David Morrell - Double Image

“Jennifer, get away from-”

The door to the darkroom exploded, flames bursting out, flashing across the corridor, whooshing toward the ceiling. But as loud as the eruption was, it didn’t muffle Jennifer’s scream as she sprinted toward the concrete pillar behind which Coltrane crouched.

Tash shot at her silhouette against the flames.

Coltrane shot back.

“Jesus, my hair.” Jennifer pawed at it, brushing out sparks.

“ Now it’s almost over!” Tash said.

Coltrane cast a panicked glance toward the roaring wall of flames behind him.

“So I’ll give you a choice!” Tash said. “You can burn to death, or you can let me shoot you.”

“And then drag Walt’s body down here to make it look like he killed us but got caught in the fire he set?”

“Sounds good to me!” Tash said.

“But you’re running out of time! I hear sirens!” Jennifer said.

“I don’t! It’s only been a couple of minutes! Nice try, though!”

Coltrane felt the heat of the fire through the back of his sport coat. His hair felt warm. Smoke seared his throat. Doubled over, coughing, he knew that he and Jennifer had only a few more seconds before they would have to run toward the stairs. Although the house was made of reinforced concrete, the walls, floors, and ceilings of the interior had conventional wooden frames. Held in by the concrete, the flames would shoot along the wood like a firestorm. We have to get out of -

The vault, he thought, unable to stop coughing. It’s fireproof. He almost struggled toward it before he remembered that it had a halon-gas fire-extinguishing system. Not sufficient to put out the flames in the rest of the house but certainly enough to suffocate the two of them if they tried to seek shelter in there.

We have to rush the stairs and hope she doesn’t shoot us before we -

As the heat on his back became unbearable and he braced himself to run, he heard a scream from the front-door landing. A shot. But the bullet wasn’t aimed toward the lower level. It was aimed toward the figure who toppled down the stairs toward where Tash crouched out of sight at the side of the landing. The figure collided against her and sent her sprawling in full view of Coltrane. The figure was Walt. The blow to his head hadn’t killed him. Regaining consciousness, he must have lurched downstairs toward the sound of shouting on the bottom level. His husky body pinned her. His hands groped for her throat as she screamed again and pulled the trigger, blasting a spray of crimson from the back of his already-battered skull. In a panic, she squirmed to get out from under Walt’s now-truly deadweight.

Jennifer took advantage of the distraction and raced toward her. Caught by surprise, Coltrane took a second longer to rush from the fire.

Tash pushed Walt’s body off her and down the stairs, then aimed at Jennifer, who lost her balance when she dodged Walt’s tumbling body. The bullet meant for her hit Coltrane’s shoulder, knocking him backward onto the floor. For an instant, he blacked out. The heat of the spreading fire stung him back to panicked consciousness, the pain in his right shoulder sending his nervous system into spastic overdrive. As the flames seethed closer, he struggled to stand and saw Jennifer grappling with Tash on the landing. Tash pulled the trigger on her pistol, but nothing happened, the slide staying back, the magazine out of ammunition.

She threw the handgun, grazing Jennifer’s head. As Jennifer moaned and stumbled back, Tash turned, slipped, and scurried on all fours up the stairs. Jennifer grabbed for her, snagging the ankle-long hem of her dress. When Tash kicked backward, Jennifer held firm, but Tash’s frantic movements tore the dress, exposed her right leg to the knee, and left Jennifer holding a scrap of cloth.

Again, Tash tried to scurry up the stairs. Again, Jennifer grabbed at the dress, ripping more of it away, unable to restrain her. The two of them raced higher.

Jennifer doesn’t know I’ve been hit, Coltrane thought in dismay. His right shoulder throbbed as he wavered up the stairs. She thinks I’m coming to help her.

Amid the roar of the flames behind him, he heard noises outside the house: shouts, approaching sirens. Thank God, he thought, as he managed somehow to unlock the front door. But the crash of something being thrown above him and a wail of pain warned him that Jennifer needed him.

He struggled to climb higher, his mind swirling when for a second time that night he came to the wreckage of the furniture in the living room. And again he heard a commotion from even higher. Dripping blood, he wavered up the stairs.

To the bedroom.

It all came back to the bedroom, he thought.

The place was in darkness. When he groped to flick the switch on the wall and achieved no result, he realized that the crash he had heard was the room’s floor lamp being smashed.

The room’s silence unnerved him.

“Where is she?” Jennifer asked from the corner on Coltrane’s right.

“I don’t know. My eyes haven’t adjusted to the darkness. I-”

A heavy object struck him in the chest, knocking the wind out of him, aggravating the agony in his shoulder. Dizzied by pain, he fell against a bureau, grabbed it for support, and touched a camera he had set there.

“Are you okay?” Jennifer whispered from the darkness to his right.

“No, I’ve been-”

Another object walloped against the wall near where Jennifer had spoken. “Where the hell is she throwing from?”

“I don’t know,” Coltrane said. “She’s wearing white. Even in the darkness, we ought to be able to see her.”

“She was wearing white.”

Coltrane didn’t understand the remark. Crouching, he grasped the camera.

Outside, the sirens grew closer, louder.

Across the room, he saw what looked like a single pulse from a firefly. The spark came and went so suddenly, he wondered if his eyes were playing tricks on him, baffled until he remembered Tash’s problem with static electricity. Readying the camera, he aimed it toward where he had seen the spark, activated the flash, and pushed the shutter button.

The stab of light caught her in midmotion, crawling toward the open door to the balcony. Because the flash was directed away from him, it didn’t hurt his eyes and presumably Jennifer’s as much as it did Tash’s. She winced, her hand raised to protect her vision. At once it was dark again, and Tash scurried toward the balcony as Jennifer leapt from her hiding place. Jennifer’s cryptic remark that Tash wasn’t wearing white any longer now made sense – because her white dress had been torn from her. She was naked, her sleek tan body hard to see in the darkness. Jennifer’s own clothes had been torn, a sleeve of her navy blazer ripped off, the buttons of her silk blouse yanked open.

She caught up to Tash on the balcony, and Tash’s supple body fought back in a way reminiscent of a feral cat. She was clawing, twisting, lunging, spitting, streaks of blood suddenly appearing on Jennifer’s cheeks.

“Bitch!” Jennifer screamed, the ferocity of her attack increasing.

The flames from the bottom level lit up the night. Smoke rose toward the struggling figures, and from behind. The stairway filled with a haze that drifted into the bedroom.

As Jennifer lunged in a fury, Tash sidestepped, shouldered Jennifer against the railing, grabbed her feet, and upended her, throwing her over the side.

COLTRANE’S HEART STOPPED.

With a shock, it restarted, urging him toward the railing. Jennifer had gripped the railing as Tash flipped her over, and now Jennifer dangled, straining to hang on as Tash pounded at her fingers and tried to peel them off. Below, flames roared from both levels, and the swimming pool didn’t extend to this side – beneath the flames, there was only a tiled patio.