The Bone House (54 page)

    Katie
listened to the shrill sirens, her face stricken with indecision.

    'It's
over,' Hilary repeated, it's too late.' She pressed her hands into the bed and
tried to stand up without alarming the girl.

    Katie
swung the gun, which was still smoking, and pointed it at Hilary's face. 'I
swore to my mom I was going to burn the house down,' she said. 'She laughed.
She didn't believe me.'

    'Don't
do this.'

    Katie
ignored her. Her mind was made up. She swung the vodka bottle into the corner
of the door frame, and the neck of the bottle shattered across the floor in
razor-sharp fragments. She jerked the open, jagged body of the bottle toward
Hilary, letting the alcohol splash across Hilary's face and soak through her
blouse to her chest.

    Katie
shoved a hand in her pocket and pulled out a cigarette lighter.

    'Don't
worry,' the girl told her. 'I've done this before.'

    On
the floor, Amy Leigh's hand shot out.

    Before
Katie could react, Amy locked her fingers around her roommate's ankle and
yanked Katie's leg into the air. Katie flew, crashing backward on to bottles
and broken glass. Sharp fragments stabbed through her clothes and impaled
themselves like arrowheads in her skin. The gun broke loose from her hand.

    Amy
lunged for Katie, leaping past Gary Jensen's corpse and landing on the girl's
chest. She drove the air out of Katie's lungs, and Katie rasped for breath
underneath her. Pinned, Katie's fingers twitched on the cigarette lighter. She
cocked her elbow and pressed the lighter against Amy's alcohol-soaked clothes.
Hilary shouted a warning, but before Amy could react, Katie's thumb flicked the
wheel, spinning it, striking the metal against the flint.

    Amy
pushed Katie down with a shout. Her eyes locked on the purple plastic cylinder
in Katie's hand. She waited for a cloud of flame to billow over her body as the
flash ignited the alcohol, but Katie spun frantically in a series of empty
clicks without triggering a spark. The mechanism was wet and useless.

    Katie's
fingers unclenched, and she dropped the lighter, but she reached out in the
same instant and scooped the butt of the gun back into her hand. Amy grabbed
the girl's arm and hung on. They rolled, scraping across glass, mingling
alcohol and blood. Hilary saw the gun caught between the two girls and threw
herself hard toward the wall as the flying barrel pointed toward her stomach.
The gun didn't go off. Instead, as Katie squirmed away and aimed from her
knees, Amy caught Katie's hand and grabbed her index finger before the girl
could slide it on to the trigger. She bent back hard, snapping the bone. Katie
screamed. The gun fell like a stone, and as the two girls struggled, Amy kicked
it, and the gun slid across the floor and bumped into the far wall.

    Hilary
rolled across the bed and collected the gun. She pointed it at the ceiling and
shouted at the two girls, who were entwined on the floor.

    'Stop!
Stop it now!'

    Amy
scrambled to her feet, pulling Katie with her. She threw Katie against the
wall, and Katie landed with a groan, holding up her hands, crying with pain.
Amy backed away toward Hilary, who trained the barrel on Katie as the girl bent
over with her hands on her knees and tried to catch her breath.

    Outside,
the sirens soared in volume, seemingly from every direction. Police cars sped toward
them down all of the side streets, converging on the house.

    'That's
it, Katie,' Hilary told her. 'No more.'

    Amy
slid an arm around Hilary's waist and leaned into her, weak and exhausted. She
had enough strength to stare at her friend and the wreckage around her. The
broken bottles. The blood-stained glass. The body of Gary Jensen, on his back,
eyes open, a burnt red hole in his forehead.

    'How
could you do this?' Amy whispered.

    The
air wheezed in and out of Katie's lungs. The girl squatted and retrieved an
unbroken, unopened bottle of gin, which was tipped on the floor at her feet.
Hilary gestured at her with the gun.

    'Stop.'

    Katie
picked up the bottle and shrugged. 'Go ahead, fire. One little spark will turn all
of us into a fish boil.'

    'Put
the bottle down,' Hilary repeated.

    Katie
rested her head against the wall with her eyes closed. Her face was streaked
with blood. Her clothes were torn. She twisted the cap off the bottle, breaking
the paper seal, and drank, not caring as gin dripped out the sides of her
mouth. When she stopped drinking, she hung on to the bottle by its neck,
letting it dangle at her side.

    'I
heard them screaming,' Katie said. 'As the fire got them. You never forget.'

    'Turn
around, Katie. Start walking. We're leaving the house.'

    'Dad
said I should have killed him, too,' Katie said. 'I didn't understand back
then. Now I do.'

    Katie
splashed gin at her feet and down her jeans and across her bare, bloody arms.
She poured it over her head. She soaked the carpet, which was already sodden.
Fumes rose in invisible waves around her; billowing into the shut-up room. The
smell alone was enough to make Hilary's head swim.

    The girl
dug in her pocket and pulled out another cigarette lighter. 'I always have a
backup.'

    'Katie,
don't do this,' Amy told her.

    Katie's
face was blank, like a bone-white, empty page. She didn't even seem to be in
the same room with them; she was in a different house, with her dead family.
She extended her arm, her thumb poised over the sparkwheel. Hilary aimed the
gun at her, but she couldn't risk pulling the trigger. Katie cocked her thumb
without looking at them or seeing them. With a sad smile, she spun the wheel
and lit the flow of butane with a single, deadly flick.

    A
tiny flame popped from the top of the lighter. There was an instant in which
the entire room was nothing but that insignificant fire, no greater than the
light of a candle. Then the flame found the gathering fumes, and the first
fireball erupted, wispy and gaseous, burning itself out in an orange burst.
Hilary and Amy leaped back. Katie held the lighter upright, still lit, and she
tilted the neck of the gin bottle downward. The liquid streamed through the
glass and became a silver waterfall splashing toward the flame.

    
'Get
down!'
Hilary screamed.

    She
threw herself and Amy toward the floor just as the alcohol struck the lighter.
The flame defied gravity and shot upward in a burst of lightning into the
bottle and turned it into a bomb. The heavy glass blew outward in a lethal
explosion of needle-sharp shards. Katie's face and torso were instantly
shredded. The fire latched on to the fuel on her clothes and skin and turned her
into a column of flames. She spun like a dancer, her flesh charring, her body
consumed. She screamed like a dying animal, but only until the fire sped down
her throat and began eating her from inside out, choking off her voice as her
lungs melted.

    Hilary
dragged Amy toward the windows on the opposite side of the room. She tore off
the curtain rod, and the heavy fabric rippled to the ground. Outside, through
the glass, the world glowed with the revolving red lights of police cars
driving on to the lawn around them. Inside, the doorway leading out of the
bedroom was engulfed in fire and impassable, as Katie's dying body became a
pyre. Sparks arced toward the bed, smoldering on the linens.

    Hilary
tried to pry open the lock on the window, but it was painted shut and wouldn't
move. She looked around the room and saw an antique brass lamp on the
nightstand closest to her. She grabbed it with both arms, dragging the cord out
of the socket and winding up as if she was holding a baseball bat.

    'Duck!'
she shouted at Amy.

    The
girl dropped to the floor. Hilary threw the lamp into the window, and it burst
with a singing clatter. The lamp disappeared down to the ground below them,
leaving jagged knives of glass clinging to the wooden frame. Air rushed in,
feeding the fire, which gnawed closer to them as it spread across the bed and
climbed the walls. Searing heat burned their faces. Sparks exploded like
fireworks to the ceiling and fell inches away at their feet.

    Hilary
bunched the fallen curtains around her hands and knocked the remaining
fragments from the window. She looked out through the open square, seeing
lights and vehicles drawing closer, feeling the cold of the wind and the wet
rain tease the heat of the fire, and seeing the waving branches of the nearest
maple beckoning to her like a rescuer. The ground was a long distance below
them.

    She
thrust Amy toward the window. 'Jump! Jump for the tree!'

    'What
about you?' Amy shouted as she squeezed her body into the frame.

    'Jump!'

    Amy leaped
forward, arms outstretched, and disappeared into the arms of the air. Hilary
glanced over her shoulder in time to see the entire room burst like a red ball
and surge toward her. She forced her torso through the window opening and
wedged her foot on the bottom of the frame. She felt a scorching heat erupt on
her back, and she knew she was on fire. She didn't look down.

    Hilary
jumped.

    She
felt the tree branches stabbing her as they took her into their arms. Her
fingers grasped like claws, and she found one thick branch with her hand, only
to have it peeled away by gravity as she fell. She clung to another for a split
second before her weight dislodged it, and it broke with a crack, sending her
downward. Another branch stopped her with a hammering blow to her back, and she
ricocheted forward, falling again, her clothes tearing, her skin pummeled with
scrapes and punctures.

    She
landed hard on her side and rolled through the mud, and when she stopped, she
found herself on her back, staring up at the web of branches that had saved
her. Fire spat through the broken window overhead like the tongue of a devil.
Rain gently poured through the light and cooled her and washed away the blood,
and the mud and puddles stamped out the flames that had licked at her back. She
tried to move, to pull herself away to a safe distance, but her pummeled
muscles refused to budge. All she could do for now was lie on the ground and
wait.

    She
felt a hand on her cheek. When she turned her head, she saw Amy hovering over
her, propped on one elbow. The girl's face was dirty, but her eyes were bright
and glassy with tears that streaked down her skin along with the rain.

    'You
OK?' Amy asked.

    Hilary
gave a weak smile. 'Yeah. You?'

    'I'm
all right.'

    Amy
sank against Hilary's shoulder and put an arm protectively around her and held
on tight. The girl closed her eyes. Hilary did, too. Their chests rose and fell
in unison as they breathed. Hilary heard the splash of boots as men drew closer
and the comforting shouts of their voices. They talked to her like the angels
in Mark's paintings, but she couldn't answer, even as she felt strong arms
lifting her and carrying her. All she could do was give herself up to sleep.

    As
the ferry drew closer to the mainland, Cab felt the turbulent waters of the
Death's Door passage settle into bobbing swells. The stubborn rain soaking the
peninsula had broken up over the past three days and drifted east across the
lake, leaving blue skies and mild temperatures in its wake. The magic of the
view made him finally understand why there were people who would choose to live
nowhere else but in this remote, beautiful land.

    Cab's
phone rang on his belt. It was Lala calling from Florida. He'd barely spoken to
her since she guided him to the body buried on Peter Hoffman's property. They'd
only had time for brief conversations as the local police wrapped up their
investigations in Green Bay and on Washington Island.

    'So
what's the deal, Cab?' Lala said. 'Are the loose ends tied up?'

    'Most
of them.'

    'No
more dead bodies?'

    'Not
today.'

    'That's
good. Try to keep it that way, OK? You're making the lieutenant nervous.'

    Cab
smiled. 'I will.'