Fire Spirit (3 page)

Ten minutes went by, while the laughing man smoked and the expressionless man jiggled one leg as if he needed to go to the bathroom, and the scowling man paced around the living-room asking irrelevant questions, which neither of the other two men bothered to answer.

‘Got to get that alternator fixed, you know that.'

‘Did you ever try the roadhouse steak sandwich at Quizno's? Now that's what I call tasty. Or you can have the chicken with chipotle mayo. I never know which to choose.'

‘Think it's going to rain all night?'

She stayed on her knees in the middle of the mattress. She was beginning to feel woozy, and she found it hard to keep her balance. She closed her eyes and prayed that when she opened them she would be back at home, and that none of this would have happened, but even with her eyes closed she could smell the laughing man's cigarette smoke, and hear the scowling man prowling around the room, talking to himself.

Suddenly, however, without a word, the laughing man flicked his cigarette butt into the fireplace and stood up. The expressionless man stood up, too. All three men approached the mattress and stood over her.

‘You look pretty goddamned drunk to me,' said the laughing man.

‘I feel sick,' she said, and her voice didn't even sound like hers.

‘You don't want to be barfing, sweetheart, believe me. Barfing can put a fellow off, if you know what I mean.'

‘No,' she said, ‘I don't know what you mean.'

‘Well, in that case, let's
show
you, shall we?'

With that, he pushed her in the face with the flat of his hand, hard, so that she fell over backward. She cried out, ‘No! What are you doing?
No
!' and tried to roll on to her side, but he pushed her again, with both hands this time, and clambered on to the mattress on top of her.

He was big and he was heavy and he was very strong. He gripped her neck with his right hand, half-throttling her, while he used his left hand to reach down and tug open his pants.

‘No!' she screamed at him, right into his leering white mask. ‘No, you bastard, get off me!
Get off me
!'

He pulled up the hem of the cheap red dress and then forced her thighs apart with his knees. She kept on screaming, high and hoarse, but she knew that nobody could hear her and nobody was going to come and rescue her.

The laughing man turned around to his two companions. ‘Come on, guys, what are you waiting for? She's drooling for it. No holes barred.'

She saw them unbuckling their belts, but that was all she saw because she closed her eyes tight and kept them closed. When the laughing man grunted and pushed his way into her, and the other two climbed on to the mattress beside her, she tried to think of that sunny fall day in Lafayette when she and Daniel had taken a walk in the woods and he had proposed to her, and she had never realized that it was humanly possible to be so happy.

She opened her eyes. She was lying on her right side, and she was shuddering with cold. The living-room was in darkness, except for a narrow line of street light that fell diagonally across the mattress from the gap between the drapes. She coughed, and sat up, and looked around.

The three masked men were no longer around, although she could still smell their sweat and their cigarette smoke and the faint pungency of liniment. She listened, but the house was silent, apart from the pattering of rain against the living-room window.

Her dress had been pulled right up under her breasts, and when she pulled it down again she felt the cold slime between her thighs and between the cheeks of her bottom. She felt sore and swollen, and even though the living-room was so gloomy, she could see that the insides of her thighs were covered in patterns of plum-colored bruises. Her lips felt dry, and when she licked them they tasted like bleach.

She didn't cry. She was too shocked to cry, and she was still drunk, too. All she could think of was the jostling, and the pushing, and the panting, and the pain. She had never felt pain like that before. It had been worse than giving birth.

She sat there for over a minute, trying to find the strength and the will to stand up and get dressed in her own clothes. In a strange way, she felt relieved. In spite of what the three masked men had done to her, it was all over, and she was still alive, and she hadn't been seriously injured. The Virgin Mary had protected her, after all, as much as She could.

She caught hold of one of the arms of the nearest chair, and was about to climb to her feet when a voice said, ‘
Mommy
?'

She said, ‘
Ah
!' in surprise, and looked around. A boy of about twelve was standing in the shadow of the open door. He was thin and pale, with a shock of wiry black hair, and he was wearing red-striped pajamas.

‘Who are you?' she asked him. Her throat was so sore that she could hardly speak. ‘What are you doing here? You're nothing to do with those men, are you?'

The boy stepped out from behind the door. He was an odd-looking child, with large dark eyes that were spaced wide apart, and a long skull, almost like an alien. His lips were a cupid's bow, and unnaturally red for a boy.

‘Mommy, can
I
sleep with you, too?'

‘I'm not your mommy, son, and I have to leave now. Where are your parents?'

‘You never let me sleep with you.'

She had to clear her throat again. ‘I'm sorry, but I'm not your mommy, and I really have to go.'

The boy crossed the room and climbed on to the mattress. He sat down next to her and looked up at her with those large dark eyes. He reached up and touched her cheek with his fingertips, and he was very cold.

‘But you
never
let me sleep with you,' he repeated.

‘Listen,' she said, ‘I'm not your mommy and I'm going now. Do you live in this house? Who's taking care of you?'

To her surprise, the boy wrapped his arms around her, and pressed his head hard against her breasts. ‘You do love me, Mommy, don't you?' His hair smelled musty, as if it needed a wash.

She took hold of his arm and tried to pry him away from her. ‘For the last time, I am not your mommy. So,
please,
let go of me.'

‘I'm not going to let go. I'm going to stay here for ever. You let
them
sleep with you but you never let
me
sleep with you.'

‘Please get off me,' she told him. She tried to pull herself away from him but he clung on to her dress, and when she tried to stand up she lost her balance and she toppled down on to the mattress again.

‘Let go of me!' she shouted at him. ‘Just let go of me!'

‘I'm not
going
to let go,' he insisted. ‘I'm not
going
to let go.'

She swung her arm around and slapped him hard on the ear. He held on to her even tighter, so she slapped him again, and then again.

‘
Get away from me, you little bastard
!' she screamed at him.

‘You never let me sleep with you! You never let me sleep with you!'

‘
Get the fuck away from me
!
Get off
!'

The boy raised his head, although he didn't release his grip on her dress. He stared at her, his face so close that she couldn't focus on him.

‘Do you remember what happened, Mommy?' he asked her, in a low, conspiratorial voice.

‘I'm not your mommy and I don't remember what happened, whatever it was. All I want you to do is to let go of me.'

‘
You
remember what happened.' The way he said it, it sounded as if it was something extremely lewd.

She grasped his shoulders and tried to shove him away from her, but he held on to her like a monkey that couldn't be pulled off a tree.

‘
Get off me
!
Let me go
!'

In desperation and fear, she seized his ears and shook his head backward and forward, as hard as she could.

‘Get-off-me-get-off-me-get-off-me!'

At that instant, the boy burst into flames. Not just his hair, or his pajamas. He exploded into a mass of roaring fire, as if he had been doused in gasoline and set alight. He screamed, his mouth stretched wide open, and she screamed, too, because the flames seared her face and her arms and her hair flared up like a Roman candle.

She tried to wrench herself away from him, but the fiercer he burned, the tighter he held her. She felt her ears twisting into little charred knots, and her eyelids shrivel, and then her eyeballs popped in the heat and she was blinded.

The pain was unbearable. She burned and burned from her feet to the top of her head, and after her red dress had been reduced to blackened tatters, the skin on her back turned bright red, too, and then that became blackened in turn. Then she could smell her own flesh roasting, and it smelled just like roasting meat.

The flames died down, and she lay on her side on the smoldering mattress, quivering with shock, in the fetal position that burns victims almost always adopt as their tendons tighten. She was only seconds away from oblivion, but even though she was blind and deaf and her fingers were nothing more than charred twigs, and she couldn't have felt the boy even if he was there, she was sure that she was quite alone.

TWO

R
uth was woken up by Amelia whispering in her ear, a hot thunder that she could barely understand.

‘I made you breakfast.'

She opened her eyes, and blinked. Amelia was leaning over her, her dark blonde hair pulled back into a lopsided ponytail. Her elf-like face was so close that Ruth couldn't focus on her.

‘
What
?' she said.

‘I made you breakfast. I even wrote you a menu.'

Ruth sat up. Next to her, all that she could see of Craig was the fingertips of one hand, sticking out from underneath the comforter, like a man crushed below a collapsed building. He was breathing so quietly that he could have been dead.

‘Look. Here's your menu,' said Amelia, and she held up a sheet of notepaper – again, so close that it was too blurry for her to read.

Ruth twisted around and looked at her bedside clock. Five fifteen a.m. Her alarm was set for five thirty a.m. in any case, so Amelia had woken her only fifteen minutes earlier than usual.

‘Shh,' she said. ‘Don't wake your daddy. He hasn't been sleeping too good lately.'

It all came out in a breathy gabble. ‘Daddy said you never had a proper breakfast, but
you
said that you never had time for a proper breakfast so I made you a proper breakfast myself.'

‘
Shh
!' Ruth repeated, touching her finger to her lips. ‘I'll see you in the kitchen.' She went into the bathroom and took her pink flannelette robe from the back of the door. Then she looked in the mirror over the basin. Her eyes were puffy and her short blonde hair looked as if she had been standing on the poop-deck of the
Pequod
all night. She splashed her face with cold water, bashed at her hair with a hairbrush, and gave herself an exaggerated scowl. She was still pretty, in a bruised-angel kind of way, still slim, although she was quite big-breasted, but she was beginning to feel her age.

Halfway along the landing she stopped at Jeff's bedroom door and opened it. Jeff was sprawled across his quilt in his jeans and his green Morbid Angel T-shirt, with his iPod still in his ears, fast asleep and snoring. Ruth quietly closed the door again and went downstairs to the kitchen.

‘Good morning, madam and welcome to your breakfast,' said Amelia. She was already dressed in her favorite white sweater with brown knitted puppies on it, and jeans. She had set two place mats on the breakfast counter, with knives and forks and spoons and red gingham napkins folded into flowers. Outside the window the yard was just beginning to grow light, and a blue jay was squawking on the bare branches of their single apple tree.

Ruth climbed up on to her stool and tried to smile. ‘Ammy, this is such a wonderful surprise. What time did you get up to do this?'

‘Three fifty-three,' Amelia told her. ‘Would madam care for some coffee?'

‘Oh, yes please. What's that smell?'

‘That's your eggs. They'll be ready in a minute.'

Ruth frowned at the range on the other side of the kitchen. Something lumpy and yellow was sizzling in a skillet, but she couldn't make out what it was. Amelia poured coffee into her mug, and then said, ‘Here's your menu.'

The menu was written in red, green and purple crayons. It read:

Ruth read it carefully, and then nodded. ‘It sure sounds
different
, I have to admit that.'

Amelia had been watching her, her eyes wide with anticipation. ‘You're really going to enjoy it, I promise.'

While Amelia went to the fridge, Ruth tried her coffee. It was scalding hot, but very weak, and it tasted strongly of maple syrup.

‘What do you think of the coffee?' asked Amelia. ‘You always say how much you like those coffee and maple candies, so I thought it would be a great idea to make them into a drink.'

She set two glass bowls on the table, each of them filled with a pale beige mixture with grated lime peel on top. ‘This is the first course. It's meant to wake you up. Try it.'

Ruth glanced at the menu. ‘This is . . . “tuna lime refreshment”?'

‘That's right. I made it with flaked tuna, vanilla ice cream and lime juice. You mush them all together and chill them.'