by Landon Wark
Her face was gaunt as she splashed water on it. They were all in worse shape than they had been before that night six months ago, but at least they were alive.
I had a dream! the words as clear in her head as she had when she first heard them. All that was missing was Ezra's round face hovering over her and his hand trying desperately to pull her from her bed. At first she thought he had gone mad. His body was sweating even more than usual, shining in the moonlight that came through the window she had left open against the heat of that summer night.
"They're dead!" he practically screamed. "My niece is dead!"
Beyond him Jenny could make out lights being cast from open doors. Before she knew what was happening Clayton was standing at her door while Ezra practically yanked her out of her bed. He paced frantically past her while she stood in her pyjamas. The large man ran his fingers through his thinning hair and seemed increasingly agitated that she was not following him to the door.
"Well?! Come on!" he shouted.
"Ezra?" Clay tried to enter the room, but he was stopped by a meaty hand placed on his chest. "What the hell are you freaking out about?"
"They're coming!" he shouted. "Up the road. Maybe police. I-I-I'm not sure."
"Okay. They've been here before. Carmen—"
"THEY KILLED MY NIECE!" Ezra screamed. "I saw it happen. On a floor somewhere. Jonah too. They killed them both. We have to go!"
Jenny felt her muscles tense under the force of Ezra's agitation. She began edging toward the small dresser that held her clothing. For unknown reasons she worried about a child that was no longer present.
"That doesn't make any sense," Clay said.
"They're going to burn this place to the ground!" he shouted in reply. "I SAW IT!! Why—why? We have to go!"
Jenny turned toward the window. The trees surrounding the road separated enough to allow her a slim vantage onto the track. There was nothing there that could have been mistaken as a car.
"There—" she managed before the glow of headlights from the main road caught her attention. Her breath held for a moment as it approached the turnoff, slowing and then turning onto the dirt of the road. "There's a car on the road."
"What?" Clay came to the window next to her. "It has to be Jonah and Sandy."
A second set of lights pulled onto the road behind the first.
"We have to go!" Ezra shouted. "We're all going to burn!"
The next few minutes were a frantic race out of the house, Jenny pulling a handful of her clothes down the stairs while Ezra roused the remainder of the house's occupants. Clay passed Jenny on the stairs, pulling on a sweat-stained white T-shirt on top of his worn boxer shorts.
"What are you doing?" Ezra asked over the landing as he waved Carmen down the hall.
"I'm going to talk to them," Clay shouted back.
"Are you crazy?" a newly wakened Carmen asked.
"It's the cops," he replied. "They need a warrant or some—"
As soon as the lights came on in the foyer of the house a pair of loud bangs foretold the explosion of an equal number of bullets through one of the front windows. Clay rolled to the ground, already scrambling to get to his feet. Jenny screamed and made a run for the kitchen through the back. By the time Clay caught up with her they met up with the first of the others coming down the back stairway.
"Did you see the warrant, dumbass?" Carmen asked as she threw open the door. "Was the fucking judge's signature clear on it?!"
All five of them shoved through the small back door and into the hot night air. Before Jenny even knew what was going on her was running to the woods beyond Jonah's small cabin. At first it was impossible to tell if the air was hot or cool, but as it whipped past her face and drove deep into her lungs, she realized it didn't really matter.
"We have to get his work!" Clay shouted.
Ezra, first through the door, was already peeling off from the main group with Carmen, Clay and Paul behind him. As Jenny waved the others into the woods they emerged, each with an armful of blue notebooks.
They had never seen who had driven the cars up the road or fired the shots. Jenny had briefly entertained the idea that Bill had had something to do with it. Maybe he had managed to rally a few of the folks around town into some kind of impromptu mob. If it was the police, they had come woefully undermanned. And they had decided to burn the house to the ground.
It hadn't made much sense at the time. But they had all stood in awe and fury in the thin shelter of the woods as the first of the salmon red flames had appeared through the windows. By the time they had thought to keep running the upper floor where all their rooms had been was ablaze. They had burned down what they all had come to think of as their home.
Jenny grimaced into the bathroom mirror.
And they would all have likely burned to death in that fire if it had not been for Ezra. Ezra's vision.
And it had happened again several weeks later. After they had all taken over the majority of the rooms in a small hotel somewhere they had had to move again. This time it had been a much more orderly evacuation, coming a day or two before he said they had to leave. Clay and Carmen had expressed some doubts, but the rest of them were ready to leave after Ezra had wearily explained that there were others coming for them. It would be better if they all moved somewhere out of town.
That was how they had come upon this ancient and worn down house, abandoned but hopefully safe from whoever was stalking around in Ezra's dreams. It had been a few months, but Jenny was still waking in the middle of the night, convinced that someone was pouring gasoline around her bed.
Walking gingerly across the hall floorboards she noticed Ezra's light was still on. Placing a hand on the peeling paint she leaned in to see him collapsed, half on his bed, one leg dangling into the abyss of the floor. Around him were the blue notebooks they had rescued from Jonah's cabin. The research into the magic was all but indecipherable to the five of them, but they were making progress. Gruelling, halting, clumsy progress.
They were the only ones left who had any hope of making it.
A loud honk came from Ezra's mouth and his lips smacked together.
With a prayer she left him to his sleep, returning to the room she and Carmen shared with one of the other women they had picked up since leaving the house, Madison, her name was.
"Jen?" Carmen's sleep garbled voice came to her.
"Yeah?"
"All right. It freaks me out hearing someone roaming around the halls."
"Me too," Madison groaned.
"Sorry. I'll try to be more quiet next time."
Jenny carefully eased herself back into her bed and forced herself to close her eyes. Ezra's dreams were bad enough, but she had her own to contend with. And as the last of her anxiety lost its battle with her need to sleep (however fitfully) she prayed that she would make it to see the day when there was no battle to begin with.
One thing was for certain; she could not withstand the loss of another family.