by Hixon, Wayne
Jacob felt defeated and lost and, at that moment, he felt very very afraid of death.
Thirty-six
Rachel backed away from the burning house, amazed at how quickly it went up. The smoke furled toward the purple moonlight-filled sky and she felt a deep sinking inside of herself.
Was Jacob dead?
The seriousness of what they were doing finally hit her. She had to realize it was entirely possible that Jacob was dead. That she was all alone now. If Jacob was really gone, she wondered what her part in this was. Coming here, they were so much a part of each other it was like they were a team. Coming here in the company of Jacob made it seem like it made sense, it felt like, together, they could accomplish something. Standing out here in the dark, alone, watching the burning house, Rachel thought it felt more like suicide. And that didn’t make any sense at all. Part of her wanted to get in Jacob’s car and drive back home, curl up in her bed, and wait for the nightmare to end. If Jacob was dead, she didn’t really know if she wanted to continue living. If Jacob was dead, then part of her was already dead along with him. She could wait for the Devils to come and get her and if they did come for her then it wouldn’t really matter. She wouldn’t go with them but she wouldn’t have anything to lose. She would fight them to the death.
She knew she couldn’t think like that. If she thought like that then it jeopardized everything. This wasn’t just about her and Jacob. After what had happened the first time, she grew to believe all of the stories she had heard about the Devils; all the atrocities, all of their false promises. Before that, she had seen the destruction wrought by them without realizing what it was she was seeing.
The students in her classes. All of the ones who had mysteriously moved or died tragically. Those, she now knew, were not accidents, they were not chance happenings. And if they were chance happenings the only chance involved in it was the students’ meeting with the Devils. She desperately wanted to stop that. She wanted to stop that and she wanted to be able to live out her remaining years without the constant fear of the Devils. At least the other residents of Lynchville had the comfort of telling themselves the Devils were just a legend, that they weren’t real. But Rachel knew the truth and it was the truth that provided her with all of those grim waking nightmares.
She continued walking until she reached the top of the hill. She opened the door to Jacob’s car. His cigarettes lay on the console between the front seats, under the emergency brake handle. She reached in and pulled one from the pack, pushing in the car lighter, staring absently into the night while it heated up. Once heated, it clicked out, causing her to jump. Touching the lighter to the tip of the cigarette, she inhaled deeply. Tired, she sat down in the driver’s seat.
What a sad night it had been so far. Rain was probably dead. Jacob was probably dead and she felt a hopeless lack of accomplishment.
What had they come here to do, anyway?
Did they really think they were going to march up to some bad people and stop them from doing whatever it was they were doing? And who were the bad people anyway? How many of them were there?
These were all questions Rachel thought they should have asked themselves before coming. They would have probably figured out they shouldn’t have come at all. If Lynchville had existed for a couple hundred years under the shadow of the Devils, it would survive for a couple hundred more.
The first time, they had acted in defense and had managed to get away from two guys who had been completely transformed. Had, in fact, managed to successfully destroy them. This time, she didn’t really know what it was. But they had wanted her. The Devils had wanted her and she couldn’t really figure out why unless it was to destroy her completely and she didn’t really know why they would want to do that. It wasn’t like she was any kind of threat to them. She just wanted to forget about them. That was why she buried herself in school and work and Jacob. So she didn’t have to think about them.
Unless she contained something that frightened them. Unless she was, in some way, every bit as powerful as they were.
Tonight was the first night she had used the healing on any human other than herself. She wasn’t even really sure it would work. She had always thought it could have been her imagination more than anything. The only things she had ever made go away were a few cuts she had received from kitchen accidents and general clumsiness. And then there was the cat… Jesus, that felt so long ago. It seemed like a dream or a prelude to a nightmare.
But why would the Devils be afraid of her powers to heal? There wasn’t anything destructive in that. What was she going to do? Heal them to death?
She thought about that. It almost made her laugh. But then she thought maybe it wasn’t a joke. What if they were afraid of being healed?
Or what if she could heal all the people they had hurt and destroyed? Is that what they were afraid of?
But she did have a destructive power. One she tried never to think about. Even experimenting with it terrified her. It was that ability to reach into a person’s mind, to make them see and do things. She was afraid, if she used that ability too much, she would lose control of it, do it subconsciously. Hell, she could be the reason for Jacob thinking he was going insane. It would come as no great surprise to her that the person she spent the most time around was also the most terrified, depressed, and suicidal individual she knew.
Now she wished she had experimented with that ability even more. She wished she had found a way to strengthen it and train it. Maybe she could have stopped the wolves from carrying Rain off. Maybe she could have commanded Jacob to turn around and come back to her as soon as she saw what was happening.
She had a hard time imagining the Devils being afraid of anything. She thought that she and Jacob were more of an inconvenience. If that was the case, then they already had Jacob out of the way and she guessed they would come after her next. That was the next logical step. And it made her even more afraid to be sitting in the car with absolutely no way to physically defend herself if something tried to attack her.
What if the wolves came back?
What if it was something else, something worse?
She exhaled the smoke from the last drag of her cigarette and tossed it out into the dewy grass. She watched it, nearly hypnotized, until the last of its fire winked out.
She had to find something. She had to find something or she had to get the fuck out of there.
It was all so maddening. Here she sat in the middle of the woods, in the middle of nowhere, land spread out everywhere before her, and she had never felt so claustrophobic in her life. She felt trapped. Like she was being forced to stay there until something came after her. If she ran, that would be too much like abandoning Jacob although, looking at the house as it burned, pieces of it collapsing, Rachel didn’t see how Jacob could possibly be alive.
There had to be something, she thought. Maybe in the trunk.
She pressed the little button in the door until she heard the distant click of the trunk unlocking. Rising from the seat, she realized exactly how tired she was, how much she would like to just crawl into the backseat and take a little nap. But she couldn’t. There wouldn’t be any rest for her until this was all over and she knew that. She walked around to the back of the trunk and raised the lid. The light didn’t work. Figures. She searched the trunk’s dark confines.
For a relatively messy person, Jacob had a remarkably clean trunk. That didn’t really surprise her. She didn’t even know why he owned a car. He never drove, unless it was to come and pick her up so they could go someplace. When by himself, she was pretty sure the only place he went was the gas station on the corner to buy beer and cigarettes.
Her hand found something cold, a can of some kind, and she brought it out of the trunk, trying to figure out what it was.
It was a can of Quick Fix Tire Sealant, some substance you put into your tire when it had a slow leak. Rachel went back to the driver’s seat, sat down and flipped on the map lights.
She had
never wanted something to be dangerously flammable more in her life.
Reading the big, boldfaced warning on the side of the can she found that, indeed, this product was highly flammable. That was even better than plain old flammable, she thought.
Now she would be in luck if the only lighter besides the car’s wasn’t in Jacob’s pocket. She flipped open the console between the seats.
And couldn’t believe her luck.
It was like, when the world ended, Jacob wanted to make sure he had plenty of lighters. There had to be at least a dozen of them in there. All different colors and sizes and brands. She picked out an orange Bic because orange was the color of fire.
She held the lighter in her left hand, far in front of her face, shaking the can of tire sealant in her right. Then she flicked the lighter, holding the nozzle of the can about an inch away from it. She pressed the tab at the top of the can quickly, she didn’t want to waste any of it, hoping the can did not explode in her face. The sight of the stream of fire shooting out from the can made her nearly giddy.
Now she had a weapon of sorts, a mini-flamethrower.
She sat in the car, staring at the burning house and waiting for all of the bad things to come. Sitting there, she found she almost wanted the bad things to come. That would have to be better than sitting here and waiting for something to happen.
The house had burned incredibly quickly. With one final, inward collapse, it became a pile of flaming rubble. She thought about going down to check it out, to see if anything was stirring. She remembered the screams she had heard coming from the house and silently wished they were not Jacob’s but knew they almost had to have been.
But what about the man who had dragged him into the house? Had he gone up in flames too? What if the people Rain told them about were in there? Would they burn themselves up to destroy Jacob?
The answer to all of those questions, she knew, was “no.” It wasn’t really like they were under some sort of attack. They had no reason to be martyrs because no one really knew about them. No, Rachel was certain that if Jacob was dead then they were still alive. They might not necessarily be in the house, but they were someplace. Lurking. Waiting to do whatever it was they had come here to do if they hadn’t done that already.
Given that she was still safe, she didn’t figure they had.
Watching the flames flicker over the spot where the house used to stand, an incredible wave of fatigue washed over her. It was more than just the casual sleepiness and general tiredness she had felt moments earlier. It was like when she had the flu or something, when there was absolutely no way she could hold her head up. She thought she wanted to stand up and move around so this feeling could not claim her but she couldn’t manage to stand up. She could hardly think about anything except closing her eyes and putting her head down on the steering wheel, the feeling was so intense. Or whatever the opposite of intense was. Surely being sleepy couldn’t classify as intense, could it?
And, of course, she knew exactly what this was. This was their way of fighting back. If they could simply knock her unconscious then she wouldn’t be able to threaten them anymore. If she would just go to sleep until it was all over or until something heinous was upon her... something that could finish her off.
Yes.
That was exactly what they wanted.
That was exactly what they wanted her to do.
She had to stand up. She had to get out of this seat that was so very very comfortable and smelled so much like Jacob. She had to stand up and move toward the fire. Had to go down and make sure there was nothing there. But she couldn’t move her head from the soothing coolness of the steering wheel.
What did it matter if she got up? She didn’t want to get up. She just wanted to put her head down for a minute. There wasn’t any harm in putting her head down for a minute. If she could just shut her eyes and rest for a second then when she opened them she would be ready to think about what she was going to do, she would be able think a little more clearly. But only after she put her head down on the steering wheel. Yes, just like that, the lighter and the can of tire sealant slowly slipping out of her hands. She shut her eyes and gave up her grip on consciousness, the night left to rage on without her.
Thirty-seven
Following Charlotte into the woods, Autumn had the strangest feeling. She didn’t have any idea what they were doing. Didn’t really have any idea what they had just seen yet she had never really felt so magical or alive before in her life. It was like witnessing that man explode before their eyes set her free from her old life and now she could begin anew.
The feeling scared her. She thought it must be what career soldiers or serial killers felt.
The girls laughed as they ran deeper into the woods, deeper into areas they had never been to before—dark, mysterious areas.
The smell of smoke filled the air. Autumn didn’t think this could be the lingering smoke from their campfire. Surely they were out of its range by now. And, besides, this smoke smelled different. It smelled like incense—heady and intoxicating.
Autumn felt like her head was spiraling around her body. She felt drunker than she had a few minutes before. Nearly giddy. Wine coursing through her veins, pumping through her heart, swelling into her head.
“Charlotte,” she laughed as they ran along, their breaths spuming out to make vaporous ghosts in the night air. “Where the hell are we going?”
“The Sad House,” Charlotte said. “I told you that.”
“Ah, yes, I forgot!” she said and they both blurted out in fresh laughter.
Autumn felt the wild energy coming from Charlotte and she didn’t think it was just coming from the girl in front of her. The whole woods seemed to be alive. There weren’t animals scurrying around them or the usual insects chirping in the trees. She thought it was probably getting too late in the year for that. No, it was something else. It was like the very wood of the trees themselves vibrated with a force she didn’t entirely understand. She didn’t know if she wanted to understand it. If she understood it then it would lose a bit of its magic.
They were on a clear cut trail and this offered a little solace but Autumn realized it was a solace she didn’t want. It was a solace she didn’t need. She saw it now as merely a manmade mark on nature, to show that humans had cut out a path through something not meant to have paths.
Catching up with Charlotte, she caught the girl’s thin elbow in her hand and tugged her off the path, into the thicker woods.
“What are you doing?” Charlotte laughed.
“We’ll never find what we’re looking for on a stupid path.” Autumn didn’t know why she had said that but it made perfect, indescribable sense to her.
Now the girls ran nearly side by side, the dead leaves crunching under their feet and coming off the lower trees as they brushed past them. It suddenly occurred to Autumn that everything around them, everything in the woods, was dying for the year. Which made it even stranger and more intoxicating that they felt so alive.
Charlotte, just slightly ahead of Autumn, came to an abrupt stop and Autumn nearly ran her over.
Then she saw why Charlotte had stopped.
Someone else was in the woods with them. It was a man or a boy, standing less than ten feet in front of them, next to a tree. He came closer and Autumn caught a glimpse of weird light coming from his eyes. She had a feeling she knew who it was.
She nudged Charlotte on the arm. “Is that...”
“Zack,” she said into the night.
The boy came forward.
“Charlotte,” he said. “I was hoping I’d run into you.”
“Well, it looks like you did. You know, if you wanted to run into me there are ways to arrange that. Like telephones. They’ve always worked for me.”
Autumn huffed out a breath of resignation. It was like all of her excitable feelings rushed out of her. She didn’t want it to end with her watching Charlotte and her boyfriend have a fight in the middle of what was promising to b
e one of the most exciting nights of her life.
“Now is not the time for joking.” Zack approached her, cradled her chin in his hand. “Tonight is a very important night.”
Autumn felt some of the excitement rush back into her. Finally, someone else realized the gravity of this night.
“You’ve brought a friend,” he said, looking at Autumn.
She felt her heart leap in her chest as she met his eyes. It wasn’t attraction, exactly. It was something else. Like a transference of power. It wasn’t hard to figure out why Charlotte had fallen so hard for him. And it only took her a second to figure that out. She imagined him biting her, doing some of the things to her that Charlotte had described and she knew she wouldn’t have any problems with that at all. Yes, she thought. He could bite me until I bleed and I wouldn’t mind.
“This is Autumn,” Charlotte said.
Zack stuck out his hand and she tentatively held out her own.
“Autumn,” he said. “It’s very nice to meet you. Autumn, my favorite season.”
Autumn would have thought that sounded lame coming from any other mouth. Instead she mumbled, “Thank you,” and stepped back from him, retreating behind Charlotte.
“We were on our way to see the Sad House,” Charlotte said. “Do you want to come with us?”
“I was thinking about taking you there myself,” he said. “There are some people I want you to meet.”
For some reason, him saying that sent shivers down Autumn’s spine. For just a second, the little spell he had over her was broken. She didn’t want to go to the Sad House anymore. She didn’t want Charlotte to go to the Sad House and she certainly didn’t want them to meet anyone this guy wanted them to meet. In the second the spell was broken, Autumn thought she saw through him and saw someone who was very evil. Or someone who was driven by something that was very evil.
She wanted to laugh at herself for using that word, “evil.” It was a word she normally only used to describe certain teachers and warmongering politicians. Maybe a few sadistic neighborhood kids from her childhood. But now using it to describe another person who was within arm’s reach seemed absurd.
