Ashes (24 page)

32

 

EMERY GROANED FROM EXHAUSTION. She'd been wheezing for the last four miles, and the shin splints should've hurt more, but the shivers, they were new. “We need to stop.”

“I think we're finally here,” Adam answered, staring in awe at the untouched, lonely house at the end of the crumbling road.

It was a dead-end street, perfect for raising small kids or fitting in with the rest of suburbia.
 

“You
think
we're here? Adam, I have blisters and cuts on my feet. You better give me something more than
you think
.”

Adam moved toward the house, erected like a horrifying statue, a piece of a former great empire. A garage sat closed on one side, a patio barely tucked into the corner of the other. Depending on the angle and vantage point, someone might miss it. Connecting fences surrounded the once lush, emerald landscape. A bleach-white door sank at the center of the house's anorexic chest. Shattered windows looked out of place but couldn't look at all. The straight path toward the pale entrance betrayed the house's sense of health—torn from ridge to split, defaced and longing for peace.

This house was ill; wounded and left alone. He remembered the grass so thick in his dreams, and now the blades were damp and slick remnants of the past. Similarly, the two houses he once recalled nestled tightly in the earth beside this lonely home were no longer there. Full houses were now empty crypts. Their ruin was all that remained, save the dug-up driveway and exposed yard with tape surrounding it and signs jammed into stiff soil.
 

Adam felt Emery's body slide next to his. Her chest brushed against his shoulder blade. “This place brings to mind some sick memories.”

He turned to her in shock. “You've been here before?” he said quickly.

“No,” she said solemnly. “I was just thinking…of our house back in Connecticut. It was a dump like this place. Dad tried to spruce it up, but I was only there for a summer before—”

“—
you
were taken,” he whispered.

Emery's expression changed. Every crease in her face looked like pain, and underneath it was fear. Adam felt it too but didn't show it. He stood rigid, eyeing the home from forty yards away in utter silence and near trembling. Adam wanted to go closer, but he couldn't move.

His eyes split from the scene, and he scanned the other homes on the block.
The few surrounding the empty spaces.
He turned to find wooden fences, cracked gravel, and broken chunks of sidewalk with grass crawling through.
Time-worn
lives left behind. Colorless flowers trapped inside forgotten, rusting coffins.

The air was suffocating. He swallowed hard, shifting to another house. Missing roof parts and chipping shingles were among the more obvious crimes. A spigot shot water across a patchy lawn.
How long have the owners been gone?
he
wondered.
Days? Weeks?
Come to think of it, he hadn't noticed any vehicle parked in any driveway, no car on the entire block. Nothing but a bike with twisted handlebars and flat tires and some tiny windmills spinning an eerie tune as it creaked with the loose wind.

His eyes swallowed the surroundings.
Like some horrifying episode of
The Twilight Zone
.
The quiet, dead-end street was a grave full of trapped memories. Spring days, summer nights, cold winters by the fireplace with an open book penned by his favorite author. He blinked, a cloud of uncertainty rolling over him.
 

It was a gray morning like today
.

Deep
breath
. The conscious wind thought about tossing the hairs on Adam's wrist as Emery's scarred chin and neck nudged against his back. A permanent fear lingered. He could feel it. He knew she could too. The scars on her skin rubbed him strangely. Adam didn't want to be touched, breathed on, talked to. Not now.

He sniffed and took his first step toward the home. Its color was a blend of white and
gray,
black shutters lining most of the shattered windows, except one in the top corner of this oddly familiar dwelling. He waited for the sound of a barking dog or a
delivery man
dropping off a package no one had ordered. But the silence nearly crippled him, this haunting home calling him closer.

His eyes itched. Adam scratched, and his focus became the home once more. Emery winced behind him whenever she moved her feet.

“Whoa,” he said, dragging his fingernails across his lips. “This was my home.”

Emery was centimeters behind him now, but he didn't want her to see him cry.
 

* * *

“Danny!” Arson screamed. “Danny! Danny!”

The cold in Arson's throat pushed hopelessly out of him. He needed someone to talk to.
Someone who could remind him that this prison wasn't his home.
Not even close.

Where is my home? What is home?

Where is Grandma?

Emery?

What happened?

How did I get here?

Things moved when he wasn't looking. Things danced to life and crawled back to death with one blink. The lockers hung open, the windows now stained. Where was the puppet master?

Hate fueled him forward. He was back on that street, watching the flames
consume
a man's house, the poor soul trapped inside. It was
him
. He was burning, his skin melting off and forgetting him with the remains.

No.

As Arson raced down the hall, he noticed one of the classroom doors was open. Almost inviting him in. Grandma sat there, looming, cursing at him for spilling a bowl of cereal on the rug. But he was only seven. “Why are you so cruel to me?” she asked, that icy stare like a strangling fog. “It wasn't enough that you took my child from me?” She broke down and cried.

The sound of her tears collapsing on the tiles was too loud to bear. Arson thought his ears were bleeding, but it was only pain.

He watched the frigid scene peel back.

Grandpa walked in from a long smoke and held his wife. He smelled like the world, like sweet fire. He was the burning Arson remembered, wanted to keep. Grandpa hugged him and assured him it'd be okay.

Did he know then how much of a lie it was? “You're different, that's all. It's not your fault, Stephen. You're not like other kids,” he whispered with that half smirk he wore so well. “Sometimes your grandma forgets.”

“Why does she call me Arson?”

Grandpa couldn't reply. Instead, he buried the boy's tiny frame in his arms.
 

But then the classroom door slammed shut. Arson went to open it, turning the handle until his palms went raw. There was no going inside. It was locked, and he was trapped on the outside.
 

What kind of place was this?

Everything here felt so real. He was real. These memories were real.

The thought of losing Grandpa again infuriated him. His blood boiled. He missed Grandpa so much. But pictures of his grandmother suddenly fluttered in instead. Some pictures were happy, most were violent.

Run,
the whispers of this place taunted.
You always run.

“Leave me alone!”

Run away from all this. Get out.

A deep scream started in his chest and crawled harshly up his throat until it tore out of him. “Danny, where are you! Come back. I know it's you. I couldn't forget. Never. Please come back!” The shivers were beginning to bug him. They didn't go away, no matter how hard he tried to burn.

The fire lay in his bones somewhere, still dormant. But how had the fire come out before? Had he imagined it all? His hand had been on fire, right? He flicked his fingers; made fists then flicked them again. The flame was what he really needed.

“Pull yourself together, Arson. You fell in here. You have to wake up and get out.” But the hopelessness inside him grew teeth. The acid in his gut drowned him from within. Anxiety. Fear.

You're all alone.

No.

Loneliness is fear. Fear is loneliness.

Shut up!

A shadow crept out in front of him suddenly. “What's the matter, baby?” a soft voice whispered. He turned behind him to find Mandy standing there with a mask melting in her hand. It didn't burn her perfectly manicured nails or those beautiful knuckles. She was wearing the red bikini from the night of the bonfire. It held her breasts firmly, the scarce bits of light tracing the lines that led to her center. Barefoot, she moved closer to him.

“Do you remember when we were kids, Arson?” she said with a twisted smile. “Do you remember when you burned that wolf?”

Arson was confused. What was she talking about?

“You brought me to the woods. Said you found a lost wolf burned by some kind of monster. Why did you
lie
, Arson?” When she said his name, the
s
seemed to slither out from her tongue. It lured him.
 

But he found the strength to draw back.

“You burned it alive, Arson. Didn't you? You were always different. I knew. You were always a freak.”

“Stop it.”

Suddenly, the halls became a forest and the lockers became trees. The two of them were surrounded. Arson was twelve. It was November air.
The smell of the cold and the end of fall.
Leaves cracked under his feet, replacing buckling tiles. He stood still. The wolf saw him as it devoured the carcass caught within its sharp bite. Bloody teeth.
A hungry growl.

“All of God's creatures are beautiful. All of God's creatures are damned.” He learned the phrase from Grandma. She spoke it to him often before bed. It was the polarity of life. She said it was good for creation to realize its beauty and its devastation. How things could begin beautiful and end in suffering.
 

Flakes of snow slowly showered underneath the charcoal sky. A half moon tucked itself inside heaven's grip. The dead wind stirred only a little. Arson could feel his hair like needles prick the back of his neck then curl at the tip. So cold it was almost impossible to breathe.
 

The violence was sudden. One minute the wolf was devouring a meal of bloody meat, and then it lay still. A sharp whimper disrupted the cold as the wolf burned alive, the fire quickly crawling into its damp fur. The creature's eyes were engulfed, a pair of colorless spheres. This wasn't power like the comics. This was horror. The beast clawed and howled into the dark only slightly. It didn't take long to die.

Grandma had taught him about sacrifices. How religious orders once mandated a sacrifice for the atonement of sin, to receive forgiveness from the heavens.

Arson did remember. Arson remembered it all perfectly. But it was buried here, in this realm somehow. The dark he wanted to escape. Arson had taken Mandy to the woods to show her the dead thing.
His sacrifice for her affection.
Some terrible beast committed the evil against this creature, he'd told her. He'd told himself. Not a scared boy. Not a firestarter like him.

Not a monster.

“You remember it, baby,” she said seductively. “You were the monster. You remember it, don't you?”

Arson's pulse quickened. Panic spread across his body. He had to get away from her, but it was like she held him there. He couldn't move.

“Scared, freak?” she said, pausing upon every twisted syllable. “F-r-e-a-k.” Her face was completely held together, nothing melted or scarred or ruined, as if the night of the bonfire had never occurred. This was the girl he used to fantasize about. How he adored her. How he even found pleasure in her.

“I was stupid,” he whispered. “But I'm not a monster. I swear.”

“You're so adorable, you know that?” she whispered, sliding her tongue up his neck. Her mouth slowly found his. She tasted like smoke. But some part of him liked her being here with him. At least he wasn't alone.

“You were so easy, Arson. I had fun playing with your little brain.
Your stupid…little…brain.
When I was a little girl, I thought you were a retard, but I learned
quick
. You were just different. You weren't like the rest of us. You burned that wolf and then you told me your little white lie. So clever.” With one hand she moved to his shirt and rubbed underneath. “But I had fun, until you turned on me. You ruined us, Arson. You ruined
everything
. Don't you want me?”

Her nails scratched at his chest. Eyeliner dripped down her cheek. “Was I just like the wolf, Arson? Lost inside the woods, waiting to be burned?” He watched as some of her lashes peeled. She dragged her lips across his once more, breathing into him with soft moans.
Moans that turned into curses.
Her ashtray mouth poured dust into his throat. But in seconds, he was coughing it all up.

“You want me, Arson,” she said, reaching for his belt. “You
need
me.”

He dragged his heel back, his heart lost somewhere in the empty space of the in-between.