Fire Devil

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Fire Devil Page 23

by J L Bryan


  You can do this.

  -Calvin

  “Who's in the ghost trap?” Jacob asked.

  “Mati Price,” I said. “The murderous nanny.”

  “Ooooh,” Stacey said. “So she can lullaby Anton Clay to sleep? But is that going to work while he's possessing a living person?”

  “I wouldn't count on it,” I said. “So let's focus on finding Melissa. I think we should split up and canvas the town, see if she's been spotted.”

  “The town looks pretty close to shutting down for the night,” Michael said.

  “Then it won't take long to hit the places that are still open,” I said. “Let's get moving.”

  So we got to work. I split us into two teams: Stacey, Jacob, and I were together because I wanted Jacob's psychic abilities with us. I put Michael with Nealon, since I thought Michael would be able to keep the exorcist in check, making sure he didn't freak out any more innocent townsfolk with his odd Polynesian weaponry.

  Michael seemed underwhelmed by his group assignment.

  He and Nealon took the east side of town, which meant they'd be covering everything from Shake A Burger all the way to Luigi's Pizza, showing Melissa's picture around to food servers and gas station employees.

  Stacey, Jacob, and I had the west side of town, but neither the grocery baggers at Lee's Family Foods nor the buffet fillers at the Peshtigo Corral had seen Melissa. We showed her picture to as many employees as we could before the managers tossed us out.

  Businesses were winking out fast as the night drew on. We managed to hit Peshtigo's night spots before they closed at nine: local steak-and-ale spot Brown's Corner, followed by a restaurant and bar called Embers 1871.

  “Between this and Forgotten Fire winery, you can really see what a scar the fire left here,” I said as we approached the entrance.

  “And the fact that it was completely forgotten is like an extra scar,” Jacob said. “On top of the...uh, scar.”

  “Are you going wonky in the head?” Stacey asked.

  “It's this place,” he said. “When there's people around, it's fine. But I can feel the dead lurking in all the dark spaces, the empty spaces. I've never been in a town like this.”

  The bartender at Embers 1871 didn't recall seeing Melissa in there, and he also shook his head at one of the follow-up questions I'd been asking: “Have you noticed anyone or anything strange around town lately?”

  “I'll tell you what's strange,” said an old-timer down the bar. He wore a green poofball knit hat with the Packers logo pulled low on his forehead, almost over his eyes. He was nursing the last few suds in a very large glass. “The wind.”

  “What's that?” I asked him.

  “One more Leiney's, Junior,” the old man said to the barkeep.

  “I think you're about tapped out, Sarge,” the bartender replied. “And Junior hasn't worked here in six months.”

  “Heck, you're all Junior to me,” the man called Sarge said, then hacked out a cough. “One last one, kiddo. I know my limits.”

  “What were you saying about the wind?” I asked him.

  “Convince Junior to pour me a refill and I'll tell you.” He nodded at the bartender.

  I offered the bartender five bucks, but he waved it away.

  “Last one, Sarge,” the bartender said, finally giving in. “I'll call you a Lyft.”

  “Call me a Lyft. What's wrong with a good old taxi?”

  “Well, you got into a fight with Russ Jansen last year, and he owns the only taxi service nearby. So you're banned.”

  “Russ Jansen deserves what he got and he knows it.” The man watched as the tap filled up his glass, then took a long sip of the beer and smacked his lips.

  “So,” I said. “The strange wind?”

  “It's been a dry winter,” Sarge said. “And you go out at night—which hardly anybody does now, on account of TV and modern central heating, the usual reasons—but if you go out there like I do, you'll feel the wind blowing hard. Bringing nothing. Where's the snow? It's January, it's Wisconsin. It's supposed to look like a dang Rudolph winter special out there. They call it climate change, but I don't know. I think it's something happening to the weather.” His voice was growing slurred fast, and I could see why the bartender had wanted to cut him off.

  “Has it been abnormally dry?” I asked the bartender.

  “In that there's no snow on the ground? Yeah, it's been a funny winter,” the bartender said. “A little snow, then it all melted. Then it got cold again, but no snow this time. Hey, I'm not going to complain. Who misses shoveling off the walk, you know?”

  “Climactic change,” the old man said, his words barely comprehensible now, though part of that could have been his rural-Midwest accent that wasn't too familiar to my ears. He waved his beer around, sloshing some on the bar. “That's what she's all about. It's the weather, and it's more.” He nodded gently, eyes drooping.

  “That's right, Sarge. Let me call that Lyft for you,” the bartender said, then he looked at me. “Closing time's coming up, so if you want to order anything, it'll have to be to go. Or something you can drink fast, if it's a drink.”

  “Hey, that's not a bad idea,” Stacey said. “We almost forgot food, and this is the last place in town still open. We'll be heroes back at the hotel if we bring supper.”

  “And it'll distract from our lack of any progress tonight,” Jacob said.

  We ordered the cheapest and quickest things they had, which turned out to be burgers and deep-fried cheese curds. The bartender insisted they were a Wisconsin classic and we had to have them. I guess our own accents gave us away.

  “So, this girl you're looking for, she's your sister?” the bartender asked Stacey, while we waited.

  “Huh?” Stacey asked.

  “It's because you're blond,” Jacob whispered, loudly.

  “Oh, no, she's our friend's sister,” Stacey said.

  “Is she in trouble?”

  “We hope not,” I said.

  “We just have to give her this vase for her grandma,” Jacob said, and Stacey gave him a quizzical look, while I tried not laugh.

  I was exhausted, but our night had just begun.

  Outside, as we walked to the van, I couldn't help but notice the cold, powerful wind cutting through my clothes. It had been there all night, but I hadn't thought of it as anything more than one aspect of a harsh, unfamiliar climate.

  Now I couldn't ignore the howling of the constant wind, or the way it rustled branches in the trees and sent leaves skittering across the dry pavement. The restaurant was in a standalone building a bit away from town, the road surrounded by the thick trees in either direction. The building's exterior lights went out behind us as the restaurant closed, leaving us in shadows.

  “That wind is freaking me out now,” Stacey said. “It's like I can hear ghosts all mixed in with it.”

  “You can,” Jacob said. “There are ghosts everywhere. And...I think some of them are beginning to stalk us.”

  “And now I'm even more freaked out, so thanks. There are ghosts in the woods?”

  “In the woods, in the air, crawling along the ground, shrieking—”

  “Gotcha,” Stacey interrupted.

  “They're taking an interest in us?” I looked into the dark, cold woods.

  “Some of them,” Jacob said. “It's probably my fault. Ghosts can sniff out people like me, people who can sense them more acutely—”

  “Mediums,” Stacey said, and Jacob winced a little.

  “Right,” he said. “Although I don't have a gypsy bonnet or anything like that.”

  “You'd look cute in one,” she said.

  “So, they want to communicate?” I asked Jacob.

  “Not yet. They're hanging back...but they're following.”

  “Should we go investigate the woods?”

  “There was even more activity in the middle of town,” Jacob said. “It was kind of muted while the living were awake and the lights were on, but as it gets later...I think
it's really going to start to fill up with the dead.”

  “Little Miss Muffet!” Stacey said, looking down at the steaming take-out bags in her hands.

  “I have no idea what you're talking about,” I said.

  “The cheese curds. I just got it. 'Little Miss Muffet sat on her tuffet, eating her curds and whey,' We got curds! Should we have ordered some whey?”

  “Definitely not,” Jacob said. “The combination attracts spiders.”

  “I think 'curds and whey' is just cottage cheese.”

  Stacey frowned. “We got fried cottage cheese?”

  “Let's not get distracted,” I said. I still hadn't opened the door to the van. “Maybe we should stash our curds and whey here and go check out whatever Jacob's seeing in the woods.”

  “No,” Stacey said. “I mean, I vote we get the whole team together first. No more going off on our own without everyone. Right, Ellie?” She gave me a nudge with her elbow.

  “Right. Though we pretty much are the team, aren't we? The three of us have handled cases on our own.”

  “So Michael's not part of the team?” Stacey asked.

  “No,” I said. “He's really the client on this one. He's not coming on future cases with us.”

  “What about Tucker?” Jacob asked. “He's not going to be one of the Musketeers?”

  “There can be only three,” I said.

  “Yeah, he can head right back to his shuttered-up haunted house in Texas.” Stacey shivered. “Maybe we'll buy him a bus ticket home. I don't really want to get too close to his place again.”

  “That bad, huh?” I asked.

  “It was just all wrong inside. Weird, creaky, slanted floors. Those stick-people dangling from the rafters. And of course those rooms he'd nailed shut.”

  “Okay,” I said, finally opening the door to the van. “Let's meet back at the motel, then go downtown where the real action is.”

  “After we have burgers and fried cottage cheese,” Stacey added.

  I looked into the darkness of the woods for a long moment, listening to the rasping of leaves and limbs in the freezing wind, and then nodded.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  It turned out that Michael and Nealon had gotten us a pizza at Luigi's, but they'd also eaten more than half of it by the time the three of us joined up with them at the motel.

  We'd managed to snag the “suite” which consisted of two connecting rooms with three queen beds among them, plus armchairs. We'd also gotten Nealon a cheap single, located on the far end of the motel, but he was hanging out with Michael instead. Our rooms reeked of sage, which was still burning in a heap in one of the sinks.

  “Did you successfully run off any spirits?” I asked, my nose wrinkling as I tried, uselessly, to wave away some of the smokey haze.

  “He's run off most of the fresh air,” Michael grumbled from in front of the television. He was watching Maine Cabin Masters, where a couple of guys argued about how to replace a cabin window.

  “Any luck?” Michael asked.

  “We showed Melissa's picture wherever we could, but nobody's seen her,” I said. “Most places are closed, though. We can try again during daylight hours tomorrow. I'm guessing y'all didn't do much better.”

  “If she's in town, she's laying real low,” Michael said.

  “They definitely hadn't seen her at Luigi's,” Nealon added. He was leaned back in the room's armchair, foot up on the dresser, knife in one hand, whittling a pizza crust like it was a hunk of wood. He was getting crumbs all over himself and the carpet below him. “There were three teenage guys working there. They would have noticed her.”

  Michael threw him a scowl, but Nealon didn't look up from his crust-whittling.

  “Oh, man, that's rotten,” Jacob said. I turned to look at him, thinking he'd detected a ghostly smell or something, but he was staring at the TV, where the Maine Cabin Masters were tearing some exterior boards off an old cabin. “They're going to have to rebuild that whole side. That's not in the budget.”

  “You watch Maine Cabin Masters, too?” Michael asked him, with half a grin.

  “Yeah, it's weirdly addictive,” Jacob replied.

  Michael nodded and turned off the TV. “Every place in town is closed except a gas station. Are we ready to head out?”

  “Yep,” I said, biting into a squeaky deep-fried curd. It definitely tasted like fried cheese. “Let's gear up. Each one of us should have a backpack crammed full of gear.”

  “I prefer to bring my own satchel,” Nealon said, patting what looked like a huge, badly water-stained leather purse.

  “Whatever. As long as you have your exorcist gear. We need to assume Clay is out there waiting for us, even if he isn't. This is not a drill, people.”

  “It's not a jackhammer, either,” Stacey said.

  “Nor a pneumatic press,” Jacob added.

  “I...come on, guys,” I said. “Michael's sister is in danger here.”

  “Oh, sorry, Mikey.” Stacey embraced him. “Let's go get her.”

  We bundled up and headed outside. For me, “bundled up” meant a black hoodie and woolen hat and gloves I'd picked up at convenience stores along the way, plus my poor battered leather jacket on top of the hoodie jacket. I definitely wasn't prepared for life in freezing weather.

  Luckily, despite the cold and the harsh wind, there was no snow or ice hammering down on us, as the old-timer had said. They say the desert heat is a “dry heat” to contrast with humid steamy-hot places like the Amazon rainforest and, um, my home state of Georgia. This was a dry freeze instead, bitterly cold and vicious, but it could have been worse. I guess.

  “How do people live up here?” Jacob wondered as we headed up the street, shivering despite his thick coat and scarf. “And how did they do it before modern heating?”

  “Apparently they did it by setting the whole place on fire,” Michael said, and Nealon let out a snort-laugh. This actually made Michael frown a little bit.

  “That's mean, Michael,” Stacey said, nudging him.

  “Kinda true, though,” I said. “All the fires were set by people trying to clear out fields for farming, or paths for roads and trains. Nobody expected all the little fires to merge into a giant one full of spinning fire tornadoes and giant fireballs. That had never happened before. Now, let's keep quiet while we trespass.”

  We'd decided to avoid the town's larger roads. Falling silent, the five of us slipped through quiet residential streets, cutting across yards, avoiding fences where dogs might live.

  We snuck around the back side of Kountry Rhode RV, and soon followed an unlined paved track that was more like a long driveway winding among a few houses and a wide, grassy area. I almost wondered whether we were walking through a park of some kind, though there was nothing on my map app about it. We kept our flashlights off, so it was hard to see details.

  We emerged into a neighborhood just across the street from the Peshtigo Fire Cemetery. We crossed over and stood on the sidewalk outside the chainlink fence, looking in at shadow-shrouded tombstones.

  “The ghosts are getting more active,” Jacob said, looking around the dark, silent street.

  “Do any of them want to tell us whether a strange and fiery new ghost has come to town?” I asked.

  “They aren't really chatty. They're mostly caught up in their own problems, like ghosts tend to be.” Jacob shivered. “I've never seen any presence this awful. Not even those ghosts of Civil War soldiers at the Lathrop Grand Hotel. There are just ghosts everywhere, all inside the graveyard but also out in the street. All of them are badly burned, some of them are missing limbs or heads. Some are carrying burned-up babies and children. Some are leading burned horses. There's a feeling of nonstop agony in the air.”

  “That's so sad,” Stacey said.

  “Well, let me know if any of them say anything useful,” I told Jacob. “Until then, hop the fence with me.”

  “Into the cemetery?” Jacob asked.

  “You're my psychic pal, aren't you?
” I asked. “Stacey, you're with us. Michael and Tucker, stand lookout while we trespass.”

  “You brought me hundreds of miles to stand lookout?” Nealon asked.

  “If any evil ghosts come at you, feel free to deal with those, too,” I said.

  “I'll burn some sage,” he said.

  “Don't you dare,” I told him. “If that stuff actually does repel ghosts, it's the last thing we need tonight.” Then I clambered over the chain-link and dropped quietly to the ground among the headstones.

  Stacy came over the fence behind me. “I thought this was a mass grave,” she whispered, looking at the scattered headstones.

  “They identified some of the bodies,” I whispered back. We hadn't really been whispering outside the fence, but the moment we were inside, we couldn't help it. “There's also a mass grave up ahead. Jacob, anything?”

  Jacob stood just behind us, shivering. He looked like a kid who was too afraid to jump into a swimming pool. Then he looked at Stacey and stepped closer to us, a little deeper into the cemetery.

  “They're everywhere,” he said, sounding like he was suddenly ill. “I can't...you're going to have to give me a minute here.”

  I nodded, and Stacey took his hand.

  We walked among the gravestones, gradually making our way toward the black wrought-iron fence that surrounded the mass grave area, as though we were drawn there by gravity.

  Dark shadows and shapes moved at the corners of my vision, but I saw only trees when I looked directly at them. Cold spots would have been impossible to sense on a January night in Wisconsin, but my skin was crawling like a thousand beetles had creeped up inside my shirt. It didn't take a psychic to feel how haunted that place was.

  “They're stirred up,” Jacob said. “Something's got them agitated, I think.”

  “Well, that's a good sign for us, right? Does anyone want to give more specific details? Can you get someone talking?” I asked.

  “But be polite about it,” Stacey added. “We're in their cemetery, after all. It's not like they sent us an invite.”

  “I'll need a minute.” Jacob began to walk off among the trees. In the nonstop cold wind, the heavy old trees swayed, their branches creaking, casting moving shadows in the moonlight.

 

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