Билл Пронзини - In an Evil Time

Hollis lunged that way in the same instant, dropping the .22. The lighter struck the backrest, bounced onto the blanket covering the boy, and then, still lit, skittered to the floor. Flame spurted, surged, whooshed up and out at him. Frantically he tore the burning blanket off and hurled it aside. Kenny, Kenny! Hollis grabbed him and swung him up — his small body wasn’t wet, she’d only doused the blanket — a moment before the cushions became a nest of fire.

The woman screamed.

He spun around, crouching, cradling Kenny’s limp form against his chest, covering the child’s head and face with his free arm. The racing flames had swept back and up, consuming Pop’s chair, consuming Valerie Burke. She came out of the chair as if propelled, sheeted with fire, shrieking her torment. He twisted aside as she lurched toward him, saw her whirl the other way and carom off the fireplace bricks with her arms spread wide — demon’s dance, blazing vision from the pit.

The fire was all around him now, spreading with incredible speed. He staggered in the direction of the door, gagging on oily smoke and the stink of cooking flesh, the heat singeing his hair and eyebrows, his body hunched and both arms wrapped protectively around the child. His shoes felt as though the soles were burning; sparks stung his face, his neck above the coat collar. He couldn’t see. He bumped into something — the door! — and groped around it, tasting the cold breath of the night outside, the crackle-thrum of the flames and Burke’s banshee screams swelling in his ears. Then he was through, out, running and gasping into the night.

The wind cooled his feet, his face; he could no longer feel the fire at his back. Or hear the shrieks. He began to shiver. He slowed then, stopped, and for the first time glanced back. He’d covered more than fifty yards, uphill into the trees — a safe enough distance.

Kenny.

He lifted the boy, turning his head so he could look closely at his face in the reflected glow.

Alive... thank God!

Breathing more or less normally except for little whimpers and coughs. The fire hadn’t touched him — no burn marks, not even his hair singed. Didn’t look as though Burke had harmed him in any other way. His features had a scrunched look, eyes squeezed shut in fitful sleep. She must have given him a drug of some kind that was now beginning to wear off.

Relief had weakened Hollis’s knees. He wobbled a couple of paces to his left, hugging his grandson close, close, and leaned heavily against the bole of a pine. Through wet and stinging eyes he stared at the cottage. It was an inferno now, all roiling smoke and high-licking flames that stained the night sky ocher and blood-red. Before long there would be nothing left but blackened bones and ash. He felt no sense of loss or regret. Yours in every way, Pop, never really mine .

Yellow-red blossomed in the dry needles that had collected on the garage roof. Pretty soon wind-flung sparks would ignite the crowns of the closest pines and this whole section would burn. For that he did feel regret. Over the beat of the conflagration he was aware of sounds behind him, cars stopping on the highway, voices shouting. He stayed where he was a few moments longer. Afterimages of the horror he’d just witnessed and lived through lingered in his mind, yet he was filled with a strange kind of peace.

Survival. Everything else stemmed from it, depended on it. Love, hate, all the emotions; the lives we lead, who we are. He’d given it to Kenny tonight, to Cassie and Angela and Eric in other ways. God willing, Stan Otaki would give it to him and he’d have plenty of time to atone for all the mistakes he’d made.

He turned his back on the burning past, on the death throes of their evil time, and moved on to what lay ahead.