Fury (Blur Trilogy Book 2)

by Steven James

  Kyle shouted louder, and finally the man looked his way, but his face was hidden behind that ski mask.

  For a moment he stood there stock-still, a dark, faceless form outlined against the snow, then he turned once more to the keeper’s home and strode toward it.

  Daniel arrived at the bottom of the steps and began to look around.

  Using the cell phone as a flashlight in one hand, he used his other hand to sweep aside the thick cobwebs that laced the air in front of him.

  The earthen walls were supported by stout timbers that’d been fitted in place against the floorboards of the kitchen.

  Underfoot, a smattering of small rocks covered the dirt floor.

  The air felt cool, but not bitterly cold—low fifties, maybe. The root cellar smelled of dust and mildew.

  There were two dozen jars of preserves piled on the ground and a stack of dried herbs near the wall.

  Other than that, the place appeared empty.

  But something didn’t feel right.

  He turned in a slow circle, taking everything in, and his math mind noted that though there were six support beams on the left side, there were only five on the right.

  Not a huge deal, but everything else about the house, about the tower, was symmetrical. Why hadn’t the root cellar been dug out in a square to match the floor plan of the kitchen above it?

  The Edgar Allan Poe tale that Teach had mentioned in class on Friday, “The Cask of Amontillado,” came to mind.

  In the story, the protagonist, who was also the antagonist, had buried another man alive, sealing him up in the catacombs.

  He did it in a place where no one ever found the corpse.

  Daniel set down the phone with the light angled toward the wall, and began to inspect the pile of dirt in the corner where the sixth timber should have been visible.

  Kyle eyed the ice that stretched between him and shore.

  You need to stop that guy. He’s going to burn down the lighthouse. You need to warn Daniel!

  Although the rowboat was still anchored, it’d drifted slightly. So, after guiding it up to the edge of the ice, Kyle killed the motor and seated himself somewhat precariously on the gunwale with his feet hanging over the ice.

  Taking a deep breath, he lowered his left foot.

  The ice held.

  Good.

  He transferred more weight onto it.

  It held.

  Alright. This was going to work.

  He swung his other leg into place and was steadying himself, ready to let go of the boat, when the ice underfoot cracked and splashed away. Losing his balance, he almost went in—as it was, his boots dipped into the ice-cold water—but he managed, just barely, to hold onto the gunwale.

  The boat rocked wildly as he scrambled back inside it, his heart jackhammering in his chest.

  That was close.

  Okay, so walking across the ice was not going to happen.

  But you need to do something!

  Hoping to make enough noise to alert Daniel that something was up, he clambered to the back of the boat and fired up the outboard.

  The ground wasn’t frozen and Daniel was able to scoop out handfuls of the loose, rocky soil.

  He’d gone in about eighteen inches when his hand found something hard and round and about the size of a melon. A rock probably.

  But, no. It felt too smooth to be a rock.

  Carefully, Daniel brushed the soil aside.

  CHAPTER

  FORTY-FOUR

  It was a skull: blackened and charred.

  He stumbled backward.

  Betty.

  This is where Jarvis buried her after she died.

  This is where—

  He heard footsteps on the floorboards above him.

  At first he thought it might be Kyle, but then he realized how ridiculous that was: there was no way for him to have gotten to shore.

  But if it wasn’t him—

  You left the trapdoor open. Whoever’s there will know you’re down here.

  Daniel started for the steps, but had only made it halfway there when someone slammed the trapdoor shut.

  Hurrying up the stairs, he pressed against the door to open it, but whoever was up there must have been standing on it because it wouldn’t budge.

  “Hey,” he called. “Step back!”

  No one replied.

  A moment later, though, Daniel smelled gasoline and felt some of it slosh through the floorboards above him.

  He ducked his head to the side so the gas wouldn’t spill onto his face.

  “Hey!”

  He heard wood being moved around and guessed that whoever was up there was piling the split logs over the trapdoor again, or at least bracing one in place against the wall to keep him from opening the door.

  Then, the person in the kitchen ignited the gasoline and a few more drops of it fell, burning this time, in and around Daniel in the root cellar.

  He thrust his shoulder against the door but it held fast.

  You need to pry it open or wedge something in and break the clasp.

  It would’ve been ideal if he had a knife or even a set of keys to jam in there, but all he had was Kyle’s cell phone.

  Scanning the cellar, he tried to see if there was anything he’d missed, anything else he could use, but there was nothing.

  No.

  Wait.

  There was one other thing down here that he might be able to use.

  Not the dried plants or canned preserves.

  From anatomy class, he knew that the femur is the strongest bone in the human body.

  It won’t be sharpened on the end, but if you can find a way to snap it in half . . .

  No, Daniel, do you even realize what you’re thinking?

  What choice do you have? You have to do it.

  No!

  You’re going to die down here unless you can get that trapdoor open.

  He directed his attention to the wall where he’d been digging, then rushed down the steps to see if he could locate one of the skeleton’s upper leg bones.

  Kyle saw curls of black smoke slither out of the spaces between the boards covering the windows of the keeper’s home.

  No!

  The person who’d carried the gasoline can into the house exited the front door and then traversed the snowy field toward the oars that Daniel had used to cross the ice.

  Digging through the bones was sickening and heartrending, and Daniel prayed that he wouldn’t be cursed or haunted somehow for disturbing them, but right now he didn’t feel like he had much of a choice.

  He found the pelvis and tunneled in deeper, cupping away handfuls of dirt and various bones that he thought were probably from Betty’s spine.

  At last his fingers closed around a bone that felt large and sturdy.

  He drew it out of the soil.

  Yes.

  The femur.

  But just as he’d expected, the ends of it were rounded, so he propped it against one of the support beams, angling it in place so it wouldn’t slip to the side when he kicked it in the middle.

  Honestly, he didn’t know if this was going to work—if the bone would be brittle enough to break.

  But if it is brittle, will it help you get out of here?

  Try it.

  You have to.

  It’s your best shot.

  After lining up his foot, he stomped against the center of the bone like he might’ve done if he were breaking a stick for a campfire.

  It shattered into three pieces. He snatched up the longest one and tried to pry open the trapdoor, but it didn’t give him enough leverage.

  Quickly returning to the skeleton, he dug desperately through the rock-infested soil for the other femur.

  Flames flic
ked down and around the floorboards above him.

  It took a minute, but he found the bone.

  Tugged it out.

  Hurry.

  He jammed the femur in place against the beam and brought his boot down.

  This one broke in half. He grabbed the longer piece, drove the sharpened end into the space between the boards along the edge of the trapdoor, and tried to crack the hasp from the wood to pop it open.

  CHAPTER

  FORTY-FIVE

  As Kyle frantically tried to think of a way to help his friend, a channel of flames burst out of the top of the lighthouse and flared into the sky, devouring the sheets of snowflakes slashing against it.

  In this wind it wasn’t going to take long for the wooden lighthouse—and the keeper’s home along with it—to be totally consumed.

  Crying out from the effort, Daniel cranked on the femur, heard the clasp snap, and threw open the trapdoor.

  Half a dozen split logs tumbled down as a rush of stifling heat enveloped him.

  The floorboards above the root cellar were blazing and, even if he could’ve tried running across them, at this point he wasn’t sure they would’ve supported his weight. The last thing he needed right now was to end up plummeting back into that cellar.

  The only clear path to the front door was along an adjoining wall where the flames weren’t as intense.

  Thick smoke and fumes choked him and the searing heat from the fire blasted against his face and bare hands where his coat didn’t protect him. Drawing the top of his shirt up over his mouth so he could breathe through the smoke, Daniel rushed toward the door.

  Because of the heat, he had to shield his face with one arm. Flames radiated across the floor in front of him, but he was able to leap over them and pivot past a column of fire that was flaring up the wall.

  The front doorway was engulfed, but Daniel rushed it, pounded it open, and stumbled out of the building, dropping and rolling in the snow.

  The cold air and wet snow felt good on his face and hands, immediately cooling his exposed skin.

  Yes, yes.

  He tugged his shirt back down past his mouth and struggled forward through the knee-deep snow to get away from the burning building.

  After he’d made it about forty feet, he paused and glanced back.

  Even with the snow blowing in his face, he could feel the raging heat of the fire.

  A spectacular but also unnerving sight.

  As he watched the lighthouse burn, he thought of what Mia had told him on Saturday—in the early days, fires on hills were used to serve as warnings to ships.

  They didn’t set the lighthouses on fire, though.

  The truth of what’d just happened slammed into him: Someone tried to kill you.

  And a second revelation: You need to get off this island.

  He hurried toward the boat, and when he got to the rocks that he’d crawled over when he first arrived, he found that his life jacket was gone.

  So were the oars.

  Kyle shut off the motor and shouted, “Are you alright?”

  “Yeah. Did you see who did this?”

  Kyle shook his head. “He was wearing a ski mask. He took off toward the other side of the island.”

  “And he took the oars and the life jacket?”

  “I don’t know why, but he did.”

  Daniel eased onto the ice.

  “You don’t have a life jacket,” Kyle said unnecessarily.

  “Then I better not fall through.”

  “You’re not really gonna walk across?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “I don’t know, I—”

  “There’s someone on this island who wants me dead. He knew I was in there when he started that fire. If he sees me here alive, who knows what he’ll do.”

  Kyle gave in. “Alright. But be careful.”

  Here, close to the shoreline, the ice would be thicker, but still, Daniel was tentative as he took his first few steps.

  “Steady,” Kyle urged him.

  Concerned that the ice might break if he moved too quickly, Daniel continued to take it slowly as he gently flattened his foot with each step to spread out his weight.

  The farther he went, the more confident he became that he was actually going to make it.

  Just get to the boat and get out of here.

  But when he was about three quarters of the way to the skiff, withering cracks began to spiderweb out from beneath his feet and he heard the crinkle of splintering ice.

  He froze, afraid to make the slightest movement.

  But it didn’t help.

  All at once the ice beneath his feet split open with a crack that sounded like a gunshot echoing across the water.

  “No!” Kyle watched helplessly as Daniel dropped into the inky black water ten feet away from him.

  And didn’t come back up.

  CHAPTER

  FORTY-SIX

  Knives.

  Hundreds of knives stabbing into him, all over him.

  That’s what it felt like.

  Daniel tried to remain calm, tried not to panic, but he hadn’t gotten a good breath before he went under, and now as he sank into the freezing lake, it felt like he had no air in his lungs.

  Though faint light filtered through the ice above him, the water below him was impossibly dark.

  He scissors-kicked toward the surface, but didn’t see the opening he’d fallen through.

  You need to swim toward open water.

  You can make it.

  Relax.

  But the heavy winter clothes and boots were dragging him down. He gave up on the idea of trying to get the boots off, but managed to untangle himself from the bulky winter coat that was making it nearly impossible to swim.

  He stroked upward and kicked fiercely against the incoming tide, which seemed intent on taking him closer to shore where he would never be able to break through the ice above him.

  He searched desperately, but couldn’t locate the fractured ice that’d broken away and plunged him into the lake.

  Battling the stiff current, he went for the ice sheet’s edge, but what little air he had was quickly running out and, despite himself, he let out a gasp of bubbles that burst into the water and then rose, gurgling around his face.

  Still ten feet to go, but it might just as well have been ten miles.

  He wasn’t going to make it.

  You have to!

  More bubbles escaped, and he had to fight the terrible urge to breathe in because if he did, if he took even the smallest gulp, it would all be over.

  Swimming as hard as he could, Daniel aimed for the surface, but it felt like something had wrapped around his leg and was pulling him down.

  A quick glance down: he saw the demon that Nicole had drawn, its bone-white grin gleaming in the eternal darkness, its claws clenching his foot.

  A blur.

  Reality.

  All the same.

  He kicked at it violently and as it swirled away into the angry, churning depths, he focused on getting to the open water above him.

  You can do it. You can make it. For your dad. You need to save your dad!

  The final dribble of air floated from his mouth.

  He stroked once more and reached for the edge of the ice.

  Caught it.

  There.

  Yes.

  But he could barely hold on.

  He was too tired, too fatigued.

  When he kicked forward with what little strength he had left, he wasn’t able to pull himself up or hook his other hand around the ice’s edge.

  He couldn’t get his face to the surface.

  It’s over.

  His grip was weakening, and just as he felt like it was going to slip away for good,
a dark form moved toward him—

  The boat?

  But—

  Something snagged his wrist as the fathomless lake tugged at him, trying to claim him for good.

  Daniel felt himself being drawn upward.

  But then he felt nothing but a cold, clutching darkness, and even the feeling of the knives piercing into him was gone.

  CHAPTER

  FORTY-SEVEN

  Kyle clasped Daniel’s wrist as tightly as he could and leaned back in the boat to bring his friend’s head to the surface.

  The waves were washing against the other side of the boat, threatening to move it closer to the ice and crush Daniel or break Kyle’s grip on him.

  Come on, man, pull. You’ve got this!

  He repositioned his hand and heaved again, this time managing to get Daniel’s head above the surface. It didn’t look like he was breathing. His skin was drained of color.

  You need to get him in the boat.

  Now!

  He hauled up his friend, managing to get his armpits to the gunwale.

  The rowboat wobbled perilously but kept from capsizing.

  Bracing his leg under one of the seats for leverage, Kyle reached down, grabbed the back of Daniel’s belt, and lifted. As the skiff tilted to the side again, nearly taking on water, he hefted Daniel up and swung him into the rowboat.

  His body dropped heavily to the bottom of the boat, his head lolling to the side.

  From being a lifeguard, Kyle realized he needed to get air into Daniel’s lungs immediately.

  With the boat’s seats in the way, positioning his friend on his back was tricky, but once he managed, he tilted Daniel’s head to open up his airway, and gave him two rescue breaths.

  His chest rose.

  Nothing’s blocking his airway.

  He found a pulse on Daniel’s neck.

  Good. That’s good.

  Kyle knew that sometimes when a person falls into ice-cold water, an instinct kicks in—he didn’t know what it was called, but he knew it was there—closing off their throat so that, even though they might drown, their lungs won’t necessarily fill with water.