“The police finally decided to show up?” Perry asked him.
The teen nodded nervously, his eyes flicking over Perry’s shoulder. “Yeah, they said they were on the way. We’d best go, Mr. Watkins. Don’t you think?”
Angel frowned at the increasingly louder noises coming from inside the house. “What the hell is that?”
“Call 911.” Perry took the blowtorch from the chop shop owner’s hands and stepped back into the house. “Tell them we’re gonna need the fire department, too.”
Perry adjusted the flame so that it was low, and lit his cigarette with it. He closed his eyes and inhaled.
“Ah, that’s good.”
“Are you fucking crazy?” Dookie shouted. “Get the fuck out of there, Mr. Watkins.”
Perry ignored him. “Go do what I said. Call 911 now. Get some fire trucks down here.”
Without another word, he turned the sputtering blue flame up high and touched it to the walls. As he’d suspected, they went up quickly, despite the pervasive dampness. Perry tried not to think about the other missing kids. Judging from the girl’s condition, they were probably dead. Most likely they’d been slaughtered the same way Markus, Chris, and Jamal had been.
“They’ve got to be dead,” he whispered around the cigarette. “They’ve just got to be.”
He repeated it to himself over and over again, trying to assuage his conscience. This had to be done. How many years had this place been a blight on the neighborhood, spreading its poisonous roots through concrete and steel? How many people had gone missing in here over the years? It had to end. If the kids were alive—and he doubted very much that was the case—then they’d be the last victims the house ever claimed.
Perry bent over and applied the torch to the carpet and floor, feeling a serene sense of peace as the bloodstained floorboards blackened and smoked, then erupted into flame. Thick smoke curled toward him. The fire grew louder, drowning out the footsteps and growls. Perry caught a glimpse of something on the upstairs landing—a diminutive, naked figure, horribly deformed. Then the smoke obscured it. He stepped back and ran the blowtorch all around the front door’s splintered frame. Then, finished, he handed the torch back to Angel and Dookie and hurried them down the porch.
“Thought I told you to go call the fire department. I guess it doesn’t matter, though. Maybe we should just let it burn down into the ground first. Then we’ll call.”
Angel stared, dumfounded. Dookie shook his head and grinned.
“You are one badass motherfucker, Mr. Watkins.”
“Thank you. And watch your mouth, son. No need to talk about my mother.”
Only when they’d reached the street and he was holding Lawanda in his arms did Perry turn around. The open doorway was choked with thick, black and white smoke, and already the blaze was flickering higher, touching the roof overhanging the porch and climbing toward the second story. Within minutes, he expected the entire structure would be engulfed in flames. He thought he saw several deformed shadows in the doorway, dim against the swirling clouds of smoke, but when he looked again, they were gone.
Perry guided Lawanda and Dookie through the crowd, refusing to answer anyone’s questions, including his wife’s. When they reached Leo and the girl, the five of them looked back at the inferno.
“You set it on fire?” Leo asked. “Ain’t the cops gonna know it was you, Mr. Watkins? All these people saw you do it.”
“Maybe,” Perry said, smiling sadly. “But I suspect they’ll keep it to themselves. That’s the way things are down here.”
“True that,” Dookie agreed. “And besides, ain’t nobody here gonna be sad to see that place gone.”
“If they ask,” Perry said, “I’ll just tell them that I don’t know who started the fire. We’ll blame it on one of the killers. After all, the place was old and rotten. A real firetrap.”
“Yeah,” Leo said. “That’s true.”
“You know what they say,” Dookie chuckled. “Shit happens.”
Then the girl standing next to Leo stiffened and began to scream.
She was still shrieking when the police and paramedics arrived.
BRIAN KEENE is the author of over twenty-five books, including Darkness on the Edge of Town, Urban Gothic, Castaways, Kill Whitey, Dark Hollow, Dead Sea, Ghoul and The Rising. He also writes comic books such as The Last Zombie, Doom Patrol and Dead of Night: Devil Slayer. His work has been translated into German, Spanish, Polish, Italian, French and Taiwanese. Several of his novels and stories have been optioned for film, one of which, The Ties That Bind, premiered on DVD in 2009 as a critically-acclaimed independent short. Keene’s work has been praised in such diverse places as The New York Times, The History Channel, The Howard Stern Show, CNN.com, Publisher’s Weekly, Fangoria Magazine, and Rue Morgue Magazine. Keene lives in Central Pennsylvania. You can communicate with him online at www.briankeene.com, on Facebook at www.facebook.com/pages/Brian-Keene/189077221397
or on Twitter at www.twitter.com/BrianKeene
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