A Death Displaced
Page 25
It began to smell of heavy smoke. The nearest house was over two miles away, and the way the hills created a valley-like effect would hopefully stop anyone from noticing the conflagration for a while. The explosions echoed, but if they were heard then they would probably be passed off as fireworks.
Grendel Manor was a bulky stone golem with blazing window-eyes of fire. It spewed black, toxic breath from its gaping mouths while its rocky organs creaked and moaned under the pressure of fiery heart-burn.
Ryan was anxious for his next move, so he scrambled into his car and drove up the steep private road. In his rear-view mirror the orange glow of the manor was blinding, but it shrunk as he zoomed away.
By the time he reached his destination it was almost midnight. He parked in an unconventional spot, away from cameras, and made his way to the staff entrance. In case he was spotted in any form, he wore the dust mask and had tightened the string of his hood to cover his face. He used Aldrich’s key to gain access. Inside, he entered the security passwords and shut down the cameras.
The only ways in were through the staff back-entrances or the main gate that the tourists entered through, which was locked shut at night, and was too high to scale.
He made trips back and forth; he brought the rope, petrol cans, a lot of wood, and on his final trip he lugged Aldrich’s corpse out into The Burning Grounds.
The milky light of the moon licked the edges of each stone platform. In a playful sense it looked like a giant sheet of bubble-wrap with needles poked into each air-ball; the circular platforms were the blisters, only flat-topped, and the wooden stakes were the needles. The sight of all thirty death-discs at night was enough to make the average human cringe. Ryan wasn’t fazed.
He yanked the body up onto the nearest platform and propped it against the pole. A foul pong occasionally wheezed out, but he ploughed on. He secured Dead-Aldrich with the rope and then piled the blocks of wood all around him.
He soaked everything in petrol.
One of the pieces of wood was more like a long branch. He took it, dipped the end in petrol and set it alight. He took a few steps back and then threw it underarm-style onto the platform.
An implosion sound brought on the flames, and a wall of heat slapped outwards. He looked at the vertical orange victim and tried to imagine thirty of them all at once.
‘I wish you were alive to feel this, Aldrich.’ his voice muffled by the dust mask.
Sat in the calm night sky, the full moon watched the spectacle indifferently: the burning body, the fierce fire, like a red-orange dragon that danced too fast to track.
In Ryan’s eyes the reflection of the roaring blaze flickered, and above that, the icy moon made an appearance.
Crooked teeth smiled under the dust mask; his skin wriggled with delight.
Table of Contents
A Death Displaced
Copyright
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25