Hell Fire (35 page)

Sounds seemed muffled, cloaking our movements. Not entirely understanding the impulse, I tugged the ladder back up after us. I felt like this was a private ceremony between females, and the guys shouldn’t be a part of it.

In a low whisper, I explained how to traverse the boards without bouncing them. We inched toward the windowsill, but I didn’t touch it. This was Shannon’s show.

As if in concert, we sank down opposite each other. The girl turned her radio on low, and the static hiss filled the dark space. Maybe I was just tired and suggestible, but I sensed something. The hair on my forearms stirred; my skin prickled.

Shannon whispered to the girl’s spirit as she fiddled with the knobs. I couldn’t make out what she was saying, but it sounded imploring. I sat quietly, trying not to distract her.

I don’t know how long we sat in the dark, but as she spun the dial farther along the bar, a tinny voice finally crackled into focus. “Hello. I’m here.”

A hard shudder wracked me. This was a child no older than the one I’d seen by the window. Whatever happened to her, it hadn’t been long afterward. She hadn’t escaped or lived to a ripe old age. She wasn’t an angry ghost, or she would have tried to take her wrath out on us, but she didn’t rest in peace, either.

“Who are you?” Shannon asked softly.

“Martha,” came the slow, crackling reply. Her words carried impossible distance, echoes of the grave. “Martha Vernon. It’s dark in here. Have you come to let me out?”

Oh God.
Sucking in a sharp breath, I wrapped my arms around my knees. She thought she was still trapped in here. And, well . . . she was.

Shannon looked very pale, arms wrapped around the radio. I could tell she was as chilled as I was, but her answer sounded composed. “We’re going to try. What happened to you, Martha?”

“Same thing that happens to everyone who’s different around here.”

In the stillness, I heard the soft shuffle of someone who wasn’t there. The boards creaked lightly beneath Martha’s invisible weight. As she’d done for countless years, she paced her prison. I thought my heart would explode when the footsteps, accompanied by terrible cold, stopped beside us.

Shannon managed to ask, “What’s that?”

The non sequitur came, low and almost toneless, full of hissing, static snakes. “They found I can call things to me, things that fly, things that crawl. I can fill a tree with butterflies, spell your name in lightning bugs, or send a plague of locusts to their houses, but I cannot get out of here. Won’t you let me out?”

I ached for her. Kilmer wasn’t a good place to be different. That had still been true in my time. I couldn’t imagine what it would have been like in hers.

“I’ll try,” Shannon assured the child’s ghost. “But I need to know what happened to you first.”

“Same thing that happened to Holly Jarrett, Timothy Sparks, David Prentice,” Martha sang out. An eerie, tuneless humming poured out of the radio, and it made my head feel strange, almost disconnected from the rest of me. Eventually, the sound evolved back into words again, leaving me numb and frightened. “And more, and more.”

“Tell me what that was,” Shannon begged.

“They fed us to the thing in the woods. ‘Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—’ ” the ghost in the machine whispered, “ ‘I took the one’ . . . ‘I took the one’ . . .” Her tinny little voice repeated, a scratched phonograph phantom.

Mr. McGee must’ve been researching the dead children and he’d located Martha Vernon on his radio—not because he was Gifted, but because he was old and near death. He’d said I could understand the whispers, whereas Chance could not because I was soon to die myself . . . and I did.

He’d scrawled down the poem at some point, and Curtis Farrell took it with him. Maybe I didn’t know all the reasons why yet, but I was starting to find connections. Once I had all the pieces, the big picture would take shape.

“That’s the link,” I said aloud. “Remember how you and Mr. McGee found a pattern for the ‘bad things’ that happen every so often on December 21? They targeted families who were different and sacrificed them to the demon. I saw them performing the ritual when I read the wreckage.”

My mother and I had certainly qualified. If anyone knew about Shannon’s gift, it would have qualified her for the purge. I could imagine Sandra Cheney’s chagrin when she realized her family wasn’t perfect enough for her perfect town. Maybe she thought sleeping with August England would change his mind. If she’d only taken a good look in his eyes, she would have seen he had no heart, and hence, no reason to change his mind.

“But
why
?” Shannon’s question came out anguished.

I shrugged. “That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it? Why did they hang so many witches in Salem?”

“ ‘I took the road less traveled by,’ ” Martha announced at length.

The radio crackled and spat. I could sense its vibrations against Shannon’s chest. A cold breeze poured over us, stirring the dust in the attic until it became hard to see.

“She’s getting agitated,” the girl said in a rush. “What should we do?”

Right,
I
was the mentor here. I didn’t have time to think or ask for a second opinion; Martha was working her way up to a poltergeist tempest. Like most children, she wasn’t long on patience, and the years alone in the attic hadn’t helped.

I decided swiftly. “I’ll pry open the window.”

A child’s strength wouldn’t have been sufficient, not when the nails were new and the boards were at their best. Years of dry rot and rust had weakened the slats over the window, though, so I pulled them off, one by one, not trying to be quiet any longer. I yanked them away, tearing my fingers on the splintering wood, and still didn’t pause until I had the whole thing cleared. Fresh air poured into the attic for the first time in I don’t know how many years, mingling with the spirit storm.

I nodded at Shannon. “Tell her the way is clear.”

Who knew if removing the symbol of her imprisonment would be enough? The girl relayed the message, standing up to thrust an arm through the triangular window. A queer pop emerged from the radio as if something had passed through its ancient speakers, and then wind gusted outward.

Surely we’d set her free. In another moment, we had our answer. Though it was too late in the year for fireflies, they twinkled outside the house, glimmering in sequence to spell out the words, “Thank you.”

Shannon whispered, “Good-bye, butterfly girl.”

The radio went dead silent. In response, Shannon clicked it off. I stretched, arms over my head, just as we started to hear commotion downstairs.

“Where the hell are they?” Jesse asked.

“Hell if I know.” Chance wasn’t a morning person, let alone a middle-of-the-night person. “Did you hear a car pull up?”

“Didn’t hear anything,” he answered. “The Forester and the Mustang are still here. You think someone took them?”

Chance’s voice became panicked. “They wouldn’t have gone out to the woods without us?”

That tore it. If we let them, they’d go running around looking for us, trying to play heroes, and wind up lost. Then we’d have to go save them before the demon scared the piss out of them and they broke their necks falling in the gully like Rob Walker.

“We should nip this in the bud,” I said.

Shannon grinned. “Yeah, they’re about to have twin aneurysms.”

In response, I unhooked the catch and gave the ladder a good kick. It dropped with a thunk; then I waited. Both guys came running, armed with makeshift weapons. Their fear turned in unison to absolute exasperation.

“What are you two doing up there in the middle of the night?” Chance demanded.

Shannon told him pertly, “Exorcising a ghost.”

Excellent
. I couldn’t have done better myself.

Jesse thought better of whatever he’d meant to say. “Did it work?”

“Yep.” I knew I sounded smug. “Didn’t you feel all that wind blow through here?”

“Well,” Chance muttered. “Yeah. It woke me up, in fact.”

“But I thought something was wrong and that the windows were open when they shouldn’t be,” Saldana added.

“That’d be a reasonable assumption under any other circumstances . . . ,” I began.

“And with any other combination of people,” Shannon finished.

Lord, I loved this girl. I gave her a quick hug around the shoulders, surprising both of us. Sheepish, I grinned and indicated with a gesture that she should precede me down the stairs. We went into the kitchen and fixed pancakes, even though it was a few hours before dawn. It didn’t look like any of us would get back to sleep anyway.

The guys bitched us out soundly for not waking them, but neither of them had much to say when I asked, “Just what would you two have contributed to the occasion?”

Frankly, Shannon hadn’t even needed me. Unless she wouldn’t have thought to open the window. In that case, I’d been mildly useful.

After conceding the point, Chance made a pot of his deluxe coffee, and I didn’t try to talk Shannon out of having some, well doctored with sugar and powdered milk. I figured we both needed the warmth and the kick, after the serious eeriness of the last hour.

An hour later, Dale staggered in and put away two mugs of java and two plates of pancakes. He didn’t seem to suffer from hangovers in the usual sense, but he did ask for some aspirin. None of us had any, and we were apologizing for that when a knock sounded at the front door.

I think our collective response to that was . . .

At this hour, it couldn’t be the twelve, coming to invite us to partake of our civic duty. Somehow I wasn’t a bit surprised to open the door and find Sandra Cheney standing there, perfectly groomed even at six in the morning. Not a single blond hair stirred from her attractive bob. Her fingernails shone pearly in the half-light.

She fixed a smile on her face as I might hammer a nail into a wall: doggedly and with force. “I’ve heard Shannon is staying with you. I’ve come to take her home.”

Behind me, the girl made an awful little sound. I made a show of looking at her. “Do you want to go?”

“Fuck no,” she answered deliberately.

“I’m pretty sure you can’t remove her against her wishes,” I said with saccharine sweetness. “Is that right, Jesse? How does the law stack up on that?”

“Once kids turn eighteen, they can’t be forced to return to a home they’ve left,” he agreed. “And I think her wishes are clear at this point.”

I smiled. “It was kind of you to come out and check on her, though.”

“Well then.” Sandra fidgeted with her pocketbook. In her icy eyes, I saw livid anger. She wanted to rant and say we’d all rue the day, but that wouldn’t be polite. Plus, you shouldn’t threaten people you actually meant to harm. Sandra might be evil, but she wasn’t stupid.

“I’m so distressed to hear that, Shannon. I know we’ve had our share of troubles, and you think I don’t understand you, but the truth is, your father and I love you very much. He’s going to be so sad to hear this.”

“He’s been sad a long time,” Shannon muttered pointedly. “And it wasn’t because of me. I’ll write to him when I get settled.”

Sandra ignored most of that. “No idea when you’re leaving, then?”

“Probably soon,” Chance said,. “I believe we’ve just about tapped the tourist attractions around here.”

“Then take care. I love you, sugar bean.” To my surprise, Sandra said that with evident sincerity. Her two-inch ladylike heels clacked as she hurried across the porch and down the stairs toward her shiny, understated luxury automobile.

When she drove away, I honestly didn’t know what to make of the visit. “Could you be wrong about her?” I asked Shannon, shutting the door. “Could she have started sleeping with England when she realized you had a gift, trying to
save
you?”

That didn’t clear her of the charge of trying to kill us and deliver us up as alternate sacrifices, but it might mean she wasn’t as bad as we thought. It was a rare she-viper who could slay her own young without batting an eye.

Shannon thought about it for a moment and then shrugged. “Don’t know. Possible, I guess, but I wouldn’t stake my life on it.”

Well, neither would I.

“Come on,” Dale roared from the kitchen. “Time’s a-wasting! Will you ungrateful devil-seekers come look at the book or not?”

As it happened, we would.

 

 

 

 

The book was a gold mine.

Crazy Dale Graham had all kinds of news clippings coinciding with the December 21 disasters. He also had a mess of pictures documenting the secret meetings, and everything he’d compiled corroborated our theories. Mainly, it was good to see pictures of our enemies; we’d be out in the woods with a bunch of different people today, and I didn’t want collateral damage if we could help it, so I memorized names and faces.

This would be a different sort of final showdown, not of weapons, but of wits; not of action, but attrition. I didn’t intend to fight fair.

After the sun came up fully, I took the list of casualties to Shannon. “Can you call them to you?” I asked. “I know it’ll take a lot out of you, but I think it’ll be worth it. We’ve got a stash of chocolate you can have if you need it.”

“Everyone but Mr. McGee,” she said.
Right, the blockage.
“Why?”

I told her.

“Oh, that’s fiendish,” she breathed. “I’m on it. What’re you going to be doing?”

“Waiting for Godot.”

At nine a.m. sharp, he arrived in the form of Sheriff Robinson. When I opened the door, he doffed his hat and twisted it in his hands. His brown uniform pulled across his gut as he fidgeted. I didn’t make things easier on him, but just stood there studying him.

“Morning,” he said.