Fire Spirit (40 page)

He reached the top of the stairs, and by now the flames that poured out of him were roaring so loudly that Ruth couldn't hear what Martin was shouting at her.

He reached across and lifted her gun hand, and it was only then that she realized that he wanted her to shoot the Creepy Kid again. She fired, right into the center of the flames. She saw a momentary flare, but that was all. The Creepy Kid kept on shuffling toward them, and with every step he grew hotter and brighter, until he was incandescent.

Ruth tried to push Amelia into her bedroom, but as she did so she heard a sharp barking sound. She stopped where she was, thinking,
no, it can't be.
But when she turned around she saw a bundle of fire racing up the stairs, and when it reached the landing she could see what it was: Tyson, on fire. His eyes were scarlet and there were flames pouring out of his mouth – a hound from hell – but she could see clearly that it was Tyson. He barked again, and then again, and then he launched himself at the Creepy Kid as if he had been shot out a catapult.

There was a dazzling explosion of fire. The Creepy Kid toppled over the banister-rails with Tyson on top of him, and they both landed in the hallway like a napalm bomb, with shock-waves of flame rolling out across the floor and up the walls. Ruth rushed over to the banister and looked down, and there lay the both of them, blazing furiously.

‘Oh, Tyson,' she said. ‘Oh, Tyson, you poor, faithful dog! Thank you!'

Amelia snatched her hand. ‘I
told
you he wasn't gone for ever, didn't I? I
told
you he was going to come back!'

Martin came up to both of them. He didn't say a word, but he put his arms around them both and held them tight.

He was still holding them when they heard a deep roaring noise out in the street.

‘That's not thunder,' said Amelia, cocking her head to one side and listening hard.

Ruth looked at Martin and said, ‘She's right. That's
not
thunder. What the hell is it?'

They went downstairs and out through the front door. Most of the houses were still on fire, and thick gray smoke was billowing out of the shingles of their own roof. But the crowds of burning people were milling around in confusion, as if they could sense that something apocalyptic were about to happen. Some of them were screaming, and other were spinning around and around with their arms out wide, blazing like Catherine-wheels.

Amelia said, in one of her breathy, knowing whispers, ‘It's
Susan
!'

The roar was growing louder and louder, and the wind was suddenly ten degrees colder. Ruth peered toward the east, and all she could see was darkness. The flames had died down, and the lurid orange glow that had lit up the city had faded into black. And then she saw a dim white line approaching, a line that stretched all the way across the street.

At first she didn't realize what it was, but then she saw that it was foam, and that it was carrying all kinds of debris with it: trees and bicycles and park benches and broken fences. It was a massive wall of water – all of the water from the eighth circle of hell.

It thundered along the street, so fast that none of the burning people had any chance of escaping it. Their flames were extinguished and they were all swept away, hundreds and hundreds of them, along with automobiles and bushes and street-signs and living people screaming for help. The water was impenetrably dark – dark, boiling green. It rose higher and higher, and as it did so it brought with it another raft of debris: boats and lifebelts and shattered oars, as well as hundreds more bodies, all clogged together in a vast, sodden archipelago.

The water rapidly began to rise up the driveway, and Ruth and Amelia and Martin retreated to the porch. In less than five minutes, however, it was flooding right into the house and across the living-room carpet. With a sharp, complicated fizzle, it extinguished the last smoking remains of the Creepy Kid, and Tyson's bones, too.

Ruth and Amelia and Martin climbed the stairs up to the landing and sat there watching as the water swirled in. They could also hear crackling in the attic as the roof smoldered.

‘Let's hope we don't have to build ourselves an ark,' said Martin, as the water rose halfway up the stairs. ‘I was never any good at woodwork.'

They sat on the landing for more than five hours. Amelia softly sang her songs, and Ruth went to sleep with her head against Martin's shoulder.

At last, at dawn, the water began to gurgle away, taking the cremated remains of the Creepy Kid, and Tyson's skull, and all of the hundreds of people who had tried to come back from hell. It was a slow, funereal current that emptied itself down drains and sewers, and it left the streets of Kokomo littered with debris. No bodies, though, except the bodies of the living who had been drowned in it. The bodies of the dead returned to the afterlife.

When Ruth and Amelia and Martin emerged from the house, a watery sun was shining. Dozens of houses were still smoking, with smoke-stained windows, and the roof of the Cutter house had been burned right down to the rafters, but the asphalt street was so bright that they were dazzled.

Ruth said, ‘All of those people. Are they really going to suffer all that pain, for ever and ever, amen?'

Martin lifted his hand, as if he wanted to touch her hair.

‘Everything we do, Ruth, it's always for ever and ever, amen.'

Three days later, when she was staying with her friend Margaret in Lafayette, she had a phone call from St Vincent's Hospital in Carmel, where Jeff had been taken after the floods.

‘Mrs Cutter? This is Doctor Petersen. I'm sorry to have to tell you this, Mrs Cutter, but about an hour ago your son Jeffrey suffered an acute myocardial infarction. We did everything possible, Mrs Cutter, but I'm afraid to say that he's passed.'

‘Passed?' said Ruth. She was looking out of the window at Amelia, playing with Margaret's five-year-old son in the yard outside. He looked so much like Jeff, when he was little. She could even hear him laughing.

‘I'm sorry,' said Dr Petersen. ‘I really am.'

Three months later, when Ruth went up to Amelia's room to say goodnight, Amelia said, ‘I hope Jeff isn't hurting.'

Ruth had been looking at the framed picture of Jennifer Steadman on Amelia's desk – that wistful, unfocused smile. ‘Oh. Sweetheart. Of course he's not hurting. Jeff's at peace. It's only unhappy people who go to hell when they die.'

‘I don't know. Sometimes I think that I can hear him. Just when I'm falling asleep, I can hear him whispering “Ammy”.'

‘You miss him is all.'

Ruth went to the window, took hold of the drapes, and she was about to draw them together when she saw somebody standing under the basswood tree. A tall teenage boy, with unkempt hair. Not moving, just staring at the house.

She frowned at him. He was wearing black jeans and a black T-shirt. On the front of the T-shirt she could make out the red letters
Cattle Decapitation
.

She raised her hand, but he didn't acknowledge her, and she couldn't be sure that he had seen her.

‘Mommy?' frowned Amelia. ‘What's wrong? Aren't you going to draw the drapes?'

Ruth went out on to the landing. ‘Craig!' she called. ‘Craig!'

Craig came out into the hallway and looked up. He was still wearing white cotton gloves to protect his hands.

‘What is it, honey?'

Ruth hesitated. She couldn't think how to tell him that their son had come back.