The Devil's Intern (16 page)

The scene is chaotic. People of all shapes and sizes are running in all directions. No one seems to know the way out of this labyrinth of flame. Just minutes ago the fire was on the horizon. Now it is only doors away. Wood and straw ignite quickly as if soaked in accelerant. The ash falling from the black, heavy sky sticks to my skin. It gets into my nostrils and throat. Medusa’s long eyelashes are coated, and her hair is now as gray as her jeans, aging her by fifty years.

We head into the pitiful house Elinor called home. We can hear her living voice, and it sends chills up my spine. If she sees us, she won’t know us.

Several adults burst through the entrance. They’re covered in black ash, but I get the impression they weren’t that clean to begin with. A woman with a dirty white cap on her head lurches forward. Greasy red strands of hair fall from her headpiece, and she tucks them behind her ears. Just the way our Elinor does.

Totally unprovoked, the woman slaps Medusa hard across the face. My best friend falls to the ground.

“Get ye out of my house, ye filthy whore!” screams the woman. “Did ye think ye could steal my belongings whilst the fire burns? Ye stinkin’ maggot.”

“Touch her again and it’ll be the last thing you do!” I yell, pushing the woman away. Medusa is sobbing on the ground and her pale skin is now shining bright pink, seared with the outline of short fingers. I pull her to her feet and shield her behind me.

“Stop yer screechin’, ye stupid bitch!” cries an older male with barely any teeth; those that do remain in his sore-covered mouth are stained yellow and brown. “Get the food in the cart before some other stinkin’ thief tries to take off with it.”

“Get the pigs,” grunts another male. He has a deformed arm, which hangs limply at his side. The adults ignore the screaming from upstairs.

“Elinor and two of the boys are up there!” I shout, but the adults ignore me. They’re grabbing pots and dirty, cracked plates and are loading up a wooden cart outside. The screams are getting louder by the second. A fat, bearded face pokes through the entrance.

“Bert, Jacob, the fire has reached the McDonalds’ house. The firemen pulled it down with old man McDonald and the little ’uns still inside,” he croaks. He coughs blood onto his arm. “Get yerselves out of here now. Head eastward, away from the wind.”

“What about the kids?” I yell as Bert, Jacob, and the old hag who slapped Medusa join the masses streaming away from the approaching roar.

“Get away from me, boy!” snarls the man with the deformed arm. He has a squealing piglet tucked under his armpit. He smells so bad I’m amazed the piglet hasn’t been knocked unconscious.

“Let them go,” sobs Medusa, pulling at my arm. “We’ll get El and the boys.”

The man with rotten teeth suddenly stops. “Boys, ye say? Are my boys up there?”

“And Elinor!” screams Medusa. The pain and humiliation have passed. By the way her back teeth are clenched, I’m sure she’s going to punch someone soon.

“Girls are no use to me,” snarls the man. “Just another mouth to feed, but I’ll take my boys.”

Thick black smoke is starting to condense in the room. I can’t see the wooden staircase anymore. The living are coughing up the linings of their lungs, while Medusa and I are fighting the reflex to breathe. The screaming upstairs has stopped.

The man with rotten teeth yells out, “John, William, get yer backsides down here!” but no one comes. He hovers by a wooden chair with broken spindles and then runs out of the house.

“He left them!” screams Medusa. “They left their children to die in the fire.”

“Yeah, but we’re here!” I shout over the roaring and spitting firestorm, which has already reached us. “We need to do this now, Medusa.”

I run blindly up the stairs. The wooden boards are uneven and loose. I lose my footing before I’m even halfway up and slip down. Medusa runs past me, skipping up the steps two at a time as if she were weightless.

Terrified that the floor will give way with Medusa up there, I pull myself to my feet and clamber up after her. We can’t see our hands in front of our faces. The smoke is as black as coal and the heat’s intensity tells me that this building is already on fire.

Parts of the ceiling collapse with a thunderous roar. Flaming wood and thatch crash down to our left. There is a pitiful scream to our right as some of the dense smoke is sucked out of the newly created hole above our heads.

“Elinor!” screams Medusa. “Elinor, it’s us, we’re here to save you.”

“She won’t know who we are!” I cry back. “She hasn’t met us yet.”

A figure in a dirty white dress appears in a doorway.

“I cannot move our John or William,” says the living Elinor, choking. “Ye must help me.”

I run into the room. The two little boys we saw fighting earlier are huddled together in a corner. Their green eyes are as big as Brussels sprouts. I try to pick one up, but he starts slapping and hitting me. I drop him after he bites me on the shoulder. He gags and spits at the taste of my dead flesh.

“Elinor, can you hold them long enough to drop them out of the window?” I yell as another part of the ceiling falls down. Burning thatch scatters throughout the landing as the embers set fire to the wooden stairs.

“Yes!” she screams back.

“Then drop them to me. I’ll catch them and then you.”

The living Elinor doesn’t know who we are, but she accepts us immediately as people who just want to help. Our Elinor. As trusting in life as she is in death. There are no words of hate against the family that deserted her.

I run back out, pulling Medusa by the hand. We fall down the
stairs, landing in a heap at the bottom. The downstairs is ablaze. The fact that we can’t die again is cold comfort now that we’re back in the land of the living, because Hell is actually safer than this inferno. We dodge the flames and run back out into the street. People are crying and screaming and trying to escape the red monster that is now devouring everything in its path. I secretly hope the fire gets that woman who slapped Medusa. I don’t care if she was Elinor’s mother.

A face appears at one of the windows. It is Elinor. She has the smaller child in her arms. He has yanked off her cloth cap and is pulling at her hair.

“Drop him now, Elinor!” I cry.

The toddler falls with a scream, but I catch him in my arms before his head hits the cobbled street. A young woman who is heavily pregnant scoops him up and sets him in her cart.

“Hurry, Elinor!” screams the woman. “Throw down young John.”

The older boy doesn’t fight as much as his brother, but Elinor is struggling. She staggers several times before levering him out of the window. I can see the flames directly behind her. I catch the boy again, although his legs land with a heavy thud on the cobbles. He screams out in pain.

“We’ll find Elinor!” I yell at the pregnant woman. “Now get out of here.”

With a strength that awes me, the pregnant woman grabs the shafts of the cart and starts to pull it. The boys scream for their sister, but they don’t move as they trundle away to safety.

Fire has now taken hold of the houses on either side of Elinor’s. Men aren’t trying to fight the fire with water; they’re just pulling down houses farther up the street. People are still screaming and crying and searching for loved ones. It’s absolute pandemonium.

“Elinor, you have to jump now!” screams Medusa, but we can’t see Elinor anymore. Smoke belches out of the broken window.

Then there’s a sickening crack, like a giant bone being snapped in half, and the entire second floor implodes. The instinct to survive
doesn’t vanish just because a person is dead, and both Medusa and I jump back as enormous orange-and-blue flames leap into the air.

And then the screaming starts.

I now understand why victims of the Skin-Walkers have their tongues taken out, because the cry of true torture is unbearable. It burrows into every fiber of your being. My stomach heaves as the dying cries of the living Elinor clutch at my soul.

We came to save her, to stop her death and give her a second chance at life, and we have failed.

A huge figure suddenly barges past me. The blade of an axe reflects the hungry flames.

“Alfarin, what are you doing?” screams Medusa.

But he doesn’t stop. He runs into the burning shell and disappears.

Before I realize what I’m doing, I run in after him.

My skin is already blistering in the heat. Two wooden beams, one upright, the other lying across the top of it at a ninety-degree angle, create a tunnel into the remains of the house. If they fall, the entire building is coming down. Trying to see in this blinding mass of smoke is hopeless, but I have one sense that I can use.

My hearing.

The living Elinor is screaming like a trapped animal. We knew she died because her house collapsed on top of her, but I never imagined it took her this long to pass over. The harrowing, gut-churning sound is coming from the kitchen area where Medusa was attacked earlier. Elinor must have fallen straight through the ceiling.

I know that’s where Alfarin is now, and a glimmer of hope resurrects itself in the darkness of my mind.

This house is made of wood, and Alfarin has his axe. We can still get the living Elinor out.

With my left arm raised above my head, I push through the burning beams. Alfarin is only a few feet away from me. I tread on his axe, which is lying on the ground, inches from the living Elinor’s blackened and bloody face.

She is pinned down on her stomach beneath two thick pieces of wood. One is across her legs; the other is across her back. Blood is filling Elinor’s mouth.

“We have to move this one first!” I shout to Alfarin, pointing to the beam across Elinor’s back. One end is on fire, and I frantically start stamping on sparking embers that are threatening to set Elinor’s long dress alight.

Alfarin and I position ourselves on either side of the beam and try to raise it, but it’s jammed fast by other pieces of the walls and ceiling that have come down on top of it. We try again and again. Alfarin is stronger than ten men, but we can’t raise it an inch. We get so frustrated we start kicking it, but the beam won’t move.

Living Elinor’s head is twisted to the side and blood is leaking out of her mouth; she’s gagging on it. Her internal organs are being pulped. Soon she’ll be drowning in her own blood.

The flames are now all around us. We have no way of extinguishing them. Alfarin’s T-shirt catches fire and I jump on him to smother it before the flames take hold. Then Elinor screams out in agony. It’s primal, like a woman giving birth.

Her dress is ablaze.

Alfarin picks up his axe and starts chopping at the wood, but the second he does, the beams that are resting above us start to vibrate violently. Everything is about to come crashing down.

I take off my T-shirt and start beating out the flames on Elinor’s dress. I swear I can feel my skin bubbling and blistering in the heat.

“I don’t want to die like this,” sobs Elinor. Pockets of blood are erupting from her mouth and nostrils.

“We can’t get her out, Alfarin!” I shout. Panic is spreading through me. How have we managed to screw this up again?

“Please don’t let me die like this,” begs the living Elinor. She is pleading with Alfarin, who is on his hands and knees by her face.

“I understand,” he says quietly, and he bends down and kisses Elinor on the forehead.

“Make it quick,” begs Elinor.

“I will see you on the other side, my princess,” says Alfarin,
and he picks up his axe, grabs hold of the wooden handle with two hands, and raises it above his head.

I realize what he is going to do a split second before the blade slices through the flame.

“Alfarin, no!”

I crumple onto the beam that has pinned Elinor’s legs. I am now burning in the pits of a living Hell. We came here to save Elinor, not kill her.

Alfarin grabs hold of me and starts to pull me away. I fight back. I don’t want him touching me. More beams start to fall. Let them come. Bury me in this inferno. I deserve to burn in Hell for the rest of eternity for what I have started.

“Take us back!” roars Alfarin.

I feel freezing hands on me. Everything is cold now. I’m encased in ice. That was one of Dante’s circles of a mythical Hell. The ninth circle, reserved for the treacherous. What greater betrayal could we have committed than this one?

The screaming comes quickly. Burning hands grabbing and pulling in the darkness. Harder and faster than before. And now the howling. The baying wolves of death are coming for us.

“Get them into the shower. The water needs to be ice cold.”

Medusa and our Elinor are taking charge. I let them manipulate my body the way a mother would a baby because I am helpless.

Alfarin and I are pushed into the shower; I collapse onto the tiled floor. Elinor turns the dial and freezing water gushes onto our smoking, burned, dead bodies.

“Should we remove their clothes?” asks Elinor.

My eyes lazily trail across the bathroom to where Medusa is standing. Everything is in slow motion. Medusa is in front of the sink with Alfarin’s axe in her hands. She is scrubbing the blade. The water runs red.

“Don’t look, El,” sobs Medusa, but Elinor places a hand softly on Medusa’s back.

“It’s okay,” she says quietly. “I’ve been waiting four hundred years for this day to come.”

And now Medusa is crying violently. She is bent over the sink and her shoulders are heaving. I look up at Alfarin. The water is streaming through his singed beard and hair. His pale skin is red and is blistering. I don’t need a mirror to know mine is doing the same, but we stay silent through the pain.

We deserve it.

Alfarin’s eyes are closed, and Elinor is comforting Medusa. No one can see me crying. I put my fist into my mouth and bite down hard.

Medusa slumps onto the toilet seat. Elinor hands her several tissues. Then she wipes Alfarin’s axe and takes it back into the main bedroom. The rest of us are in pieces, and yet our Elinor is as calm as a summer day.

I don’t understand. Why isn’t she screaming at us for what we’ve just done to her? That filthy axe is not something to be revered and handled with care. It is treacherous. Elinor has just watched Medusa wash her own blood from its blade. For centuries Elinor has hung out with Alfarin, waiting patiently for Medusa and me to join them. She said it was fate that we were friends.