by Rob Summers
Chapter 31 Finding the Door
Reason did not ask why Lost Innocence was hiding from Fear and Self Righteousness. Who would not? Besides, something more disturbing had caught her attention.
“Are you well?” she asked the girl. “When you opened your mouth just now, I thought that—”
“Hm-mmm.” Lost Innocence compressed her lips as she shook her head. She turned toward the wall. “Go away.”
As she spoke, Reason again saw a flicker of light coming from the girl’s mouth. Dignity took Lost Innocence by the shoulder and turned her around.
“Come on, open up.”
She put a hand over her mouth. “You usually can’t see it except in the dark,” she whispered. “Nobody’s supposed to know.”
“My God, look at her eyes,” Dignity said.
Reason did and saw candle-like flames in them. When she turned to look for the candles that seemed to be reflected, she saw in the gloom only a blank wall. As she was turning back, Dignity pulled the girl’s hand away and gripped her jaw, forcing her mouth open. Out came flickering light and a slight smell of brimstone. Dignity let go and backed away. He took Reason by the arm.
“Let’s saddle our horses.”
“I’m with you!” Reason said.
“No wait!” the girl said, again shielding her mouth with her hand. “You’ve got to tell Obscurity something for me. Tell her to keep away and not to try to come back to us. Not ever. We’re all like this, Mom and Dad and me. Tell her that she’s the only survivor and to stay away.”
“OK, we’ll tell her,” Dignity said, “but I think she already knows.”
As they found their way back to the main rooms of the huge house, Reason gripped Dignity’s arm harder and harder. For she seemed to have acquired the ability to see the same fires Obscurity had once seen in her parents’ house. Even in well lit areas of the Powers’ home Reason could now see faint lines of flame here and there: climbing a curtain or pulsing in a mirror. As they passed the table where they had sat earlier, the other guests looked up at them, and in each pair of eyes were the Hadean burnings. The smell was growing stronger and stronger. Soon the fires were all around them, sickly fires, throbbing with weight and age, like the twisted roots of some dead tree.
“Do you see it?” she whispered to Dignity.
“Yeah, I see it. Let’s just go straight for the door and forget about my coat.”
But suddenly Mr. Power, swaying drunkenly, was blocking their way. He was smiling in his ghastly way, and little tongues of flame showed behind his teeth.
“Whoa, this is a New Year’s party,” he said loudly. “You can’t leave before midnight.”
“We have to, sorry,” said Dignity. “Let us by.”
“You and I have a contract now,” Power said. “You can’t break it, it’s airtight. Now sit down and enjoy yourself with the ghosts—I mean the guests.”
Dignity fumbled for the unsigned contract, which was sticking out of his jacket pocket. “Here it is, you can have it,” he said. “I never signed it.” As he held it up, it burst into flames so that he dropped it, and in seconds it burned to ashes on the floor. “Sorry. Send me a bill for the carpet. Gotta go now.”
“You’re a fool, Pride,” Power said, using Dignity’s old name. “You’re not going to get another offer like this.”
Reason heard her own laugh welling up almost hysterically and found Power gazing down at her.
“Nothing,” she said. “Something just went through my head about a ‘red hot opportunity.’ Just stupidity.” His hard, burning eyes did not change. “Uh, if I start screaming, will you let us out of here?”
Finally, Power stepped back, and they rushed through more rooms burning with the spectral fire. Standing at the front door with both their coats over his arm was the chauffeur Fate.
“She’s parked at the curb, sir. I talked the policeman into letting me take Mr. Bitterly to the hospital, so I was able to bring back Mrs. Reason’s coat. If you’re ready to leave, I can still have you back at Grace House in time to ring in the New Year.”
