‘What are you talking about?’ said Nadine, wretchedly. ‘I don’t understand a word you’re saying. I need help, that’s all. I need you to go to the house.’
‘You always said that you loved me, didn’t you, Freda? You always said that you an’ me, we should run away together and don’t never come back. Because none of those bastids understood us, did they? They thought you was cracked, and they thought you was taking advantage, but they didn’t know how much we loved each other, did they? They didn’t know we was plannin’ on havin’ a baby of our own.’
‘Go away!’ said Nadine. ‘If you can’t help me, then please just go away!’
The boy slipped his hand under the horse-blanket and took hold of her blood-sticky shoulder. She tried to push him away but he gripped her even tighter. ‘Come on, Freda! Don’t chicken out on me now! Let’s do it, just the way we always planned to do it, you an’ me. Let’s hightail it out of here, right now!’
She closed her eyes. She felt as if she were going mad. Or maybe this boy was mad. But if he could help to get her out of here, what did it really matter if he thought she was somebody called Freda, and that she had agreed to run away with him?
‘All right,’ she said. ‘If you can help me up, please.’
‘Surely can,’ said the boy. He stood up and took hold of her hand, and pulled it, and he was surprisingly strong. She climbed to her feet and stood there for a moment, swaying. Sparkling dots of light swam in front of her eyes, and she felt the stable floor tilting.
‘Hey, Freda, are you OK?’ the boy asked her. ‘You’re not going to faint on me or nothin’?’
‘No, no, I’m OK. Just take hold of my arm and help me to walk. It isn’t too far.’
‘Walk? We won’t get hardly nowhere at all if we walk. We have to take one of these horses and ride.’
‘No, no. There’s no way I can ride. My ribs are broken. I don’t have any clothes. I just need to get back to the house, that’s all.’
‘We have to ride,’ the boy insisted. ‘I’ll help you, like I always helped you. Which horse are we going to take? How about that black one?’
‘Don’t you understand? I can’t possibly ride. I’m hurt too bad.’
‘I’ll help you,’ the boy told her. ‘You always said we were goin’ to go ridin’ off together, into the sunset. You always said that, over and over. You promised. Turn around, touch the ground, that’s what you said. You promised. You said that if things ever got too bad for us, if anybody ever tried to split us up, that’s what we’d do. And now this is our chance to do it.’
‘All right, I’ll try,’ said Nadine. ‘But you’ll have to help me. I’m hurt too bad to do this on my own.’
‘I can help you. Don’t you worry about that. Then we can go ridin’ off together, can’t we, just the way you always said.’
Nadine nodded. ‘OK,’ she whispered, and when it was clear by the expression on his face that he hadn’t heard her, she repeated, ‘OK?’ much louder.
‘So which horse we goin’ to pick? This black one? I really like this black one. He looks mean!’
‘This one,’ she said, pointing toward Bronze Star. She was badly concussed, but she was still capable of thinking that she was the only one who could make Bronze Star behave with complete docility. If the boy tried to make off with him on his own, Bronze Star would immediately toss him out of the saddle.
The boy took her arm and helped her to shuffle over to Bronze Star’s stall. She held Bronze Star’s head while the boy lifted down his bridle and his dark blue saddle-cloth and walking saddle. Nadine told him how to make sure that the saddle was positioned properly, with the underflaps lying flat, and how to flex Bronze Star’s forelegs to make sure that when the girth was tightened, it didn’t pinch his skin.
Bronze Star looked at her solemnly, and Nadine felt that he could sense her distress and would have spoken to her, if only he could.
The boy adjusted the stirrup-irons, and then he said, ‘Come on, Freda, you can climb aboard now.’
‘I can’t. Really I can’t. I hurt too much.’
‘Come on, Freda, you can’t give up on me now. This is us, runnin’ away together! This is you an’ me, elopin’! We can go someplace where nobody don’t know who we are, and we can raise a family and do whatever we damn well please!’
‘Can’t you just help me to walk to the house?’
Without warning, the boy seized a handful of her blood-encrusted hair and twisted it, hard, so that she screamed.
‘You promised me, Freda, and a damned promise is a damned promise!’
‘I can’t!’ Nadine sobbed. ‘Just leave me alone! I can’t!’
The boy dragged the horse-blanket away from her and threw it across the stall. Bronze Star snorted and took two or three steps to one side.
Nadine stood naked and shivering, still holding on to Bronze Star’s bridle. ‘Don’t make me! Please don’t make me!’
The boy looked around the stall. On a wooden rack on the wall hung horseshoe tongs and nail-pullers and a long blacksmith’s file with a sharp-pointed end. He pulled out the file and went across to Bronze Star, holding it up so that its point was only inches away from his flank.
‘Maybe you don’t think you killed enough horses today, Freda? Maybe you want to see one more go down? I seen an automobile with a puncture, but I never saw a horse with a puncture. But there’s always a first time for everythin’, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Leave him alone!’ Nadine screamed at him. ‘You just leave him alone!’
‘I will, for sure, if you do what I’m askin’ of you, and climb up into that saddle.’
‘Please, I’ll try. But don’t hurt my horse, OK?’
She managed to raise her left foot into the stirrup-iron, but she couldn’t summon up the strength to mount.
‘You should see yourself, Freda,’ the boy grinned. ‘You’re a sight to behold, and no mistake!’
‘Help me up,’ said Nadine. ‘I can’t do this on my own.’
The boy came around behind her and grasped her buttocks. Nadine was in so much pain that she thought she was simply going to black out and fall backward, but the boy said, ‘Come on, Freda, one-two-three!’ and gave her a boost. She screamed as she managed to swing herself into the saddle, and when she was mounted she sat with her head tilted back and both hands pressed against her ribs, sobbing. Bronze Star shifted restlessly underneath her, and every movement he made hurt her more.
‘Don’t you howl, Freda,’ the boy admonished her. ‘We’ll be out of here before you know it, and then we’ll be happy ever after! You’ll see if we ain’t.’
He dragged across an upturned feed-bucket, and climbed up on it. Then he grasped Nadine’s left thigh with one hand, and the back of the saddle with the other, and clambered up behind her. He made himself as comfortable as he could, and then he wrapped his arms around Nadine’s waist.
‘Not so tight!’ she pleaded. ‘Please! You don’t know how much it hurts.’
‘Don’t you fret. I’ll take care of you, I promise. Now, let’s get out of here, shall we?’
Nadine took a series of quick, shallow breaths, which was all she could manage. Then she clicked her tongue and said, ‘Walk on, Star. There’s a good boy.’
Bronze Star seemed confused, and he hesitated. He had never been ridden with two up before, and he was obviously aware that something was wrong. Usually, Nadine spoke to him in a high, encouraging trill, but this evening her throat was choked with misery, and she was barely audible.
‘Walk on, Star,’ she told him. ‘Go on, boy.’
Gently, she guided him out of his stall. She kept her head turned away so that she wouldn’t see the bodies of all the horses she had killed and the glistening black blood that covered the floor. As they approached the stable doors she could see that it was still raining outside, but not so hard, and she was relieved to hear that the thunder had passed over to the north-east. The loudest noise was the clattering of water from the overflowing gutters
around the roof. Bronze Star nudged one of the doors with his nose, and they stepped out into the rain.
Off to the right, less than 200 yards away, Nadine could see the Gardner family house. Her father wasn’t back yet. There was no sign of his Explorer, anyhow. But the lights were shining in the kitchen window, and in two of the upstairs bedrooms. She saw Cora, standing in front of the sink in her pale blue apron, and she let out a low, thankful sob. She clicked her tongue again and tugged at Bronze Star’s reins, directing him toward the driveway.
‘No!’ said the boy, in a shrill, panicky voice. ‘Where the hell do you think you’re going?’
‘Back to the house, of course! Where do you think?’
‘You can’t do that! We’re runnin’ away! If we go back to the house, they’ll punish us. They’ll beat us black and blue, those bastids! They won’t let you an’ me stay together, not never again!’
Nadine twisted around in the saddle, although the boy clung on to her even tighter. ‘I’m going back to the house and you’re not going to stop me!’ she screamed.
‘You wanta bet?’ the boy shouted back at her. ‘You really want to bet?’
In spite of the pain in her ribs, Nadine reached down and took hold of his wrists and tried to pull his hands apart. ‘Help!’ she gasped. ‘Help me! Cora! Cora! Help me!’
But at that instant, with a soft whoomph! like a gas boiler firing up, the boy exploded into flame. He let out an ear-piercing scream and Nadine screamed, too, and Bronze Star reared up and let out a terrible bray that was almost like laughter.
Within seconds, the boy was blazing from head to foot. Nadine felt the hair on the back of her head frizzling down to the scalp, and her shoulders scorching. She tried again and again to break the boy’s relentless grip around her waist, but his arms were on fire, too, and her own hands started to blister.
‘Help me!’ she cried out. ‘Oh, God, help me!’
Bronze Star bucked and kicked and screamed with pain, because the boy’s fiery legs were clenched around his flanks and were searing his hide. Nadine tried to pitch herself sideways out of the saddle, on to the ground, but the boy was holding her so tightly that she couldn’t break free of him. He blazed hotter and hotter, with a steadily-rising roar, and his temperature rose so rapidly that Nadine began to blaze, too, her skin shriveling and her body fat spitting and flaring. Within a few seconds, the whole of her upper body was seared, the skin cracked apart to expose raw red muscle, and her contorted face was a grotesque parody of Darth Maul, scarlet and black.
Maddened with fear and pain, Bronze Star went berserk. He bolted wildly through the rain and the darkness with Nadine and the boy on his back, both of them trailing flames behind them like burning flags. To begin with, he swerved left and right, kicking and rearing in a frantic attempt to dislodge them, but by the time he reached the driveway that led to the main road, he was burning as furiously as they were, and so he galloped hard and straight, as if he could run fast enough to leave his agony behind him. His mane was a crest of flames and his tail was a thick shower of whirling sparks. His shoes clattered on the asphalt in a sharp, hysterical drum pattern, and as he galloped he left a long trail of smoke behind him, which whipped and twisted in the wind.
Bronze Star had nearly reached the archway over the main entrance to Weatherfield Stables when Charles Gardner, Nadine’s father, turned into the driveway in his dark green Explorer. He was singing along with the Bee Gees’ ‘Stayin’ Alive’. ‘Whether you’re a brother or whether you’re a mother you’re stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive.’
He saw a billowing mass of fire careering toward him and he stamped on his brake-pedal, but it was too late. Bronze Star and his two riders collided with the front of his SUV at a closing speed of over forty miles an hour, and burst apart in a whirling, blazing cascade of legs, arms, ribcages, cannon-bones and skulls.
The noise of the collision was deafening, and Charles Gardner was instantly punched in the face by his air bag, which broke his nose. He sat back, bruised and stunned, while pieces of burning flesh pattered on to the roof of his Explorer, and his daughter’s smoking pelvis banged down on to the hood, right in front of him, and rocked from side to side.
SEVENTEEN
Ruth said, ‘I’m sorry, Martin, I don’t believe a word of what you’re saying.’
‘Mommy—’ Amelia protested, but Ruth shook her head emphatically.
‘I’ll admit these three fires are totally unlike any fires that I’ve ever come across before,’ she said.
‘You don’t know how much,’ Martin told her.
Ruth shook her head again. ‘In the past five years I’ve investigated hundreds of fires, and some of them have started in really weird ways. Chemical fires from non-combustible chemicals, electrical fires after the power was switched off, freak lightning strikes, gas leaks. I’ve even had spontaneous combustion in stores of pistachio nuts. But, come on, Martin. Dead people coming back from hell?’
‘All right,’ said Martin, raising his hand. ‘I can’t say that I blame you for being skeptical. But why don’t we forget about the technicalities for the moment and concentrate on why Zelda asked me to come down here? Your daughter and I share a common feeling that people are coming into this world from someplace underneath, and I think that’s too much of a coincidence for us to ignore.’
‘It is a coincidence, I agree. But you said yourself that you suffer from a chromosome deficiency, just like Amelia. Maybe that deficiency makes you both suffer the same kind of delusion.’
‘What about Susan?’ asked Martin. ‘I saw Susan after she was drowned, and your colleague saw his wife after she had burned herself. How do you account for that?’
‘I don’t know. Grief can play some pretty strange tricks on us, can’t it? Maybe there are times when we want to see somebody so much that we think we can.’
‘And the Creepy Kid?’
‘I don’t know about him, either. But, like I said, he’s probably just a kid who happens to be creepy. We’ll find out who he is, given time – same as we’ll find out how these fires were started.’
‘I’m sure you will,’ Martin told her. ‘Except that in my opinion, solving one conundrum will solve them both. Cause and effect. Or vice versa.’
‘What do you think, Doctor Beech?’ asked Ruth.
‘I think Martin’s right,’ said Doctor Beech. ‘We need to find out more about this feeling that he and Amelia have both been experiencing – these “people coming through from underneath”. We need to know why they’re having it, and what it symbolizes.’
‘So how do we do that?’
‘I’m proposing a kind of hypnosis. But before we talk more about that, does anybody want coffee, or a soda? How about you, Amelia?’
‘Yes, please.’
Doctor Beech went to the door and asked Dora to bring them three cups of coffee and a can of Dr Pepper. Then she sat down again and said, ‘I’ve never been very happy about using hypnosis. After some people have been hypnotized, they can suffer some very undesirable after-effects, some of which can last for years: delusions, paranoia, personality disorders.
‘But there’s a method of suggestion which I sometimes use in cases of severe psychological trauma, especially when there are two or more people involved. It’s called the Liébault Technique, and it was devised by Ambroise-Auguste Liébault, who was a very respected nineteenth-century hypnotherapist. It encourages patients to share their thoughts not only with their therapist but with each other. It makes it possible for them to see whatever it is that’s been disturbing them in three dimensions, so to speak, and also to see themselves as other people see them.’
‘OK . . .’ said Ruth, cautiously. ‘How does it work?’
‘Simply by encouraging patients to play back the images that they already have stored in their minds. You know, like playing back the tape from a CCTV. The last time I used it was for five people who had been involved in a serious auto accident on Route Thirty-Five. Four people had died, and bot
h of the surviving drivers each thought they were responsible for what had happened, while two of their surviving passengers blamed one of them and the third surviving passenger blamed the other.
‘As you can imagine, the drivers’ families had both been torn apart by what had happened. How can you live with a man when you blame him for killing your mother and three young girls and permanently crippling your baby daughter? But I persuaded them all to sit down together and recreate the accident in their minds, and it was only then that they remembered the girl who had suddenly fallen from an overpass, right in front of them.
‘One car had swerved to avoid her, but had hit her all the same, as well as the car that was traveling next to it. Both cars had collided with a third vehicle, a bus carrying seven Girl Scouts, and then an SUV, and all of the vehicles had caught fire. Most of the occupants of the vehicles had managed to get out unhurt, but five people had died.
‘The police had assumed that the body of the girl who had fallen from the overpass was a passenger in the SUV, but the Liébault session showed us where she had really come from, and that neither of the drivers were guilty of dangerous driving.’
Dora came into the room with the coffees and the soda, and set them down on the table, along with a plate of Oreos.
‘I shouldn’t eat these goddamned things,’ said Martin, taking three cookies at once. ‘Once I start, I can’t stop. Pardon my French.’
Doctor Beech said, ‘If you agree to my using the Liébault Technique today, we can at least find out if these “people coming through from underneath” are really real. Or really not real.’
‘How can you do that?’
‘Because the Liébault Technique shows me in my mind’s eye what all of my patients are seeing, simultaneously. It assembles all of their differing viewpoints into one picture – a picture which is much more objective than the memory of any individual patient on their own. It’s as near as any therapist can get to the truth. It’s as near as anybody can get to the truth.’
Fire Spirit Page 19