Fire Spirit (33 page)

‘We lost 'em!' he said, triumphantly. ‘They didn't see us come down here!'

Jeff lifted his hand and gave him a high-five. ‘Wahoo! Nobody messes with the Cutters! No-bod-ee! Way to go, Dad!'

At that instant, Jeff realized that there was somebody standing in the middle of the road, about a hundred feet in front of them, under a street light. A young boy, not moving, not making any attempt to jump out of the way. Jeff stood on the brakes and the Grand Prix went into a long screaming skid.

Craig saw the boy coming nearer and nearer, as if he were watching a slow-motion movie. He could see the boy's face with unnerving clarity, pale and unsmiling, with wide-apart eyes and lips as pink as a girl's. He could hear a high-pitched squealing noise, a squealing that went on and on, but as the boy drew closer he realized that it was Jeff, making the sound of brakes, as if that could somehow bring the car to a stop any sooner.

The Grand Prix stopped so close to the boy that he was able to raise his right hand and rest it on top of the hood.

‘Holy shit,' said Jeff. ‘Holy shit that was close. I could of killed him.'

He reached for the door handle, but Craig grabbed hold of his arm and said, ‘Wait.'

‘What? The kid was standing right in the middle of the road and I could have knocked him down. I just want to make sure he's OK.'

‘No. Wait. This is the Creepy Kid your mom was talking about.'

‘
What
?'

‘I'm sure of it. Pale face, dark curly hair. Washed-out black T-shirt, red jeans.'

‘OK. So what's he doing out here, trying to get himself knocked down by a car? Doesn't he have a home to go to?'

‘Mom says he killed Tyson. Burned him alive, and himself, too. I know it sounds crazy.'

Jeff pulled a disbelieving face. ‘He doesn't look very burned alive to me.'

‘I know. I know that. But I think the best thing we can do is just get out of here.'

‘He's a kid, Dad. That's all. You're not scared of some
kid
?'

‘Jeff – your mom has gotten herself involved in some pretty weird stuff lately. I'm not saying that I believe in any of it, but I think we'd be wiser to play this safe.'

The boy was still standing in front of the car, staring at them. Not smiling, not moving, but keeping one hand on the hood, as if he wanted to stop them from leaving.

‘Let me just ask him if he's OK,' Jeff suggested. ‘There can't be any harm in that. I mean, look at him. He can't weigh more than sixty pounds.'

‘Your average pit-bull terrier weighs less than sixty pounds, but it can still tear your throat out. Come on, let's go.'

Jeff shifted the gear-shift into drive, and waited.

‘What are you waiting for?' Craig asked him.

‘He's not moving out of the way, is he? I can't just run him over.' He waved his hand and called out, ‘Hey, get out of here! Get lost, kid! Scram!' But the boy stayed where he was, with his hand still resting on the Grand Prix's hood.

‘The only thing you can do is back up,' said Craig.

‘OK,' said Jeff, and engaged reverse. When he turned around in his seat, however, he said, ‘Oh, shit. Look.'

Craig turned around, too. Coming slowly toward them down the street was the black Buick Riviera, with its lights out. It stopped about fifty feet away, its engine running, and smoke blowing out of its exhaust. Craig could see the white-faced driver and the white-faced front-seat passenger, but now he could see that there was another passenger, in the back seat, and that he had a white face, too.

‘What the fuck's going on?' said Craig. ‘Like, who
are
these guys?'

The Buick's doors opened and the three men climbed out. Apart from their white masks, they were all wearing long black overcoats, so that they looked like three gunfighters from a Sergio Leone movie. They came right up to the Grand Prix and the man in the laughing mask rapped on Craig's window with his knuckles.

‘Get out of the car!' he said, in a loud but muffled voice.

With a tight feeling around his heart, Craig was suddenly reminded of the laughing mask that Ruth had seen in Doctor Beech's clinic, except that this man was more than just a disembodied head.

‘Get out of the car!' the man repeated.

Another man rapped at Jeff's window. This man had no expression on his mask at all. ‘You heard what he said. Don't pretend you didn't. Get out of the car!'

Craig vigorously shook his head. ‘I don't know what you want, but whatever it is you're not getting it! I've called the cops, they're going to be here any second.'

‘Are you deaf? I said get out of the car. I have a message for your wife and daughter.'

‘
What
? What message?'

The laughing man stepped away from the car, tugging at his black leather gloves. ‘I'm not telling you until you get out!'

‘Dad!' said Jeff. ‘Let's just go!'

Craig looked around. The Buick was effectively blocking the street behind them, and the Creepy Kid was still standing right in front of them.

The laughing man rapped on Craig's window again. ‘You getting out, fella, or what? You really need to give your wife and daughter this message. Otherwise we might have to give it to them personal. Hand-deliver it, so to speak.'

‘Dad!' said Jeff. ‘They're bluffing, I'll bet you anything! They just want us to get out of the car so they can jack it!'

‘They're going to all of this trouble for a 'ninety-nine Pontiac? I don't believe it!'

‘Then what
do
they want?'

‘I don't know. It looks like I'll just have to get out of the car and find out.'

‘Dad –
don't
!'

‘Listen, Jeff. Stay calm. If they had wanted to kill us, they would have shot us through the windows by now.'

The laughing man called out, ‘Are you coming out, or what? We can do this any way you want. But your wife and your daughter, they need to get this message one way or another.'

‘All right!' Craig shouted back at him. ‘I'm coming out!'

He opened the car door and stepped out on to the road. The laughing man came up to him and said, ‘There . . . that wasn't so hard, was it?' Inside his mask his voice was thick and breathy, as if he had a heavy cold.

‘Who the hell are you?' Craig demanded. ‘What do you think you're trying to do, rear-ending us like that, and chasing after us? Are you some kind of psycho? What have we done to you?'

‘You personally have done nothing,' said the laughing man. ‘Me and my friends, we don't have any bones to pick with you. But your dearly beloved wife seems to be suffering from selective deafness. My little friend here has told her to drop her investigation more than once, but for some reason she doesn't seem to be listening.'

‘Listen,' said Craig, ‘I don't have any idea what this is all about, but if you have a problem why don't you take it up with the Fire Department?'

The laughing man prodded Craig in the chest. ‘I don't need to take it up with the Fire Department because I'm telling
her.
And I'm telling that daughter of yours, the one who thinks she can see things and hear things.'

‘You leave my daughter out of this.'

The laughing man shook his mask from side to side. ‘Can't do that, my friend. Your daughter knows what's happening, that's why. Your daughter's got the sensitivity. But if she wants my advice she should stick to singing her songs, and drawing her pretty pictures, and forget about people coming through from underneath.'

‘Why?' Craig challenged him. ‘Why should she? What in God's name is this all about?'

The laughing man came up closer. He was at least four inches taller than Craig, but Craig stood his ground. The laughing man said, ‘Deals have been done, my friend. Undertakings have been given. We can't have anybody upsetting the apple-cart, not now. You need to tell your dearly beloved wife that all of the fires she's been looking into recently, they were all started by natural causes, so she can close her files and turn her attention to something less con
-trov-
ershul. And you need to advise your dearly beloved daughter that if she happens to hear whispering, or doors opening and closing, then all she has to do is turn up the music to drown them out, and forget she ever heard them.'

‘Why don't you tell them yourself?'

‘Because I'm asking
you
to do it, that's why.'

‘OK. Supposing I tell you to go screw yourself?'

‘You wouldn't, because you're a decent churchgoing man who doesn't hold with language like that.'

Now the Creepy Kid came around from the front of the car, and stared up at Craig with undisguised hostility.

‘Your wife, she needs to mind her own beeswax,' he piped up. ‘I thought I taught her enough of a lesson already, burning her dog.'

‘Oh, that
was
you, was it?'

‘Sure it was. That was to teach her a lesson. That was to teach her to mind her own beeswax.'

‘If that was you, how come
you
didn't get burned?'

‘Maybe I
did
get burned,' the boy snapped at him. ‘Maybe I got burned to nothing but ashes. But what do you know? You don't know nothing about nothing! You don't know comings and you don't know goings. You don't know dying and you don't know pain. People never made you promises and then double-crossed you. You were never burned alive on account of the fact that nobody cared squat about you, even your own mother. I came out of her, didn't I? How come everybody was allowed back inside of her, except me?'

Craig was shaking. He didn't understand any of this encounter, or who these people were, but he was determined that he wasn't going to allow them to intimidate him. He had been crushed enough in the past eighteen months – by banks, by developers, by credit agencies, by the IRS. He wasn't going to take any more, especially not from some snot-nosed kid with a face like a flatfish and three bozos in carnival masks.

‘You listen to me,' he told them. ‘We're leaving now, my son and me. You characters – you can do whatever you darn well please. You don't scare me and I won't allow you to threaten my family.'

‘I don't think that you quite understood me,' said the laughing man. ‘You have to tell your wife that her investigations into all of those recent fires are finished. You have to tell your daughter to close her eyes and close her ears and above all to close her mouth. And you can tell that so-called psychic to go back home, too.'

‘Or what?' Craig challenged him.

‘Do you really want to find out?'

‘Like I said,' Craig told him. ‘Go screw yourself.'

He climbed back into the Grand Prix and slammed the door. Jeff was staring at him half in admiration and half in bewilderment.

‘That's it,' said Craig. He was pumped up with adrenaline and his heart was thumping against his ribcage. ‘Let's just get out of here. Go straight ahead. You can take a left at the end of the street, and then another left, and we'll be back on South Philips.'

Jeff started the engine and drove off. Neither the Creepy Kid nor any of the three masked men made any attempt to stop them. As they reached the end of Conradt Avenue, Craig turned around and saw that they were still standing in the road, watching them.

‘That was unreal,' said Jeff.

‘You think so? It was too darn real for my liking.'

‘You want to go to police headquarters and report it?'

‘No, let's go home first. I want to make sure that your mom and Ammy are OK.'

As they passed West Carter Street, Craig took a good look to the left to make sure that the Buick hadn't turned around to follow them, but the street was deserted, apart from lines of parked cars and a man walking a Dalmatian.

‘What was that about a message?' asked Jeff.

‘I'm not too sure. But it seems like they want Mom to drop all of those arson investigations she's been handling lately, and they want Ammy to stop going on about people coming through from underneath.'

‘How the hell did they know about
that
?'

‘Don't ask me. Maybe Ammy told one of her friends at school about it and her friend told somebody else and somehow those freaks got to hear about it, although I don't see why it should matter to them. But believe me, I'm going to find out who they are and I'm going to make sure that they all get locked up.'

They were only half-a-dozen blocks away from home now, and Craig was beginning to calm down.

‘Come on, Jeff, you don't have to drive so fast. It's all over now.'

But Jeff said, ‘That Creepy Kid. Shit. He's like
beyond
creepy, man. He just stood in the road, right in front of me, and I must have been doing forty-five, easy. Didn't even flinch. Didn't even fucking
blink
. What if I'd hit him? He'd be dead, and I'd be up for vehicular manslaughter.'

Craig said, ‘He knew about Tyson, that's what I don't understand. If he didn't do it, how did he know about it? There hasn't been anything about it on TV. But he wasn't burned at all, was he? Your mom said that he and Tyson, they both burned up together. They were practically
cremated
.'

Jeff shook his head. ‘He sure didn't look dead to me. But whether he's dead or not – I could have been in jail now, charged with killing him.'

‘Maybe he's a twin,' said Craig. ‘I don't know, maybe he's even sextuplets.'