The Loveliest Dead (40 page)

Still screaming, his voice cracking, Father Malcolm turned around and faced the fireplace, then dropped to the floor on his hands and knees.
 

Arty massaged his chest with a fist as his face tightened in a painful grimace. He said, “Oh Jesus, oh Jesus, oh Jesus...”

Father Malcolm dropped flat on the floor. His body squirmed, his legs kicked, and his arms flailed as if he were struggling. His screams were interrupted by sobs. The two pieces of glass remained lodged in his fleshy thigh and buttock, and his black slacks glistened with blood.
 

Arty fell forward and hit the floor hard. He landed with his right arm bent at the elbow, hand between the floor and his chest. He did not move.
 

Mavis cried out, “Oh, no, Arty!” as she knelt beside him.

Jenna turned to Martha and said, “Take Miles to the kitchen.”

Martha put an arm around Miles, and they hurried out of the room.

“Call an ambulance!” Mavis pleaded. “Quickly, call an ambulance, right now!”

Father Malcolm was on his hands and knees again. His screams gave way to blubbering.

Jenna looked around for the cordless phone—she could never find it when she needed it. She hurried into the kitchen, where Miles sat in the breakfast nook, eyes wide. Martha was putting the phone back on its base.
 

“I called 911,” Martha said. “An ambulance is on the way.”

“I love you, Mom,” Jenna said.

“Is Arty conscious?” Martha asked.

“I don’t think so.”

Martha’s voice trembled as she whispered, “I’m sorry I suggested all this, honey. This is terrible, just terrible.”

“Don’t be sorry, Mom. Everything’s going to be fine. Just keep Miles occupied for me, okay?”

Martha nodded.

On her way back through the dining room, Jenna realized Father Malcolm had stopped screaming and blubbering. Instead, a high keening cry grew louder in the living room.
 

Shannon and Willy had not come back. The front door still stood open and cold air was creeping into the living room.

Mavis had turned Arty over onto his back. David was on his knees, instructing Mavis as she clumsily performed CPR on Arty with tears rolling down her cheeks—one hand on top of the other over Arty’s sternum, pushing, pushing.
 

The high-pitched wailing sound grew more frenzied, and Jenna realized it was coming from Father Malcolm. His knees were still on the carpet, but he had crawled forward and now his hands were flat on the brick hearth, fingers bent as if clawing the bricks. His head and shoulders were in the fireplace, in flames. The wailing broke and became a gurgling groan.
 

Jenna screamed as she ran to him. She bent down and grabbed his ankles.

At the same time, David saw him and shouted, “Shit!” He got up, hurried unsteadily to the fireplace, and grabbed Father Malcolm’s belt. Jenna and David pulled together and dragged Father Malcolm out of the fire. Flames still covered his head and shoulders. His legs kicked, arms flapped on the floor. The room filled with the smell of burnt hair and cooked flesh as Mavis screamed and sobbed.
 

Jenna ran to the entryway and grabbed up the throw rug near the front door. She hurried back to Father Malcolm and used the rug to smother the flames.
 

David and Jenna rolled Father Malcolm over and knelt on either side of him. Great tremors moved through the priest’s body as his hands clawed at the carpet and he made a strangled gurgling sound. His hair was gone. Tendrils of smoke rose from his blistered flesh, which was a mixture of dark red and charred black.
 

Jenna looked over at Mavis as a large man in a policeman’s uniform rushed in through the open front door, his gun drawn. He stood in the archway and looked around quickly, taking in everything in the room.
 

“I heard screaming,” he said.

“My husband’s not breathing!” Mavis croaked breathlessly. She bent down, put her mouth over his, and blew.

“What’s going on here?” he said.

David stood. “Didn’t they tell you? Is the ambulance here yet?”

“Ambulance?” The policeman holstered his weapon as he crossed the room and stood over Father Malcolm. “I’m Police Chief Oscar Winningham,” he said. “I came here, uh ...” He looked around again, concern and confusion on his face. “I came here to talk to you about Lily Rourke.”
 

“Who?” David said. “
What
?”
 

Jenna saw her then, filling the doorway. A siren became audible as Lily Rourke came into the house and crossed the entryway cautiously. Her redheaded friend appeared in the doorway behind her and followed her inside. Jenna saw Shannon and Willy out on the front porch. They craned their necks to look inside, but came no closer to the front door.
 

Panting and crying, Mavis said, “Help, somebody please help me, I can’t do this anymore, he’s not breathing!”

Chief Winningham went to Arty’s side, got down on one knee, and felt Arty’s neck for a pulse.

The siren grew louder, then stopped. Tires crunched over the gravel outside and the flashing lights of the ambulance throbbed through the open door.
 

Chief Winningham went over to Lily Rourke. “Did you know about this?”

She shook her head as her eyes met Jenna’s. “I only knew something bad was going to happen.”

Jenna looked down at Father Malcolm, who had stopped moving. She closed her eyes and put a hand over her mouth as a sob rocked her. David put his arms around her, and she cried against his shoulder.
 

Feeling sick, Lily stepped out of the way of the two paramedics who hurried into the house. She was not nauseated—it wasn’t that kind of sick feeling. This was deeper. Her bones felt sick—her bones and her mind.
 

“My God, what happened here?” Claudia said, “Are you okay?”

“No. I’m not.”

“Are you going to pass out?”

“No, it’s not that. It’s ... this house.”

“Do you want to go back outside?”

To Lily, the air in the house felt thick. It wasn’t just the awful smell of burning hair and flesh—it was more powerful than that, like a thick black electricity in the air that made the fine hairs on her arms stand up. It penetrated her and hummed in her stomach, buzzed at the edges of her soul. But it was not the directionless electricity that charged the air before a storm—-it emanated from a specific source somewhere in the house and had a creeping, malignant intelligence to it, a personality. Lily felt as if she were being watched from all directions, even from inside. She felt naked.
 

“Yes,” she said. “Let’s go outside till they’re done in here.”

The young man and woman Lily and Claudia had passed on the way in were standing on the walkway, arguing quietly. The young man said, “You knew what we were going to be doing, so why did you come?”
 

“Oh,
please
,” the young woman said, arms folded tightly across her breasts. “I didn’t believe
any
of that stuff, and neither did you. This was supposed to be for
fun
.”
 

“Hey, I take this very seriously, you know that.”

“I didn’t realize
how
seriously until now, and I think it’s seriously
insane
.”
 

“Why didn’t you say something about this sooner?”

“Because I hadn’t seen inanimate objects fly across the
room
before!”
 

“I can’t walk out on Arty and Mavis now. I came to—”

“Fine, you stay.” She removed a cell phone from the pocket of her down jacket and flipped it open. “I’m calling a cab to take me to the airport. I’m going home.”
 

“Home? C’mon, Shannon, why?”

“All I know is, Willy, this is bullshit. I figured maybe we’d hear a few sounds, see some lights. I didn’t know people were going to be hurt.”
 

“I didn’t either, but what we saw here tonight, it was incredible. It was—”

“It was scarier than
shit
, William,” she said, crying now. “Don’t bother to call me when you get home.” She punched three buttons, then stepped away from him, saying quietly into the phone, “Eureka? Urn, I need a cab. I don’t know—try, um, Yellow Cab.”
 

Lily felt a little better outside the house, but not much. There was a dull ache in her head, and she still felt twinges of the presence in the house, but she swept them both aside to focus on her situation. She went down the front steps to Willy and introduced herself.
 

“Nice to meet you,” he said, distracted, still looking at Shannon.

“Could you tell me what happened in there?” Lily asked.

“Uh ... sure.” He didn’t take his eyes from Shannon.

“Where are we?” Shannon asked over her shoulder. “What’s the address?”

“Two two oh four Starfish Drive,” Lily said. To Willy she said, “Please. Tell me.”

While Willy told her what had happened in the house, Shannon waited for her cab.

After all the screaming and wailing, it ended quietly. Jenna was left with a ringing in her ears and the sour smell of Father Malcolm in her nostrils. She and David sat across from Martha in the breakfast nook. Miles had stretched out on the back cushion and dozed off, so they spoke in whispers.
 

Chief Winningham stood at the table. “You say he did that himself?” he said.

David said, “Yes. He was on all fours, and he crawled into the fire. And he just... stayed there. And let himself burn. Jenna and I pulled him out, but...” David sighed and scrubbed his face with his hand.
 

“Why would he do that?” Chief Winningham asked. “Do you have any idea?”

“You wouldn’t believe us if we told you,” Jenna said.

David shook his head. “No, you wouldn’t.”

“Something made him do it,” Jenna said.

“Something?” Winningham said. “Made him?”

She stood and faced the chief. “Our house is haunted, and yes,
something made
Father Malcolm crawl into the fire.”
 

Winningham nodded, then stared down at the table for a moment, thinking. Finally, he looked at Jenna and said, “Well, they’re gone now. The ambulance took them. And that young man drove Mrs. Bingham to the hospital. The young woman left in a cab.”
 

David cleared his throat and said hesitantly, “They’re both, uh ... they died?”

“I’m afraid so. Look, the reason I came here in the first place was not to answer a call. You’re outside my jurisdiction. I came over to vouch for Lily Rourke.”
 

“The psychic,” Lily said.

“That’s right. She’s a good one, too. She has an excellent reputation. She’s assisted law enforcement on a number of occasions. She’s helped find missing people and solve crimes, and she’s saved lives doing it. She says you were suspicious of her motives and asked me to come talk to you and reassure you that she’s not a fake, and she’s not asking for money. When she talks, the police listen. I think you should, too.”
 

Still standing, Jenna looked down at David. He looked pale and tired, but there was a little too much white visible in his eyes. The anger and resistance were gone.
 

“Let’s talk to her,” Jenna said.

David nodded without hesitation and said, “Yes.”

“I’ll get her,” Winningham said.

As he left the kitchen, Jenna sat down again. She and David watched Miles sleep while Martha stared at her tea. None of them spoke.
 

When Winningham returned, he brought with him Lily Rourke and her redheaded friend. Lily saw Miles asleep on the cushion and whispered when she spoke.
 

She introduced herself and Claudia again, and said, “Mr. and Mrs. Kellar, I’m sorry. I feel partly responsible for what happened here tonight because I didn’t put a stop to it. I should’ve been more insistent, I should’ve—”
 

“It’s not your fault,” Jenna said. “I should have listened to you.”

“It’s my fault,” David said. “I should’ve listened. What do we do now? How do we get rid of this?”

Lily said nothing for a moment. She looked up at the ceiling, around at the cabinets and counters, but she did not seem to see them. She inhaled deeply and seemed to be breathing in the whole room, the house itself. “We’ll need help,” she said to Jenna. “I’m a psychic, not a medium. I’ve never dealt with anything like this before. We need someone who has. Kimberly said you talked to some mediums, is that right?”
 

Jenna nodded. “One of them came here. Ada. But she won’t come back.”

“Was there another? Someone who didn’t seem like a fraud?”

“Mrs. Frangiapani. She claims to be a psychic medium. We were both pretty impressed with her, but I don’t know if she—”

“We need her.”

“Do you want me to call her?” Jenna said.