Down in Flames

by P. W. Catanese

  “Angela!” called Fiasco. “I think you should come talk to your friend.”

  Angela arched an eyebrow at Donny, and then they both hurried back to where Carlos stood. Carlos looked at his hands as they trembled. His face was slick with perspiration.

  “What’s wrong? Is that because you touched the soul?” Donny asked.

  Carlos shook his head. “No. Something is coming.” His eyes bulged as he looked at Angela. “It’s close. I can feel it even though you and Fiasco are here. Very strong. Muy malo.”

  Angela put her hands on her hips. “One thing, or lots of things?”

  Carlos raised a finger. “One. One very bad thing.”

  “Not a problem,” Angela said. She smiled at Fiasco. “We’re two bad things.”

  Donny glanced at the door that blocked the entrance, with the massive slabs of thick concrete chained to it. Angela had struggled to move it, and Fiasco had only done it with great effort. Just how strong was this thing? He looked at Fiasco and saw the big fellow staring upward.

  There were cracks in the ceiling where moonlight shone through. That’s not just the ceiling, Donny thought. It’s the floor of the rooms above. Fiasco put a finger to his lips, a signal to be quiet. Carlos looked up, and his headlamp lit the ceiling, but Fiasco reached over and blocked the light. Donny covered the beam of his flashlight with one hand, leaving only the reddish glow where it shone through his skin.

  Now that it was dark, the moonlit cracks were easier to see. Donny heard the creak of floorboards and the shuffle of feet. Something blocked the moonlight in one of the cracks. And then another, and another. Whatever was up there was moving across the floor.

  Donny shuddered when he realized where it was going. It was headed toward the stairs that led to this basement room.

  CHAPTER 25

  Nowhere to hide,” Carlos said in a shaky voice. “There’s nowhere to hide!”

  “Put a sock in it, Carlos,” Angela hissed. Donny looked up and down the long room. It was almost bare except for the shelves on one wall. Carlos was right—there was nowhere to take cover.

  “Here’s what we’re gonna do,” Angela said. “We get behind the door and stay there when it opens. I want this thing to come in where we can nab it. We do not want it getting away.”

  Donny loved the idea of this thing getting away, especially if it never came down the stairs in the first place. But all he could do was follow Angela and Fiasco as they stood behind the door and waited to pounce. Carlos was behind him, fiercely gripping Donny’s shoulder.

  “May I suggest we douse the lights?” Fiasco asked. Donny slid the button on his flashlight but kept his thumb there, ready to flip the light back on. Carlos covered the bulb of his headlamp with a shaky hand.

  Donny wondered what he was supposed to do. Angela hadn’t given him anything to fight with. The flashlight wouldn’t do much damage. A hand grenade would be nice, Donny thought.

  Angela had done it again. She’d put his life in jeopardy, and he wondered if he’d escape this one unscathed, or even in one piece.

  He heard steps on the stairs on the other side of the door. The thing didn’t seem to know they were there, because it wasn’t trying to be stealthy, from the sound of it. Or maybe it doesn’t care, Donny thought. That would be worse.

  He heard something else: The plink of glass against glass. More of those jars, filled with souls, he guessed.

  The steps grew louder and then finally stopped. A new sound slipped through the narrow gaps between the door and the frame. A moist, ragged breathing. Then Donny heard rustling cloth and more clinking glass. In the darkness he could imagine what was happening: a bag of those jars had been set on the floor at the foot of the stairs. What he couldn’t imagine was what sort of creature had put them down.

  His eyes adjusted to the dim traces of moonlight that filtered into the room. He bit off a scream as spidery fingertips emerged through the gaps on both sides of the door and gripped the edges. Both sets of fingers were at the level of Fiasco’s head. Whatever this thing was, it was tall. Donny had still held on to some hope that they were dealing with a human, but not any longer.

  When Fiasco had moved the door, he’d shoved it hard, like a football player hitting a tackling sled. This creature just pushed it inward as if it were on wheels. The stone scraped across the floor. Donny was glad it was noisy, because Carlos let out a high-pitched whimper that only Donny could hear over the grinding of concrete.

  The door swung to one side, even though it wasn’t hinged. The four of them angled along with the door as it turned, shifting sideways to stay in line and out of sight. Donny thought the sight would have been comical if the predicament weren’t so horrifying. Angela turned around to check on the rest of them. From the grin on her face, Donny would have thought this was a surprise party, not an ambush on a powerful, malevolent creature.

  The door stopped moving once the threshold was fully exposed. Clinking sounds came again from the other side—the sack of jars being lifted once more. Donny held his breath. Angela crouched like a tiger ready to spring. Fiasco bent low and flexed his fingers.

  The thing stepped into the room but was still mostly out of sight behind the door. Donny caught a glimpse of its shoulder—something boney with ragged edges—and then heard the sack of jars being set down again, this time on the inside of the room. If it put the sack down, his mind screamed, it’s going to come around to push the door closed!

  Which is exactly what it did.

  CHAPTER 26

  Carlos took his hands off the headlamp, and a beam of light struck the creature in the face. It froze and glared down from a height of at least eight feet. Time seemed to stop for a moment, along with Donny’s heart.

  Donny thought he’d opened his mouth to scream, but a gasp came out instead. There was something familiar about this thing.

  “Golly gee!” Angela shouted. “It’s a ferryman!”

  Until that moment, Donny had only seen ferrymen on the barges that brought the dead to Sulfur, and among the Ferryman King’s company. This one didn’t wear the robes that made ferrymen resemble the classic version of the Grim Reaper. Stripped of the robe, it was clad in ancient, moldering rags that had fused to its mummified skin. This gave the already gaunt ferryman an even more lanky, skeletal, and horrifying appearance.

  Donny had only an instant to absorb that information. Then the suspended moment ended, and the fight began.

  The ferryman’s long arm shot out and struck Angela with the heel of a bony hand. She was launched backward into Fiasco, who slammed into Donny, who slammed into Carlos, and the four of them tumbled like bowling pins.

  The light from Carlos’s headlamp swung wildly as he rolled. Fiasco had fallen hard on top of Donny. It squeezed the breath from his chest and nearly crushed his bones. The weight was off him just as suddenly, as the big fellow shot nimbly to his feet. Donny rolled onto his stomach and looked up, trying to suck air back into his lungs.

  Angela leaped to her feet. She pointed at the ferryman. “You’re in a lot of trouble, buster!”

  The ferryman hissed. His long arm whipped forward again, and he clutched the front of Angela’s shirt. He hurled her with absurd strength into the air, so high that she struck the ceiling above. As she fell, pieces of old wood and dust rained after her. She landed roughly on her side and twisted in pain. Her arm was bent at a strange angle and surely broken. The woozy look on her face was a shock to Donny. He had never seen her injured before, and had thought of her as nearly indestructible.

  The ferryman reached for a weapon that was slung at his waspish waist—a short-handled scythe with a crescent blade big enough to slice a man in half. Fiasco charged before the ferryman raised the weapon. The ferryman leaned back, lifted a leg, and unleashed a powerful kick. Fiasco was suddenly a blur as he whooshed over Donny’s head and straight into one of the shelves of jars. There was a hailstorm of dark glass, and the entire shelf toppled over and buried Fiasco. A twinkling cloud of freed souls drifted
from the wreckage.

  Somehow Donny still had the flashlight in his grip, his thumb on the button. As he rose to his knees, he slid the button forward and aimed the beam at the ferryman’s face. He didn’t know what good it would do—blind the monstrous being for a moment, perhaps. The awful face was spotlit in the dim room. The eyes glared from deep within hollow sockets, the only moist things on an arid face. A skeletal mouth grinned horribly. Up went the arm, wielding the wicked blade. It glittered in the dark, poised to strike.

  Carlos stepped in front of Donny and hurled a jar at the awful face. The ferryman’s other hand flashed up and caught the vessel neatly before it struck. Carlos pulled Donny to his feet and yanked him aside as the blade swept down in a terrible arc. Donny heard the weapon whistle through air, and then an awful sound of tearing fabric. Carlos cried out in pain. He clenched his teeth and staggered, a hand pressed against his side. “Carlos!” shouted Donny.

  Dark laughter bubbled from deep inside the ferryman’s throat. Donny put his arm around Carlos and helped him move. A dark stain spread around the tear in Carlos’s shirt, and redness oozed between his fingers. It only took one step of the ferryman’s stiltlike legs for him to reach them. The ferryman’s free hand palmed the top of Carlos’s head and tilted it back to bare the neck. The hand with the blade prepared to strike.

  Behind the ferryman, the toppled shelf erupted. Something roared up from the glass and wood and spread its massive arms wide. It was Fiasco—but not in the human form Donny had come to know. This was a raging beast clad in bony plates. Fiasco was huge as a man, but as a demon he was even more enormous and breathtaking to behold, like a cross between a dinosaur and a grizzly bear. His paint-splattered shirt was ripped open around his barrel chest, and the thighs of his pants had split. A single lethal horn jutted from his forehead, and his eyes blazed with an orange inner flame. He bellowed and charged, pulverizing wood and glass under his beach sandals.

  Before Fiasco arrived, the ferryman had tried to slash his blade down on Carlos’s exposed neck—and probably slice through to take Donny’s head as well—but Angela sprang up, recovered from her daze. Her wounded arm hung limp by her side, but she hooked her good arm inside the ferryman’s elbow and prevented the strike.

  Fiasco’s shoulder hit the ferryman with the force of a runaway train. The three of them, Angela, Fiasco, and the gaunt ferryman, flew into a wooden pillar and broke it like a breadstick. Part of the floor above collapsed and rained onto their shoulders. Angela rolled to one side, and Fiasco lifted his hands to shield his head.

  The ferryman looked up and spotted the gap that had been opened. He scrambled to his feet and leaped, meaning to jump straight through and escape. But Fiasco seized his ankle and whipped him back down. As the ferryman slammed into the floor, he swung his blade again. It bit into the hard plates on Fiasco’s thigh and stuck there.

  Fiasco, so filled with humor and cheer in human form, was a rampaging monster in his demon state. He plucked the blade from his thigh and flung it to the other end of the room. Steam whistled from where the blade had bit. The ferryman leaped to his feet again, and Fiasco grabbed him by the shoulders.

  “Don’t kill him, Fiasco!” Angela cried out. If Fiasco heard those words, he did not show it. He snarled and bull-rushed the ferryman toward the concrete wall nearby, and then lowered his horn into the ferryman’s chest. The impact shook dust from the rafters. Donny heard Fiasco’s horn strike the concrete, all the way through the other side of the ferryman.

  The skeletal creature squealed, a sound so piercing and dreadful that Donny clapped his hands over his ears. Fiasco pried his horn from the ferryman’s chest. The ferryman slid down the wall and came to rest, his feet splayed. His spidery hands tried to cover the gaping hole that Fiasco had made. Donny beamed his flashlight there, and saw hot mist flooding out of the wound. The ferryman stared up at Fiasco, his eyes wild and frightened. He shivered, and his long gray teeth clacked together. Dust flew from his throat as he coughed.

  Angela limped toward the fallen ferryman, cradling her arm. “Boy, Fiasco, you really put a hurt on him.”

  Fiasco crunched his enormous hands into fists. His breath hissed furiously through his flared nostrils, and he turned toward Angela and growled. He looked ready to do more damage to anyone in the vicinity.

  “Easy, sweet pea.” Angela took a step back. “You did great. Come back to me now, okay? Why don’t you go find your gold band and put it on?”

  Donny glanced at Fiasco’s ankle. The gold band that was normally around his sock was missing. Fiasco made a concentrated effort to contain his rage. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. Then he walked toward the fallen shelf and searched the debris for the band that would restore him to his human form.

  Donny worried for a moment that the ferryman might have some fight left in him, but the gaunt figure toppled over until his shoulder was on the floor and his head hung at an awkward angle. Angela kneeled in front of him, just out of reach of the long arms and legs. “Looks like the fire’s going out of you, old man,” she said. She pointed at the vapor wafting from the wound. “Why don’t you tell me what this is all about? Where do you go on the other side of that fire? Are you working alone, or did someone put you up to this? I’ll try to help you. All you have to do is talk.”

  The ferryman twitched, and his limbs jerked as if some mad puppeteer were tugging his strings. The jaw opened and shut with frightening speed, and the teeth slammed together until they finally cracked and tumbled loose. He let out a great wheeze as dust and mist flowed from his mouth and his wound. Then every part of his lanky form broke loose, clattering together and finally collapsing into silence. All that remained was a lifeless pile of bones covered with rags.

  “Well, phooey,” Angela said. “He didn’t tell us anything.”

  Carlos groaned, and Donny suddenly remembered. “Carlos is hurt!” he cried.

  “Huh?” Angela said, turning to look. Carlos was on his knees, his face pale and his teeth clamped tight. He pressed his hand against the slash that started on his side and went halfway across his belly. Blood streamed between his fingers.

  “Call 911,” Carlos managed to get out, gasping.

  “Meaning what, exactly?” Angela asked.

  “Meaning he needs a doctor right now!” Donny snapped. The ferocity in his voice made Angela’s head spin toward him.

  Fiasco swooped in, human once more. The enormous beard was gone, revealing an anvil of a chin below. Fiasco kneeled beside Carlos, cradled him like a baby, and lifted him. Carlos winced and groaned. “To the car,” Fiasco said. “I know where the hospital is.”

  Donny lit the way with his flashlight as they raced upstairs, out of the old building, and back to the rented car. Fiasco laid Carlos gently across the backseat.

  “I can drive,” Angela said.

  Carlos’s head popped up. “No!” he said weakly. “She cannot drive! I will be dead for sure.” He had pulled the keys from his pocket but now clutched them to his chest, away from Angela’s reach.

  “I can drive a little,” Fiasco said. “I think.”

  “That has to be better than her,” Carlos said, and gasped. He held the keys out for Fiasco.

  “Take my scooter back,” Fiasco said as he wedged his bulk into the driver’s seat, his head brushing the ceiling. He tossed a keychain to Angela.

  Donny stood by the open rear door. “You’ll be okay,” he told Carlos, trying to sound confident. Carlos had shut his eyes, and he barely responded except to nod and lick his lips. Donny gulped and closed the door.

  “Which one’s the gas?” Fiasco shouted.

  “The square one on the left,” Angela said.

  “No, it isn’t,” said Donny. Even he knew that. “It’s the long skinny one on the right!” He started to wonder if he should be the driver, even though he’d never driven before. Carlos raised one bloody hand to draw a cross in the air over his chest. “Maybe I should go with you!” Donny called out, but Fiasco didn’t hear him as t
he engine blasted to life, getting way too much gas.

  The car lurched backward and nearly spilled Carlos off the backseat. Fiasco grimaced and shifted from reverse to forward. The car bolted ahead, Carlos thumping into the backrest. From the way the vehicle turned the corner, the brake lights on and the wheels squealing, Donny was pretty sure that Fiasco had his huge feet on the gas and the brake at the same time.

  “Hey, Fiasco’s driving pretty well,” Angela said.

  Donny just stared at her. “Carlos is really hurt.”

  “Oh, come on. It was just a scratch.”

  Donny’s jaw sagged. “Just a scratch? It was deep, Angela. He might bleed to death. Don’t you even know that? Carlos could die.”

  “You’re so dramatic. They’ll just sew him back up, right? Put more blood in him?”

  Donny was dumbstruck. He stared at her, amazed and horrified. Angela Obscura might look perfectly human, but she wasn’t human at all, and that fact was now completely laid bare. She had no real regard for the frailty and mortality of human beings. She couldn’t even relate.

  He spoke again, his tone colder than ice. “Carlos got hurt because he saved me. He was so scared of that thing, but when it came after us, he put himself in front of me. And now he might die, and I don’t think you really care.”

  She waved the back of her hand at him. “Pshaw. Betcha he doesn’t. Come on. We have to clean up down there. Then I’ll take you back to the hotel.”

  Donny fumed in silence as they returned to the depths of the old building. When they were downstairs, Angela flexed her wounded arm and grimaced. “Hang on a sec,” she said. She pulled the gold bracelet off her gloved wrist, triggering the transformation to her demon form.

  “Why are you doing that?” Donny asked. He was angry but still curious.

  “Transforming will heal an injury if it’s not too bad,” she said. She arched her neck as the skin there turned to scales. The hair fell away from her scalp and rained onto the floor. When the change was complete, she straightened her arm completely. “Much better. One more change will do, but it’s exhausting to do them too close together. Come on. Help me pop the rest of the lids off these jars, will you?”