Behind the Fire: A Dark Thriller (12 page)

“But Mrs. Jessup, you stated in your earlier testimony you yourself thought your husband was crazy. You were going to get him to a doctor. What could possibly have changed your mind? After all, this is about as far-fetched as stories get.”

“Because the next time he went, I went, too, and this time, this time was different. This time the black thing spoke.”

Chapter 16

Emily stood behind Bobby as he pulled the maroon sports bag and what looked like a flamethrower from the trunk of the car.

“What
is
that?” she said pointing to the long green pole connected by black tubing to a propane bottle, which was fixed into a hand trolley.

“It’s called a Weed Dragon but I’ve found a better use for it. It packs more punch than the blowtorch I was using. I call it The Dragon.”

As Bobby heaved The Dragon out from the trunk and swung around holding it, Emily took a step back to avoid him bumping into her. He was so focused on gathering everything she saw that she suddenly wasn’t there to him.

The night wasn’t cold, yet a shiver suddenly caught Emily. She wrapped her arms about her body. Her mind kept drifting back to the kids snuggled in bed at home. She couldn’t help but imagine what would happen if something went wrong and they didn’t come back.

Bobby wheeled The Dragon a few feet from the car and then returned to the trunk. Emily wanted to suggest they go home, forget about this, and come back another night— anything to get back to the safety of their home. One look at his face told her his mind couldn’t be changed.

He leaned back into the trunk and pulled out a four-gallon container of kerosene.

“Em, is this too heavy for you to carry?”

He lifted it up and down to check the weight, before hefting it toward her. Reaching further in to the trunk, he retrieved a large green sports bag and hoisted it over his shoulder.

“Bobby, what if we get caught?”

“I haven’t been caught yet. Anyway, who’s going to catch us here?” He waved his hand around like a host on a game show presenting the prizes. “There’s nobody for miles. This is an easy one.”

Emily looked around at the darkened buildings of the abandoned Market Street Canning factory. With its shattered windows and rotting wood walls, it could be the set of a Scooby Doo film. In fact, it was the perfect setting for a horror story, which seemed appropriate imagery to her, since it felt like they were living in one.

A half-moon cast shadows among the rows of bleached-gray pallets stacked in piles around the U-shaped courtyard the building complex formed. Signs hanging over doorways and roller doors, some with intact doors and some without, announced
Produce Delivery
,
Foreman’s Office
,
Dispatch
, and
Restroom
. Someone had painted a line across
Restroom
in red paint and written in
Can Produce
.

Bobby checked his watch and then reached for Emily’s hand. “Come on, Em, let’s go. We have only forty minutes and a lot to do.”

Emily followed him through the maze of pallets and up the concrete steps into the nearest building, which according to the sign was the entrance to
Produce Delivery
.

At the doorway, Bobby dropped her hand and reached inside his bag to pull out a flashlight. Switched on, its light revealed a cavernous interior with crisscrossed wood beams towering above them. Silver lamps hung in a neat line running the length of the ceiling. Cardboard boxes and crates lay strewn about the deserted space. Along the back wall were stacked more pallets. These ones were a straw-pine color; protected from the elements, they were in better condition.

“At least there’s plenty of fuel,” Bobby said, marching across the expanse as Emily stood in the doorway wondering how long it would take for this place to burn to the ground once Bobby lit a match. She guessed only minutes. Everything in here was wood, except for the metal roof. This factory was one big bonfire stack.

Bobby began pulling crates from the piles and dragging them to the center of the room, putting them in stacks of three. He very quickly created a horizontal wall, which ran directly under the hanging lights.

Emily left the doorway, walked over near Bobby, and began to help him, grunting and coughing as the movement of the crates dislodged a fog of accumulated dust.

“Em, leave it. They’re too heavy for you.”

“I want to help. I can’t just stand here doing nothing. It’s making me nervous.”

Bobby pointed to cardboard boxes with fruit pictures on their side lying scattered across the concrete floor.

“Grab some of those. Try to break them into pieces. Then shove them into the piles I’ve made.”

Emily pulled at the boxes, tearing through the creases, grunting with the effort. Once she’d torn enough pieces, she went down the line of ramshackle crates and pallets, inserting the cardboard.

Every few minutes Emily checked her phone for the time. Time seemed to be moving too quickly. She hoped Bobby knew what he was doing. It seemed so. In twenty minutes, he’d built quite a wall of fuel. Finally, he stopped and stood back admiring his handiwork. Then he moved down the stacks, pushing newspaper into the bottom rows around Emily’s cardboard.

He then moved along the line, swinging the kerosene container, and splashed the fuel over the pyres in long sweeps. The smell of the liquid filled the air and, as the fumes reached Emily, she started to gag. She reached into her pocket, pulled out a hanky and held it to her mouth. Bobby seemed immune to everything except the job at hand.

Emily was mesmerized by the way her husband moved with such conviction, with a determination on his face she had never before seen, except for that night on Old River Road.

Again, she checked the time. 10.27 p.m.

Bobby had said the list time was 10.28 and point something. She figured the extra point something was neither here nor there and had forgotten it.

Bobby shook the last drops of kerosene onto a stack, throwing the empty container after it, and moved back toward her. She wasn’t sure where to stand. She was afraid she’d get in the way, so she had moved closer to the back wall, nearest the door through which they’d entered.

As go-time neared, she kept thinking her preferred position was outside the door and as far away as possible from this crazy setup. She wanted to remind Bobby how dangerous this was, how afraid she was, how much she wished he’d never found that list. When he turned toward her, she saw a steely look in his eyes that hushed her. No matter what happened in the next few minutes, she knew she wouldn’t leave his side.

Meanwhile, her stomach had begun twisting into tiny knots, and she wondered if the C
an
P
roduce
restrooms still functioned. Of course, there wouldn’t be time.

As Bobby took a position near her, she grabbed his arm and asked, “What happens now?”

“We wait,” he said, his gaze roaming the room.

Emily placed her hand into his. It felt rough and worn from handling the wooden pallets, and she knew they’d be tweezing splinters out of his skin for days.

Bobby stood motionless. The cavernous interior was so still, so dead, she could hear his steady breathing beside her. Her stomach knots had become tangled, electrified threads, and she felt panic and nausea in equal proportions rising within her.

“Bobby, I think I’m—”

Suddenly her husband dropped her hand and took a step forward.

“Do you hear that, Em?”

Emily twisted her head to the side, straining to hear. All feelings of nausea or anything, for that matter, instantly disappeared.

“There. There’s the wind. Hear it? Do you feel it?”

She felt something. It seemed nothing more than a slight movement of air, like the brush of a faint summer breeze. So slight it would barely rustle a leaf.

Emily peered in the direction of Bobby’s stare. Maybe there
was
some movement there.

A few scraps of paper floated across the floor toward them, gently dancing across the surface, kicking up into the air for a beat before descending down again.

Just as she was speculating how the paper could suddenly float, she felt the air movement instantly increase, as if an ocean-side window had been opened to a squall.

“Here it comes, Em. Stay back.”

Bobby bent over The Dragon, twisting the lid on the gas bottle. Dragging the trolley behind him, he took several strides closer to the epicenter of the wind, which emanated near the right side of the line of pallets.

Something
was
there, something dark and moving. Where there had been empty air, a murky blackness, shaded on the edges with blue, began to emerge and grow. Emily thought back to her science class more than a decade ago and the image of an amoeba swimming slowly through its watery home under a microscope.

“Bobby, careful,” she called after him.

Without looking back, he put up a hand behind his back and signaled for her to stay. The wind had kicked up a notch, and over the howl of it she thought she heard, “Don’t worry … under control.”

Emily fought the urge to back out of there, run to the car, lock the doors, and hide. She was a housewife for heaven’s sake. A mother. Bobby—he was just a middle-of-the-road guy. A husband. A father.

Under control?
None of this was
under
control
.

She couldn’t move. The wind now tore through the place. The dust it kicked up filtered through her nose and coated her throat, forcing her eyes to squeeze into slits against the microscopic assault.

What looked like a blue-black version of a face appeared only a few feet above a pallet pile very close to Bobby. Emily shoved her fist into her mouth, stifling a scream. She wanted to shout for him to run, so she could run.

At the least, she should have a weapon. She felt exposed and vulnerable watching her husband standing before the huge, ugly black thing that belonged in a nightmare.

Some kind of long spindly thing—maybe an arm, but not quite—began reaching through the dark hole, twisting and turning, reaching out above Bobby. Panic gripped her. Could it reach down, pick him up and hurl him against a wall like monsters did in movies? Unable to stop herself, she began to run forward screaming Bobby’s name.

That’s when she heard the voice.

Wait.

It stopped her mid-stride. At first she thought it was Bobby, his voice distorted by the wind and the adrenaline and the waves of nausea rampaging through her body.

“Bobby, I can’t hear you. What?” she shouted.

He didn’t turn. He just stood there staring up at the thing, the long thin wand of The Dragon poised at the pallet stack below the face.

Wait. Help!

No, it wasn’t Bobby. She was certain now. Not a human voice. It sounded like a thousand whispers combined; the thrumming of a disturbed wasps’ nest. The voice sunk beyond her ears, deep into her head like a burrowing drill. Somehow the words were
inside
her mind.

Through.

Now it hurt. The voice pierced her skull, vibrating her brain, it seemed like. The wind accelerated, tearing through the building like it a desperate creature trying to escape. Shreds of paper flew up, swirling, thrashing around midair, only to be dashed again to the floor. Emily leaned into the wind, her hair streaming behind her. She was standing in a tornado.

“Bobby!” she screamed, running toward him. “It’s in my head.”

Bobby turned, and the look on his face made her breath catch. His eyes were wild and panicked.
He
had heard it, too.

“You hear it, don’t you?” Emily said, holding her hands over her ears. Bobby nodded and slowly looked back at the thing, which now looked down on them.

Oh God, it’s seen us
, she thought.

She wanted to grab Bobby. She
really
wanted to scream at him to run, but talking with the buzz inside her head had become impossible. She couldn’t hold a thought with those words burrowing away in there. The idea they were about to die was all she could hold, until it too was lashed away by the onslaught of the words.

Carbon. Help. Neeeed.

She managed to scream, “Oh my God, Bobby.” The rest of the words she’d meant to say—
These things are real
—disappeared.

Time. Gooone.

The words echoed inside and outside her head, a tsunami of thought. Overwhelming. Terrifying. She’d pray if she could just string even one sentence together.

The buzzing increased in intensity, growing louder and more piercing as the words began repeating. The sound had reached a level above shrieking pain. Emily knew she couldn’t take much more. She’d die if it didn’t stop, her brain exploding inside her head with the pain.

Carbon. Wait. Need. Help. Through. Time. Gone.

Emily tried to concentrate, to understand what it meant, but the more the words repeated, the more uncertain she became of the message. There was no order to the words: they seemed thrown out there like answers in a game of charades.