by E. M. Fitch
Before Cassie could finish the thought, the ground trembled underneath her sneakers. She turned, confused. The parking lot was full of cars all just starting up, brake lights flashing and mufflers vibrating. Laney stood by the nearest car, but she turned away. Samantha and Ryan stared at the base of the hill, pulled by the trembling earth just as Cassie was and probably just as unable to believe their eyes.
A gigantic fire blossomed like a rare flower in the center of the library. Flames leaped into the air from the roof, and then every window blew out at the same time. Glass burst onto the lawn and scattered over the parking lot. Bodies flew backward, some tumbling like rag dolls and others landing like flour sacks, unmoving. The sight burned Cassie’s eyes, and she instinctively stepped back. The rhododendron poked her backside, and she ignored it, too stunned to move away. A wave of heat engulfed them all, washing over them in a hot sweep that lingered and stayed. It felt like a full-body sunburn had erupted in an instant. As long as she lived, Cassie would never forget the feeling. Shielding his eyes, Ryan stepped forward, turned to look at the girls, and then broke into a run.
His expression snapped the trance. Ryan was no longer disbelieving, no longer in shock. Fire had steeled him. Cassie held her golf club like a broadsword, even though the metal had heated under her fingers, and rushed forward. Breath came harsh and ragged through her mask, searing her chest.
Samantha followed, and then Laney. The four leaped over hobgoblin bodies that had been struck as they ran down the hill. Black smoke belched from every window. Ryan reached the library first, pointing and shouting. Cassie couldn’t hear him until she reached his side. The roaring flames that engulfed the library snarled in her ears, blocking all sound. Even the sirens that must be drawing ever-closer couldn’t be heard.
“Propane tank!” Ryan shouted. Cassie followed his pointing finger to a green tank the size of a small car that was nestled tight against the side of the brick building. “Sam, go stop the police cars! Tell them!”
Samantha nodded and took off running, passing the tank by about ten feet. Cassie shuddered as she watched her friend go, and then turned to help Ryan. He had an elderly man over his shoulder and was stooping to grab the hand of Mrs. Haskell, a librarian Cassie had known her whole life. Cassie grabbed her other hand and together they pulled, yanking the unconscious—but still alive, dear God, let them still be alive—people off the library lawn. Mr. Fisk pulled his Ford truck in front of the library, dazed, but with it enough to drive.
“Load them in!” he shouted over the deafening flames. The man over Ryan’s shoulder went first, and then Mrs. Haskell. Laney stopped right behind Ryan, two bodies at her feet. Cassie had no idea how she had gotten them there; both outweighed her friend considerably, but now was not the time for questions.
“Propane tank,” Ryan gasped. Mr. Fisk nodded.
“I know, son, hurry,” the First Selectman said. He got out of his truck and, along with Cassie, lifted the two women Laney had brought over and placed them carefully next to the others. One of them stirred, coughing considerably before wailing a name over and over.
“Jimmy! Jimmy,” the woman cried, reaching blindly.
“Here, hon,” Laney whispered, running over to her with a small bundle in her arms. The boy squirmed in the unfamiliar grasp, crying quietly.
He’s alive, Cassie thought. It was all she could register before turning back to the library’s front lawn. Along with the stirring bodies that were rising and coughing—they looked like television movie actors with the volume set to mute—flaming bits of debris littered the grass. Cassie hurried past a blackened chunk of the circulation desk, the summer Storytime hours still taped to the top with a cheery We hope to see you there! in Comic Sans font. Flaming bits of paper littered the air, catching in the breeze and flurrying upwards. Cassie jumped over piles of burning books, yelling over the fury of the flames as she did.
“Get to the truck! People, the tank is gonna blow!” She wasn’t worried about inciting a panic; those who were moving were groggy at best. Panic would be a good thing; it would get them to the truck faster. She looked back and found Ryan and their First Selectman lifting another unconscious man into the bed of the truck, Samantha with her arm around a young woman, both limping toward Ryan. And Laney had three people rolling through the burning grass, supported by sprung roots and vines, moving along at Laney’s murmured insistence. They were all sweaty and covered in soot. Cassie turned back toward the parking lot, scanning the debris for anything moving.
Something stirred under a ruined bookcase, books shifted and fell to the side, and beneath the twisted, blackened metal, a tiny hand shot out. Cassie ran forward and fell to her knees. She pushed books to the side, ignoring the burn on her skin. She shouted encouragement to the tiny moving hand as she did, shouted that she’d get them out of there soon. The hand stopped moving. Cassie got to her knees and put her shoulder under the bookcase. She strained upward, getting to her feet, but not quite able to toss it over completely. The metal was too twisted to flip like that. A shredded corner of the shelf only dug deeper into the soft earth.
The little body underneath was completely still. Blood had been pouring from a cut on his forehead, and Cassie could see a white flash of what she knew was bone underneath. The blood wasn’t flowing now; it was a sluggish crawl that had more to do with gravity than it did with the force of a living heartbeat. She swallowed hard as her stomach threatened to revolt, and then ripped her mask from her face. “Laney!” she screamed, wild and louder than the flames. Her best friend turned, nodded once, and then the ground underneath Cassie trembled and shifted. The little body was carried out on a wave of earth, the roots undulating gently underneath until he lay at Cassie’s feet. She let go of the bookcase; it fell back into place. A million sayings flit through her mind—things her mother had said while watching medical television dramas.
“You’re not dead ’till you’re warm and dead.”
“CPR, pfft! Useless. Unless you’ve got a defibrillator right around the corner … what’s the point?”
“How is he still bleeding? He’s dead!”
This boy wasn’t bleeding, and he was warm. Cassie could start CPR, here on the flaming lawn of the library, but was there a defibrillator? Yes, Cassie decided, there was—on a fire truck. She couldn’t hear the sirens still, not over the roar of flames, but all of a sudden a wash of blue light covered the rescuers. The police had arrived. Mr. Fisk was coughing and red in the face, sucking at the air as though his lungs were on fire. He got behind the wheel of the car, waving wildly at Samantha and Ryan, both of whom climbed into the bed with the survivors. Laney hung back, pointing around the other side of the building. In a moment, she disappeared into the chaos of the fire. Cassie looked to her feet. The boy’s heart had stopped beating for only a minute. There was time for him still, if only the propane tank held. The police were here now, which meant the fire department was just behind them. Cassie only hoped.
To the boy at her feet, she whispered an apology, then she put her hands on his small chest and pushed hard, counting to the beat like her mother had once taught her.
The boy was taken from her hands soon after the fire department arrived. Someone continued Cassie’s rhythmic pumping, pausing to blow air into the boy’s lungs. Cassie could still taste that small mouth on her own, the still, unresponsive lips, and the stale air that had been trapped too long in lungs that didn’t move to push it back out. A coil of nausea bloomed in her gut, and she swallowed hard again, refusing to succumb. She had no time. She had to find her friends.
The air was wet, and Cassie’s hair hung limply, damp and full of soot. The fire department had gotten most of the fire under control quickly, though Cassie knew the wreckage would smolder for the rest of the day. They were still spraying the building and the surrounding area, especially by the still intact propane tank, when Cassie wandered up through the trucks with lights still flashing and sirens still bleeping. Radios cackled in the
air, and staticky voices spoke and then were cut off. The town hall stood innocently in the background, all the windows still blown and the occasional set of gleaming eyes peeking out from behind a busted window frame. Cassie could still hear their whispered laughter.
She needed to find Ryan and Samantha and Laney, all of whom seemed to have disappeared. Ryan and Samantha were with Mr. Fisk, possibly taking the survivors to the hospital. But Cassie couldn’t believe they would just leave her, not knowing what they did. This was only the beginning. The hobgoblins were just getting started. She needed to find her friends, and her weapons—where was that golf club?— and a way to stop this.
“Cassie Harris!” a voice boomed so loudly that Cassie jumped, her hand over her heart. The offended organ beat erratically under her skin, admonishing her for the scare. She turned to find an enraged Officer Gibbons striding toward her. His vise-like grip caught her arm, and she was half-lifted, half-dragged to the end of a fire truck and sat rudely on the shiny metal bumper. “Explain,” he growled.
Now or never. The time had come. He would be the last attempt she would make, the last one who deserved her truth. She steeled herself, drawing breath, hoping he wouldn’t scream at her like Rebecca did, or laugh derisively like Jon.
“Laney is—”
“Here.” Cassie looked up in astonishment as Laney herself appeared at Officer Gibbons’s elbow. The man spun, reaching instinctively for his service weapon, his fingers lingering on the clasp that held the gun in place on his hip.
“I’m sorry, Officer Gibbons,” Laney said calmly, peering up at the graying officer. “I know you’ve spent a lot of time looking for me.”
“I saw your body,” he spluttered, turning to Cassie for an explanation. She nodded helplessly, shrugging as she did. “I saw your body. We buried you. You died.”
“A part of me died, it’s true,” Laney said sadly. She brightened as she continued. “But not all. I’m here now, and we need to put a stop to this.”
“The men in the woods, Officer Gibbons, the ones who were never carnies, they are faeries,” Cassie continued, reaching out to touch his arm. He didn’t seem to notice; one of his hands raised and rested at the back of his neck. Cassie was sure he would dismiss her as crazy, turn and cuff her and bring her to the hospital. The thought seemed to be floating behind his eyes. But he surprised her.
“Okay. Faeries. And they’re attacking the town?”
“They have been for ages,” Cassie confirmed gently. He nodded.
“Right. And that’s what this is?”
“Yes, only worse. Our king is angry, mad,” Laney said in a rush, “crazy, you know? He wants to see the town and everyone in it burn. Roanoke and Ashley, Kansas and—”
“I know the stories,” Gibbons interrupted, putting his hand up. “How do we stop them?”
“Iron,” Cassie answered. “Can you see them now? Look to the town hall.”
Gibbons did, and in the stagger of his stance, the truth shone out. He could see them now. He believed, and so he could see them. That’s what cemented it. Before that moment, he—just as the rest of the townspeople did—might have seen prankster children, teens in dark hoodies, or even misshapen women occasionally hanging out in the local coffee shop. Now he knew the truth, and so those illusions shattered. He saw them for what they were. His radio keyed on his shoulder, and a jumble of words and static followed that Cassie could barely understand.
“I have to find Ryan and Samantha,” Cassie said, looking back into the crowds. “They can help.”
“Haven’t seen them,” Gibbons responded, looking disturbed. “But that Evans woman is at the Town Green. With a bullhorn.”
“Oh, hell,” Laney murmured, turning toward the mess of parked police cars, the doors ajar and the light bars flashing. “People need to get out, not group together. Which one is yours?”
“At the end,” he said, pointing. Laney ran toward the car, and Cassie went to follow, but Gibbons’s hand on her arm stopped her. She looked up into his lined and worried face.
“You could have told me,” he said. “You should have told me.”
“Would you have believed me?” she asked. He licked dry lips that were blackened with ash.
“I don’t know,” he answered. She smiled, because it wasn’t a lie. And she could trust Officer Gibbons to never lie to her. She liked that a lot.
“Fair enough,” she answered, nodding toward his car. Cassie pulled her mask back into place; it helped with the smoke. Gibbons followed, opening the passenger side door for her and then getting behind the wheel. Laney was in the backseat, keyed up and ready to go.
They pulled out to the drive toward Main Street, leaving the chaos of the fire trucks and smoking library in their rearview. But just before it pulled out of sight completely, Cassie screamed, “Stop!”
A firetruck, one of the tankers, was suddenly rolling forward. Behind the windshield Cassie could just see the wheel in the clutches of two hands with long, yellowed claws at the end of twig-like fingers. Gibbons honked his horn and blared his siren. The sound cut through Cassie, ringing in her ears, but none of the firefighters seemed to hear it. All of a sudden, they had slowed, and at their feet, Cassie saw tendrils of mist snaking along the ground. Those who held firehoses, held them limply, the water now trickling in streams toward the library. None seemed aware that the firetruck was loose, none tried to stop it as it barreled forward, no one even blinked when it connected with the propane tank and, with a wrench of metal on metal, tore it open. A woof of flame erupted with a swell of silence in its wake, and then the truck, the library, the grounds, the trees, and everything that surrounded the small space was once more in flames. A tower of fire shot into the sky and sparked the trees that hung near the space. Crackles of popping sap and cracking limbs joined the chaos of noise that had once more engulfed the library and town hall, and every last standing firefighter turned as one and walked toward the tree line, walked straight into the waiting hands—Cassie was sure—of the hungry Red Caps.
With a rush of whispered giggles, a mass of black shadow swelled in the forest that lined the drive. Every last hobgoblin fled the scene, racing to their next target, and who knew how many more deaths.
There was nothing they could do. Gibbons keyed his radio and called in the explosion, the confused operator was cut off with a turn of the knob as he looked first to Cassie and then back at Laney. They couldn’t put this fire out; it would have to wait for the next fire crew. He turned back to the road and drove forward.
The Town Green stood at the intersection of the two major roads that bled through Cassie’s small hometown. It hovered off to the side of the town’s single stoplight and offered only a small space to stand before people would spill over onto the street that lined each side. From a bird’s-eye view, the area was a patch of green that a toddler might have colored into the crook of a Y, with the road that intersected Main Street breaking off into two lanes, like a river parted by a flat rock.
In the center of the green, a flagpole sprouted, Old Glory waving proudly against the blue August sky. A small bed of flowers, planted every year by the local Girl Scouts, was mostly dried out. Only a few bright orange blooms remained. Next to that was a plaque and a bench, both adorned with the names of those who lived in town and who served in the armed forces. Every Memorial Day the parade ended here, the entire town saluting their remaining soldiers.
Today, the green was filled to bursting. People milled around the street, watching with their hands shielding their eyes as the smoke rose above their library. The roads that enclosed the small green space were filled with cars, all pulled over in haphazard lines, blinkers still flashing, horns occasionally honking. Children clutched their parents’ hands, wrapped chubby fingers around their legs. No one ran or chased or played. The sun was blotted out in the soot and ash that rocketed upward, and the murmuring almost took over the woman with a bullhorn who was currently prophetizing over the crowds.
“You didn’t believe, and now they’ve descended!” Mrs. Evans screamed into the bullhorn. The machine screeched and whined at her volume, but otherwise carried the message over the frightened crowd. “I told you they were there, and now they’ve come!”
“She’s going to whip them into a frenzy,” Gibbons muttered, pulling his patrol car alongside the green on Main Street. Cars still crawled by on the road that had a speed limit of fifty miles per hour, but no one dared approach that speed now. Every neck was craned over the trees toward the library, all watching the disaster unfold.
“Maybe we should let her,” Laney wondered aloud. She pressed her nose to the divider between the front of the car and the back seat, her fingers threaded through the holes drilled in the plastic barrier. “Maybe more people would get out of here?”
“No, they’d whip themselves into a mob,” Cassie said, watching the restless agitation that simmered in the frightened crowd. “They’d just help the hobgoblins along. We should get them home, before the mist takes them to the forest, too.”
Gibbons nodded in agreement. He tweaked his siren before exiting the car, pausing long enough to let Laney out of the back of the patrol car. Some of the crowd turned to look at him, but most turned back to the frantic woman shouting apocalypse through a bullhorn.
“Can you help with that?” Gibbons asked tentatively, looking down to Laney. “Can you get them out of here safely?” She nodded and headed into the crowd, gently touching shoulders and whispering in waiting ears.
