Wide Open (27 page)

“Oh my god, Hallie,” Lorie said when they were inside.

It was almost pitch dark in the church, except moonlight filtered through two large holes in the roof.

The two of them were standing in a silvery shaft of light from the three-quarter moon. Hallie could see Lorie’s hands when they moved. She was wearing a white T-shirt with cap sleeves and something embroidered on the front, jeans and sneakers, and a short little jacket with just one button to hold it closed. Hallie figured she must be cold, because even though it was noticeably warmer than it had been, it wasn’t warm.

“I know people, right?” Lorie went on. “You know that about me, that I can read people. Everyone says so. And I thought … he was so charming and interested in what I said, which most people aren’t. They just listen to be polite. And the company and the job and everything was so amazing. I thought— God, I was so stupid!”

A chill crept up Hallie’s spine and across her shoulder blades. Jesse Luponi drifted past her left shoulder.

“What are you talking about?” Hallie said for what seemed like the five-hundredth time.

Lorie lowered her voice dramatically. “Martin! He’s the one who chased us. He put up a roadblock, Hallie!”

“Where’s Jennie?”

Something moved in the shadows just below the altar. “It’s okay,” Lorie said. “You should come out.”

When Jennie emerged from the shadows, it was all in a rush. “What’s going on?” she asked. “What’s happening? Why is this happening?”

She sounded scared and weak and cold. Hallie took off her jacket and approached her slowly, like approaching a skittish colt. She draped the jacket over Jennie’s shoulder, and Jennie immediately pulled it tight, hunching her shoulders in so deep, it must have hurt.

“Okay,” Hallie said. “Okay. Tell me what happened.”

Lorie took a big breath, let it out slow. “So, when Dell came back to town, I was working at Cleary’s—”

“Not, like, the birth of the universe, Lorie. Tell me what happened tonight.”

There was a pause. “Some of this is important,” Lorie said.

“Give me the highlights, then.”

“Mr. Weber—Martin—was always really good to me, you know. Because I’m not, you know, anybody. I haven’t been to a fancy college and I don’t have a degree. I just worked at the elevator and down to Cleary’s on weekends, you know. But he always treated me like I was as good as anybody.”

Hallie ground her teeth.
Let her talk, just let her talk. It’ll get there.

“And I thought—I wanted to keep that job forever. That’s not wrong, right? To want a good job, to want to do a good job? But I didn’t— I’m sorry I spied on you, okay?”

“You spied on me?”

“Because Dell killed herself. Or, we thought she did. I mean, I thought—well, everyone thought she did. Except, I think, Martin. Because, Hallie, I think he had something to do with Dell’s death.”

“But why did he ask you to spy on me?” Hallie refused to be drawn from the main point. “Why did you do it?”

“Well, I didn’t do it, not really. I mean I told him about picking you up at the airport and about the funeral and I guess the Bob, but Pete was there and he could have told him, too. But I didn’t, like, try to find out what you were thinking or pick your brain or anything. He said he was worried about you. And, well, who wouldn’t be—I mean you’re tough and everything, but you lost your sister. And I thought—because he said that he was really struggling without Dell and someone needed to step up, and I figured that could be me. Because I can step up. I’m not the smartest or the prettiest or any of that, but I can be there for people.”

“How did you find Jennie? How does Martin know?”

“I’m getting there.” Lorie’s voice lost its edge, sounded snappish. “Just—let me tell it, okay?”

Hallie held up her hands, palms forward, though Lorie probably couldn’t see her. “Okay,” she said.

“So today—er, last night—I was at Cleary’s. You saw me there, remember?”

Hallie nodded, though Lorie probably couldn’t see her. She continued anyway.

“I’d been asking everybody about Jennie Vagts. Because no one had seen her, and maybe her mother wasn’t worried, but I was starting to get worried because I know everybody. And when I say I asked everyone, you know I mean
everyone
. But nobody’d seen her since, well, since she left with Pete after the funeral.”

“I went to Brookings, okay? To see my boyfriend.” Jennie sounded defensive, like the visit itself had sparked the trouble they were in now.

“What?” Because that had been the furthest explanation from Hallie’s mind.

“I know, right?” Lorie said. “All this time I was looking and getting worried because I couldn’t find her, and she was kind of right where people said she was.”

Hallie started to say,
Why didn’t you check the boyfriend in the first place?
but she could have done that herself. Should have done it herself, because now Lorie was in this as deep as anyone, and no idea how deep that really was.

“So, I went to Cleary’s to ask again,” Lorie continued. “I mean I’d been there before, but there were a couple of waitresses who hadn’t been there then, and I thought I’d be able to catch them. Pete and Martin were there, and they asked me to join them, which I thought was pretty nice of them. One of the waitresses didn’t come on until nine, so I figured sure, why not?

“Martin was very charming, fun to talk to, you know? Because he is—charming, I mean. Maybe you don’t see it, Hallie, but he’s, like, the most charming man, so it’s not stupid that people like him. It’s not.” She paused as if suddenly realizing all on her own that she’d strayed from her point.

“Pete was drinking a lot, though. I thought maybe he was still embarrassed because Jennie had to drive him home that day of the funeral. But Martin seemed kind of pissed at him. They had this little argument while I was sitting there that I couldn’t quite hear. It was kind of embarrassing. Martin apologized, though, and said they had to go.”

“Lorie, why is this important?” Hallie asked.

“When Martin and Pete were leaving,” Lorie spoke slower to emphasize the point, “Jennie walked in.”

“I was meeting Sandy Oliver, you know. We were going to have something to eat and then go on out to the Bob.” Jennie ended on a half sob, as if she wished the only thing she were worried about anymore was a beer and a good time.

“Yeah, so,” Lorie took up the story again. “Jennie came in and I told her you were looking for her and everything. She thought I was … kind of weird, actually.”

Hallie grinned, though none of this was actually funny.

“But I talked because, you know, I’m a pretty good talker. And eventually I guess it sounded okay or something and we had a beer and something to eat and Sandy Oliver never showed so Jennie and I decided to go to the Bob together. But when we got, like, a mile out of town, they were waiting for us.”

“Martin?”

“And Pete.”

“Martin was still being really charming,” Lorie said. “And, honestly, I didn’t realize they’d been waiting for us until later. He said Pete’s truck had stalled out and he asked if we could give them a ride back to town, and I said sure, but why not just call. So, I took out my cell phone—”

“And he grabbed me,” Jennie said, the fact of it still shocking to her.

“He was kind of mean about it,” Lorie said. “Which because it was so surprising, I didn’t know what to do. But then Pete grabbed me, and I kicked him.”

“Good for you,” Hallie said.

“It got kind of crazy because everyone was yelling. But then Martin started trying to do something with this piece of cloth he took out of his pocket and he was saying stuff that didn’t make any sense and I kicked Pete again and knocked him over into Martin and we got out of there.”

“Why didn’t you go back to town?” Hallie asked.

“We tried! A tree crashed in front of us. And then the prairie started on fire. We had to drive through fire, Hallie! When we were through it, it just went out, though. Crazy. I called the sheriff, but it was pretty clear the dispatcher didn’t believe me. Plus, she said everyone was out at a fire at your place.

“She said come in, but we couldn’t! We hid in that barn for hours; then we tried again. But the phone didn’t work, except when I called you.”

Hallie stood up. “Except when you called me?”

“Uhm … yeah.”

“Well, shit.”

30

Suddenly, the ghosts scattered like dandelion seeds out the broken windows. Just as quickly, they were back, forming a rough circle around Hallie and Jennie and Lorie.

“What the hell?” Hallie said.

“What?” Lorie said.

There was a sound, getting louder, like the crackle of dry paper or wind through old leaves.

“Shit!” Because she knew what was coming.

“Come on.” She grabbed Jennie by the arm and pushed her toward Lorie and both of them to the back of the church. “We’re getting out of here.”

“What? Why?” Lorie stopped, and Hallie pushed her again.

“Go!”

Then they were out the back door and down the steps. Lorie was ahead, already halfway across the parking lot. Jennie stumbled. Hallie caught her under her arm and hauled her up, pushing her forward.

Lorie stopped by the truck. “Hallie,” she said. “There isn’t anything—”

“Get in the truck!” Hallie shouted because there wasn’t time to explain. How could she explain things no one else could see? She snagged the toe of her boot on the uneven bottom step and hit the ground, a jagged piece of gravel jammed painfully into her right knee.

Jennie turned back. “Go!” Hallie shouted. “Keep going!” She still couldn’t see it, just a bright glow over the roof of the church, like the rising sun—if only that were actually what it was.

She scrambled to her feet. “Get in the truck!” she shouted at Lorie, who had stopped and was turning back to them.

“I don’t— Where are they?” Because Lorie wouldn’t see it—couldn’t see it—until it killed her. She stood by the truck, unmoving. Everything was too slow—so slow—slow motion, nightmare slow.

Jennie took a step back toward Hallie.

“No!” Hallie shouted, because she’d been wrong about how long they had. Because the fire giant was here, looming over the old church. Hallie turned to face it, shouting, “Go!” one more time over her shoulder, like she could do something, like she could stop fire.

But she had to try, didn’t she?

The ghosts—Dell and Sarah Hale and Karen Olsen and Jesse Luponi—surrounded her. She thought—at least we won’t be alone.

The roof of the church started to smoke.

Wind rose across the open parking lot, like the sharp edge of a weather front.

Someone screamed.

The fire formed a giant hand and reached down. Hallie ducked. Ghosts surrounded her. She could feel the heat, dry and intense, the kind of heat that could peel her skin to the bone.

She straightened. If she was going out, she’d do it standing.

The hand hovered twenty feet over her head. The church roof burst into flames. Grass growing up through the gravel in the parking lot sparked into a dozen small fires.

There was a hesitation—in the night air, in the land around them, in the rotation of the earth.

The hand descended.

Then it was gone. Like the entire hand snapped out of existence. The thing—the fire giant—was still there, but it was missing its arm. Hallie started to turn, opened her mouth to tell Jennie and Lorie to get into the truck, was pulling her arm back to toss Lorie the keys. Fire snapped and crackled within the thing’s body, a thick orange tendril of flame ran along its back, across the shoulder and down, forming a new arm, a new elbow, a new hand, like burnoff from a blast furnace.

It reached down again—no pause, no hesitation. But it didn’t reach for Hallie.

Hallie dived forward and knocked Jennie down, covered her with her body. The heat again, a rush of wind like a rising summer storm. Hallie kept her head down, kept Jennie covered beneath her until the heat diminished.

And Lorie screamed.

Hallie scrambled to her feet and ran. But she was so late, days and months and eons too late. Lorie had tried to get away, was maybe twenty yards out into the prairie when the fire came down.

It seemed to take forever, but was really only seconds. Hallie couldn’t get close. The heat dropped her to her knees, and all she could do was watch, made herself watch. Told herself that it wasn’t like other times when people burned, that it was quick—instant—just that one initial scream and Lorie was gone. That’s what Hallie told herself.

Because she had to tell herself something.

*   *   *

The church was still burning when the sun came up fifteen minutes later.

The grass in the parking lot and the adjacent field smoldered, and Lorie … there was no Lorie any longer, not even a charred and blackened body, just ash and bone, already scattering in the wind. The fire giant, its task completed or the power that held it gone, had disappeared—took three strides back out into the prairie and then vanished with a loud pop, like air rushing into a sudden vacuum.

Hallie’s face stretched tight and aching, from the heat or from not screaming, she wasn’t sure which. She made a wide circle around the spot where Lorie had died, then turned back to the parking lot.

“Jennie?”

No answer.

Hallie put her hand on the hood of Lorie’s car, then yanked it back. The metal was hot like it had been in the noonday sun.

“Jennie!”

She heard someone coughing and rounded the car. Jennie lay on the ground. She was talking to herself.

“Oh my god! Oh my god! She burned up. She just—she burned!” She turned wide eyes to Hallie. “My god!” she said.

Hallie reached a hand down to help her to her feet. Jennie scrabbled backwards, out of reach. “What was that?” she said, like Hallie would have—
must
have—an answer.

Hallie reached down again, as if Jennie hadn’t just pushed her away, grabbed her by the arm just above the elbow, and pulled her to her feet. Halfway up, Jennie yanked back hard, like she wanted to pull Hallie to the ground with her. Then she was on her feet, staring at the smoldering grass and swearing, “Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my
god
!”