Fire Spirit

by Graham Masterton

  Ruth looked across at Martin, and then at the Creepy Kid. Martin said, ‘Easy, Ruth.’

  But Ruth stalked up to the Creepy Kid and snatched Tyson’s collar again and pulled him. ‘You let my dog go!’ she screamed at him. ‘I made you a promise so you let my dog go!’

  ‘No!’ the boy shouted back at her. ‘I don’t trust you, not one bit! You think I started that fire, too, don’t you? You think I set fire to that woman and that horse!’

  ‘So you had nothing to do with it, did you? Just like you had nothing to do with any of those other fires? How do you even know about it? How? And how can a woman and a horse catch on fire? How can that possibly happen?’

  ‘It was an act of God. They was all acts of God.’

  ‘God? God had nothing to do with this, did He? It was you. I don’t know how you do it, not yet, but let me tell you this: if I’m going to make any promises here today, I promise to find out, and when I do find out I promise to hand my evidence over to the cops, and I promise to see you locked up in the Howard County Juvenile Detention Facility for as long as the law will allow. Swear to God and spit in the sky.’

  As she shouted at him, the boy began to shuffle himself away from her, on his backside, still with his arms tight around Tyson. Tyson himself was wriggling and struggling, but only spasmodically. He seemed to find it impossible to break free, as if he had lost all of his strength, or couldn’t decide any longer where his loyalty lay.

  ‘Give me my dog, you little runt!’ Ruth shouted at him, as the boy retreated. ‘Give me my dog or I’ll twist your goddamned ears off!’

  ‘Ruth!’ Martin called after her. ‘Ruth – don’t!’

  But Ruth was too angry to take any notice. She stalked up to the boy and seized Tyson’s collar again. ‘Give – me – my – fucking – dog!’ she shouted at him, right in his face.

  At that instant, while he was still clutching Tyson tight to his chest, the boy detonated into a mass of fire. Orange flames burst out all over him, as if he had been drenched in gasoline and somebody had struck a match. He let out a panicky howl of pain, and Tyson screamed in a way that Ruth had never heard a dog scream before, almost like a human baby. She half-jumped, half-stumbled backward, both of her hands scorched.

  ‘Tyson!’ she screamed, but even though Tyson was scrabbling wildly to get himself free, the burning boy still wouldn’t release him.

  ‘Foam!’ Bob Kowalski bellowed at the fire crew who were standing around the pumper. ‘Keiller! McKay! We need some goddamned foam here! Like, now!’

  Ruth stripped off her coat and bundled it around her hands to protect them. Bob Kowalski said, ‘Ruthie! Don’t even think about it!’ The boy was already blazing fiercely, in a column of flame that was over six feet high. The fire burned faster and hotter with every second, with a soft roaring noise like a giant blowtorch.

  Ruth held her arms up to shield her face, but all the same she could feel the heat against her legs, right through her jeans. She approached the boy as close as she could, and made a desperate lunge to drag Tyson out of his arms. But Tyson, too, was on fire. All of his black fur had been singed off, so that his skin was red-raw. He was jerking convulsively from side to side, like a cockroach on a hotplate. Right in front of Ruth’s eyes, his spine burst out of the skin on his back.

  ‘Tyson!’ she wept. ‘Oh God, Tyson!’

  Tyson turned his head round and stared at Ruth in agony, but the fire was far too hot for her to pull him out of it, at least 700 degrees Celsius, probably more. She knew there was nothing she could do for him, nothing to spare him from his pain, and that she had no choice but to watch him die. She tried to see the boy’s face through the flames, but by now it was nothing more than a blackened voodoo mask, with flames pouring out of his empty eye-sockets, and even as she looked at him, his jaw dropped open and fire gushed out of his mouth.

  ‘Tyson, oh God, Tyson. Oh, God.’ The heat was so intense that Ruth had to step even further back. Three firefighters were running over from the pumper, reeling out a long hose behind them. They started to blast the fire with high-pressure foam, and within a few seconds it was noisily extinguished, leaving nothing but a wide black mark on the ground, and a small clutter of smoking bones.

  Ruth could see Tyson’s ribcage, and it reminded her so much of the rack of barbecued ribs that she had eaten at the Windmill Grill last week that her mouth was flooded with sour-tasting vomit. She turned away and bent double and retched. She had seen scores of people and animals with horrifying burns, but they had never sickened her as much as this. Tyson had been hers. He had expected her to take care of him and protect him. She found it as devastating as if she had seen her own child burned alive in front of her.

  Martin came up to her and without any hesitation put his arm around her shoulders. ‘Ruth? Are you OK?’ he asked her. ‘It wasn’t your fault, believe me.’ Smoke was drifting past them and it smelled strongly of burned hair and flesh.

  Ruth looked up at him, her eyes blurred with tears. ‘What do you mean? You warned me not to, didn’t you?’ She unwrapped her coat and saw that all of her fingers were blistered. ‘God, this hurts. I can’t imagine what poor Tyson must have gone through.’

  Martin said, ‘Ruth, it wasn’t your fault. That boy has been doing everything he can to discourage you from investigating these fires any further. He’s on a mission from hell, Ruth, and he doesn’t want you interfering. I told you, your best option is for you and your family to get as far away from here as possible.’

  ‘If he’s trying to stop me from interfering, why didn’t he burn me, instead of Tyson?’

  ‘I wish I could tell you, but I don’t know for sure. There’s still so much about the afterlife that we don’t understand. And we won’t be able to, until we die. By which time it will be too goddamned late, won’t it? Excuse my French.’

  Ruth walked over to the edge of the charred patch under the trees where Tyson and the Creepy Kid had caught fire. The grass and the leaves and the undergrowth had been completely burned away, leaving nothing but blackened, smoking soil. In the center of the patch lay Tyson’s skeleton, with his dog-tags and the steel studs from his collar scattered around it.

  Bob Kowalski came up beside her, and sniffed, as if he could smell mischief, as well as smoke. ‘Real sorry for Tyson, Ruthie. What a hell of a thing to happen.’

  Ruth said, ‘It was that boy. That Creepy Kid. He’s like something out of a nightmare.’

  ‘He just caught fire, for Chrissakes. No accelerant, nothing. Not even a goddamned Zippo.’

  ‘It’s like I told you, Bob. It’s like some really bad dream, and now you’ve seen it for yourself. Julie Benfield, Tilda Frieburg, the Spirit of Kokomo bus. Nadine Gardner, too, by the sound of it. How do a woman and a horse both catch fire? Now poor Tyson, too.’

  ‘So what are you saying to me, Ruthie? All this stuff you were telling me about dead folks, you really think it’s true?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I think we have to keep an open mind. All of these fires are way beyond our normal experience. I mean, you know how Jack and me work. We always stick to the evidence. But something totally unnatural is happening here, and so far none of the evidence is enough to explain what it is.’

  The fire crew had brought out two tungsten floodlights, and set them up on metal poles to illuminate the razed area of soil. Bob Kowalski shaded his eyes with his hand and peered at Tyson’s remains. ‘Hate to say this, but where’s the kid at? Like, where are his bones?’

  Ruth said, ‘Wait.’ She stepped carefully across the burned patch, until she reached Tyson’s skeleton. His back legs and his tail had been less seriously burned, and were still intact, and when she saw them she felt sick rising up in her throat again. She took three deep breaths, and then she hunkered down and gently brushed the soil around his skeleton. It was covered with heaps of gritty gray powder, some of it damp and lumpy from the firefighters’ foam. She carefully picked up a lump between finger and thumb and carried it back to Bob Kowalski.r />
  ‘What’s this?’ he asked her.

  ‘What does it look like? It’s the Creepy Kid. What’s left of him, anyhow.’

  ‘You’re kidding me! I witnessed that fire for myself, with my own eyes. You don’t get remains like this, not even from a fire as hot as that. You only get remains like this when you’ve been cremated in a proper crematorium, and your bones have been all crushed up in the old crembola.’

  ‘That’s right, Chief,’ said Martin.

  ‘So how in hell–?’

  At that moment, however, Ruth saw that Amelia was crossing the parking lot toward them. ‘Excuse me, Bob,’ she said. ‘There’s no way I want Amelia to see this. She adored Tyson.’

  She hurried back and managed to intercept Amelia just as she was stepping over the chain-link fence. She took hold of both of Amelia’s hands and said, ‘I’m so sorry, sweetheart. There’s been an accident. Tyson got burned.’

  ‘What happened to your fingers?’ asked Amelia.

  ‘It was the fire. I was trying to pull him out, but I couldn’t. It was much too hot.’

  Amelia’s eyes were glistening with tears. ‘It was that Creepy Kid, wasn’t it? I felt him. I knew he was there.’

  Ruth nodded. ‘I’m so sorry. We’ll give Tyson a proper burial at the pet cemetery.’

  ‘But they’re together now. Tyson and the Creepy Kid.’

  ‘What do you mean, together?’

  ‘They’re underneath, but they’re going to come back. I know it. I can feel it.’

  ‘Ammy, Tyson’s dead.’

  Amelia shook her head furiously. ‘No, he’s not. They’re together. Him and that Creepy Kid. And they’re going to come back, I promise you.’

  NINETEEN

  ‘I could seriously use a drink,’ said Ruth. Amelia rummaged in her purple woven bag and produced a bottle of Gatorade No Excuses. ‘Here you are, Mommy. It’s a bit warm, but it’s wet.’

  ‘Very sweet of you, sweetheart, but I need a drink drink.’

  Her eyes flicked up to her rear-view mirror.

  ‘Is he keeping up with us?’ asked Amelia, twisting around in her seat.

  Ruth nodded. ‘I just hope we’re doing the right thing, inviting him home.’

  ‘Mom, he’s telling the truth, I swear it. You saw those people yourself, all burning. And that mask. And that Creepy Kid.’

  ‘I still find it really hard to believe. Dead people coming back from hell? There has to be some other explanation.’

  ‘You told Martin that you believed it.’

  ‘I told Martin that I almost believed it.’

  ‘But I believe it, and you believe me, don’t you?’

  Ruth looked at her. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I believe you, sweetheart. But I genuinely wish that I didn’t.’

  Martin had made himself a reservation at the Courtyard Hotel on Kentucky Drive, but Ruth had insisted that he come back to the Cutter house for a family supper. He was a stranger in a strange city, after all, and whatever his motives he had come a very long way to help them.

  More than that, though, she badly needed to talk to him about what had happened at the clinic. She needed to understand where all those burning people had come from, and why the Creepy Kid had punished her by setting fire to Tyson, and himself. She needed to find out why that hysterically-laughing white mask had spoken to her in the voice of Pimo Jackson.

  She had no way of knowing for sure if Martin was genuine, or if Professor Frederick Solway really existed, or if the Nine Circles of Hell were any more real than Middle Earth. Martin could be nothing more than a con artist. He could be certifiably insane. But even after all of the forensic tests that she and Jack had carried out, none of the material evidence from any of the fires that they were investigating made any scientific sense whatsoever. As far-fetched as it was, Martin’s was the only theory that so far fitted all or at least most of the facts.

  But there was something else, too. Martin and Amelia seemed to have developed an unspoken but almost tangible affinity, exchanging looks that made any words unnecessary. And she had to admit that she herself found Martin’s presence strangely reassuring, as if he was an old college friend she had known for years. Maybe that was what made him a good con artist. Just for tonight, though, she didn’t really care.

  When they turned into the driveway, Ruth saw that Craig was already home. Out of habit, she went around to the back of her Windstar and was about to open up the tailgate when she realized that Tyson was no longer sitting in the back, snuffling impatiently to be let out, and never would be. She looked at Amelia and Amelia looked sadly back at her.

  Martin had parked his battered silver Taurus by the curb, and he followed them up to the porch.

  ‘This is going to be OK, isn’t it?’ he asked. ‘I mean, your husband won’t have his nose put out of joint if I join you for supper?’

  ‘Of course not. Why should he?’

  Martin shrugged. ‘Some men are pretty skeptical about the afterlife, that’s all. More than women.’

  Ruth unlocked the front door. ‘We saw what we saw, Martin. Maybe they were dead people coming back from hell, maybe they weren’t. But we can’t pretend that we didn’t see them, and we can’t pretend that Tyson wasn’t burned to death in front of our eyes. We have to talk this over, no matter what anybody else thinks about it.’

  Craig was pacing around and around the living-room, talking on the phone.

  ‘I know, Roger. I know that. But I can’t cut the price any lower than seventy-eight-five. I have to break even, at the very least.’ He paused, and then he said, ‘OK. Get back to me. But you know that I can give you a top-quality job. Far better than Hausmann’s, any day.’

  He hung up. There were bags under his eyes, and his hair was all mussed up.

  ‘Roger Letterman,’ he said. ‘I think I just lost out on six kitchens out on Cottonwood Drive. I don’t know how anybody else could fit them any cheaper. Not unless they make their worktops out of compressed horse-manure. Still – the Logansport contract is going ahead OK, touch wood and whistle.’

  Ruth said, ‘Craig, honey, this is Martin Watchman.’ She hesitated. Her throat was so constricted that she could barely speak. Craig looked blank, and so she said, ‘You know – the gentleman who came down from Chicago today to help with Ammy’s anxiety attacks.’

  ‘Oh – OK,’ said Craig, and held out his hand. ‘Pleased to meet you, Martin. How did it go today? Make any progress?’

  ‘Tyson’s dead,’ said Ammy. Her cheeks were shining with tears. She rushed over to Craig and put her arms around him.

  ‘What?’ said Craig. ‘What the hell happened?’

  Ruth could only speak in a choking staccato. ‘It was terrible. The whole thing was terrible. Those visions that Ammy’s been having, I saw them too. We all saw them. And then that Creepy Kid showed up. He put his arms around Tyson and they both burned up. They caught fire.’ The word fire came out only as a throaty squeak.

  ‘What?’ said Craig.

  Martin said, ‘Your wife has had a bad shock, Mr Cutter. I think she could use a drink.’

  They sat around the kitchen table with a bottle of wine and talked for almost an hour. Gradually, Ruth and Amelia and Martin explained to Craig about the Liébault experiment at Doctor Beech’s clinic, and the horrifying images it had conjured up.

  ‘And these what-d’you-call-’ems – these PMVs – they actually set the drapes on fire?’

  ‘They’re not ghosts, Craig. They’re not holograms. They’re real people.’

  ‘But they’re dead, right?’

  ‘Dead, yes,’ said Martin, ‘but not at rest. They’re a split-second ahead of us in time, that’s all. It’s just like somebody walking down the street about twenty yards ahead of you. If you’re both walking at the same speed, you’re never going to catch them up, right? But if they turn around and start walking back toward you, then you’re going to meet up with them pretty quick, because your closing speed is doubled.’

  Craig turned to
Ruth. ‘What’s he talking about? Do you know what he’s talking about?’

  ‘Craig,’ Ruth appealed to him. ‘Please try to understand. I don’t know if Martin’s theory about hell is true or not. I don’t have any way of proving it. But then again, I don’t have any way of disproving it, either.’

  ‘Andie’s ashes,’ Amelia whispered.

  ‘Excuse me?’ said Martin.

  ‘Andie’s ashes. Somebody just whispered “Andie’s ashes” into my ear.’

  Craig tilted back his chair and drummed his fingers on the table. ‘You know, I don’t want to be the party-pooper here. But it seems to me like a classic case of mass hysteria. Like, you’re all working each other up into such a state that you’re beginning to believe that it’s really happening. But, let’s be logical here for a moment, how can it be?’

  Martin said, ‘Ruth gave me to understand that you believe in the afterlife.’

  ‘I do. I believe that when we die we’re judged by God and we get our just desserts. If we’ve tried our best to live a good and honest life, we get admitted to heaven. But if we’ve been purposely and unrepentantly wicked, we get sent to hell.’

  ‘So what’s your problem, Craig? You believe in some kind of continuing existence after death, and that’s exactly what we’re talking about here.’

  ‘I know. And I do believe in life after death. But I don’t believe that dead people come back, wherever they’ve been sent to. And I certainly don’t believe that they set fire to innocent people.’

  ‘Not just people,’ Amelia put in. ‘Dogs, too.’

  ‘People, dogs, whatever. I don’t believe it. That’s no way for a soul to get absolution, is it, however sinful they might have been when they were alive, or whatever problems they might have left behind them?’

  ‘You think that because you’re a monotheist,’ said Martin.

  ‘Say what?’

  ‘You believe in only the one God. And to some extent, yes, you’re right. He is the Supreme Being, although He’s not quite the whiskery old senior sitting on a storm-cloud that Michelangelo painted.’