Now Entering Addamsville

by Francesca Zappia

  “Shut up.” My stomach heaved. “You’ve killed people.”

  “Whatever. Bach has killed way more than me, and I don’t see you cutting his head off.” He stepped toward me. “He’s always been the worst.”

  I spun and lunged for the door. Ludwig’s hand came down on top of mine on the door handle, searingly hot; it felt like he was pressing a clothes iron to my knuckles. I ripped my hand away and tore my glove off. It had melted, but the skin underneath was unharmed.

  Ludwig held the door handle until it melted into a lump of malformed metal in his fingers, then let go. “Who needs locks? That’ll be hot to the touch for a while.” He smiled again. I heard him, but my heart was beating in my throat, making sounds pulse in and out. “Now, are you going to sit down and listen? I like watching the expressions on your stupid human face.”

  I took a deep breath.

  “No, no screaming for help, come on!” he said. “I’ll have to melt you a muzzle. You don’t want that, trust me, I’ve done it before, and people were not happy about it.”

  I let out a long, slow exhale. It was nearly a scream.

  He loped back to the desk in the corner, where a laptop and phone sat beneath the lamp. He scooped up the phone. “I can’t wait to get out of this town. The sooner the better.”

  “Get out?” I said. “You could have left whenever you wanted.”

  He glanced up from the phone. “Bach hasn’t told you? Hildegard, our loving mother, left us here. If I can find her entrance, I can find her.

  “And I already know where it is. All these idiots thinking the treasure beneath Grimshaw House is jewelry or money, they’re all wrong. It’s Hildegard’s entrance. She escaped Addamsville through Grimshaw House and hid it there by giving Sam ownership of it. If I can get rid of them, if that ownership passes to me, I’ll be able to get back to her. She’s out there somewhere.”

  “I thought she abandoned you.”

  He grinned as he raised the phone and tapped something on the screen. “Only because she thought Bach and Sam were more worthy of her time. Once they’re out of the picture, it will just be me and her again. So what do you say? Partners?”

  I tried to speak, but no words came out. I couldn’t say no because he would kill me. I couldn’t say yes because I couldn’t help him kill anyone else. And I couldn’t cry, because it would do no good.

  “That’s a shame.” He tapped the screen again and put the phone up to his ear. When he spoke, his expression was flat but his voice shot up an octave, breathy and fast. “Oh god—please, come quickly—she’s got—it’s some kind of fire—please, my name is Tad Thompson, I’m in room seven of the Cherry Motel on Valleywine Road. Please, please come—it’s this Novak girl, she’s setting the room on fire—please!”

  And then he melted the phone and tossed it on the floor.

  “Five minutes, tops,” he said.

  The mustard-yellow comforter burst into flames, all at once, an even coat of orange fire that spread to the bedposts and down to the carpet. I stumbled back, catching myself on the dresser. With a hiss like a blowtorch, the dresser top went up, wood splintering. I whipped my hands away and scrambled for the desk. Smoke billowed toward the ceiling. Tad—Ludwig—shimmered in the sudden heat.

  “Help!” he yelled. “Help, fire! Help!”

  Fire sliced the curtains from their rods. The wallpaper cracked and curled. Smoke stung my eyes, my nose; acrid chemical smoke, things burning that shouldn’t be. The alarm clock melted on the night stand. A painting of old Addamsville crashed to the floor. The building groaned. Fire crept along the carpet fibers. I dropped, my knees unable to hold me up, my head spinning.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” he said. “Fleeting, bright, destructive. Fire’s the only true way to go.”

  I was dying. I was going to die. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t see. The fire corralled me to an empty spot on the carpet and held me there, shaking, shivering, useless. I couldn’t feel my arms or legs. If I moved, I would die. If I didn’t move, I would die.

  Ludwig paced around me. Sometimes he was Tad Thompson, sometimes a creature that swallowed the light, its eyes two little red pinpricks. “I don’t feel like myself if I’m not setting something on fire. I don’t know how Bach stands his abstinence. Maybe it’s easier when you have someone else holding your leash?” He dug claws into the carpet. Smiled with human teeth. “I’m glad Hildegard didn’t make me the pet of her spawn. I’m not sure I would’ve liked being leashed.”

  He leaned down. Brushed a lock of hair away from my face with a black talon. “It’s probably been enough time now. They’ll be wondering why I’m not dead yet.”

  Then he grabbed the desk chair, spun, and slammed it through the window. Glass shattered. He slithered through and started screaming. I had to move. I wouldn’t burn, but I still had to breathe. There was sweet cold air outside. Outside. Outside was five feet away, and I wouldn’t make it. Go go go, said one part of my brain. Fire fire fire, said another. That part was louder. I pressed my forehead to the hot, rough carpet.

  “Get up, Zora.” I could at least move my lips.

  “Get up, Zora.” A whisper this time. I curled my fingers, the ones that could be curled.

  “Get up, Zora.” Pushed my forehead off the floor. I was two breaths from screaming.

  “Get up.” On my knees. Looking at the window through the licking flames.

  “Get up.” Legs wobbling, feet shuffling.

  “Get up. Get up. Get up.” Forward. Hands on the windowsill. Eyes burning, lungs burning. An ungainly leap.

  My sleeve caught and tore; my stomach grew hot. I kicked off the window ledge and crashed to the hard-packed dirt outside, coughing, sobbing, alive. Smoke billowed out the broken window, whipped into the air by the cold night wind. I scrambled to my feet as the world tilted beneath me and my vision blurred, and I sprinted toward the end of the building. Wood popped. Flickering light leaped into the windows I passed, the other rooms. Eight, nine, ten. The building groaned again. The night brightened as fire overtook the roof. I rounded the end of the building and stumbled into the parking lot.

  The other motel patrons were already outside. The fire had reached the rooms closest to Tad’s. Leila, Mike, and Eric stood in the parking lot, Leila without a coat, Mike without his shoes, Eric without a shirt. All of them clustered around Tad, who was sprawled on the ground. The cameramen were yelling about their equipment; the producer and the assistants were staring at the building, mouths open. The producer saw me come into the light.

  “Hey!”

  I tried to run. The first cameraman came around the van and hit me from the front. The second one knocked us both sideways. We crashed into dirt and grass, me wheezing, them cursing.

  “I didn’t do it!” My voice was barely strong enough to be heard over the fire and the wind. “I didn’t do it—Ludwig—Tad—set me up—”

  Sirens floated in from the distance. The guy who’d tackled me first grabbed me by the wrists and the scruff of my neck, hauled me to my feet, and dragged me back to their van. Something warm ran down my arm.

  The producer got in my face. “Do you know how many thousands of dollars of equipment we had in there? Do you know? Even if you hadn’t put all of us in danger, we’re going to make sure you pay for every cent.”

  “She’s crazy!” Tad cried. “She—she barged in demanding the—the thing—and she set the bed on fire—she threatened me!”

  “Liar!” I screamed. “I didn’t do anything to you! I didn’t do it! I didn’t! Let me go!” The cameramen only held on tighter, one on either side of me now, so I couldn’t aim a kick at their kneecaps or slam my head into their faces. The fire was only getting bigger.

  The sirens were upon us. Addamsville’s lone fire engine, followed by a police cruiser.

  “We’re the liars?” the producer said. “Try to lie your way out of this one, you stupid b—”

  I spat in his face. He slapped me. I swung my body forward and drove my boot int
o his groin. He doubled over.

  “DON’T EVER CALL ME THAT NAME! I DIDN’T DO THIS I DIDN’T SET ANY FIRES I DIDN’T DO ANY OF THIS LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO!”

  “Zora!”

  The wind quavered beneath the whipcrack of Chief Rivera’s voice.

  24

  My lack of burns baffled the paramedic. The fire had overtaken the room so quickly. Tad had gotten out right away, but I hadn’t. My clothes were charred. My skin was fine. My only injuries were the cuts from the glass.

  Jack and Norm stuffed me in the back of their cruiser and drove me to the station. My pulse throbbed where the broken window had sliced straight through my jacket and into my biceps. I still couldn’t quite breathe right. None of these things were helped by the handcuffs.

  Norm and Jack never said a word. Neither did I. There was no Ludwig, to them. No ghosts. There was just Tad Thompson and lies. I caught Jack giving me sympathetic looks in the rearview mirror, but only because he’d been a little rough as he put me in the car. There was no more I don’t think you did it. The two people who knew I hadn’t done it were me and Ludwig, and he was going lie all the way back to hell.

  Police station. Same cell. I paced because I couldn’t lay down. The other cells were empty. Norm and Jack stuck around. Norm answered phone calls while Jack stood near the door to the hallway my cell was in.

  “Hey, Jackalope. What happened to Bach?”

  Jack turned to me. His voice was subdued, and he kept his distance. “He was released. He didn’ do nothin’, had a clean alibi for the night of the Forester mansion fire.”

  I shivered. All of my organs felt like they were standing on the tips of their toes, ready to either explode or help me burst into a sprint. I shouldn’t have been asking about Bach. “You know I didn’t do this, right?”

  Jack didn’t say anything.

  I stood close to the bars. “I need to talk to Chief Rivera. I have to explain this to her.” I didn’t want to be stuck in here. “Jack, come on.”

  “The chief is busy.” He shifted as Norm said something from the main office; for a minute, I thought he was going to leave me in here.

  “What about the Chevelle?” I said. “The Chevelle is at the motel.”

  “It’ll be impounded for now,” Jack said.

  “Impounded? But—Buster holds the impounded cars. At the junkyard.”

  “Yeah,” Jack said.

  I swallowed.

  “My dad could go get it. Has anyone called him? He was sleeping. He could run over there with my sister and get it. Please, Jack, you have to call him.”

  “They can pick it up from the junkyard later.”

  “No—no, Jack, please—Buster will destroy it—”

  Norm said something else. Jack walked away to answer him, and the door slid smoothly shut. The lock clicked. I was alone.

  Ludwig wants me dead, I thought. Now he had me somewhere I couldn’t escape. Why not make it look like I’d killed myself by setting the police station on fire? That would be rebelliousness up my alley, right? Fire, fire everywhere. Fire for everyone, including me. That was the truth for Addamsville. I was a firestarter. I would go down in flames.

  I didn’t sleep that night. The phone rang off the hook for the first few hours, then stopped. I only knew it was morning when the light outside the small hallway window brightened. They’d taken my jacket, and my phone and the Chevelle’s keys, the only two things I’d had on me, so I didn’t know what time it was until Dad and Sadie arrived.

  Chief Rivera was the one who let them in. The expressions on their faces were unreadable, and as soon as I saw them, fear clenched in my stomach. They could get trapped here as easily as I was, and they wouldn’t know until it was too late.

  Dad looked at my hand, my arm, my face. Sadie just stared at the floor.

  “What happened?” Dad asked.

  I opened my mouth to answer, then stopped. Even Dad had a limit to how much bullshit he was willing to listen to, and I had lied to him last night. I glanced at Chief Rivera. There was no way she would take this as anything other than me either losing my mind or building a fantasy world.

  “I didn’t do it” was all I could say. “He framed me; all I wanted was the memory card back. I didn’t do it; I swear I didn’t.”

  My insides had started shaking again. They wouldn’t believe me this time. This was too much. I’d built this wall, and now I had to live on my side of it, alone.

  But then Dad took my hands from the bars, both of them, carefully, and held them in his.

  “Someone’s been calling Harrisburg trying to get their police involved, too. Sadie has to go to work, but I’ll see what I can find out, and later I’ll go speak to them myself.”

  “You don’t have to do that—the Harrisburg cops—the prison—”

  He kissed the back of my right hand. “No one’s gonna take my girl away. I’m so sorry I wasn’t here for you before. I’m sorry I made such a mess and left you in it. I’m here for you now.”

  Sadie stepped up beside him. “Don’t say anything more than you already have, okay? We’re going to try to get a lawyer.”

  “We can’t afford a lawyer.”

  “We’re going to try!” she snapped. “This is serious, Zora!”

  “I know it is!”

  “Stop it, both of you!” Dad said. Both of us shut out mouths immediately. “This is not the time to argue. Zoo, we’re not going to let you stay in here for long. I promise. I love you. Sadie, let’s get going; you can’t be late for work.”

  Dad let go of my hands. As they left, Sadie paused for a second to grab my fingertips. “I love you, too,” she said quietly.

  Then they were gone. The phone was ringing in the main office again, and I was alone.

  I slept, finally, sometime around midmorning, and my dreams were filled with fire and little creatures poking me with pitchforks, the skin burning off my hands and leaving only prosthetics that didn’t move, my hair falling out so blood could seep from my scalp as my friends watched, saying I deserved it.

  In one dream, I came out in a clearing in the woods and saw my own burned body staked in front of Forester House.

  In another, Bach was kissing me, and my skin melted and sloughed away from every spot his lips touched.

  In a third, I burst into flames and screamed, only to realize a moment later that I wasn’t burning because my arms and legs were short, thin, and black as pitch, tipped with claws and talons.

  Norm brought me a hamburger and fries from the Fool that afternoon. I ate, but I didn’t taste it. The phone kept ringing. I stared at the ceiling and focused on my breathing. Worrying about the building catching on fire wouldn’t do me any good while I was stuck in here. Where was Ludwig now? Still with the DMW crew or out patrolling the town? Was he going after Bach? Norm came again to bring me dinner, which I had even more trouble eating. When I asked what was going on, he gave me a closed-off look and said, “They ain’t happy about it.”

  Shortly after dinner I fell into another restless sleep. No real dreams, not that I can remember, only a bad feeling deep in my chest every time I pulled myself back to consciousness. When I finally couldn’t make myself sleep anymore, when the lights were out again in the hallway, I sat up on the cot and held my pounding head.

  Then I realized it was too dark. It wasn’t just the overhead lights that were off, but every light. The desk lamps in the main office. The soft illumination of the security light. The red eye of the camera by the exit. Only a little glow came through the small window on the door, and it must have been from the moonlight flooding into the main office. There was no hum of electronics.

  I sat up, listening. Ludwig had cut the power to the building and he was coming for me, making sure there was no way for me to call for help, even if I did get out. Something moved outside my cell, and I stilled. There was breathing. Not my own.

  “Zora.”

  Chief Rivera. I stayed pressed to the cinder-block wall at the back of the cell.

/>   “Why is the power out?” I said.

  “So I can speak to you.”

  “You don’t have a flashlight or something?”

  She ignored me and said, “I know who Sam Forester is. So did your mother. So do you.”

  I waited, breath held. My limbs felt like jelly, my urge to run overwhelming. “Are you . . . like us?”

  “No. But twenty-eight years ago, I had two good friends.” Her voice was soft in the dark. “They were ghost hunters, like your cousin. They wanted so badly to uncover the truth of this town, and they thought they would find something the first time Forester House burned down. They were excited because they thought big events like that always meant an uptick in paranormal activity.

  “Then the Foresters moved into town. The fires continued. People kept dying. Your mother and your aunt almost died when the Aberdeen house went down. My friends thought all of the fire, all of the destruction, would reveal secrets no one else knew. They were down in Maple Hills one night when their cabin caught on fire. It went up so fast they didn’t have a chance to get out. Can you imagine how fast it must have burned? For them not to have a chance to run? How hot it had to be?

  “Sam went back to the woods. The fires stopped. The stories became myths, but I remember. I saw things that summer I’ve never told anyone, because I knew they wouldn’t believe me.”

  I couldn’t see her face, but I could feel her gaze.

  “I know you and your mom have something to do with all this. I know Dasree wanted to stop Sam as much as I did.” She paused. Keys rattled. “I can’t stop these fires now, and I can’t—I can’t relive it. I’m sorry. But I can at least do this.”

  The key turned. The cell bars passed through the weak light as they slid open. “You’ll get fired,” I said. “You’ll lose your job; everyone will think you’re—”

  I stopped. She knew I had no case against the DMW crew. Against Ludwig. I was the lunatic who had tried to kill Tad Thompson, and it was only my word against his.