THERE HADN’T BEEN enough time to make elaborate provisions, but fortunately Bobby had most of what he needed on hand. The gun, of course, and a couple of jerry cans he filled up at a self-serve gas station well out of his or the boy’s neighborhood. And then, for the coup de grâce, he stopped off at One-Eyed Pete’s on the way. Pete wasn’t home, which was just as well. Bobby kicked open the door to the shed deep in the woods behind Pete’s house, took an empty beer carton, and filled all but one of the bottle compartments with Pete’s most powerful aerial shells in their mortars, scattering skyrockets and spinners around them for effect. He found an empty beer bottle from the stack in the shed, filled it from one of the jerry cans, put a rag in the top, and placed it in the final compartment.
And then it was on to the craphole house where the boy had grown up.
Robert had already searched the house a few days before, had picked the back lock and slipped in, looking for the file, so he knew the layout, a small two-story with a basement and only two exits, both on the first floor, front and back, which made things easier. The house had been cleared in anticipation of the upcoming sheriff’s sale, and he’d found nothing. But there were always hiding places that a stranger might miss: a loose floorboard, a fake wall, a tile in the ceiling that could be pushed away. He wasn’t surprised that the boy had gone back.
A few minutes later, Bobby was kneeling in the overgrown bushes at the rear of the house, his provisions beside him. He had parked on the opposite side of the block, across from a completely dark house, and slipped quietly through the backyard to the Byrne house. Robert would have taken far better precautions, but Bobby sensed that the time for such care was coming to an end, and he was glad of it. No longer would he skulk about as if ashamed of the darkness, he was ready to maraud like a berserker.
A dim outside light was on. The Datsun glowed with a dark bloody red at the back of the driveway. It wasn’t a mystery how the boy had gotten inside, one of the small rear windows was out of its sill, leaning against the wall, and the back door was ajar. The upper windows of the house were dark, but the kitchen light was on, and, more interestingly, from the lowest windows an uneven white light shone faintly. So the Byrne boy was in the basement. It had seemed completely empty when Robert had searched it. Obviously, he had missed something, but he wouldn’t miss anything now.
As quietly as he could, he moved along the edges of the bushes that lined the driveway, angling to get a view of the front door. While he assumed it was still locked, he wanted to be sure which way the boy would run.
But wait a second, what the hell was that?
A figure, at the front door, a male figure in what appeared to be a suit jacket, his face in shadow. There was something about his posture, bent at the waist and slightly hunched, by either age or caution, but something that tolled familiar. The figure tried the front door, found it locked, and then, with an almost arthritic sidestep, arms akimbo, scurried off the far side of the front porch.
Bobby hurried around the house to his spot in the rear bushes and watched as the figure darted around the back of the house, scampered up the rear steps of the porch, slipped inside the open door. Who the hell was he? What was he doing there? And why did he seem so damn familiar?
Bobby thought about it for a moment and then decided it didn’t much matter. The man was obviously in cahoots with the boy, had been called in for some unknown reason. If the file was somewhere down in the basement, which only made sense, then the man would learn about it and would also have to be destroyed. Robert would have been greatly concerned about another casualty, but Bobby simply figured this made up for the one he missed out on fourteen years ago. Fine. He’d wait for the man to join Byrne down in the basement and take care of both of them together.
Then a break. The dim outdoor light went off, and the kitchen and basement lights, too. Suddenly the house was in utter darkness.
The power must have died for some reason. The other houses still were lit, so this was just the Byrne house. All the better. Rushing to take advantage of this almost magical opportunity, Bobby gathered up the two jerry cans and the box he had taken from One-Eyed Pete’s. Staying low like a soldier, he quickly made his way to the rear steps, the jerry cans sloshing as he moved.
He climbed the steps, lowered the jerry cans, and placed the box to the side of the door. He peered through the screen and could spy nothing but the slight unbroken glimmer of the streetlight slipping in the front windows and bouncing unobstructed across the bare wooden floors. Perfect. There was no time to dally. Maybe the main circuit had simply snapped closed. It wouldn’t be long before the boy found the circuit box and clicked it back.
Time to go.
He opened the screen door, grabbed the jerry cans and rushed inside. He took a deep breath, stuck a handkerchief into his mouth, twisted the first cap off, the second.
And then, freed from any concern about the sound he was making, Bobby took the first can and stomped like a motorcycle madman on his way to the front of the house, slopping the liquid over the walls and floor with abandon. The dark, gaseous smell almost overwhelmed him, but he forced in a breath through the handkerchief and kept going.
One can done, he went back for the second and kept stomping and pouring, stomping and pouring, concentrating now on the kitchen and the steps to the basement. He heard shouting from below, footsteps on the stairs, saw the large shadow of the Byrne boy and a beam of light. He took out the gun and fired a shot that rang down the dark stairway, followed by a howl of pain. He must have hit him. Lovely. That will slow the little bastard down, he thought as, with the dregs of the second jerry can, he traced a path out the rear door and to the box he’d taken from Pete’s.
As the screen door slammed shut, he took the beer bottle from out of the box, its rag now soaked and stinking. He pulled a lighter from his pocket, flicked it to life, lit the rag.
“A shes to ashes,” said Bobby as he opened t he screen door a nd tossed the flaming bottle into the vapor-filled house. “Like father, like son.”
Next thing Bobby knew, he was flying off the porch like a batted shuttlecock.
He fell with a painful thud onto the unyielding lawn. Something cracked in his back. The handkerchief blew out of his mouth. He was blinded, his eyebrows were singed right off his skull, his face felt like he had bobbed for apples in a boiling soup pot, like the skin was peeling from his cheeks. Smoke rose from his smoldering clothes.
He struggled to sit up. His vision was a red blot, but slowly the outlines of the house emerged, and then, within the outline, the dancing, boiling flames. A wild inferno was barely contained within the house’s walls. Fire shot out of broken windows, out the now-melting screen door. It wouldn’t be long before it burst through the roof like a signal flare into the night sky, declaring the final victory of the Spanglers.
The bitch said she wanted initiative.
Like a wounded crab, Bobby slunk back into the bushes. He now had a view of the rear door and the boy’s car. Soon the boy would come charging out the back. And if he ran out some other exit, he’d still head straight for the Datsun. Either way he’d be toast.
Bobby reached into his pocket, pulled out his gun, and waited for the fireworks.
KYLE’S HEART JUMPED like a nervous rabbit flushed from hiding before taking off with a burst of terror. Something was terribly wrong. The sight of his father’s face, pinned in the flashlight’s beam like a moth in a lepidopterist’s display, seemed to turn the ironclad rules of time and space in on themselves in a loopy, Möbius kind of way.
It was as if the flashlight were somehow allowing him to peer into the past. Cheesy science-fiction television shows were the only frame of reference he could grab hold of to understand what was happening:
Stargate
or
Star Trek
or
Lost in Space.
There was an anomaly in the universe, a rent in the time-space continuum, a wormhole. This vision of his father was either a miracle or a harbinger of doom, and either way it scared the hell out of him, as if everything in the universe, along with every certainty he held about his life, were quivering just then on the knife edge of annihilation.
He clicked the light off and then on again. The same face, the same crooked smile.
“I’ll have that file if you don’t mind, boyo.”
“Dad? What the—”
“Watch your language, now. You know I don’t abide swearing. English is a marvelously adept tongue. To use such words is nothing short of lazy.”
“What the fuck?”
The old man put up a hand to block the flashlight’s beam or Kyle’s expletive, one or the other, Kyle couldn’t be sure, and shook his head. “Ahh, boyo. As headstrong as ever. Can we do something about the light?”
“I don’t understand,” said Kyle.
“The light. Can you get that interrogator’s beam out of my face and turn the overheads back on?”
“Who the hell are you?”
“You know who I am.”
“Am I dreaming you? Have I gone crazy?”
“I know it’s hard to get a grip on. Something like this doesn’t happen every day, but no, you’re not crazy. I’ve come, Kyle, to pull you out of trouble. You’re in need of saving, even if you don’t know it.”
“You’ve come from where?” said Kyle. “The past?”
“No, son, not the past. That would be crazy. San Bernardino, actually.”
“Dad?”
“It’s rather nice. A quiet place, really, but we host the National Orange Show every spring. Juggling acts, midget racers. There’s even a bean-spitting contest.”
“Dad?”
“When I heard what had happened to Laszlo, that Hungarian scoundrel, I knew what it was about. It was the O’Malley file—what else could it be? I came back to make sure it didn’t kill anyone else, that it didn’t kill you.”
“Dad?”
The old man’s smile brightened. “Now be a good boyo and give over the file.”
“Dad,” said Kyle, the skeptical inflection leaving the word and his heart at the same time, being replaced with an impossible joy. Because he knew, suddenly, as much as he knew anything, that this indeed was his father, not a sign of incipient insanity or a culmination of all the false sightings in the last few days. Whether he came to him through the Time Tunnel or in an airplane from San Bernardino didn’t matter just then. What mattered was that it was his father, and he had come.
Kyle couldn’t help himself from surging forward and wrapping the old man in his arms, even as the flashlight’s beam flew wildly about the room before flopping onto the stairs. Kyle pressed his head into his father’s neck, breathed in the sharp reality of him, a mélange of scents that were achingly familiar, old cigarette smoke, a dab of Brylcreem, sweat and Aqua Velva, all cut with the faint tinge of gasoline.
Gasoline?
And footsteps above them. Not even quiet footsteps.
Kyle pushed away, aimed the beam again at the old face. “Who the hell is that? Did you come alone?”
“Quite,” said the old man. “I made sure of it.”
“Not sure enough, I suppose. We’ve got company.”
The old man’s eyes narrowed. “They’ve come for it, boyo, they’ve come for the file. You have it there, in your hand, isn’t that right?”
“Yes.”
“Then give it over and let’s make haste out of here.”
“But why the gasoline?” said Kyle as he quickly thought it through, and then he yelled, “Crap,” as he began bounding up the stairs.
The crack of a shot and the whiz of something buzzing by and biting the tip of his ear came all at once. He froze, taking an instant to realize what had happened, an instant where he stayed unmoving on the stairway like a deer caught in a pair of headlights with a target painted on its chest, a red laser dot on its forehead, and a sign that read shoot me because i’m an idiot. Then he dove back to the basement, rolling on the floor and howling at the pain in his bruised ribs.
The footsteps above moved away from the top of the stairs even as the smell of gasoline grew so strong it was choking. Kyle coughed as he pushed himself to standing, the flashlight and the file still gripped in his hands.
“Did he get you?” said the old man.
“I don’t think so,” said Kyle. “Maybe he winged me.”
“Let me see.”
Kyle aimed the flashlight at his ear. In the reflected light, he could see the old man wince.
“Ahh, nothing to be concerned about,” said the old man. “A mere flesh wound. I can barely feel it. Now, boyo, think. How many were there?”
“I only saw a shadow,” said Kyle, putting the hand with the file to his ear. He could feel a warm slickness on the back of his hand. “One, maybe.”
“Is there a way out?”
“Up the stairs.”
“A course of last resort, considering the thug with the gun. Anything else? The windows?”
Kyle passed his flashlight around the room. A series of narrow windows led out to cement window wells. He moved the flashlight from the windows to the old man’s thick waist.
“You won’t fit,” said Kyle.
“Oh, I think I could make it. I’ve always been as wiry as a snake. But those shoulders of yours wouldn’t make it through, that’s for sure. I always said less time in the gym and more time in the library and maybe you’d make something of yourself. So it’s up the stairs, is it?”
“Or wait for the son of a bitch to come down.”
“I fear we won’t have that luxury,” said the old man.
Just then, as if on cue, a bomb went off.