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UNSPEAKABLE
FIRE SPIRIT
Graham Masterton
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First world edition published 2010
in Great Britain and in the USA by
SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of
9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.
Copyright © 2010 by Graham Masterton.
All rights reserved.
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Masterton, Graham.
Fire Spirit.
1. Arson investigation–Fiction. 2. Genetic disorders in children–Fiction. 3. Horror tales.
I. Title
823.9'14-dc22
ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-100-2 (ePub)
ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-6875-6 (cased)
ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-239-0 (trade paper)
Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.
This ebook produced by
Palimpsest Book Production Limited,
Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.
ONE
They caught her in the parking lot of Casey’s General Store, as she was stowing her shopping in the trunk of her car. It was dark, and raining, and a blustery wind was blowing, so she didn’t hear them coming up behind her.
One of them seized her around the neck and clamped his hand over her mouth. She let out a muffled whinny of shock, like a young antelope being pulled down by a lion, but then he dragged her violently backward, away from her car, so that she dropped her bag and her shopping scattered across the ground.
She twisted and struggled, but he was much too strong for her. He forced her across the asphalt, her feet dancing through the puddles, until they reached a black panel van that was parked in the darkest corner of the parking lot, under a broken floodlight.
Another man banged open the van’s rear doors. He was wearing a mask, bone-white and totally expressionless. Then yet another man came into her line of sight. He, too, was wearing the same kind of mask, except that his mask was scowling. He held up what looked like a twisted black bandanna in front of her face.
‘Listen to me, young lady,’ said the man who was holding her around the neck. His voice was thick and breathy, as if he had asthma, or a heavy cold. ‘We’re going to gag you. While we do that, I recommend that you don’t try screaming, OK? If you do, we’ll hurt you, and that’s a promise.’
She tried to jerk her head from side to side, but the man’s hand was gripping her jaw so hard that she could barely move it. He was wearing a leather glove and it tasted new and sour.
‘Are you going to keep still?’ he asked her. ‘We don’t want to hurt you, but we will if we have to.’
‘Mmfh!’ she protested. She could only breathe in short, shallow snorts and her heart was thumping painfully hard against her ribcage. But she remembered what she had been taught at self-defense classes: if you stand no chance of fighting your way out, it’s always safer to give in. The man lifted his hand an inch away from her mouth, let it hover for a moment, and when she didn’t scream he said, ‘Good girl, excellent.’
The scowling man immediately pulled the bandanna between her jaws and tied it in two knots behind the back of her head. She swallowed saliva and almost choked herself.
‘Is that hurting you?’ asked the first man. She nodded, and made a mewling noise, to tell him that it was, but all he said was, ‘Good. Excellent.’
The expressionless man produced a pair of black nylon handcuffs and looped them around her wrists, zipping them tight. Then the three of them took hold of her together and heaved her bodily on to a blanket in the back of the van. She kicked out at them, catching the scowling man hard in the left hip. He didn’t say a word, but roughly pushed her flat on to the floor and seized her ankles, so that the expressionless man could fasten them together with another pair of nylon restraints. The two of them pulled the blanket right over her, and slammed the doors shut. Seconds later, the van’s engine started up and it slewed backward out of its parking space. She felt it jolt over the speed-hump across the entrance to the parking lot, and then veer sharply to the left.
She lay in darkness, half-stifled by the blanket, swallowing and swallowing because of the gag. At first she was too shocked to cry. She found it almost impossible to believe that this was actually happening. When she had walked out of Casey’s she had been worrying if she had enough crunchy peanut butter at home. Now she didn’t know if she was going to live or die.
The van swerved right, and then left, and then right again, and each time she was rolled from one side of the floor to the other.
She couldn’t help thinking about her car, with its trunk still wide open and her keys dangling in the door. And then she thought about Heidi and Joanna, who would be home from school in less than twenty minutes. How were they going to get into the house? And who would take care of them if anything happened to her?
How would Daniel take the news? Maybe Daniel didn’t love her any more, but they had been married for seven-and-a-half years, and they were still close friends.
The van drove on and on, bumping and swaying, and she began to grow increasingly panicky and claustrophobic. The blanket was coarse and heavy and reeked of cigarette smoke and she found it difficult to breathe. Her jaws ached from the gag, and the nylon restraints were cutting into her wrists and ankles. Her right shoulder was bruised from hitting one of the wheel-arches when she rolled over, and every time the van took a left turn she hit it again.
Now her eyes filled up with tears, and she started to make a thin, repetitive squeaking sound in the back of her throat. She couldn’t think why these three men had taken her, or what they could possibly want. It couldn’t be for money. Daniel had his own insurance business, but he wasn’t wealthy, and neither were her parents.
She closed her eyes so that her wet eyelashes stuck together and she thought of a prayer. Dear Virgin Mary please please protect me from harm. Dear Virgin Mary please don’t let these men hurt me. I don’t want to die. Dear Virgin Mary all I want is to go home and hold my children close to me.
The van slowed, and turned, and jolted up and down, and then came to a stop. She lay under the blanket, listening. She heard men’s voices, although she couldn’t distinguish what they were sayin
g to each other. Then she heard the van’s front doors open, and felt the suspension rocking as the men climbed out.
There was more conversation, and then the rear doors opened. One of the men leaned over her and pulled the blanket away from her face. It was the expressionless man.
‘So sorry for the bumpy ride,’ he said, but his mouth was only a horizontal slit cut into his mask and so she couldn’t tell if he meant it. The only distinctive sound she heard was the way he said ‘sho shorry’, with a strong South Philly accent.
‘Hurry it up for Chrissakes,’ said the thick-voiced man who had first grabbed hold of her. They pulled her by her ankle restraints out of the back of the van and stood her up on her feet, holding her upper arms to keep her from falling over. Now she saw the thick-voiced man face-to-face for the first time. He was wearing a mask, too, but his mask was laughing. A mad, hysterical laugh, like The Joker.
She twisted her head around, trying to see where she was. The van had parked in the front driveway of a pale green two-story house on some long, straight suburban street which she didn’t recognize. There was nobody else in sight. The glistening-wet sidewalks were deserted and the trees were thrashing in the wind with a noise like the ocean.
The scowling man dug his hands under her armpits, while the expressionless man grasped her ankles. Together they lifted her up and carried her toward the house, both of them shuffling crabwise. They climbed the front steps on to the porch, while the laughing man took out his keys and opened the front door.
‘Welcome,’ he said, then coughed, and had to stand still for a moment with his fist pressed against his mouth. When he had recovered, he said, ‘Come along in.’
Inside, the house was gloomy and smelled of damp. The laughing man held the front door open while his companions carried her into the hallway and stood her up on her feet again. He went across to an ugly little plywood side-table and switched on a lamp with a naked bulb in it, so that the hallway was filled with harsh white light. Then he closed the front door, and bolt edit, top and bottom.
She stared up at him, her eyes wide. He came close to her and tilted up her chin with his leather-gloved hand.
‘Hey, are you afraid?’ he asked her, in his catarrhal voice. ‘There’s nothing worse than feeling helpless, is there? Nothing worse than not knowing what’s going to happen to you, neither.’
She looked around, trying to see if there was any other way out. There was a half-open door on her right-hand side, but that looked as if it led only to a living-room. At the far end of the hallway there was another door, blocked with a stack of dining chairs and an ironing-board.
‘Come on through,’ said the laughing man. He opened the living-room door and went inside, and the other two men gripped her upper arms and forced her to hop and stumble after him. The living-room was at least thirty feet long, with one wall painted maroon and the other three cream. The smell of damp was just as strong as it had been in the hallway, only there were other smells, too – a brown smell, like dried blood; and Raid fly-spray; and curdled milk; and stale cigarette smoke.
On the opposite side of the room there was a rough stone fireplace, its grate clogged with half-burned newspaper and cigarette butts. Above it hung a framed print of a forest in fall. What she found most disturbing, though, was the furniture, what there was of it. Four mismatched armchairs with deeply-soiled upholstery were arranged in each of the four corners of the room, around a stringy, worn-out rug. But in the center of the rug lay a large mattress with striped ticking, and countless stains in the middle of it, some dark, some pale, some that were no more than spatters, others that looked like aerial photographs of dried lake-beds.
The laughing man laid a hand on her shoulder and gave her a pat. ‘It all comes down to this, in the end. Sooner or later, we all end up in hell.’
He nodded to the scowling man, who reached up and loosened the knots at the back of her head. The laughing man tugged the bandanna out of her mouth and dropped it on to the floor. She didn’t scream, although she felt like it. She realized that if he had taken the gag off, there was no chance that anybody could hear her. She had seen the empty streets outside. On a wild, wet evening like this, everybody would be sitting indoors in their La-Z-Boys, with a can of beer and a pepperoni pizza and their TV turned up loud.
The expressionless man came forward and took out a pair of electrician’s pliers. He knelt in front of her and cut the nylon restraints around her ankles, and then cut her wrists free. This was even more frightening. If they were prepared to take off her restraints, they must be completely confident that she couldn’t escape.
She wiped her mouth on the sleeve of her cable-knit sweater. She looked at the three men in turn, trying to see their eyes through the holes in their masks, trying to detect some humanity. But all she could see in each of them was a glitter, like the glitter of cockroaches underneath a sink.
‘You need to let me go,’ she told them, with a catch in her throat.
The laughing man slowly shook his head from side to side.
‘That isn’t an option, I’m afraid. It’s almost five already and we’re running right out of time.’
‘You can’t keep me here! What do you want me for? My neighbor’s expecting me back at five. If I don’t show up, she’ll call the police!’
‘Well, yes, I expect she will. But the police won’t never find you.’ He sniffed behind his mask. ‘Not until it’s too late, anyhow.’
‘Please,’ she said, ‘you have to let me go. I don’t have very much money, but if it’s money you want . . .’
The laughing man kept on shaking his head. ‘What you can give us, it’s worth much more than money, let me reassure you of that. It’s priceless.’
‘What is it then?’ she demanded, more shrilly than she had meant to. ‘Is it sex you want? Do you want to rape me?’
‘Is that an invitation?’ put in the scowling man. The expressionless man turned his face away, and let out a grunting noise that could have been a laugh.
‘Ever hear of ex-orcism?’ asked the laughing man.
‘Of course I’ve heard of exorcism,’ she retorted. Her voice was trembling but she was beginning to grow angry. ‘What the hell does exorcism have to do with me? I’m just an ordinary woman and a mother and all I want to do is go home and cook my children’s supper for them. If you want a damned exorcism, why don’t you call for a priest?’
‘Because it ain’t no demon that needs to be exorcized, which is what priests do.’
‘Then what? And why do you need me?’
‘Because you’re an ordinary woman and a mother and all you want to do is go home and cook your children’s supper for them. You have all of the right qualifications. More than that, though, you look just right. Or nearly right, anyhow. Near as dammit.’
He crossed the room and picked up a red piece of cloth that had been hanging over the back of one of the armchairs. He held it up in both hands and she could see that it was a cheap red sleeveless dress.
‘Why are you showing me that?’
‘Because I want you to put it on.’
‘What? Why?’
‘Because it’s part of the exorcism. Can’t have an exorcism without all the required accoutry-ments, can we?’
She stayed where she was, breathing deeply, with her arms by her sides. ‘You really need to let me go,’ she repeated.
The laughing man walked back toward her. He stood so close that she could hear the phlegm crackling in his sinuses as he breathed.
‘We don’t want to hurt you, but I assure you we will, unless you do what we tell you.’ He held out the dress. ‘There you are. It should fit you, pretty much.’
She looked up at him and then glanced at the other two men. ‘Where can I change?’
‘Right here. Right in front of us. That’s part of the proceedings, too.’
She took the dress and hung it over the arm of the chair that was next to her. Then, very slowly, she pulled down the zipper of her quilted navy-blue
squall. The three men stood quite still, watching her. She took off her squall and hung it on the chair next to the dress.
‘You don’t have to take for ever,’ said the laughing man.
‘What do you want?’ she screamed at him. ‘Just tell me what you want!’
‘Hey, don’t get your panties in a bunch. You’re already doing it. You’re already doing what we want. We wouldn’t object if you did it a little quicker, that’s all.’
In spite of her determination not to be intimidated, tears began to slide freely down her cheeks. She bent over and pulled down the zippers at the sides of her brown leather boots, and took them off. Then she crossed her arms and lifted her oatmeal-colored sweater over her head.
‘Keep going,’ said the laughing man. ‘Brassiere off, too.’ The lisping old-fashioned way he said ‘brassiere’ only increased her feeling of dread.
She shook her head. ‘No.’
‘Brassiere off, too, or we’ll cut it off, and we won’t be too careful.’
She reached behind her and unfastened the catch of her bra. She closed her eyes as she took it off, and tried to imagine that this was nothing but a bad dream, and that she wasn’t here at all.
‘Come on. Skirt, too,’ the laughing man ordered her.
She opened her eyes and she was still in the gloomy living-room, with the three masked men still watching her. With shaking fingers, she unbuttoned her skirt at the side, and pulled down the zipper of that, too. She stepped out of it, so that she was wearing nothing now but her pantyhose and her white lace panties. Although the room was so cold, she suddenly felt hot with fear and embarrassment.
‘We’re waiting,’ said the laughing man. ‘We don’t have the patience of Job, you know.’
‘Please,’ she wept. ‘I’ll do anything.’
‘You bet your sweet bippy you will. Now come on, get on with it. Get them pantyhose off, and those pretty little panties, too.’
She did as she was told, and now she was naked.
‘Nicely trimmed topiary there,’ said the laughing man, and the expressionless man let out another grunt of amusement. ‘Now how about putting on that dress?’
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