by Tabitha King
He waited, staring over the woods. The sirens had ceased. The smoke above the trees was sequined with sparks. He didn’t think she would try crawling across that floor again, under the wires. By the time she did, he would be perched like a hawk on the porch roof, ready to jump on her as she came down the porch steps. So he would give her time to convince herself it was just wind that had loosened a bit of mortar or a squirrel’s hidden acorn and that he was gone, really gone.
After long moments of silence, he shifted again, very carefully, and lowered himself by his arms into the chimney.
At no time did it cross his mind that the chimney might not be the same width all the way down. Once he had looked up it, and seen the blue, and accounted for the height of the chimney affecting the size of the patch of sky, but he had been wrong.
Rand screamed “Here comes Santa Claus!” and let go. It was a great surprise when he dropped six feet and stopped. It took a while for him to realize that he was stuck, caught by a ledge where the chimney met the second floor.
Liv was waiting at the door of the secret passage when she heard Rand’s scream, and the sound of his brief plummet. When he stopped in the narrowing of the chimney, there was a hail of soot and dry mortar on the hearth, and a series of thunks that were his boots in the chimney’s throat. She opened the door a crack and crept out onto the hearth.
From above there was a cascade of soot and mortar, cursing and obscene threats. Covering her nose and mouth with her hands, and blinking to keep the fine particles out of her eyes, she backed to the door and crouched there, uncertain what to do next. Travis peeked out the door. She had only to look at his face to know it mirrored all the terror she felt. A fresh fierce rain of particles rattled on the hearth. It was clear Rand would soon free himself, even if he had to bring the ancient chimney down with him.
Liv pushed herself up against the door, forcing it closed. Slowly she reached for the matches in the brass matchbox holder. The sound of the match head scraping over the stone of the fireplace seemed very loud to her, louder even than Rand’s nonstop cursing. She shielded the flame with one cupped hand and crouched on the hearth. Gently, she held the match to the kindling under the logs. The dry wood charred in the tiny flame, and then it glowed bluely, and began to burn. She moved the match to another piece of kindling, and it too quickly caught. The flame had crept down the shaft of the match nearly to her fingers but she held it out again, to a third stick of kindling. She felt its heat on the tips of her fingers and let it go, let it fall into the flames. The kindling caught enthusiastically. She wondered how long this fire had been laid, drying, on the hearth, as the flames from the kindling charred the bark of the logs and the bark began to spark and glow. From years of firing kilns, she knew exactly how it would burn, given the enormous inefficient draft of the antique chimney, the size of the firemouth, the papery feel of the bark on the wood.
Above her, the struggling suddenly stopped.
Somehow a little smoke found a way past him, blocking the chimney, and prickled in Rand’s nose. At the same instant, he thought he felt warmth rising from below. For a moment he was too stunned to do anything. He could not believe she had lit a fire under him.
The smoke rose and met the blockage in the chimney and curled downward. It came curling under the stone mantel and out. There was no place else for it to go. Liv sidled back to the secret door and rapped at it. Travis opened it, and she slipped inside and closed it tightly. She urged him up the passageway, and followed him, on her bottom, but they both moved in slow motion, fearful of making the least noise that would give away their position. Travis was silent and tense. Liv wondered if he understood what she had done.
She sat in the darkness and listened. Tendrils of smoke pushed through the crack at the bottom of the secret panel. It hurt her eyes, and she began to weep.
The warmth grew and Rand began to struggle again, this time pushing himself up, instead of down.
“You fucking bitch!” he screamed.
It was all the breath he could afford to waste on vituperation.
As he loosened himself, more smoke was able to rise, and what was at first only an irritating, acrid trace, burned his eyes and then his lungs, for he could not help breathing it in. He struggled all the more fiercely, and felt, with a great leap of joy, that the ledge around him was breaking apart. With it came a greater panic for now he smelled burning rubber and knew his boots were smoldering. The mortar wasn’t disintegrating fast enough, and his boots ignited, the synthetic of his snowmobile suit ignited and melted, the fire was in his vitals, and he screamed, and when he wasn’t screaming, he was sucking in the toxic hot smoke in great burning lungfuls. At last the mortar gave way, and he was free. But though he reached upward, clawing the walls, there was nothing to catch, and he was only free to fall, fall into the fire, still screaming. He rolled onto the hearth a mass of flames and out into the room, the burning logs rolling with him. Somehow he gained his feet, and hurled himself into the room. He never felt the wires he broke. There was a roar of shotguns exploding, and the screaming stopped.
Inside the secret passage, Liv and Travis clung together, sobbing. They rocked back and forth. An unearthly glow seeped under the crack at the bottom of the secret door. The air had grown thick and hard to breathe with smoke. It seemed as if they were sitting outside the door to hell.
Walter McKenzie had tracked Liv and Travis to Miss Alden’s line when he heard the shotguns. He stopped short.
“What the Christ is going on?” he asked himself, and then hurried on.
Reuben Styles heard shotguns, too. His head came up sharply and his nose was in the wind, like a dog pointing. He dropped the hose he was helping roll and shouted new orders. Then he sprinted for the woods, in the direction of the shots. So did the bulk of the volunteers. Drivers mounted their cabs and began turning the fire trucks in the driveway, following Reuben to Miss Alden’s, as ordered.
Pat Russell heard the screaming, and disregarded it. A trick of the wind.
Sarah tugged at his arm. “Did you hear that?” she asked, voice trembling.
They halted, nursing stitches in their sides, panting painfully.
The cat materialized out of a snowdevil, and wrapped herself around Sarah’s ankles. She picked her up and buried her face in The Poor’s warmth. Then the shotguns went off. The cat shot out of her hands, and streaked away across the ice.
They realized then the direction of the screaming, the gunshots. It was closer than home.
“Miss Alden’s?” Pat asked, unbelievingly.
“I think so,” Sarah agreed nervously.
Only a few yards, and they rounded the bend, and saw it. Smoke pouring from Miss Alden’s chimney, and from the back porch. There was an instant of joy in both their throats, as they thought they had been mistaken, that the fire was here and not at home. But when they looked in that direction, the smoke still rose there, like a signal fire, and they were plunged back into terror, and into fresh confusion. Then Pat saw Walter McKenzie’s squat figure rolling like a peg-legged sailor from the woods, a second before Sarah did.
“Walter,” she shouted.
And they began to run, as best they could, toward Miss Alden’s house.
Walter’s chest heaved painfully as he reached Miss Alden’s yard. His eyes watered from the acrid smoke pouring from the house. At the corner of his eye, he picked up Pat Russell, who else could it be, stumbling toward him from Miss Alden’s beach and a greater astonishment, a girl with him, the Russells’ little girl Sarah, with him. Walter stopped and grabbed his knees, gasping. By the time Pat and Sarah reached him, Walter had caught a little breath.
“Walter!” Pat shouted in his ear.
Walter straightened up and gestured toward Miss Alden’s, then back toward Russells’. “Fire department,” he gasped.
“What about my mother and Trav?” Sarah shouted.
Walter shook his head.
Pat put an arm around Sarah’s shoulders and drew her close. Her eye
s welled with tears.
The wind blew smoke into their eyes and they breathed it in involuntarily. They all fell to coughing.
They moved to get away from it, looking for a patch of fresh air. Together they stumbled over the mound of snow that covered Gordy Teed.
“Jesus Christ!” Pat cried.
“Oh God!” said Sarah.
Walter sank wordlessly to his knees, brushing the snow from the dead man. He knew at once who it was, even before he cleared the snow from his face. Some terrible mischief had happened.
Pat backed a few steps in horror and then looked up at the house, seeing for the first time that the heap by the doorway was another body. Fire showed through the broken door as through the glass door of a stove.
“Stay here,” he ordered Sarah.
She was shivering, and looked as if she might be going to vomit. But she nodded she understood. She hunkered down next to Walter, and took one of his hands in hers to comfort him. But she did not look at the corpse in the snow.
Pat ran to the porch and up the steps. By the time he reached the top step he was sure the body was not Liv’s but that of a man. He stepped over and peered into the house. In the middle of the room was a fire. As he stared at it, it became the black remnant of a human being. The flames lit a maze of wire, tangled ends on the floor. A few lines stretched across the room, leading to the triggers of shotguns. Other guns cornered the room, or were on the floor, or dangling from mounts fixed to the walls. He backed off in shock. His heel thudded against the solidity of the corpse on the porch. He stared down at it unseeing.
Shaking, he stepped over it and went back to Walter.
Men in black rubber jackets and yellow firemen’s hats were running out of the woods, crossing the yard. Come from his house, he thought numbly. He recognized faces. Local men. Volunteer firemen.
He stooped over Walter. “Where’s Liv and Travis?” he asked, his voice hoarse with desperation.
Walter looked up at him. The old man’s face was slick with tears and gray. He looked about a hundred and eighty. He shook his head.
Reuben Style’s big hand fell on Pat’s shoulder. Pat stood up and faced him.
“My wife and boy?” he asked.
Reuben shook his head. “Don’t know.” He glanced at Miss Alden’s house. “What’s this mess?”
It was Pat’s turn to shake his head.
Walter grabbed the leg of Reuben’s wool trousers. “Reuben,” he said hoarsely. “Gordy’s murdered.”
Reuben stared at him. The cat bounded onto Gordy’s chest from nowhere, and meowed at Reuben.
Suddenly everything he had seen coalesced for Pat. “Jesus, yes,” he said. And whirling round, shouted at the men going up the porch steps, “Don’t for Christ’s sake go inside!”
They stopped and stared at him.
Reuben raised one hand in a stop signal. “He’s right.”
He turned to Pat. “Now tell me what’s going on.”
Inside the secret passage, the sound of Pat’s voice electrified Liv and Travis.
“Daddy!” Travis said.
Liv sat up straight. “Oh God, I think so.”
They slipped down the steps quickly on their bottoms, and Liv cracked the secret panel open to peek out into the room. A cloud of smoke spilled in on them, making them cough and choke. The fire in the middle of the room was burning brightly through the smoke. It showed Liv many things she did not want to see. She closed the door quickly.
“Can’t we get out?” Travis asked.
“There’s fire out there,” Liv said.
Travis buried his head under her arm. “I want daddy,” he said.
She smoothed his hair. “We’ll get out,” she said. “You’ll see.”
She began to push her way up the stairs. The passage was growing warmer. The fire was eating the oxygen, she thought. Perspiration trickled from her hairline and tracked down her cheeks like tears. Her armpits were dripping. Travis was at the top before she was, and cracked the panel. The air coming in from above was a relief that recharged her.
The fire trucks followed the man in Walter McKenzie’s plowtruck to Miss Alden’s. They found everyone else in a subdued and puzzled group in the yard outside. Under Reuben’s direction at what he considered a safe distance, volunteers took to the roof where they began to chop a good hole, and through it they turned hoses on the fire inside. Much to their amazement, they began to gain control of the fire. Even more amazingly, the weight of the water falling on the remaining wires triggered the rest of the trap. After the first surprise, it was a little like the Fourth of July, and they greeted each explosion with a cheer.
Reuben left off a radio transmission to the sheriff’s office and joined Pat hunkering by Walter and Gordy’s body. He handed Pat a thermos cup of coffee.
“It was a trap,” Reuben said, “right? Some kind of godforsaken trap.”
Pat warmed his hands around the plastic cup before he allowed himself a sip. It was wonderful. “I could see all these wires, and shotguns,” he said, word for word what he had said several times before.
Reuben patted Walter’s shoulder.
“Who are these people?” Pat asked.
“Walter’s grandson,” Reuben said shortly, indicating Gordy. He nodded toward the porch. “One on the porch was Ricky Nighswander. My guess is the fella inside was the older brother, Rand. Like to know how he caught on fire.”
“Could there have been enough gunfire to set his clothes on fire?” Pat asked.
Reuben shook his head. “Don’t know. State police forensic people’ll have to figure that one out.”
Suddenly there was another shotgun blast, and the sound of breaking glass. They all jumped, and then looked wearily at the house. Maybe that would be the last. Then someone shouted from the roof, and then another one did, and it became apparent that there was something else going on.
“That was from the back of the house,” Reuben said thoughtfully, staring at the house. Then he began to run toward it, shouting new and incomprehensible orders about the ladder truck.
“Daddy!” a child screamed.
Pat looked up. He began to trot after Reuben. Then he began to run.
Two men carrying a ladder detached from a truck passed him.
“She blowed the bedroom window!” Ansel Partridge shouted from the roof.
Walter McKenzie lifted his face. Gently he let down Gordy’s head and struggled to his feet.
The bedraggled cat trotted across the porch. She stepped delicately onto the body at the door. She gave the bloody snow a lick, then climbed off, and sat down to look inside. Within the house, the fire was dead. An evil smoke and steam still rolled through the windows and door. But inside, a cold rain from the firehoses poured down through the broken roof. It began to freeze at once, glazing the furniture and the floor. Icicles bearded the trophy heads and their eyes were blackened. The remains of the burned man still lay like an insect in a bug-killing lantern on the floor. It would be a while before it was cool enough for the water to freeze on it, but it would.
From the roof, a cheer went up.
EPILOGUE
Being led away by a trio of middle-aged white men, Miss Alden looked quite mad. She was wearing a plain, dark, front-closing dress that gaped over her bosom where a button was gone, and frayed tennis shoes without stockings of any kind. She wore no hat or headcovering. Her hair was a thin, crudely chopped thatch of yellow white. It looked very dirty. Her lips were cracked, and she seemed dazed.
“Professor Alden,” the TV commentator said, “surrendered to the authorities after resigning her chair. She will be extradited to Maine on multiple charges of first degree murder.”
Liv sat up in her hospital bed, snatched up the roses on her bedstand, and heaved them at the TV on its swivel arm.
It was her testimony that moved the jury to find Miss Alden guilty not of murder but of manslaughter, and to recommend a lenient sentence. Miss Alden, groomed and formidable again, accepted her sentence of pr
obation, community service, and psychiatric counseling politely, told the TV cameras she felt a kind of rough justice had been served, and went home and shot herself with her father’s World War One service pistol, which no one knew she still had.
A brand new will provided for the lifetime care of her longtime companion, Elizabeth Royal, and left her Nodd’s Ridge property, known as the Dexter Place, and her cane, to Olivia Russell, and her army of toy soldiers to Travis Russell.
“Just what I need,” Liv said as she unwrapped the cane.
Travis giggled.
Their reaction almost cheered Pat up.
Travis couldn’t be got to bed nights in less than two hours. Pat would read to him for a long time, and then tuck him in and kiss him.