by Rick Hautala
“Hey, Andy!” one of them shouted. “Looks to me like we got it pretty much under control.”
Andy looked back at Edward and Dianne, and gave them a thumbs-up.
Edward sighed with relief, then glanced back and forth between Brian and Dianne. “Jesus Christ,” he whispered, shaking his head in amazement.
“I wonder when they’ll let us in to see what’s left,” Brian said in a low, wavering voice.
PART THREE
The “Old Witch Lady’s” House
August 1994
“I had borne a great deal in this house.”
—Henrik Ibsen
Ghosts
Chapter Sixteen
The Only Alternative
Half an hour later, Fire Chief Andy Jones declared that the fire at the Fraser house was officially out. Armed with plaster hooks, the cleanup crew entered the house and started pulling out the walls and ceiling, hosing down any hot spots they found. There was broken wallboard all over the kitchen floor, and timbers were still streaming with thin ribbons of smoke when Dianne, Edward, and Brian went through the house with Rick Anicetti, the town fire marshal.
“It’s fairly obvious the fire started in here somehow,” Rick said as they walked into the devastated kitchen.
The heavy smell of steam, and burned wood mingled with other, more noxious fumes to produce a lingering ozone-like sting in the air. That, if not the impact of their loss, would have brought tears to their eyes. A glaze of soot and ash covered everything, making it look as if a volcano had erupted inside the house. Especially over by the counter, where the fire had been centered, the linoleum floor was curled up and bubbled where it had burned. The thin black crust crunched underfoot as they walked slowly around the room, staring in disbelief at the extent of the damage.
The kitchen wall had a jagged, teardrop-shaped hole to the outside that revealed charred two-by-fours and the tangled remains of melted wiring and burst water pipes. From the inside, it looked as though a gigantic cannon shell had slammed through the wall and exploded. On the sides that had been facing the flames, the kitchen table and chairs were burned to waffled charcoal. Anything plastic—especially the small appliances and containers on the countertop—had melted into unrecognizable, black lumps. The counter and cabinets were rippled with scorched wood and blackened laminate, and the wood paneling on the walls was flaking off in large, black chunks that looked like autumn leaves. The ceiling above the sink had burned through to the upstairs room, into Brian’s bedroom. The refrigerator and stove were scorched with brown and black streaks that looked like splashes of paint. The wall phone was a formless green puddle of plastic and wires on the floor, almost lost beneath the jumble of burned and smashed wallboard. Even in the adjoining hallway and dining room, everything that hadn’t been damaged by the flames and intense heat, was skim-coated with greasy soot.
“I’m still not sure yet if it first broke out inside or outside the house,” Rick said, “but it definitely looks as though the flames traveled up the outside of the building first. It’s possible the fire started inside the walls, from faulty wiring or whatever.”
He scratched his chin in concentration as he looked at Edward as though studying him, gauging his reactions.
“But there are some mighty odd-looking scorch marks angling up the exterior of the house that look suspicious to me.”
“Suspicious,” Edward said. “What do you mean, suspicious?”
Rick shrugged. “Almost as though someone splashed the side of the house with gasoline before touching it off. I dunno—” He shook his head. “Maybe the fire was purposely set.”
Brian stiffened, and Edward regarded Rick with a numbed, nearly uncomprehending expression, but Dianne blurted out. “Set? Who would have done something like that?”
Rick didn’t answer right away as he looked around with his hands on his hips. “Impossible to say. You don’t mind if I take a day or two to investigate this a bit, do you, to determine if it was arson?”
“Of course not,” Edward said, vacantly nodding his agreement. Dianne had the impression that he had mentally taken a back seat to all of this and was watching things the way he would watch a movie.
Rick grimaced and said, “It’s just a niggling little doubt I have. I don’t think I have to get the state involved with any of this, though no doubt an adjuster and probably an investigator from your insurance company is gonna want to take a look at it in a few days, too. You probably ought to notify them.”
Again, Edward nodded absently as if he was barely paying attention.
“I’ve got to post the property so no one will come in here, and as much as I don’t want to, I’m gonna have to ask you to stay out of the house for a few days. You couldn’t very well sleep here tonight, anyway.”
“Where are we going to sleep?” Brian asked, but no one answered him.
“Can we get some things first—clothes and stuff?” Dianne asked. She was acutely aware of how frail and tight her voice sounded.
“Oh sure, sure,” Rick said. “No sweat. Usually in a case like this, we gotta be pretty careful about—well, if either one of you tried to torch the house—you know, for the insurance money or whatever, we don’t want to let you tamper with the evidence. But—hell, Ed, I’ve known you all my life. I’m willing to bet a few weeks’ salary that you had nothing to do with it.”
“Of course I didn’t,” Edward said in a voice that sounded raw and tired.
They all went back outside and waited until the last fire truck left after two hours of “cleanup” work. That, Dianne thought, was exactly the wrong term for what the firemen had done to the inside of their house, but she knew it was necessary to rip out the walls and ceiling to make sure all the smoldering embers had been extinguished. Once the fire trucks were gone, the last few straggling bystanders also left. Several people stopped by and offered their assistance in helping them get things squared around, but Edward gratefully declined, saying that he and his family could take care of things—at least for now. A few neighbors offered the family a place to spend the night if they needed it.
Rick Anicetti and a helper posted the house with NO TRESPASSING signs and strung the area with police line tape, pending the outcome of his investigation into the cause of the fire. He reassured Edward that he honestly didn’t think the fire had been set, but he didn’t want to rule anything out until he had a chance to go over the evidence carefully.
Feeling physically and emotionally drained, Dianne followed Edward and Brian back into the house to see again what was left of their kitchen and to gather any clothes or whatever else they needed that hadn’t been damaged. All of them were silent as they stood in the kitchen, looking around and wondering what to do next or even where to start.
Heeding Rick’s warning to be careful because of the piles of debris and the weakened structure, they cautiously went upstairs. Except for the nauseating smell and the heavy coating of soot everywhere, they discovered that there—fortunately—wasn’t very much damage. Not much, that is, except in Brian’s bedroom, where the window had been broken open. Hundreds of gallons of water had been sprayed against the wall to control the fire’s spread, so the blue shag rug was saturated with black water that squished underfoot as they picked their way carefully through the broken wallboard, checking to see if any of Brian’s clothes and personal possessions had escaped a damaging soaking. The fire had burned through the floor, and they could look down into the kitchen. Luckily, the firemen had gotten to the blaze before it had done much damage up here. The ceiling and roof seemed to be intact.
Dianne cleared her throat, the first sound any of them made as they inspected the room.
“Do you really think someone could have … could have started the fire—I mean, deliberately?” she asked.
She half wanted to believe Rick Anicetti’s suspicion that arson was involved because the thought was nagging at the back of her mind that she might have done something stupid or forgetful that had started the blaze.
Edward shrugged dejectedly, slapping his hands against his legs as he looked around the bedroom. He wrinkled his nose as he sniffed the caustic air. Brian was stooping over beside his desk, sifting through the wet jumble of music magazines, cassette tapes and cases, and other things that had fallen to the floor. Everything was coated with a greasy film of black soot. Brian’s radio/tape player now was nothing but a bubbly, melted plastic mess. When the boy picked it up, water gushed out of the base onto his feet. Uttering a frustrated cry, he straightened up, raised the tape player high over his head, and then dashed it angrily to the floor. The burned plastic housing shattered loudly.
“Goddamn it!” he wailed as he kicked wildly at the remains of his tape player. “Jesus Christ! Goddamn it!”
“Hey, hey! Come on, now! Take it easy,” Edward snapped at him. “We can replace everything you lost—easily.” But when he saw the pale look of despair on his son’s face, his resolve weakened. He moved over to Brian, but he felt curiously reluctant to take the boy in his arms and hug him. They locked eyes, and for a moment neither one of them said anything.
Dianne cleared her throat again, but it did no good; the cloying, chemical taste on her tongue wouldn’t go away. She stepped forward and said, “Well, at least we have one thing to be thankful for. No one was hurt.” Coming from behind the wires in her mouth, her voice sounded strangled and high, paper-thin.
Edward looked at her and forced a smile, but his eyes held an odd, flat glow when he turned back to Brian. It struck her then that, as real and as tangible as this disaster was, he still hadn’t allowed the full impact of it to hit him; it was almost as if he couldn’t … not yet.
“It’s true,” she said a bit more forcefully as she stepped close to Edward and wound her arm around his waist. She wanted to reach out to Brian, too, but something held her back. “Okay, so we have a gigantic mess to clean up and a lot of repairs to do, but so what? What have we lost? I mean—really! Tell me. What have we lost?”
“I’ll tell you what!” Brian shouted as he turned around and glared at her. “I lost plenty! Look at this! Almost everything I brought with me for the summer has been destroyed! I don’t even have any clothes! And all my tapes are destroyed!”
“We can get you new ones,” Edward said, but Brian seemed not to hear him as he bent over, scooped up a handful of melted cassette tapes and cases, and threw them violently against the wall. The plastic shattered and fell to the floor like broken glass. Before either Dianne or Edward could say anything, Brian lunged over to his sodden bed. The bedspread was singed on the edge that had faced the burning wall. He tore off the soot-coated covers and flung them hard against the wall. They hit with a loud squishy sound before plopping like a gigantic wad of Jell-O to the floor. A winding sob sounded deep inside his chest, and his face flushed bright red. Veins swelled in his neck, looking as thick as pencils. For a terrifying instant, Dianne had the impression that the house was still on fire, and that he was standing in the middle of the raging inferno.
Simultaneously, both she and Edward took a step toward him, but then they both shied away, each of them seeming to sense that Brian had to let out his pent-up emotions. The room was a disaster anyway, so why not let him trash it, get everything out of his system? But within seconds, his rage ebbed, and with tears and sweat glistening on his face and arms, he turned to his father, looking for all the world like a little boy who was lost, lonely, and frightened.
“What are we gonna do?” he cried, shaking his hands frantically in front of his face. “Where are we gonna stay? All of my stuff—everything I own—is ruined!” He took a deep breath that rattled loudly in his throat. “What are we gonna do?”
Edward stepped forward and took his son into his arms, pulling him so close his face was, smothered in the crook of his shoulder. As soon as they embraced, Brian let out a long, warbling cry that cut to the core of Dianne’s heart. The boy’s shoulders shook violently as he sobbed while his father continually stroked the back of his head and murmured comforting words. Over Brian’s shoulder, he locked eyes with Dianne.
“There, there,” he said. “Take it easy, Brian. Come on—just take it easy. We—we’ll think of something. Don’t worry. We still have each other.”
Dianne watched them silently, wishing she dared to share their intimacy.
“Well,” she said hollowly, sniffing the air and wrinkling her nose. “We can’t very well stay here tonight.” Her glance flickered toward the view outside the broken window. “I suppose—” Her voice caught for an instant. “We could sleep in your mother’s house … for the time being, anyway.” Her voice sounded so distant and strained, she had the uncanny feeling again that it wasn’t her but someone else speaking in the room.
For just an instant, Edward’s face registered a measure of dulled shock; then he nodded slowly and said, “I … suppose so.” He gave Brian a bracing shake. “I—I think it’s the only sensible alternative.”
The numbing horror of what had happened was compounded for Dianne because she still couldn’t get rid of the gnawing worry that—somehow—she was responsible for it all. As far as she knew, she had been the last one in the house before the fire had started. What had she done? How could she have caused it?
She turned away and looked out the shattered window at the late afternoon sun. Everything outside seemed so calm, so peaceful, as if the world had barely taken notice of their catastrophe. She was amazed at how fast things could change—how a gorgeous summer day could plummet so fast into such a pit of loss and despair. She closed her eyes and tried to mentally reconstruct everything she had done since coming home from the meeting with Dr. Murray. She had been upset about uncovering that horrible childhood memory that there didn’t seem to have been anything else on her mind, but what else was there? What could she have done?
She remembered taking her medication and then making lunch for herself and Edward—a tuna fish sandwich, chips, and an apple for him; pureed vegetables and a diet Pepsi for her. And then—and then …
Oh, shit!
A thought went through her mind like a quick, white slice of lightning. Her face suddenly felt like it was on fire.
I made some coffee for Edward! she thought. And when was it … sometime—days or weeks ago? Sometime recently I left the house with the coffeepot still on when it was empty, and it had gotten hot—red-hot. Was that it? Maybe the coffee maker was defective? Did I leave the pot on? Could that have started the fire?
A cold, clutching sensation worked its way up from her stomach to her chest. Even without going back down to the kitchen to verify it, she knew that the worst of the flames had been to the right of the sink, under the cabinet where she kept the coffeepot. Rick Anicetti had even commented on how badly melted the coffee maker was, as if he suspected but hadn’t wanted to say anything just yet.
Oh, Jesus! Oh, shit! That must have been it!
A wave of nausea swept through her. She took a staggering step toward the window, hoping to catch a breath of fresh air. Neither Edward nor Brian seemed to notice when she covered her mouth with both hands in an attempt to push back the scream that was building up inside her.
That was it! her mind shouted as the soft, whimpering sound vibrated in her throat. Waves of dizziness crashed over her, and she almost collapsed.
I did it!
The thought reverberated in her mind like an echo that steadily diminished but would never entirely fade away.
That was it! … I did it!
That was it! … I did it!
That was it! … I did it!
“I don’t like this idea at all,” Brian said as he rolled onto his side and pulled the bed covers up over his shoulder. Up until a few days ago, he had been confident that he would never have to think about this room again, much less sleep in it; but Jesus Christ! Here he was!
It was well past eleven o’clock at night—almost midnight. The three of them had spent the rest of the daylight hours sorting through their smoky, soot-covered clothes, g
athering a few things to bring over to Edward’s mother’s house. After that, Edward and Brian went into town to pick up a few groceries and to replace Dianne’s medicine, which had been destroyed in the kitchen. Dianne stayed at the house and ran their clothes through the old washing machine and dryer, hoping to get rid of the cloying, smoky smell. For a while there, she thought the old Maytag washer was going to give up the ghost, but it eventually got the job done.
Around nine o’clock, they had a quick supper of submarine sandwiches and pureed food for Dianne. Then they spent the rest of the evening trying to get the house into some kind of livable order. It smelled musty and old after being closed up for the two months following Evelyn Fraser’s death. Edward mentioned a few times how grateful he was that he hadn’t had the electricity and water shut off. Dianne opened all the windows to air the place out and did some dusting while Edward ran the old Hoover vacuum around, but it seemed as if all they succeeded in doing was stir up more dust.
Conversation throughout the evening was sparse. All of them were exhausted and depressed by the recent turn of events. It was almost as if each of them had to retreat into themselves to process what had happened before they could speak about it with each other. Finally, around ten o’clock, they decided to call it a day. Each of them took a quick shower to wash away the clinging smell of smoke from their skin. Around eleven-thirty, Edward went upstairs to settle Brian into bed.
Brian was trying his best to relax, but as sleepy as he was, he couldn’t get it out of his mind that this was the same bed he had slept in the last time he stayed here—probably the same sheets, blankets, and pillow, too. That had been the night he first heard about Dianne’s accident and the same night his grandmother—the Old Witch Lady!—had the heart attack that had finally killed her.
