Fire Spirit

by Graham Masterton

  ‘His name is Pimo Jackson. The last time I saw him was three years ago, at Indiana State Prison in Michigan City. He’s a serial arsonist. He started a fire at the Markland Motel here in Kokomo and eleven people died, including three children. Twenty-seven other people had to be treated for smoke inhalation or serious burns.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘Yes, Jesus. But there’s one thing more. Pimo Jackson himself was one of the casualties. That’s how we caught him. He was splashing accelerant around so wildly that he almost burned his own face off.’

  EIGHTEEN

  Dora brought them towels to dry themselves off, and then Ruth went out to her car to let Tyson out. It had stopped raining, but the sky was still thunderously dark, and she could see sheets of rain falling high over Greentown, to the east.

  Tyson could smell fire on her straight away, and he snuffled and whined and strained at his leash. Ruth gave him a chance to relieve himself next to a fence-post, and then she took him inside the clinic. About a half-mile away she could hear the honking and whooping of a fire truck.

  ‘What’s with the dog?’ asked Martin, as she led Tyson into Dora’s office.

  ‘His name’s Tyson and he’s pretty famous around here. He’s an arson dog, trained to detect accelerants.’

  ‘But you know what caused those drapes to catch fire, and it certainly wasn’t arson.’

  ‘Sure, I know it and you know it, but I still have to do it by the book. If you’re trying to prove that something unnatural happened, first of all you have to establish that nothing natural happened. How do we know that Doctor Beech didn’t surreptitiously soak those drapes in lighter fluid, and set fire to them just to impress us?’

  ‘Because she didn’t. And we saw people, Ruth. We saw scores of people and some of them were burning. That’s what caused it.’

  Tyson looked up at Martin and gave a deep growl in the back of his throat.

  Ruth said, ‘You’re right. We did see people. But how can we prove it, and where are they now?’

  ‘They’re back, for the time being, anyhow. They’re back underneath, in hell, or Purgatory, or whatever you want to call it. But they’re not going to stay there very much longer. That’s what this is all about.’

  Through the window, Ruth saw Engine Number Two pull up outside, an International-Pierre Contender, red and silver, followed by a white Ford Expedition with its red lights flashing. A few seconds later Bob Kowalski, the battalion chief, came striding in, his face even more florid than usual.

  ‘Hi there, Ruthie!’ he greeted her. ‘Where’s the fire?’

  ‘Bob! You didn’t have to come out here in person. It was only a set of drapes, and they’re out now.’

  ‘Hey, I didn’t have anything else to do. Apart from that, I was playing pinochle with Gary and Keith and Jim The Spaceman, and I was getting creamed.’

  Ruth unclipped Tyson’s leash and he trotted into Doctor Beech’s clinic and sniffed around. Ruth and Bob Kowalski followed him.

  ‘So what happened here?’ Bob Kowalski asked her, reaching up and tugging at the tattered remains of the drapes. ‘Somebody get careless with a cigarette?’

  Ruth pointed at the brown chrysanthemum-shaped stain on the ceiling. ‘We were holding what you might call a group therapy session. I can’t exactly explain what happened. I saw things. We all did. They could have been hallucinations. They could have been real. But this is what happened.’

  Bob Kowalski stared at the stain for a long time, thoughtfully pulling at his upper lip, as if he were wondering whether to grow a moustache. ‘You saw things and then the drapes caught fire?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I’m finding this kind of hard to follow, Ruthie. What kind of things?’

  ‘We saw flames, and then we saw people. I believe they might be connected with the Julie Benfield fire, and the Tilda Frieburg fire, and the Spirit of Kokomo bus fire.’

  ‘People? What people? Where people?’

  ‘They were fire victims,’ said Ruth. ‘Some of them were still burning. I guess that’s how the drapes caught alight.’

  Martin came forward. ‘Excuse me, Chief. We call them PMVs. Post-mortem visitations. Their existence has been verified by some very respectable researchers.’

  Bob Kowalski’s eyes narrowed. ‘You’re talking dead folks?’

  ‘If that’s what you want to call them, yes.’

  ‘So you were having a group therapy session and some dead folks showed up and torched the drapes?’

  ‘That’s about the size of it, yes.’

  Bob Kowalski looked at Ruth. ‘What kind of therapy was this exactly?’

  ‘It’s for Amelia,’ Ruth told him. ‘She’s been having anxiety attacks.’

  ‘I see.’

  Martin said, ‘You don’t, I’m afraid. You think this was mass hysteria, Chief, but I can absolutely assure you that it wasn’t. You have a very dangerous situation building up here.’

  ‘You want to tell me who you are, sir?’ Bob Kowalski demanded.

  Martin held out his hand, which Bob Kowalski ignored. ‘My name’s Martin Watchman, and I’ve come down here today to help Amelia to deal with her anxiety attacks. At Doctor Beech’s request, may I add, and with Ruth’s explicit approval.’

  Bob Kowalski looked at Ruth, as if he expected her to deny it, but Ruth nodded. ‘Martin has been having exactly the same kind of attacks as Ammy. Well, not so much attacks as visions, or premonitions. I don’t really know what to call them.’

  ‘I think you and me need to talk about this back at headquarters,’ said Bob Kowalski. ‘Meanwhile, do you want to handle this yourself, or do you want Jack to come out here and take over?’

  ‘Bob, this is serious. Something very strange is happening and we can’t ignore it.’

  ‘Did I say I was going to ignore it? You’ve all had a very disturbing experience this afternoon, I can understand that. But don’t let’s start getting all mystical here. Whatever set these drapes on fire, it’s explicable. Every fire has a physical cause and this one is no exception.’

  ‘But that’s the whole point,’ Martin interrupted him. ‘The cause was physical, not mystical. PMVs might seem supernatural to you, but they’re not. In their own way, in their own space and time, they’re just as real as you are.’

  ‘What, you’re trying to tell me that I’m some kind of ghost?’

  ‘Of course not. But if people still have problems to sort out, after they’re dead, they have the ability to come back and sort them out, if they need to. For God’s sake, have you never watched Ghost Whisperer? It’s only fiction, of course. You don’t really go into any light when you die, you go into total goddamned darkness, excuse my French, and that’s it. Goodbye for ever. But Ruth saw these people and I saw these people and so did Doctor Beech, and it was these people who set fire to the drapes and could have killed all four of us, if Ruth hadn’t had her wits about her.’

  Amelia came up and took hold of Ruth’s hand. ‘I saw them, too, Uncle Bob. I saw the people and I saw the fire that burned the ceiling.’

  Bob Kowalski laid his hand on Amelia’s shoulder, as if he forgave her for supporting her mother. ‘We’ll get to the bottom of this, sweetheart, don’t you worry. I know it seems confusing and scary, but that’s what shock does to you. Give it some time and it’ll start to make sense. How about it, Ruthie? Let me call Jack for you. Why don’t you take Amelia home?’

  At that moment, however, Tyson let out a single loud bark. Ruth called out, ‘Hold on, boy!’ and went back into Doctor Beech’s consulting room to see what had excited him. He was sniffing around the blackened fibers that had fallen from the drapes. He was circling around and around and his tail was drumming furiously against the air-conditioning unit.

  Ruth hunkered down beside him. ‘What is it, Tyson? What did you find?’

  Tyson sniffed again, and then sneezed. Ruth picked up some of the fibers and rubbed them between finger and thumb. There was something else mixed in with them:
not fiber, but gritty gray ash. In fact, not ash at all, but what looked like cremated remains.

  ‘Bob!’ she said. ‘Come here, take a look at this!’

  Bob Kowalski came into the room, but as he did so Tyson let out another bark, and bundled past him, out of the door, almost tripping him up.

  ‘Tyson! Where are you going? Tyson, come back here!’

  Tyson had never disobeyed her before, but now he hurtled out of the front door of the clinic, down the steps and across the parking area. Ruth said, ‘Sorry about this, Bob,’ and went after him.

  Outside, the sky was gloomier than ever, and it was starting to rain again. Tyson ran across the parking area, jumping over the chain-link fence that surrounded it, and headed for a small stand of silver birch trees, off to the left.

  ‘Tyson! Slow down!’ Ruth ordered him. She stepped over the chain-link fence and crossed the grass. ‘Tyson! Come here, you disobedient mutt!’

  But it was then that she saw what Tyson had been tracking. Or rather, who. Underneath the overhanging trees, his face luminously white, his curly hair tousled, stood the Creepy Kid. Without hesitation Tyson ran right up to him and the boy knelt down and put his arms around Tyson’s neck and held him close. Tyson, for his part, whined like he did when he wanted food, or a walk, or affection. He even licked the boy’s cheek.

  Ruth approached the Creepy Kid very cautiously. ‘Tyson,’ she said. ‘Heel, Tyson.’

  ‘He wants a cuddle,’ said the Creepy Kid. His voice was high and defiant. Although he didn’t say it, the implication was ‘he wants a cuddle so what are you going to do about it?’

  ‘Heel, Tyson!’ Ruth snapped at him. Tyson turned his head around and looked at her with guilty, bulging eyes, but he stayed where he was. The Creepy Kid was tugging rhythmically at his ears now, just the way he liked it.

  ‘What are you doing here, kid?’ Ruth demanded.

  ‘Maybe I should ask you the same darn question,’ the boy retorted.

  ‘I want you to let go my dog now, you got it?’

  ‘He’ll come when he’s good’n ready. You’ll see.’

  ‘I said, leave him alone!’

  The boy said, ‘You didn’t leave me alone, did you? Even though I asked you nice as pie.’

  ‘You threatened me with trouble. You call that “nice as pie”?’

  ‘Depends what kind of a pie takes your fancy. There’s all kinds of pie. There’s blueberry pie, for sure, and cherry pie. But then there’s trouble pie, poison pie, and stab-you-in-the-eye pie.’

  ‘Tyson, come here!’ Ruth shouted. Tyson made a jerking move to come toward her, but the boy held on to him tight.

  ‘Let go my dog!’ Ruth told him.

  ‘I told you,’ the boy insisted. ‘He’ll come when he’s good’n ready, not before. And I want to make sure that you’re good’n ready, too.’

  ‘What are you talking about? Let him go!’

  She went right up to the boy and seized Tyson’s collar. The boy held on to Tyson even tighter, and stared up at her with those odd, wide-apart eyes, like something staring at her out of a fishbowl. The expression on his face was frighteningly triumphant.

  ‘I told you to leave me be, didn’t I? I told you. What I gotta do I gotta do, and I don’t want you interferin’ none because there’s souls to be saved and all manner of mis’ry that needs to be attended to. It ain’t your right to let other folks suffer in eternal torment, now is it? It ain’t your place. So you promise me now that you’re going to back away and leave me be, and everything’s going to be fine and dandy, lickerish candy.’

  ‘Let go my dog, you little bastard. I mean it.’

  The Creepy Kid grinned. His teeth were unnaturally small, as if he still had his milk-teeth. ‘You got to promise me first. All them fires was acts of God, that’s all. So don’t you go pokin’ into them no further, less’n you want to take on more trouble than you ever knew that one person could suffer.’

  Ruth pulled at Tyson’s collar again, harder, so that Tyson made a strangling noise in his throat, but still the boy wouldn’t release him.

  She stood up straight. It was raining harder now, and the raindrops were pattering through the leaves of the silver birches. She turned around and saw Bob Kowalski walking toward her, closely followed by Martin Watchman.

  ‘Ruthie? What’s going on here?’ asked Bob Kowalski. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Not really. I’m having a little problem with this young man here. He’s holding on to Tyson and he won’t let him go.’

  Bob Kowalski came up to them and said, ‘Come on, kid. Let the dog loose.’

  The boy shook his head vigorously. ‘He wants a cuddle.’

  ‘Well, I’m afraid he’s not a cuddling kind of a dog, kid. He’s a working dog and right now he needs to be working.’

  ‘I don’t want him to be workin’. I want him to stop snifflin’ around and leave me be.’

  ‘What’s your name, kid? You shouldn’t be here, this is private property. Do your folks know you’re here?’

  ‘My folks are dead. And I can go any darn place I want.’

  Martin leaned close to Ruth and murmured, ‘Is this him? Is this the Creepy Kid?’

  Ruth nodded.

  ‘It’s the same kid who was hanging around outside my house,’ Martin told her. ‘You need to be very careful, take my word for it. Whatever you do, don’t upset him. Like I told you, he’s a catalyst.’

  ‘What you two mumblin’ about?’ the boy called out. ‘You got somethin’ to say to me, you say it out loud so’s I can hear it!’

  Martin stepped up to him. Tyson twisted uncomfortably in the boy’s arms, but still he wouldn’t let go.

  ‘Remember me, son?’ said Martin. He spoke so quietly that Ruth could hardly hear him over the rustling of the rain.

  The boy blinked up at him. ‘Should I?’

  ‘Not necessarily. But I know who you are. More to the point, I know what you are, too, and I know why you’re here and I know what you want.’

  ‘So what are you?’ the boy retorted. ‘Some kind of ever-livin’ smartass?’

  ‘Not at all. I just happen to know what’s what, that’s all. Now, if this lady promises to file a report saying that all of those recent fires were caused by natural phenomena – how about you let the dog go?’

  The boy frowned. ‘What’s a natural fermonima?’

  ‘It means that those fires were nobody’s fault. They were caused by lightning, maybe, or a short-circuit, or a chemical spill, something like that. That way, the investigations get closed, and nobody will come looking for you.’

  ‘No dogs snifflin’?’

  ‘No dogs. No cops. No children’s services. Nobody from the Fire Department. Nobody.’

  Martin stepped back. The boy looked up at Ruth and said, ‘Would you do that?’

  Out of the corner of his mouth, Martin said, ‘For Christ’s sake, say yes. You don’t have to mean it.’

  Ruth cleared her throat. ‘Yes, OK,’ she said, loud and clear. ‘I’d do that.’

  ‘You promise? Swear to God and spit in the sky?’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘Swear to God and spit in the sky?’

  But Bob Kowalski said, ‘Hold up a tootin’ minute here! We’re talking about three serious cases of probable arson, with multiple fatalities. We can’t make no promises like that. These fires, they’re going to be investigated thoroughly and we’re not going to let up until we find out how the hell they started and who’s responsible, just like we always do.’

  ‘Chief . . .’ said Martin, and made a patting gesture in the air which meant that he should hold it down. ‘We have a very special situation here, Chief, if you understand what I mean.’

  ‘Excuse me? You might be Ruthie’s friend, sir, but I don’t think that you’re in any position to decide what’s a special situation and what isn’t, or how we’re going to respond to it, even if it is. Officers of the Kokomo Fire Department don’t make no promises to cover up potential cases of deli
berate fire-setting, not for nobody, and under no circumstances, not ever.’

  Ruth crossed over to Bob Kowalski, turning her back on the Creepy Kid so that he couldn’t see her face. ‘Bob,’ she said, and her voice was low and urgent. ‘Please go along with this. Please. I need him to let Tyson go.’

  ‘Ruthie – you don’t have to promise this kid nothing. He’s only a kid, and a skinny kid at that. I can take him apart with one hand.’

  ‘Are you mumblin’ again?’ the boy protested. ‘I told you I didn’t want you to do no mumblin’!’

  Ruth turned around to face him. ‘I’ve made you a promise. Now let my dog go.’

  ‘You never said swear to God and spit in the sky.’

  At that moment, Bob Kowalski’s cellphone made a siren noise. He flipped it open and said, ‘B.C. Kowalski. What the hell is it? I’m tied up right now.’

  But then he raised one hand, as if to stop Ruth and Martin from saying or doing anything more, at least until he had finished talking. He listened for a long time, his hand still raised, and then he said, ‘When did this happen? What? What? How many?’

  He listened again. The Creepy Kid said, ‘You didn’t promise yet. Not properly.’

  ‘All right,’ said Ruth. ‘Swear to God and spit in the sky.’

  But Bob Kowalski suddenly said, ‘Christ on crutches, you’re kidding me! OK, Jim. I’ll be there in ten. Who’s attending from Fire and Arson? OK, great. I have Ruthie with me, too. Yes, she’s here. I’ll bring her along.’

  He snapped his cellphone shut and his face was grim.

  ‘What is it?’ Ruth asked him.

  ‘Charles Gardner’s daughter, Nadine, out at Weatherfield Stables. Looks like she slaughtered seven of their own horses, cut their throats.’

  ‘Nadine Gardner? I can’t believe it. She’s such a lovely girl. Do they know why she did it?’

  ‘We don’t know the full details, not yet. Nadine’s dead. Seems like she was trying to ride away from the stables on her favorite horse, but they caught alight.’

  ‘What? What do you mean “they caught alight”?’

  ‘Pretty much cremated, that’s what Jim said. Rider and horse. Charles Gardner was coming home and he ran right into them. Turned into his driveway and they were galloping hell-for-leather right toward him, like a four-legged fireball.’