Fire Spirit (27 page)

Suddenly, the fire jumped up higher and higher, and Ruth was sure that she could hear the flames roaring. She turned toward Martin, and saw that his face, too, appeared to be crawling with flames. The fire was growing fiercer because
his
visualization of it had now joined Amelia's, and the two of them were sharing their vision of the same inferno, but from different points of view.

And that's what it was: an inferno. Not a bonfire, or a burning warehouse, or even a thousand-acre forest fire. This was a wall of never-ending fire, a whole
world
of fire, a fire which would consume everything – people, houses, forests, even the sky – and go on burning for ever. This was hell.

Ruth remained locked in her chair, her hands clasped together in her lap, with Martin's fingertips pressed to one side of her forehead and Amelia's fingertips pressed to the other. She wanted to stand up. She wanted to break the circle, but her body simply wouldn't obey her. She looked through the transparent flames at Doctor Beech, but Doctor Beech's eyes were unfocused and she appeared to be lost in some kind of hypnotic trance.

‘
Doctor
Beeeechhhhh
!' she called out, but her voice came out slow and blurry, like a soundtrack played at a quarter speed. ‘
Doctor Beeeechhhhh
!'

It was obvious, however, that Doctor Beech couldn't hear her, or else she was unable to respond, because her eyes remained unfocused, and she seemed to be whispering something to herself, something quick and urgent.
Whisper-whisper-whisper, like sand, when the wind blows it.

Ruth turned back to Amelia. Amelia was still staring down at the glittering glass ball, her eyes unfocused like Doctor Beech, and she was whispering, too. So – when she looked at him – was Martin. Ruth began to hear whispering herself, too soft and hurried for her to make much sense of it, but it sounded like the same words being repeated over and over: ‘–
have to settle it – have to make it right – have to settle it – fingers on fire
–
eyes on fire
–
have to settle it
—'

She frowned, trying to hear this garbled, sibilant whisper more clearly. As she did so, she gradually became aware that there was an object lying on the floor of Doctor Beech's consulting-room. She could see it only in the extreme left-hand corner of her field of vision, but she could see that it was almost spherical, and about the size of a soccer-ball, and it was
white
.

She had to use all of her strength to turn her head a little way around, and she could actually hear her neck muscles creaking as she did so. The white object was lying in the corner, close to the skirting-board. Even though she couldn't work out what it was, its appearance filled her with dread, as if it signified that something terrible was about to happen.

She tried to turn back again, so that she could call out to Doctor Beech. Whatever this white object was, she thought it was important that Doctor Beech should see it. It might give her some vital understanding of Amelia's and Martin's shared illusion, and help her to treat them, if they needed treatment. But she had managed to move her head only a fraction of an inch when the white object on the floor slowly rotated on its axis and tilted upward a little and she saw what it was: a deathly-white mask, with a pointed nose – a mask whose expression was fixed in frenzied, triumphant laughter, as if it had just told the greatest joke of all time.

The mask stared back at her for six long heartbeats. She was sure that she could see eyes glistening inside it. All the time, the whispering continued: ‘–
have to settle it – have to
make it right – eyes on fire – face on fire – have to settle it
—'

Ruth had never felt so frightened in her life. Was this just a mask, or did it have a decapitated head inside it? If so, how had it appeared here, on Doctor Beech's floor, and how did it move? Maybe it was just an illusion, a magic trick, like the ghostly flames that were still leaping up in the center of their circle. But it continued to stare at her, and she couldn't take her eyes off it. Its malevolence was almost palpable. If she had been able to get out of her chair and cross the room and pick it up to see what it really was, she would have done, but then again she didn't know if she was brave enough. After all, it might be a real decapitated head.

She squeezed her eyes tight shut and strained as hard as she could to turn away from it.
There's nothing there. This is just some figment of Ammy's imagination, or Martin's, or both of them
.

But then, over the persistent whispering, she heard a thick voice say, ‘Don't you remember me, Ruth, baby? Don't tell me you
forgot
me already! It wasn't
that
long ago, surely? Don't you remember the Markland?'

She felt as if thousands of woodlice were pouring down her back. She recognized that voice.
She knew who it was.

‘
You
!' she said, and tried to rear up out of her chair. But the white mask rolled away and knocked against the skirting-board, and then it dropped down into the carpet and vanished, as completely as if it had fallen into a dark-green pond.

Ruth twisted herself around. The flames were still flickering. They were barely visible now, but Amelia and Martin and Doctor Beech were still sitting as they had been before, staring fixedly at the sparkling glass ball.

‘
Ammy
,' said Ruth.

But now the whispering grew louder and louder, until it was almost deafening.

‘–
settle it, settle it, settle it – make it right – eyes on fire – fingers on fire – settle it, settle it, settle it
—'

The consulting-room door burst open, and dozens of people poured in. They were so smudgy and faint that it was impossible to see what they looked like, or exactly how many there were. They rushed through the room quickly and jerkily, like characters in a speeded-up movie. Ruth's immediate instinct was to throw herself across to Amelia and hold her tight, but she still found it impossible to rise from her chair.

Most of the people who were crowding in were black-faced and charred, and dressed in blackened rags, although they were hurrying around the room so rapidly that Ruth couldn't focus on them to see how seriously they had been burned. They kept criss-crossing in front of the window so that the daylight flickered, and each of them was trailing a swirl of strong-smelling smoke. Even more of them jostled in through the door, and several of these newcomers were still alight, with flames crowning their heads instead of hair, and rippling cloaks of orange fire.

‘
Ammy
!' screamed Ruth, or thought she did. ‘
Ammy, wake up
!'

The room was a riot of whispers and shuffling feet and stroboscopic images of half-incinerated men and women, and children, too. As more and more burning people came in, the smoke began to thicken, until Ruth's eyes were watering so much that she could hardly see. She coughed, and coughed again, and the stench was so pervasive that she could actually
taste
it – seared flesh and frizzled hair and smoldering wool.

‘
Ammy
!
Martin
!
Wake up
!'

It was then that the loose-weave drapes caught alight, and flames leaped up on either side of the window. The temperature climbed rapidly, and Ruth knew that it would only be a matter of seconds before the soft furnishings ignited. If that happened, and they were all unable to leave their chairs, they would be dead from toxic smoke inhalation within less than twelve minutes.

‘–
eyes on fire – fingers on fire – settle it, settle it – faces on fire – make it right – settle it, settle it
—'

Ruth tried to shake her head from side to side, to break the contact with Amelia's and Martin's fingertips, but she could only move her head an inch or so in either direction, and their fingertips were pressing against her temples too hard and too persistently. Amelia and Martin were both completely caught up in what Doctor Beech had called the fairground carousel of remembered images, unable or unwilling to get off.

She bent forward in her chair as far as she could manage. She took a deep breath, coughed, then snatched another breath and flung herself backward in her chair as hard as she could. It wasn't enough. The chair remained upright. Meanwhile, the drapes were flaring up to the ceiling, and the black leather on Doctor Beech's chair was starting to shrivel, as if it were growing prematurely old.

By now, the entire consulting-room was thronged with burned and burning people. Some of them were not much more than shadows, rushing from one side of the room to the other, like the panicking audience in a burning movie theater. But, for split-seconds only, Ruth glimpsed people moving more slowly – people with faces stained black as photographic negatives; people whose bodies were so contorted in agony that they looked like hunchbacks. She saw people whose legs had been completely consumed by fire up to their knees and whose arms had been burned to their elbows; people without ears or eyelids or noses or lips, yet who still stared out at the world in pain and desperation, longing for life as it was before they burned, but also longing for it all to be over.

Ruth bent forward again. She took another deep breath and tightened her throat so that she wouldn't cough. She counted to three, and then she threw herself backward again.

There was a moment when her chair teetered on its back legs, and she was sure that she was going to tilt forward again. But then she fell backward, on to the carpet, knocking her head. She would probably have a bruise, but the circle was broken.

The crowds of burned and burning people completely vanished, as if they had never existed. But the drapes were still alight and the consulting-room was thick with smoke, and all four of them started to cough.

Ruth climbed to her feet and gave Amelia a hug. ‘Come on, Ammy, come on sweetheart, out of here, now! You too, Martin. And you, Doctor Beech. Where's your fire extinguisher?'

Doctor Beech was still sitting in her chair, looking bewildered. ‘What? What happened? Where did all those people go?'

‘You're back in the real world, Doctor Beech. All you have to do is get the hell out of here, before you breathe in hydrogen cyanide gas.'

Doctor Beech stood up unsteadily, and Martin came across to take her elbow and support her.

‘That was some party trick, Zelda,' he told her.

At that moment, the sprinkler system switched itself on and they were deluged in cold water. Amelia screamed and flapped her hands. The blazing drapes were extinguished almost immediately, and the acrid brown smoke began to shudder like a beaten dog and sink down to floor level.

‘Come on,' said Doctor Beech, ‘let's get out of here.'

‘Look at us,' Martin laughed. ‘We look like four drowned rats!'

Doctor Beech said, ‘Dora! Call nine-one-one, please, and ask for the Fire Department.'

‘I already did that, Doctor,' Dora replied, in a testy voice. ‘I did it as soon as I saw smoke coming out from under the door.'

‘The door was
closed
?' Martin asked her.

‘Yes, sir. It's been closed all the time you've been in there, except when I brought in your coffees.'

‘I don't get it. Nobody else came in or out?'

‘I think I would have seen them if they had, sir,' said Dora. She was being sarcastic, because her desk was only about four feet away from Doctor Beech's door, on the right-hand side.

Ruth took a quick look back into Doctor Beech's consulting-room, just to make sure that there were no signs of the fire springing into life again. The blackened tatters of the drapes hung from the rail over the window like a row of vampire bats, and all the files and papers on Doctor Beech's desk had been soaked, but apart from that there was no serious damage.

Doctor Beech came up behind her, raking back her wet hair with her fingers. ‘How could the drapes have caught fire?' she said. ‘Those people – they weren't actually here. They only exist inside of Amelia and Martin's minds.'

Ruth looked up. There was a brown flower-shaped smoke stain on the ceiling, directly above their circle of chairs. It looked like a giant chrysanthemum, almost six feet in diameter.

‘What do you make of that, then?' she asked Doctor Beech. ‘If that fire we saw was only inside of their minds, how come it left smoke residue on the ceiling?'

Martin joined them. ‘It was all real, that's why. The fire, the people. Amelia and I, we haven't been imagining this stuff, these people coming through from underneath. They
are
coming through, or they're trying to, and we've both been able to sense it. You know, the same way some animals can sense when there's an earthquake coming.'

‘Well, Martin,' Ruth told him, ‘I have to say that I'm almost inclined to believe you.'

‘Really?' Martin raised one eyebrow. ‘That's a dramatic change of heart.'

‘I know,' she said. ‘But even if I can question my own reliability as a witness, I can't argue with the evidence. Those drapes didn't set themselves on fire, and this smoke stain on the ceiling didn't appear by magic. And there was something else. I saw a head on the floor, right over there, in the corner.'

‘A
head
?'

‘It was covered with a white mask, with a laughing expression on its face. I'm not sure how to describe it to you.'

‘Just a head?'

Ruth nodded. ‘That was all. A man's head. But he was alive. He spoke to me, and he knew who I was. What was more, I knew who
he
was, too.'

‘Go on.'

‘His name is Pimo Jackson. The last time I saw him was three years ago, at Indiana State Prison in Michigan City. He's a serial arsonist. He started a fire at the Markland Motel here in Kokomo and eleven people died, including three children. Twenty-seven other people had to be treated for smoke inhalation or serious burns.'