Fire Spirit

by Graham Masterton

  ‘Dad!’ said Jeff. ‘Let’s just go!’

  Craig looked around. The Buick was effectively blocking the street behind them, and the Creepy Kid was still standing right in front of them.

  The laughing man rapped on Craig’s window again. ‘You getting out, fella, or what? You really need to give your wife and daughter this message. Otherwise we might have to give it to them personal. Hand-deliver it, so to speak.’

  ‘Dad!’ said Jeff. ‘They’re bluffing, I’ll bet you anything! They just want us to get out of the car so they can jack it!’

  ‘They’re going to all of this trouble for a ’ninety-nine Pontiac? I don’t believe it!’

  ‘Then what do they want?’

  ‘I don’t know. It looks like I’ll just have to get out of the car and find out.’

  ‘Dad – don’t!’

  ‘Listen, Jeff. Stay calm. If they had wanted to kill us, they would have shot us through the windows by now.’

  The laughing man called out, ‘Are you coming out, or what? We can do this any way you want. But your wife and your daughter, they need to get this message one way or another.’

  ‘All right!’ Craig shouted back at him. ‘I’m coming out!’

  He opened the car door and stepped out on to the road. The laughing man came up to him and said, ‘There . . . that wasn’t so hard, was it?’ Inside his mask his voice was thick and breathy, as if he had a heavy cold.

  ‘Who the hell are you?’ Craig demanded. ‘What do you think you’re trying to do, rear-ending us like that, and chasing after us? Are you some kind of psycho? What have we done to you?’

  ‘You personally have done nothing,’ said the laughing man. ‘Me and my friends, we don’t have any bones to pick with you. But your dearly beloved wife seems to be suffering from selective deafness. My little friend here has told her to drop her investigation more than once, but for some reason she doesn’t seem to be listening.’

  ‘Listen,’ said Craig, ‘I don’t have any idea what this is all about, but if you have a problem why don’t you take it up with the Fire Department?’

  The laughing man prodded Craig in the chest. ‘I don’t need to take it up with the Fire Department because I’m telling her. And I’m telling that daughter of yours, the one who thinks she can see things and hear things.’

  ‘You leave my daughter out of this.’

  The laughing man shook his mask from side to side. ‘Can’t do that, my friend. Your daughter knows what’s happening, that’s why. Your daughter’s got the sensitivity. But if she wants my advice she should stick to singing her songs, and drawing her pretty pictures, and forget about people coming through from underneath.’

  ‘Why?’ Craig challenged him. ‘Why should she? What in God’s name is this all about?’

  The laughing man came up closer. He was at least four inches taller than Craig, but Craig stood his ground. The laughing man said, ‘Deals have been done, my friend. Undertakings have been given. We can’t have anybody upsetting the apple-cart, not now. You need to tell your dearly beloved wife that all of the fires she’s been looking into recently, they were all started by natural causes, so she can close her files and turn her attention to something less con-trov-ershul. And you need to advise your dearly beloved daughter that if she happens to hear whispering, or doors opening and closing, then all she has to do is turn up the music to drown them out, and forget she ever heard them.’

  ‘Why don’t you tell them yourself?’

  ‘Because I’m asking you to do it, that’s why.’

  ‘OK. Supposing I tell you to go screw yourself?’

  ‘You wouldn’t, because you’re a decent churchgoing man who doesn’t hold with language like that.’

  Now the Creepy Kid came around from the front of the car, and stared up at Craig with undisguised hostility.

  ‘Your wife, she needs to mind her own beeswax,’ he piped up. ‘I thought I taught her enough of a lesson already, burning her dog.’

  ‘Oh, that was you, was it?’

  ‘Sure it was. That was to teach her a lesson. That was to teach her to mind her own beeswax.’

  ‘If that was you, how come you didn’t get burned?’

  ‘Maybe I did get burned,’ the boy snapped at him. ‘Maybe I got burned to nothing but ashes. But what do you know? You don’t know nothing about nothing! You don’t know comings and you don’t know goings. You don’t know dying and you don’t know pain. People never made you promises and then double-crossed you. You were never burned alive on account of the fact that nobody cared squat about you, even your own mother. I came out of her, didn’t I? How come everybody was allowed back inside of her, except me?’

  Craig was shaking. He didn’t understand any of this encounter, or who these people were, but he was determined that he wasn’t going to allow them to intimidate him. He had been crushed enough in the past eighteen months – by banks, by developers, by credit agencies, by the IRS. He wasn’t going to take any more, especially not from some snot-nosed kid with a face like a flatfish and three bozos in carnival masks.

  ‘You listen to me,’ he told them. ‘We’re leaving now, my son and me. You characters – you can do whatever you darn well please. You don’t scare me and I won’t allow you to threaten my family.’

  ‘I don’t think that you quite understood me,’ said the laughing man. ‘You have to tell your wife that her investigations into all of those recent fires are finished. You have to tell your daughter to close her eyes and close her ears and above all to close her mouth. And you can tell that so-called psychic to go back home, too.’

  ‘Or what?’ Craig challenged him.

  ‘Do you really want to find out?’

  ‘Like I said,’ Craig told him. ‘Go screw yourself.’

  He climbed back into the Grand Prix and slammed the door. Jeff was staring at him half in admiration and half in bewilderment.

  ‘That’s it,’ said Craig. He was pumped up with adrenaline and his heart was thumping against his ribcage. ‘Let’s just get out of here. Go straight ahead. You can take a left at the end of the street, and then another left, and we’ll be back on South Philips.’

  Jeff started the engine and drove off. Neither the Creepy Kid nor any of the three masked men made any attempt to stop them. As they reached the end of Conradt Avenue, Craig turned around and saw that they were still standing in the road, watching them.

  ‘That was unreal,’ said Jeff.

  ‘You think so? It was too darn real for my liking.’

  ‘You want to go to police headquarters and report it?’

  ‘No, let’s go home first. I want to make sure that your mom and Ammy are OK.’

  As they passed West Carter Street, Craig took a good look to the left to make sure that the Buick hadn’t turned around to follow them, but the street was deserted, apart from lines of parked cars and a man walking a Dalmatian.

  ‘What was that about a message?’ asked Jeff.

  ‘I’m not too sure. But it seems like they want Mom to drop all of those arson investigations she’s been handling lately, and they want Ammy to stop going on about people coming through from underneath.’

  ‘How the hell did they know about that?’

  ‘Don’t ask me. Maybe Ammy told one of her friends at school about it and her friend told somebody else and somehow those freaks got to hear about it, although I don’t see why it should matter to them. But believe me, I’m going to find out who they are and I’m going to make sure that they all get locked up.’

  They were only half-a-dozen blocks away from home now, and Craig was beginning to calm down.

  ‘Come on, Jeff, you don’t have to drive so fast. It’s all over now.’

  But Jeff said, ‘That Creepy Kid. Shit. He’s like beyond creepy, man. He just stood in the road, right in front of me, and I must have been doing forty-five, easy. Didn’t even flinch. Didn’t even fucking blink. What if I’d hit him? He’d be dead, and I’d be up for vehicular manslaughter.’


  Craig said, ‘He knew about Tyson, that’s what I don’t understand. If he didn’t do it, how did he know about it? There hasn’t been anything about it on TV. But he wasn’t burned at all, was he? Your mom said that he and Tyson, they both burned up together. They were practically cremated.’

  Jeff shook his head. ‘He sure didn’t look dead to me. But whether he’s dead or not – I could have been in jail now, charged with killing him.’

  ‘Maybe he’s a twin,’ said Craig. ‘I don’t know, maybe he’s even sextuplets.’

  ‘Hard to work it out, ain’t it?’ said a reedy voice, close to Craig’s left ear.

  Craig twisted around in shock. Sitting in the back of the car, his thin elbows resting on the back of Craig’s seat, was the Creepy Kid. Jeff turned his head and saw him too and the Grand Prix lurched violently sideways.

  The boy’s eyes were black and glittering and his bright pink lips were moist, as if he had been licking them. He looked grubby, as if he hadn’t had a bath in a very long time, and he smelled like the inside of a charity clothing store.

  ‘How in the name of God did you get in here?’ Craig barked at him. ‘Jeff, stop the car! He gets out right now!’

  ‘No! Don’t stop yet!’ said the Creepy Kid. ‘You have to give a message to your dearly beloved wife, and your dearly beloved daughter, and I’m here to make sure that you do.’

  ‘Jeff! Stop the darn car!’

  Jeff drew the car into the curb and stopped, but the Creepy Kid stayed where he was. Suddenly, unexpectedly, he smiled at them, first at Jeff and then, even more winningly, at Craig. ‘Don’t you want to find out what’s really going on? Don’t you want to know who my friends are? They’re real scary, aren’t they? I think they’re the scariest friends I’ve ever had. You never know what expression they’ve got on their faces under those masks. Brrrrrr! Don’t that just give you the willies?’

  Craig said, ‘Get the hell out of this car before I drag you out.’

  ‘Don’t you think your dearly beloved wife will want to know what’s going on? If you throw me out now, she’ll never ever know. Unless she’s a stupid dumb bitch, of course, and carries on trying to find out for herself.’

  Craig took a deep breath. Every muscle in his body was tensed up, ready to jump out of the car, open the rear door, and throw the boy bodily on to the sidewalk. But he knew that Ruth was desperate to find out why and how all of those people had been incinerated, and how Tyson had died. If the Creepy Kid could give her some clue, maybe it would bring her some closure, even if it never led to any arrests.

  ‘OK,’ he said, so quietly that the Creepy Kid obviously didn’t hear him.

  ‘I’ll get out then, shall I?’ the Creepy Kid asked him. ‘Just don’t blame me for what happens next, man. My friends . . . they don’t have much in the way of self-control, if you understand what I’m saying.’

  ‘I said, OK!’ Craig repeated. ‘You can come back home with us and you can explain to my wife who’s been causing these fires, and why. Then you can listen while I give her your friend’s message about closing her investigation, and while I tell my daughter to ignore any noises or voices or whatever makes her think that people are coming through from underneath. Will that satisfy you?’

  ‘It might. It depends.’

  ‘Will you then go away and leave us alone and stop hanging around outside of our house?’

  ‘I might. It depends.’

  Craig looked across at Jeff. Jeff made a face which meant that he didn’t really know what to think.

  ‘Come on,’ said Craig. ‘Let’s go home and sort this out once and for all.’

  Jeff drove very slowly along the next three blocks, reluctant to reach home. The Creepy Kid sat perched on the edge of the back seat with both elbows on the front seats and whistled ‘Lazy Bones’ in a breathy, high, irritating pitch.

  At last they reached the Cutter house and turned into the driveway, parking next to Ruth’s Windstar.

  Craig said, ‘You wait here, you got it? I’ll go fetch Ruth. There’s no way I want you in the house.’

  The Creepy Kid smiled and said, ‘That’s OK. I understand. Lots of my friends’ moms didn’t want me in their houses. They said I smelled funny.’

  ‘That’s because you do,’ said Jeff.

  The Creepy Kid lowered his head. ‘It weren’t my fault. She never gave me a bath or washed me none. Only Belinda ever did that, until Belinda went away and never came back.’

  Craig said, ‘I won’t be a minute.’ He went up to the porch and opened the front door and called out, ‘Ruth! Ruth, do you want to come out here?’

  Ruth appeared, still rubbing moisturizing cream on her hands. ‘You got Jeff’s car! That’s wonderful! But you were such a long time. What happened?’

  Craig took hold of her arm to stop her from pushing her way past him. ‘Hold up just a second, honey. We ran into some trouble.’

  Ruth frowned, and tried to look over his shoulder. ‘Trouble? What kind of trouble?’

  ‘We were almost home when we got rear-ended by this Buick. We tried to lose them because we thought they were crackheads trying to jack the car.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Ruth. She didn’t like the sound of this at all.

  ‘We gave them the slip, but we had to stop because there was some kid standing in the middle of the road and Jeff would have hit him otherwise.’

  Ruth said nothing, waiting for him to continue.

  ‘Actually,’ said Craig, ‘it wasn’t just any kid. It was him.’

  Ruth felt as if she were sinking very fast in a high-speed elevator. ‘Oh, my God. So he’s back already. Martin was right. He gets burned up, but then he comes back, over and over. There’s no getting rid of him.’

  ‘There’s more than that, Ruth. When we stopped, the Buick caught up with us, and there were three guys in it. They were all wearing white masks, with different expressions. The one who spoke to me, he had a laughing mask.’

  ‘Like the mask I saw at Doctor Beech’s clinic?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I thought, yes.’

  ‘What did he say? Did he tell you who he was?’

  ‘No, he didn’t. But he said I should give you a message. You and Ammy, both.’

  Ruth said, ‘What message? What’s going on, Craig? What’s Jeff doing?’

  ‘He’s sitting in the car, waiting.’

  ‘What’s wrong, Craig? Something’s wrong, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. It’s the Creepy Kid. He’s in the car, too.’

  Ruth stared at him, aghast. ‘My God, Craig, you have to get Jeff out of there!’

  She forced her way past him and out on to the driveway. Jeff was still sitting in the driver’s seat and the Creepy Kid had his hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Jeff, get out!’ Ruth shouted at him. ‘Get out of the car right now!’

  Jeff tried to open his door but it seemed to be locked. He stared out through the windshield and shook his head. Ruth went around to the side of the car and yanked at the handle, but she couldn’t open the door either.

  ‘Craig!’ she shouted. ‘Help me get the doors open!’ Then she hammered on the window with her fist and said, ‘Let him out, you little bastard! Do you hear me? Let him out!’

  Craig tried the doors on the passenger side of the car, but they were locked, too. Jeff turned around in his seat and tried to punch the Creepy Kid, but the Creepy Kid kept ducking, and when Jeff turned the other way, he grabbed a handful of Jeff’s hair and jerked his head back.

  Ruth hammered on the window again. ‘Let him out, or so help me . . .’

  ‘You want to see him burn?’ the Creepy Kid screamed at her. Ruth could only just hear him. ‘You want to see him burn the same way your dog did? ’Cause if you don’t, you’d better back off!’

  At that moment, Amelia came out on to the porch, wearing her pale blue bathrobe and fluffy slippers, her hair tied up in pale blue ribbons. ‘Mom?’ she said. Then she shaded her eyes with her hand and peered into the interior of the Grand
Prix and said, ‘I thought he was here. I thought I heard him.’

  ‘Ammy,’ said Craig, putting his arm around her, ‘you’d better get inside. Call nine-one-one and tell them we have an emergency.’

  ‘No,’ said Ammy, vigorously shaking her head. ‘We mustn’t do that. If the police show up, there’s no telling what he’ll do.’

  Ruth said, ‘Craig, break the windows. I’m going to drag out that little runt and strangle him myself.’

  ‘No, Mommy, no!’ said Amelia. ‘He wants to talk to us, that’s all.’

  ‘If he wants to talk to us, this is not exactly the way to go about it, is it? Let my son out of there, you miserable little bastard! Do you hear me?’

  Craig went over to his SUV, lifted the tailgate and took out his tire-iron. He went back to the passenger side of the Grand Prix and lifted up the tire-iron so that the Creepy Kid could see it.

  ‘You got three!’ Craig shouted. ‘Then I’m coming in to get you!’

  The Creepy Kid gave him a slow, sly smile. He kept his grip on Jeff’s hair, but he stretched forward with his left hand so that he could put down the driver’s-side window.

  ‘Jeff?’ asked Ruth. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Kid’s stronger than he looks,’ Jeff panted, and said, ‘Ow! Fuck!’ as the boy gave his hair another sharp tug.

  ‘Try opening the door again,’ Ruth told him.

  Jeff jiggled the handle but the door remained locked.

  ‘All right,’ said Ruth. ‘My daughter says you have something to say. Let’s hear it.’

  The boy was still smiling. ‘Your dearly beloved husband has to give you a message first.’

  Craig came around and stood next to her. ‘The guy in the laughing mask said that he wanted you to drop all of your recent arson investigations. Put them all down to natural causes, and close the book on them.’

  ‘Now why would he want me to do that?’ asked Ruth. She was trembling with anger, but she was trying very hard to control herself. She had seen what the Creepy Kid could do, if he was crossed.

  ‘Because people are sufferin’, Ruth, and they sorely need their sufferin’ to come to a close.’