He got to his feet. He passed the dead cat—he thought perhaps his weepy eyes were playing tricks, but a second glance told him otherwise—yes, its skull was crushed. He made his way toward the veranda, then, realizing he had wasted precious moments trying to make it inside from the front before, veered right and made his way round the side of the house. A moment later, there was a great rumble behind him as half the awning came down in a burning heap.
He pulled up short as he came to the back.
“Omigod.”
He went to her. She wasn’t moving. She was breathing, and he shook her gently. She stirred.
“Lynn.”
Her eyes opened, and he helped her sit up. She fell into his arms, and he held her a moment. At least God had granted him that.
He moved quickly to her son.
“He’s alive,” he said, finding a strong pulse along the boy’s neck. He checked the wound; it was bleeding badly.
“Lynn.”
Together, they rolled Ryan to his side. Kain pulled off his shirt and fashioned a makeshift dressing. Lynn held it on the wound.
“He’s going to be all right,” he said, and before she could say a word, he was up again, and heading for the back door.
~ 18
Ray hovered at the top of the stairs, but he did not linger. The gas he had poured down the length of the flight would ignite soon enough.
He sang as he checked the boy’s room; hummed the parts he couldn’t remember. He closed the door quietly, did the same to his old bedroom, and then stopped outside his daughter’s door.
He listened. Knocked. Nothing.
He tried the knob. Locked.
He spoke the words almost silently.
“It’s not my life, it’s yours and mine … can’t you hear it? Can’t you please?”
Suddenly, he dropped the gas beside him. The pain was incredible. He cupped his hands round his ears for the incessant screaming in his head. He cried out, the sound rising above the deep thrum of the new flames below. But then it came, the want and the lust unbridled, the clarity, of the Voice.
FINISH IT.
Ray Bishop hummed … and then rammed through the door.
~ 19
Brikker concealed himself in the shadow of the guesthouse as he watched the home come undone. The fire had spread to these strangest of grasses; the tree in the gully could be a Roman candle.
There was no sign of the woman. No sign of Richards. Still, he knew: Richards was inside.
He had seen it in the Turn.
He had also seen the man who had set the blaze; most likely the woman’s estranged husband. And he had also seen—with frightening clarity—the man kill Kain Richards.
But as he knew so well, the future was but a bare canvas, yet to be painted by men. Men, like he.
“I want him alive,” he said, and said it only once.
Strong regarded Brikker coolly. He nodded as he drew his weapon, and with eyes narrowed, limped forth to the fiery hell before them.
~ 20
Lynn stopped crying her daughter’s name. Her home, like her fleeting hope that Lee was alive, teetered on the verge of collapse. She could hardly breathe for the smoke and had lost sight of Kain; the flames had swept up behind him just as he had stepped into the house, and she feared he had been swept up with them.
She huddled with her son. The fire was spreading quickly, and already it was devouring much of the grass around them. She had seen grass fires, but this was something else. The grass—what had been grass, anyway, for this was more like fine sand when she touched it—was going up like paper in a blazing hearth. A deep rumble shook the doomed home, and just as she looked up, a ball of fire rained down and nearly struck them. The grass beside them went up in an instant. The flames caught the tattered cuffs of Ryan’s jeans, and she snuffed them out before they ran wild.
She shook him, and he stirred. She got him to hold the dressing. She struggled to her feet as she lifted him, releasing a small cry as her broken fingers bore their share of the brunt. Slowly, they made their way round the back of the tool shed. The air was clearer here, less choking, but now that she had a chance to catch her breath, she found it did reek of—
She reeled, biting down hard on her lip to stifle her horror.
Beaks. Ohhhh, Beaks.
Her heart sank. The world had gone insane.
She eased her son down, steadying him against the shed. Growing fires had broken out everywhere, including the path they had just taken. More would reach them in minutes. Maybe less.
She looked to her son. He was groggy.
“Can you walk?”
Ryan nodded weakly.
She helped him up, placed her arm around him, and led him away from the pockets of fire. She had no destination in mind, but as she led him down into the gully, she found it too, had started. The oak was a giant torch, the rope on the tire giving to the flames. The tire rolled a few feet and toppled. Cutting a wide path round the property, they backtracked behind the blaze, passed far beyond the shed, and made their way through a long stretch of deep wildflowers that turned to dust underfoot. They came to a clearing near the barn, and just as they did, Lynn slipped into a panic. Though he could barely stand, she rushed Ryan forward and led him inside. She set him down gently and stroked his hair. His good eye closed then, but when she listened carefully, she could hear his faint breathing. The bloodstain near his wound had stopped growing; the dressing seemed to be working.
Lynn tried to settle herself, but the terror that had sent her reeling outside the barn gripped her. She crawled quickly to the open door and dared a glance toward her burning home; she knew hope was lost. A monster of a man stood near the veranda, gun in hand, clearly looking for a way past the flames … but what frightened her most was the one-eyed man skulking behind the guesthouse.
~ 21
Kain crawled through choking black smoke as fire closed in from both ends of the corridor. He could barely hear Lynn’s voice. Her muffled cries were there for an instant, if at all, only to be swallowed by the rising roar around him. Hovering on collapse, he managed to make his way to the burning hell of the kitchen. The smell of gas was unmistakable.
He tried to reach the stairs, and the flames sent him back. Only a second effort drove him through, and he made his way up. Fire seared his skin. His hair nearly caught. He caved at the top, out of breath, the smoke thicker and blacker than below, the heat suffocating. He held up just shy of Lee’s broken door, but when he heard Ray Bishop’s voice—singing, for God’s sake—he summoned what strength he still had. He bolted inside, thrusting himself into an abyss of the darkest madness.
Ray Bishop stood at the bed. The man was a fright, his skin blistered and worn and splattered in the blood of his kin. His scar, like the rest of his face, was a sickening worm of open sores. Spittle dribbled from his lips. His soulless eyes betrayed him, for Kain had seen that glassy gaze on the faces of so many; he looked as crazed as Costello. Stiff or not, man or beast, he had fallen to the Turn, his mind lost. Animal Crackers.
Kain’s heart ached. Lee lay on the bed, her nightshirt ripped open. Her bared shoulders were badly bruised. Blood stained her battered face. Sobbing, her breath came in desperate gasps. She looked to him in terror, begging him to stop this madness, not really believing that he could. Not really believing she would live but a moment longer.
And graver still: the room reeked of gasoline. The bed and the girl were soaked in it … as was the mechanic himself.
“Drop it.”
Ray Bishop, or perhaps the thing inside him, grinned. He nodded meekly, as if to capitulate; drew the knife back with hands raised in innocence. He stood cold and brooding. His left pant leg was ragged and torn and stained in blood. His clothes reeked of fuel. He started into a hum, the sound barely audible, and then, without warning, drove the blade into his daughter’s shoulder and sent her into a scream. And before Kain could challenge him, the man moved with the speed of a demon. Ray ripped the blade free and sw
ept it wildly, forcing him back.
“Let her go.”
The man’s laugh was utterly insane.
“My woman! My wife.” He thrust the knife again. “Come on, drifter. You’re gonna bleed.”
“Let her go, Ray.”
“Fuck me,” Ray Bishop stammered, shaking his head. “Some people just never goddamn learn.”
“Just the stupid ones,” Kain replied, and slowly brought his right hand to bear. He kept his eyes locked with Ray’s. And when he was ready, gave him a wink.
Ray Bishop twitched. His crazy eyes flittered.
Kain tapped two fingers at his temple.
“What the fuck … what the fuck you doin’?”
“The hand,” Kain said, “is quicker than the eye.”
This set Ray off. He uttered a wild cry as he lunged, the knife poised to kill. But a hiccup later—before might be more accurate—he nodded as he limped back from the bed. He hovered over his daughter, the gaping wound in her shoulder lost to the past. And just as he started into that practiced grin and readied the knife, Kain was on him.
Kain drove into him, knocking the can on its side and sending them to the floor. They struggled, and Ray dazed him with a vicious butt to the head. The knife came swiftly, and Kain barely got a hand up to deflect it. They rolled on the hardwood, the spilled gas soaking them.
Kain groaned as Ray drew his arm free and sliced into his shoulder. Ray got to his knees and bled him across the left forearm, the pain stinging. As the man brought the knife up for the kill, Kain felt himself coming undone. The room spun in a dream.
Uncertain he could even summon it, he had gambled with the Turn. He had rolled the dice praying its randomness would play to his favor, but it had drained him to the edge of collapse. He was burning up, the throb in his brain striking like a wrecking ball. He had squandered his second chance, and now, in this fiery hell, Lee would die. They all would.
The girl screamed at her father, enough to distract him for an instant. Kain found the will and drove a heel into Ray’s leg wound. The man cried out, and he struck him again; this new agony brought him to his knees. Kain rolled away, the knife coming down in a blur. It just missed him as it stuck in the floor. Ray drew it free, and as he did, Kain leapt with all he could muster. They came down hard, Kain toppling right, Ray left. Ray tripped over the can and landed on his side, the knife ripping into him. He screamed. He tried to rise, but he slipped on the slick floor, driving the blade all the way in. He groaned as he faltered, clawing to get the blade out. But then his crazed eyes fell dead, and his hand went limp. Blood pooled around him.
Lee scrambled from the bed and fell into Kain’s arms. Smoke choked them. The house shook violently as part of the place collapsed. Kain feared the gas would catch before the house settled, but when seconds passed without further incident, they helped each other up. He whirled round to the door, but stopped cold at the creeping flames in the corridor. They were out of time.
“LEE.” He steered the girl to the window and struggled to raise it; he could hardly stand. She flung it open, and as she was about to crawl through, she froze. Half the awning was gone. And what remained, ablaze as it was, would likely give at any moment.
“You have to,” Kain said. “You can do this.”
Lee nodded courageously and crawled out. The awning shifted under her weight, and she screamed. Kain followed, the flames rising around them. Again the house shook, nearly delivering them to the hell below. He threw his arm about her and held her tight. It was a good fifteen feet to the ground, pockets of fire all about.
“I can’t!” Lee shouted. “I can’t—”
Kain felt an icy finger slip along the nape of his neck. It was the laughter. The insane laughter.
He turned to the window, and terror gripped him. The mechanic lay with an arm slung round the gas can, cradling it against his chest as if it were treasure. His eyes were the blackest evil. He held a match between his right thumb and forefinger, not an inch from the spout.
Two seconds later, Ray Bishop lit up.
~ 22
Brikker felt the shudder … the strange displacement in time. It had come quickly and quite unexpectedly, passing in the blink of his eye. Yet there could be no mistake: Richards was alive.
Strong, the useless fool, had finally made it inside. But now he stood at the base of the burning veranda again, with no way in. Five, perhaps six seconds had Turned, mere breaths, and when Brikker saw the girl climbing from the upstairs window onto that faltering awning, just as he had seen, he realized that Richards’ gamble had been for naught, that nothing had changed and all was lost. In a moment, the man would follow, and but seconds later, the explosion would come.
Strong, like the beast inside who had started the fire, would perish quickly—he had seen that, as well—but so would the girl.
And so would Richards.
As if on cue, he appeared out of thin air, the grand magician himself, and they held each other on that crumbling platform as the farmhouse began to collapse.
Seconds later, it exploded.
~ 23
Lynn Bishop felt the hiccup; it had come and gone in a heartbeat. She was certain she had seen the man with the gun make his way inside, but now he was standing outside again. Precious seconds passed as more of her home began to collapse, and she watched in horror as her little girl climbed from the window onto the burning awning. The thing shifted one way and back, nearly sending Lee to her death, and only when she saw Kain emerge did she believe—for an instant at least—that God might spare them.
She died inside. She wanted to call out, but she couldn’t. Not with Brikker twenty yards away.
The house rocked, and Kain held her little girl.
“Jump,” Lynn whispered. “Jump … jump … JUMP—”
~ 24
The girl didn’t have time to scream.
Kain drove into her with everything he had, driving her through the flames and over the edge of the awning. The blast wave struck them in that instant, thrusting them several yards forward, shrapnel and fire and all manner of hell coming with them. The din was deafening; half the roof blew skyward in grand fireworks. Burning debris struck the ground like missiles. They came down in the drive clear of any grassfire, but Lee-Anne struck hard, crying out as her left tibia fractured under her weight. She rolled like a rag doll, arms flailing, and came to rest in a heap. Kain spun head over heels and came crashing down on his back, the impact winding him. He nearly passed out.
Strong was not so fortunate. On the veranda with his gun poised when the blast hit, the explosion severed the awning, and it came down in a mass of flames. He dove back, but it was too late. The awning struck him and pinned his legs. He screamed from the agony, and then screamed again as the fire took him. His plainclothes went up like paper, his arms thrashing, and in a few seconds, his whole body was consumed. A bullet later, the screaming stopped.
The farmhouse shook, the thing finally giving in, the upstairs coming apart. There was a great rumbling from the conflagration, and then the left side of the home collapsed. The ground trembled. Smoke filled the sky and blacked out the stars. Fires here and there spread to the road and into the fields. The oak had spent its fuel and now smoldered. The Chevrolet looked as if a bomb had hit it.
Several dark moments passed. Kain could barely feel anything but pain, could hardly see at all for the burning in his eyes. When the smoke cleared just enough, he found Lee-Anne, the girl lying deathly still but a few feet away. A thick shard of glass was lodged in her arm, the wound bleeding badly. Her left leg was horribly twisted, her tibia threatening to pierce her skin. He called out to her, called again in desperation, and finally her eyes flittered open. She groaned weakly. She tried to move, but when she pressured her leg, she let out a horrible cry.
“It’s broken,” the good Doctor said.
~ 25
Kain Richards closed his eyes.
Sometimes, when it came—that voice, cold and cutting, like a knife—i
t was all he could do to slam a black door in his mind and climb inside the darkness. As if not to see was not to hear … not to believe. He wanted so desperately for it to be gone; for it to wither and die and never ever return. He could try to imagine a better place, where such things were but nightmares spawned from the whims of fiction, but no. The nightmare was real; the creeping thing in his closet was real. In his mind’s eye, he could discern its tenuous outline, the fleeting shadow within the shadows. He could feel the lazy pulse of its hideous eye, the rise and fall of the glow of the cigarette, bearing down on him; could smell its tease, as if he himself were pleasuring in it. He could taste it. He could taste it. He trembled, so cold. He could die in his madness, and a dark part of him had prayed for it, for as long as he could remember. Slowly, uncertainly, he opened his eyes. The world was a dizzying blur of sound and sight, both fading quickly, and he succumbed to the terrifying truth. Upon him, there would be no merciful judgment, no quick and painless death: the evil was here, waiting as it always was, in the guise of a man. His tormentor … his jailor.
Brikker towered above him. His slight shape was dark and menacing, as it had always been. Dressed not in crisp lab coat but in simple street clothes, he stood deliberately with his back to the flames, throwing himself in stark silhouette—precisely as Kain had foreseen—and only when he turned just so did the madman reveal his self. His skin, normally unusually white, was now ashen, blistered and cracked. His thin lips bled from open sores. His breathing was heavy and uneven. The flickering firelight played tricks with that singular eye, granting only the barest hint of its existence. One could be forgiven for believing it was never really there.
But that voice was. It was.
“You really shouldn’t,” Brikker said, and he said it to the girl. “You’ll only cripple yourself.”
Velvet Rain - A Dark Thriller Page 47
