The Bone House (2 page)

    Glory
crept to the garage, which was in the midst of a grassy field. A rusted padlock
held the side door closed. She knew where Mr Bone kept the key, on a hook
hidden underneath the window ledge. She undid the padlock, replaced the key on
the hook, and opened the door. She always got a lump in her throat creeping
inside. She reached for a heavy flashlight on the shelves next to the door, and
when she turned it on and rattled the batteries, it struggled to make a tiny
orange glow across the floor. She could see mouse droppings littered at her
feet. Parked in front of her was a pickup truck with a dirty tarpaulin
stretched over its bed. At the rear of the garage was a wooden ladder leading
to the loft.

    'It's
me,' she called softly. 'I'm here.'

    Glory
tiptoed to the ladder. The rotten steps sagged as she climbed, and splinters
poked her fingers. Ten feet over the floor, she crawled on to the bed of the
loft, which was strewn with paint cans and moldy blankets. She saw nails
jutting down through the roof shingles and a huge papery growth under the eave
that was really a hornet's nest.

    'Hey,'
she said. 'Where are you?'

    She
heard the scrape of claws and a wispy squeal. When she turned her flashlight
toward the sound, she saw the wide, curious eyes of the kitten squeezing out of
its hiding place. She gathered the little animal up into her arms and was
rewarded with a rumbling purr that was loud in her ears. The kitten's spiky fur
was mottled with tan and black, striped like a tiger.

    'Look
what I have,' Glory said. She poured milk into the lid of a dirty glass jar,
then dumped the food from the paper bag on to the floor and let the kitten
attack it hungrily. She stroked its back as it ate noisily and then picked it
up with one hand and deposited it near the milk, where it drank until its mouth
was damp and white. When it was done, the kitten climbed up her bare legs with
wobbly steps, and she put it back down on the floor of the loft. As Glory
watched happily, it hopped in and out of the flashlight glow, slapping at a
black beetle with its tiny front paws.

    Glory
was so caught up in the antics of the kitten, so much in love with it, that she
didn't realize immediately that she wasn't alone anymore.

    Then
her heart galloped in her chest. She heard footsteps treading on the gravel
outside the garage.

    Glory
sucked in her breath, covered the light, and shrank back from the edge of the
loft.
Don't come inside, don't come inside, don't come inside,
she
prayed in her head, but she heard the bang of the metal plate on the door lock
as the side door opened below her. Someone stole into the garage. Someone was
with her, moving about in the darkness, the way a ghost would, the way a
monster would.

    She
hugged the kitten to her chest and flattened herself against a blanket on the
floor. In her arms, the kitten squirmed and mewed. She tried to bury the sound by
keeping its little body against her chest, but whoever was below her heard
something in the rafters and stopped. There was a moment of horrible quiet,
then a flashlight beam speared through the dark space. It swept like a
searchlight around the corners of the garage and traced the wall of the loft
just above her head. Hunting for her among the spiderwebs.

    She
thought about calling out. Whoever it was would be surprised, but they'd laugh
to find her here. There was no reason to be afraid. Even so, she kept her lips
tightly shut. She didn't even want to breathe. It was the middle of the night
and no one should be here now.

    Somehow
Glory knew in the hollow of her stomach: something bad was happening.

    The
light went black. Below her, she heard labored breathing as the stranger
dragged something heavy off the metal shelves. She heard an odd burp of plastic
and a hiss of air. Something bounced on the floor like a bottle cap and rolled,
and the intruder didn't bother to retrieve it. As Glory listened, stiff with
fear, she heard the outside door open. The lock rattled, and the garage fell
into a deep quiet again. It was over. She was alone.

    She
waited with no sense of time ticking away. She didn't know how long she lay in
the loft, not moving, wondering if it was safe to escape. Finally, when she
felt bugs crawling over her bare legs, she grabbed the kitten with one hand and
navigated backwards down the wobbly ladder. She jumped the last few feet to the
floor and took blind, tentative steps toward the window so she could stare
outside. She spied the dark square of glass, which looked out toward the west
wall of the Bone house. The height of the window frame was almost taller than
she was. She had to stand on her toes to look out.

    The
glass was punched with pellet holes shot by the Bone boys. Air whipped in
through the starbursts. Before she pushed her head above the ledge, she smelled
an odor that was both sickly sweet and overpowering.

    Gasoline.

    A
drowning, drenching wave of gasoline.

    Glory
didn't understand, but the foul smell made her want to run. Run fast, with the
kitten sheltered in her arms. Run home to her bed. Get away.

    She
poked her eyes above the window frame. When she did, she had to clap her hand over
her mouth not to scream. A black silhouette stood immediately on the other side
of the glass, not even a foot away. She couldn't see the person's face, but she
squeezed her eyes shut and stood stock-still, as if becoming a statue would
make her invisible. Fumes of gasoline crept into her nose, and she swallowed
back a cough. When no one came running, she peeked through her eyelids and
dared to look again. The person didn't move. She heard loud breathing, the way
an animal would pant. Before her brain could process what was happening, she
saw the smallest flick of a hand, saw bare skin, and saw the tiny eruption of a
flame.

    A
match.

    The
hand cupped it and dropped it. The flame descended to the ground in a flash of
light like a falling star. It was a simple thing, someone lighting a cigarette
and then stamping out the match with their foot.

    But
there was no cigarette.

    Glory's
world blew into pieces. The flame struck the earth, and a cannon of fire
erupted, filling the window and blowing her backward like a punch to her chest.
She shielded her eyes with her hand, and through her slitted fingers, she
watched the fire leap like a circus acrobat toward the Bone house. The flames
sped along scorched, intersecting paths, greedily licking at the walls and
climbing for the sky. In seconds, fire was everywhere, consuming the frame of
the house as if it were nothing but a few branches of kindling stuffed under
the grate. She smelled wood blackening and heard knots pop like knuckles
cracking. Through the house windows, she saw the yellow glow of flame blooming
inside, and soon, she couldn't see the house at all; it disappeared behind a
tower of smoke and fire. The heat was so ferocious and so close that her hands
and face began to sear. She backed up and gagged as poison billowed through the
window and filled the garage.

    Crying,
coughing, Glory bolted for the door, but it was locked. Locked on the outside.
The rattling hinges refused to give way. When she touched the doorknob, she
burned her fingers on the hot metal and screamed.

    It
was now bright as day inside the garage, but the white haze gathering in the
air was as impenetrable as the darkness. Glory ran from the fire toward the
wide automobile door; she pulled and tugged on the handle but she couldn't move
it at all. She could hardly breathe now. The smoke infiltrated her eyes and
lungs. She crumbled to her knees and wept as an orange dragon crackled through
the wall and began to devour the garage itself. The sound was loud and
terrifying, a roar, a hiss, worse than any monster she'd imagined living here.

    Glory
backed up, scraping her knees on the floor until they bled. She retreated into
the furthest corner of the garage, and when she could go no further, she curled
up into a ball. She clutched the kitten to her cheek, kissed its face over and
over, and whispered in its ear, 'Baby, baby, baby, baby.' She closed her eyes
as the fire ballooned over her and poked at her with its evil tongue like a
spitting devil.

    She
prayed the way her father had taught her to pray before he died.

    She
prayed that God would lift her up in His arms and take her back home, where she
would awaken on her mattress on the floor of her bedroom. The humid night would
be still again, the mosquitoes would be buzzing in her ears, and the kitten
would be purring in her arms.

    She
prayed.

    Even
when part of the wall collapsed around her body in a cascading spray of sparks
and debris, and left a gaping hole where she could escape, Glory prayed.

    Even
when she crawled away over a trail of burning embers into the safety of the
grass, with the kitten nestled in her chest, she prayed.

    She
lay with her hands covering her ears, but she couldn't shelter herself from the
awful noise. Over the howl of the fire, she heard the agonized wails of the
people dying inside the Bone house, and in her desperation, she prayed that God
would make this night unreal. Make it go away forever. Wipe her memory clean
until she forgot everything, even in her worst dreams.

    Please,
God, let me forget everything, Glory prayed.

    Forget
everything.

    Forget
everything.

    The
girl in the bikini pirouetted on the wet sand.

    She
was a hundred yards away, and all Mark Bradley could see was the sheen of her
bare skin in the moonlight. She danced like a water sprite, with her head
thrown back so that her hair swept behind her. She had her arms extended like
wings. The dark water of the Gulf was as calm as glass, barely lapping at the
beach. The girl splashed and kicked at the surf, sometimes running deeper into
the warm water until it rose to her knees.

    He
could hear her singing to herself. She had a sweet voice, but it wasn't
perfectly in tune. He recognized the song, which he could remember playing on
his Walkman while jogging through Grant Park in downtown Chicago as a teenager.
To the girl on the beach, the song must have been an oldie, something from her
mother's generation. He heard her chanting the chorus over and over.

    It
was Billy Joel's 'We Didn't Start the Fire'.

    As he
got closer to the girl on the beach, Mark couldn't help but admire her. Her body
was mature, and the flimsy strings of the red bikini showed it off, but she
still had the gangly gait of an adolescent, all arms and legs. She was more
girl than woman, with an innocence about her near-nakedness in public. He was
still too far away to see her face, but he wondered if his wife Hilary knew
her. He assumed she was one of the girls who had competed in the dance
tournament at the resort, and now that the competition was over, she was
enjoying a few sleepless moments on the beach before going home.

    Mark
couldn't sleep either. He dreaded the return to Wisconsin. The vacation in
Florida had been an escape for a week, and now he would have to face the
reality of his situation at home. Shunned. Jobless. Angry. He and Hilary had avoided
the subject for most of the past year, but they couldn't avoid it much longer.
Money was tight. They would have to decide: stay or go. He didn't want to give
up on their dream, but he had no idea how to put the pieces of their lives back
together.

    That
wasn't how it was supposed to be. They'd left Chicago for rural Door County
because they had wanted a quieter life in a place where they could join a
community and raise a family. Instead, it had become a nightmare for Mark.
Suspicion now followed him everywhere. He was marked with a scarlet letter. P
for Predator. All because of Tresa Fischer.

    He
pounded a fist against his palm. Sometimes his fury overwhelmed him. He didn't
blame Tresa; she was just a girl in love. But the others - the teachers, the
parents, the police, the school board - they had ignored his denials and picked
apart his life, leaving him with his career destroyed. He wanted revenge for
the injustice. He wanted to hurt someone. He wasn't a violent man, but
sometimes he wondered what he would do if he met the principal of the school in
a deserted county park, where no one would see them and where no one would ever
know what he'd done.

    Mark
stopped on the beach. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply until his anger
washed away. The waves came and went, and he felt the sand eroding beneath his
feet. The peace of the water calmed him, which was why he was here. He smelled
the briny, fishy aroma of the Gulf. The mild, damp air was like a tonic
compared to the cold weather back home, where it was March and temperatures
were still in the thirties.