leading her through the attic. They both crouched automatically, trying without much success to get below the smoke.
And then he saw it. A small patch of light.
He hauled Sheri with him as he hurried over to it, thanking his lucky stars that there was nothing up here, no furniture or family memories to trip over. Just empty space.
A moment later they were at the light. A vent cover. He put his face to it and could feel cool, clean – or at least cooler and cleaner – air wafting through the slatted cover. It was about eighteen inches to a side. Big enough to get through.
He put his fingers through the slats and pulled. Then pushed. Then pulled again.
The vent cover didn’t budge. Sheri started to cry, and beyond her Jerry could see the leading edge of the fire licking over the top of the attic hatch.
He pulled harder. Pulled until blood ran down his fingers. His spine popped with the effort he was putting into it, pulling with his whole body and not just his hands or arms.
The house shifted, seeming to leap to the side a good two feet. Sheri screamed.
Jerry kept pulling.
And with a crash, the vent cover pulled away from the wall. Jerry went down, falling to his back, and every bone and muscle in his body seemed to scream its disapproval. He told them all to shut up, then stood and threw the vent cover aside.
Outside the hole that he had opened up, a red and orange fabric flapped between billows of dark smoke. The termite tent.
And beyond that… freedom.
98
Jerry helped Sheri out of the vent hole, dropping her to a part of the first-story roof that jutted out a few feet below it. He thought she was going to roll over the side and fall right off it, but she managed to hold on. He pushed himself out the hole next, landing semi-gracefully next to her.
They still weren’t out of danger. The termite tent was all around them, full of smoke and fire, disorienting and suffocating them. They could die only inches from freedom.
He thought about lowering Sheri off the roof, but couldn’t for the life of him remember what was below them. Grass? Concrete? Something else? How ridiculous would it be to die here, dropping down and breaking their backs on a patch of unforgiving architecture or landscap
ing after all they’d been through?
He could barely see now, the smoke was pressing so close. Sheri was coughing constantly. He was, too, he realized, but hadn’t noticed it. Too busy trying to get him and his daughter out of this.
The house shuddered and took another sideways lurch. Wouldn’t be long before it came down completely.
Jerry moved slowly to the edge of the roof. Not the edge that hung over nothing, but the edge where it joined the house. He seemed to remember that some of the roofs had… yes! His questing fingers found a thick drainpipe. He didn’t know if it would hold them for long – if at all. But if it could give them even a moment or two, they could shimmy down a couple feet and be that much less likely to hurt themselves on the landing.
“Come on,” he said to Sheri between fits of coughing. She reached for him and he guided her hand to the pipe. She seemed to understand his intention, dropping over the side of the house without a word.
And then she was gone.
Jerry found himself alone. Alone and suddenly reticent to follow. Lowering a lithe teenage body would be one thing. A middle-age parent’s body? The body of a man who led a sedentary life and whose idea of a workout was walking to the television to change channels instead of using the remote?
He pushed himself over the edge. Soot coated the pipe, and at first that was actually helpful, letting him slide more than climb. I can do this, he thought.
Then the pipe became slicker. Too slick. He fell.
He hit something on the way down. Something soft. Sheri. The two of them fell the rest of the way to the ground. He had no idea how far it was, but it felt far Empire-State-Building-far.
The impact was bone-crushing, and Sheri screamed below him. Jerry would have screamed as well, but the impact made every molecule of oxygen rupture out of his lungs. He could do nothing more than lay there, opening and shutting his mouth like a fish waiting calmly to die.
Sheri groaned and he realized she was beneath him. That got him moving. He rolled off her, though it seemed push every single muscle fiber in his body to its final limit.
He couldn’t see anything. Completely disoriented. Smoke everywhere. The only break in the black was bright flashes of fire that reached out like hands playing a deadly game of tag.
Jerry shied away from the fire. Reached out, hoping to find Sheri, and felt heavy cloth instead: the termite tent. With the other hand he reached again for Sheri. Touched her. She screamed in pain. He didn’t know if he was causing the pain or not, but he couldn’t wait. The fire and smoke would kill them soon. Maybe seconds.
He grabbed her. She resisted.
Suddenly brightness was everywhere. The termite tent must have caught fire. It was a burning shroud, flaming pieces falling down from above, fiery pillars leaping at their sides. They couldn’t get out here. Besides being on fire, Jerry suspected the fabric of the tent would be too heavy to lift. They had to find some sort of exit.
Jerry pulled Sheri, yanking her along with him as he searched for a hole in the flames, some way to leave.
And found it.
99
Jerry pushed through the termite tent. Engulfed in flame on either side, but a hole the size of a small door had been burned away and he darted through the exit carved out by the fire. He didn’t let go of Sheri, either, and dragged her through with him.
Even this close to the fire, the air outside the tent seemed one hundred degrees cooler. He turned his face to the sky, savoring the cool, then felt something hitting him.
He looked at it. It was Sheri, batting at his arm with one hand. Her other hand hung limp and lifeless at the end of an arm that was clearly broken. She was beating out a small fire on his shirt sleeve.
She was beating it out with her bare hand. Not seeming to mind the burns she must be suffering.
The fire snuffed out. Jerry caught her hand in his. Pulled her in for a hug.
She did not resist.
“I love you,” he said. And it was true.
“I love you, too,” she said.
He looked down. Realized he was standing near the pool, on the same spot that Brian died years ago.
Jerry looked back at Sheri. She was gazing at him with concern.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I’m okay. We’re going to be o –”
And that was when a burning figure reared up behind his daughter.
100
The Killer was on fire. Clothing, hair, skin. It was all a single pillar of flame. He came after Sheri, screaming over and over, “You can’t live, you can’t live, you can’t live!”
Sheri screamed. She raised her good hand up to ward off the hellfire-cloaked nightmare that had come for her.
Jerry plowed past her, knocking her aside and then barreling into the Killer. He felt flames licking at him, leaping from the other man’s form to his own. Felt the heat settle into his skin and burn. Didn’t care. He just had to stop this. Had to stop it now.
He felt the Killer’s hands, now little more than bone with charred clots of sinew clinging to them, batting at his face, his arms and shoulders.
Jerry gritted his teeth. Bore down harder.
Sheri screamed. He wished he could tell her goodbye. But he couldn’t, and that was all right. He had said the more important things.
He drove the Killer forward. Toward the waterfall of flame that had once been a termite tent. To the fiery dome that the Killer had intended to use to hide them from the world.
Jerry gritted his teeth. Plunged them farther. To the edge of the fire. Then farther. Through it.
He felt it immediately, the passage from the momentary freedom he had enjoyed back into flame. He remembered Brian, falling to earth, and thought he might have an inkling how he felt in the moment he touched down.
His hands were burning. He realized in a strangely detached moment that he would probably never do another surgery.
That was all right.
His clothing caught fire.
That was all right.
The Killer was struggling, but slowing.
That was best of all.
Jerry threw him into a bright spot in the fire, what he hoped was a part of the house aflame, and was rewarded with the sound of crunching plaster. The Killer shrieked below his hands, and Jerry enjoyed the immense pleasure of seeing the other man’s flesh melting off his face.
He hit the madman’s body into the house again. Again. And again again again againagainagain….
The fire leapt before him and he fell back instinctively.
The Killer’s body slid to the ground. The fire crept over and claimed it.
Jerry knew he himself was burning, too. Knew he was going to die.
That was all right. He was tired. Tired.
I’ll just lay down.
Sounds good, Jerry.
He slumped to the ground. But it was too hot, so he pushed himself away from the burning wreckage of the house. It canted to the side, seeming to spill over itself. Jerry watched it dully, then realized something was tugging at him. A hand, reaching through the smoke and fire, pulling him.
Sheri, he thought.
He followed the hand as it pulled him. Through dark clouds, through heat and hell.
It pulled him into clear air. He blinked away smoke and particulate. Tears blurred his vision. And when his sight cleared he saw….
“Hello,” said the Killer.
101
Jerry heard something pop, and couldn’t be sure if it was the conflagration behind him, or something in his mind. Because the Killer was dead. He had to be dead. Jerry had just killed him.
But here he was. Standing here completely unmarked and holding onto Jerry with one arm while Sheri unconscious at the living dead man’s feet, blood spurting from her nose and a huge bruise across the side of her face.
“You’re dead,” Jerry said.
The Killer nodded. But at the same time, he said, “You can’t kill me. Not all of me.” He nodded at the burning mass that had been Jerry’s once-upo
n-a-time Dream House. “But you had to kill him.” The Killer sighed. “He wasn’t me anymore. He didn’t match anymore.”
Jerry remembered the Killer saying that. “I don’t match.” And suddenly remembered other things:
Strangers Page 26