Edgewise (2 page)

She turned around to go back upstairs. But standing in the archway close behind her were two huge figures, bulky and dark. She let out a high-pitched “
Hah!
” and stumbled backward.

Both figures were dressed entirely in black—black leather coats and black denim jeans—and they were both wearing transparent celluloid masks, which gave their faces the melted appearance of severe-burn victims. The taller of the two had a strange hat that looked like a demon's horns.

“Goddamit!” Lily shouted at them, although she was more shocked than angry. “Who the heck are you? And what the
heck
are you doing in my house?”

The figure with the demon's horns took a step toward her, and raised his hand. “Didn't intend to alarm you, Mrs. Blake.” His voice was thick and harsh, like a heavy smoker.

“Who are you? How do you know my name?”

“We know everything about you, Mrs. Blake—where you work, where you do your marketing, where you spend your lunch breaks.”

“What?”

“Oh, yes. We know what you been up to. You and that Dane guy. Thought you'd get away with it, did you? Thought nobody would notice all of them midday get-togethers? You're a bad, bad woman, Mrs. Blake.”

Lily's was shaking. “Get back. Get away from me. I've called nine-one-one.”

“Don't exactly believe that you have, Mrs. Blake. In any case, what we came here to do we can do long before the cops get here.”

The figure stepped forward again, and then again. Lily retreated behind the couch and held up her pepper spray. “Don't you come any closer. I'm warning you.”

“We've only come here to give you your just desserts, Mrs. Blake. Nothing more.”

“If you come any nearer . . .” Lily warned him. But without any hesitation the figure vaulted over the back of the couch, knocking over a brass planter filled with hyacinths. He grabbed hold of Lily's hands, and when she tried to spray him in the face, he twisted her fingers so fiercely that she dropped the spray on to the floor.

She had taken self-defense classes, and she struggled and feinted and tried to kick her assailant between the legs. But he was far too strong for her, far too heavy. He wrenched both her arms behind her back and forced her to bend forward, until her face was pressed against the knotted pile of the rug. All she could so was pant with effort, and with pain.

“You know what you are, Mrs. Blake? You're a witch—that's what you are. And do you know what the punishment for witches is?”

“Let me go,” she begged him. “Listen . . . there's money in the house. Cash. You can have it.”

“Are you insulting my moral purpose?” the figure demanded. “Are you trying to suggest I'm some kind of a yegg? I came here to give you your just desserts—that's why I came here, and that's what I'm going to do!”

“I have jewelry. Please. I have my children to take care of.”

“Oh,
now
you're worried about your children! Maybe you should of thought about your children when you was bouncing around on that waterbed with Robert Dane!”

“Who the hell
are
you?” Lily panted. “Who sent you here?”

The man leaned forward, pressing his full weight onto Lily's back. She felt as if he was going to crush her rib cage. When he spoke, his lips were very close to Lily's ear, and his voice behind his celluloid mask sounded foggy and indistinct.

“We was sent by God, Mrs. Blake. We was sent by God, to carry out divine retribution.

The other figure came around the couch, and between the two of them they lifted Lily up. She had never felt so helpless in her life, and her heart was beating like a panicking bird's.

“Tasha!” she cried out, although her voice was so choked that Tasha couldn't possibly have heard her. “Tasha! Call the police!”

“Thought you'd called the police already,” said the figure with the demon's horns. “You weren't trying to
mislead
us, by any chance?”

“Just let me go,” Lily pleaded. “If you let me go, I swear on my children's lives that I will never say anything about this to anyone, ever.”

The figure took hold of the lapels of Lily's robe, and tore it wide open. “Don't think that's much of an offer, Mrs. Blake. After we've done what we came here to do, you ain't going to be saying nothing about this to nobody, regardless.”

He wrenched her robe off her back and tossed it onto the floor. Now she was wearing nothing but her long white sleep-T.

“Please don't hurt me,” she said. “You can do whatever you like, but please don't hurt me. Think of my children.”

“You don't get it, do you?” said the figure. He leaned forward until his celluloid mask was only three inches away from her face, and she could see his eyes glittering behind it like black beetles. He smelled strongly of cigarettes and onions and something aromatic, like creosote. “The children is the reason we're here.”

“What?”

“You won custody, didn't you? You got to take sole care of them. But taking care of children—that's a very burdensome responsibility. You need to be moral, don't you, and set a good example. You need to be a shining light. No drinking, no cursing, no bad-mouthing your former partner, and no indiscriminate fornication with guys who ain't fit to wipe your former partner's rear end.”

Lily stared back at him, horrified. “Did
Jeff
send you? Is that it?”

“You don't need to know nothing more, Mrs. Blake, except that you're getting what you justly deserve.”

Lily screamed at him and threw herself wildly from side to side, trying to break free. She was so frightened and so furious that she felt as if she were going insane.

“Let me go! Let me go, you bastards! Let me go!
Let me go!
”

But the figure with the demon's horns swung his arm back and slapped her across the face, so hard that it made her ears sing. She stopped struggling at once and dropped her head down. She could feel the side of her mouth swelling up and her left eye closing.

“Don't struggle,” the figure admonished her. “There ain't no future in struggling.”

“There ain't no future at all,” said the other figure, speaking for the first time, and then giggling.

Between them, the two figures half-dragged and half-carried Lily into the kitchen. Behind the frosted-glass door that led to the utility room, Sergeant appeared, and stood there blackly and silently, watching their distorted images as they made their way around the island. He whined in the back of his throat but still he didn't bark.

The figure with the demon's horns stood over Lily and said, “I want you to know that this is a sacred duty and there ain't nothing personal in it. Like, I don't want you coming back to haunt me.”

Lily said nothing. Her mouth was too swollen and she felt too numb.

The figure hesitated a moment longer, and then said, “Look at you. You look like a witch, in that nightgown, all ready to make her peace with God.” Lily was trembling with shock. The other figure, who was gripping her arms, let out another giggle, and then a snort.

The figure with the demon's horns dragged over one of the wheelback kitchen chairs, and pushed Lily back until she was forced to sit down in it. Out of his pocket he produced a coil of washing-line cord, and lashed up her arms and her waist and her ankles, knotting the cord so tightly that it cut into her skin.

“You won't hurt my children, will you?” Lily managed to ask him, in a bruise-muffled voice.

“Do I look like somebody who would hurt a child?” the figure asked her. “There's a whole lot of difference between divine retribution and unnatural cruelty, believe me.”

“Just don't hurt my children—or, by God, I
will
come back and haunt you, I swear. I will haunt you day and night for the rest of your miserable, worthless life.”

The figure said nothing but walked across the kitchen to the refrigerator and lifted out a gallon-sized container of spring water. He came back, unscrewing the cap.

“Do you know why witchfinders used to dunk witches in water?” he asked. “There was three reasons. One, to make them confess to their liaisons with Satan. The second, to see if they floated, or sank. If they floated, then God's own water refused to take them to its bosom, and their guilt was manifestly proven. But the third reason was to soak their clothes, so that when they were burned, they burned more slowly, and suffered the pain of their punishment for a whole lot longer than they would have done if they had been burned dry.”

“What?”
said Lily. She couldn't understand what she was hearing. But without any hesitation the figure held the container over her head and emptied it all over her. It splashed all over her hair and her face, and drenched her sleep-T. She couldn't stop herself from gasping.

The figure tossed the empty container across the kitchen. Then he nodded curtly to his companion, and the two of them bent down on either side of her. They gripped the kitchen chair and heaved it up until Lily was sitting on top of the island.

“What are you going to do to me?” asked Lily. High up like this, she felt even more vulnerable.

“Well, you're a witch, and this is the prescribed way for dealing with witches. As close as I could manage, anyhow. These modern homes—they may have all the modern built-in accessories, but not too many of them can boast a stake for the burning of witches, can they?”

The other figure had temporarily disappeared, but he returned only a few moments later carrying a green plastic gasoline can. Lily could hear the gasoline sloshing inside it.

“Oh God,” she said.

“Well, it might be a good idea to ask for the Lord's forgiveness, in your final moments.”

“Oh God, you're not going to burn me. Please don't burn me. I'd rather you shot me.”

“That'd be kind of difficult since I don't carry a gun of any kind and neither does my friend here.”

“Then for God's sake strangle me. But please don't burn me. I couldn't stand to be burned.”

“I gather it's pretty damned painful, for sure. But the pain you've caused, Mrs. Blake, don't you think you deserve it?”

Lily tried to appeal to him again, but she was so terrified that she began to hyperventilate and she couldn't get the words out. She watched with dread as the figure unscrewed the cap of the gasoline container and began steadily to pour it all over the floor around the kitchen island, and splash the sides of the island itself. The reek of gasoline was overwhelming, and the air was distorted by its fumes, as if everything around her were a mirage.

At last, she heard a woman say,
“Please
—don't do this.” To her surprise, it was her. She was amazed that she sounded so reasonable and detached—almost as if a separate Lily Blake were pleading on her behalf. “If Jeff sent you . . . if Jeff has a problem with custody . . . I'm sure that we can work something out. I can talk to my lawyer first thing in the morning.”

The figure with the demon's horns said nothing, but backed away from the island, toward the kitchen door, while his companion crouched alongside him, pouring a trail of gasoline across the tiles.

“You won't get away with this,” Lily insisted. “And if Jeff sent you, neither will Jeff.”

The two figures reached the kitchen door and stepped outside, into the hallway. The figure with the demon's horns took out a cheap flip-top cigarette lighter and flicked it into flame. It dipped and guttered and made his transparent plastic mask look as if he were grinning.

“You're making a serious mistake here,” Lily warned him.

There was no explosion, only the softest of
whoomphs
. Orange flames ran across the floor and then jumped up all around her, like blazing clowns. She felt a wave of heat that seared her face and shriveled the hairs in her nostrils.

The fire burned with soundless ferocity. Within a few seconds it had consumed almost all of the oxygen within the circle of flames that surrounded her. She gasped for breath, but the gases she inhaled were so hot that she had to clamp her mouth shut, and keep it shut. She could smell her hair burning, and she could see the skin on her forearms starting to redden.

Sergeant was barking now, and throwing himself up against the utility-room door. Lily was fully aware of what was happening to her, but she felt preternaturally calm.
No matter how I do it, I have to get myself out of this fire, and I have to do it now.
The oak-paneled sides of the island were already blazing—they were thickly polished with beeswax and they were crackling and popping and pouring out thick black smoke. She realized that she would probably choke to death before she was actually cremated.

She did the only thing she could think of: she bent her head forward as far as she could, hesitated for a moment, and then threw herself violently backward. Her chair tilted, rocked, but it didn't overbalance.

Desperate for air, she bent her head forward again, and threw herself backward a second time. There was a split second in which the chair was teetering on its back legs. Then she crashed off the island onto the floor, knocking the back of her head on the terra-cotta tiles and jarring her spine.

Gasoline flames were still dancing all around the island, but on the tiles they had almost burned themselves out. She managed to kick herself away from the island with one blistered foot, and rock the chair onto its left side. She rocked it again, and again, until she had rolled herself clear of the fire, almost as far as the kitchen door.

She felt bruised, and half-concussed, and she was quaking with shock. The kitchen door was shut, but Sergeant was still furiously barking and the smoke alarm was screeching. That worried her more than anything. If Tasha and Sammy were still in the house, surely the noise would have woken them up, and they would have hurried downstairs to find out what was happening. She prayed that those two figures in black hadn't hurt them.