“Guys, just wait in the car. I got this, okay?” the boy says.
“Get off of my property.” I reach behind me and wrap my hand around the barrel of the shotgun. “Emma, get inside the house. Now.”
Before I can lift the gun, the man darts forward and grabs it from my hand. His arm moves quicker than my eyes can follow. He reeks of alcohol and something else. Something sour, musky, and dry.
“Well, if Mr. Law-abiding ain’t just breaking a few rules out here his own self.” He raises the gun to his shoulder and looks down the sights. He levels it into the darkness, swings it around, and levels it at me. Then he lowers the end, holding the weapon comfortably under his arm. “Now, my cousin here asked me to come and pick up his girlfriend. So why don’t you let the girl go?”
The barrel of the shotgun is still pointing at my knees. He hefts it slightly, and I have the feeling he’s used a gun a whole lot more often than I have.
“Put the gun down, Chad. There’s no reason to be a jerk,” the boy says.
“Come on, Zach. Ain’t we just having a good time?” Chad smirks.
Zach turns to Emma. “Come on, Emma. He’s just being a jackass. He won’t hurt anybody. Let’s go.”
Emma hoists the bag on her shoulder, nervously glancing from the shotgun to Zach and back. “Zach, just get him to put the gun away first, okay?” she asks.
“Aw, look at that,” Nina says. “You gone and scared the girl, Chad. Ain’t that cute?”
“Nina—” Zach begins, but a sudden gust of wind howls around us, whipping dust and debris into my face and eyes. When I look up, Nina has stepped into the shadows of the yard. Our eyes meet, and I see what I hadn’t seen before.
Her eyes are glowing with a pale silver light and sparks and flashes of blue. I haven’t seen that up close since the day I signed Angela’s soul away. A chill rises up the back of my neck.
Emma’s face drains to a ghostly white. “Graver,” Emma whispers. She clings to my arm and shuffles behind me.
“Come on, Emma,” Zach says. “They’re not usually like this. They’re just gonna give us a ride is all.”
“You didn’t say your cousin was a graver.” Emma’s voice is soft and tense.
“That’s all right, pretty girl,” Chad says. He reaches out again with his free hand, grabs Emma by the arm, and yanks her off the porch. Emma screams. She and I stumble in our effort to hold on to each other. I catch myself on the railing. Emma stumbles to her knees. Chad pulls her to her feet again, out of my reach. He hefts the shotgun up toward my chest.
“Zach!” she calls.
“You take your hands off her.” I straighten, scanning around me for anything that I can use as a weapon. But the tools are on the other side of the door. I took them inside to keep them out of the rain.
Nina snickers behind them, waving the tiny flame of the lighter in front of her face. From nowhere I can see, she produces a rag and hangs it above the flame. Golden light envelopes her face. Fire drips off the edge of the rag. She tosses it into the dry garden, and golden flames sprout up like little yellow sunflowers.
“Seriously, Chad,” Zach shoves his cousin in the chest. “Knock it off. You’re just here to give us a ride.”
“What’s wrong with you?” Chad asks, shoving him back. Zach is thrown onto the ground. “You asked me to come out here and help you get your girl. Well, here we are, getting the girl.”
And then I see Emma move. And I can’t find my voice to stop her.
She lunges around Chad and grabs at the shotgun. She’s got the gun by the barrel and half out of Chad’s grip before Chad seems to realize what’s happening. He wrenches the gun away from Emma, but Zach grabs it from the other side. The air cracks with gunfire.
There’s a chink of metal on metal, then a hiss. Everyone turns toward the sound. The pressure regulator from the house’s external hydrogen tank is spinning out into the dark. Colorized red hydrogen mist is streaming through the sheared-off pipe. Straight toward Nina’s garden fire.
Chad drops Emma’s arm and runs towards Nina. I dive off the porch toward Emma, but I don’t reach her before the world around me explodes with sound and light and fire. I’m thrown toward the house in a wash of heat. My body slams against the staircase, and for several long moments I am lost—tossed and buried beneath a sea of crashing timbers and roiling debris.
And then there is nothing but the impossible silence of dust sifting itself out of the air, broken only by the creak of settling timbers.
My lungs revolt against the thickness of the air, and it takes me too long to stop coughing. To call for my daughter.
Emma’s name croaks out of my throat between gasps for air. I can see nothing. The light from the house is gone, leaving only the golden glow of the headlights in the drive and a few smoldering flames in the wreckage of the porch to illuminate what’s left of my world.
The timber from the house lies in splintered ruins, around me, on top of me, fires burning. The support beam from the roof, crushes my chest.
I’m lying on my side, and there’s a weight above. The timbers above me slip and crash against my chest, and I cry out. I try to pull myself free, but I am wedged tight.
Somewhere in the dark, I hear someone moaning.
“Emma?” I try again. This time I manage to squeeze the name out against the burning in my lungs. “Emma?” I yell.
The wind picks up, and the dust clears enough for me to discern outlines against the car lights. The front half of the house is gone. Its remains are a jagged silhouette rising above me. In the drive, someone pushes themselves to their knees, and for a moment I am filled with hope. But the outline that staggers to its feet is too tall and broad to be my daughter.
“Nina?” he calls.
My eyes are beginning to adjust to the darkness, and I can see Chad better now. His arms are wrapped round his ribs, and he’s shaking dust from his hair. I push at the beam that’s laying across my chest, but it doesn’t shift.
Chad sweeps his gaze toward me, eyes glowing silver-blue in the dark. “Where’s Nina?” he asks again. “Where’s Zach?”
I can’t see Emma anywhere, but the sight of his eyes brings memories of Angela flooding into my mind. The graver who took her soul was a cold little man in a cheap gray suit. They said he was a professional. I tried to tell myself it was the best thing. They couldn’t convict the driver without using her memories as evidence. But the look of ecstasy in that man’s eyes when it was done haunts me still.
I push harder against the beam. Several fat drops of rain spatter on my face and arms.
Chad stumbles toward me through the dark. “Where’s Nina?” he yells. “Where’s Zach?”
“How the hell should I know?” I manage to twist my chest just slightly beneath the debris, and suddenly I can breathe a little easier. Chad wanders away from me, calling for Zach and Nina.
“Daddy?” It’s Emma’s voice, soft and whimpering. I twist my shoulders, craning my neck to find her. She’s in the dark, pushing herself up to her hands and knees. The shotgun is lying on the ground between us, just out of my reach. “Dad, the house is gone.”
“Emma, stay there.” I push against the beam, and it shifts slightly. “Are you okay?”
She lifts one hand to her head, then pulls it away and stares in confusion. The headlights reflect off something dark and wet smeared across her palm.
From somewhere close by, Chad howls Zach’s name and begins to curse. I hear boards lifting and being tossed, then the creak of timber. “I can’t find her,” Chad mumbles to himself. “Damn it. Where are they?
“This is your fault.” Chad storms back into my view. “This is all your fault.”
“Chad?” Nina’s voice is thin and weak. He spins and races into the darkness. I shift my weight as best I can, straining against the beam. I shift it to the side ever so slightly.
&nb
sp; “Emma, honey. Just stay where you are. I’m coming. Okay?”
Chad staggers back into view, carrying Nina in his arms. Her head is propped up against his shoulder. The tattoo up her leg fades from blue to red. He’s brushing her damp hair back. Her shirt is soaked with blood.
The muscles in my shoulder are burning, but I can’t get the beam to move. My whole body aches.
“I need help,” I call out. The man’s a jackass, but he’s the only one of us standing. “You need to get me out of here.” The sprinkling of rain turns into a cold drizzle. My hands slip on the wood.
Chad ignores me.
Nina’s head has fallen against Chad’s chest, and her body is limp. Chad mutters to himself, “No, no, no, no, no … It’s okay, baby. I’m gonna fix this. I’m gonna get you what you need.”
He carries her to the car and lays her across the back seat. Then he comes back and picks up the gun. Chad leans over me and inspects the wreckage that has me trapped. A few smoldering flames are fanned to life by a sudden gust of wind. The golden glow catches Chad’s face at all the wrong angles.
“I can’t help you,” he says. His breath is sour and dry. “You should know that. I can’t get to Zach, and he’s my blood, so I can’t help you. Wouldn’t be right. But I can help Nina. I can get her what she needs.” Blue sparks flash in his eyes.
The heat of the fire is beginning to warm my body, but every part of me runs cold. I struggle desperately against the timbers pinning me down as Chad pats my shoulder, then stands up and walks over to Emma. He levels the gun.
Lightning flashes in the sky, giving me one brief, clear vision of the scene: Chad has the butt of the shotgun snugged into his shoulder. Emma looks up at Chad from her knees, dazed and uncertain.
“I really am sorry about this. No hard feelings.” He pulls the trigger. The night is shattered by the blast.
I scream my daughter’s name as Emma falls lifeless to the ground. Chad picks her up and carries her to the car.
I scream again, but the sound is swallowed in the howling of the wind. The car pulls away, taillights like red glowing eyes. Emma is gone. And the rain pours so thick I can’t even see them drive away.
The flames in the house sizzle and smoke in the torrent that follows. There’s no reason to struggle against the boards that pin me. Angela is gone. Emma’s been taken. But for some unexplainable reason, my body keeps breathing. It hurts too much to move, so I don’t.
The remains of the house groan and shift. The stairs beneath me drop, and I slam to the ground in a crush of broken timbers. More by instinct than by desire, I scramble out from under the beams that had me pinned.
Then I hear someone moaning from beneath the rubble. Zach.
I drag myself to my feet and stumble toward the sound. I’m drenched through to my skin, and I can see almost nothing in the dark of the storm. Only the few places where the smoldering coals haven’t yet died leave me any light to see by at all.
Working mechanically, without thought, I toss boards to the side until I uncover him. Zach is only an outline against the twisted remains of what might have been the oven. I pull him away from the wreckage and haul him to shelter beneath the carport which is leaning heavily to one side. I sink to the ground, my head against the cold metal post. The noise of the rain on the carport roof drowns out my thoughts.
“What happened?” Zach pulls himself to his knees.
“You brought them here.” When Angela died, all I could think was to punish the man who took her from me. Now it seems like it hardly matters. Emma’s gone anyway.
Zach pulls a port from his pocket, thumbs on the light, and uses it to examine the rubble beneath the carport. “Where’s Emma?” At least he has the decency to sound afraid.
“Your cousin killed her.” I spit the words out as if I’m trying to throw them as far from myself as they can get. The look of shock on his face is gratifying and obnoxious all at once.
Zach shakes his head in protest. “No. No, not Chad. He’s a lot of things, but—”
“He killed her anyway.” The emptiness is starting to give way to anger. “What were you thinking, bringing a graver to my house? To Emma’s house?”
Zach wraps his arms around his knees and leans against the carport wall. “I don’t know. But—but it still doesn’t make any sense. Why …” His voice falters, then drops to a whisper. “Why would Chad kill her?”
I don’t bother to answer. There’s nothing to say.
“She … she told me about her mom,” Zach says.
Angela’s face superimposes itself over Emma’s. I picture the light being drawn out of Angela’s body. I relive the panic I felt in that moment when it was already too late and I couldn’t say, “No, please, just let her soul go wherever it’s supposed to go.”
No. There’s no such thing as a soul. I didn’t do anything wrong. But Angela’s memory is now too raw; Emma’s death is too real, and I can’t ignore the voice in my brain that tells me I destroyed something precious.
“Emma wouldn’t want that to happen to her.” Zach’s voice is a whisper.
“No. Emma wouldn’t.” And as I say the words, I know they’re true.
I pull myself to my feet and pick up Zach’s port. I use it to examine the carport we’re using to shield us from the rain. It’s partially collapsed, leaning against the front end of the house. I pull some of the large beams and boards out of the wreckage.
“What are you doing?” Zach limps to his feet, clutching his leg.
“We’ll need the truck.” I slip a board free of the porch and I have to jump back as several others crash to the ground. “I’m setting Emma’s soul free. Chad’s not getting her.”
“But Emma said you didn’t believe in souls. What you … what happened to her mom. It’s why she wanted to leave.”
“Doesn’t matter what I believe,” I say. “It’s what Emma believes.” I say it because it sounds right, but mostly it’s movement. Because I know that no matter what I think of the human soul, if I stay here, I won’t be alive in the morning.
I prop up a board at the fallen end of the carport. If I can brace it, I might just be able to ease the truck out. Zach hesitates for a few moments, then limps over to help me with the boards.
It takes us over an hour to prop up the roof and slide the truck free. It’s an antique with a rounded cab, wooden sideboards, whitewall tires and all. My grandfather upgraded it years ago. By the time we’ve rolled it free, the rain has slipped off into a steady drizzle, but both Zach and I are soaked and dripping with mud. The truck bed boards are smashed and part of the cab roof is dented in, but the navigation panel turns on when I press my thumb to the starter pad.
“Nina’s hurt. Where would he take her?” I ask Zach.
Zach huddled beneath the leaning carport roof, arms wrapped around himself to keep warm. “South of town. Back in the foothills. He has a place in an old train yard.” I think I can hear Zach’s teeth rattling.
“Thanks,” I tell him. Then I slam my door shut before Zach can climb in.
Zach pounds on my window, yelling at me to wait. I open the window just a crack.
“You’re not coming with me,” I tell him. “Call your parents for a ride. Tell them what you brought here.” I toss his port out the window, and he ducks back and catches it awkwardly on his chest.
“You’ll never find it.” Zach yells as the window rolls closed. “Road’s washed—” His voice cuts out as the window closes. He pounds his fist on the glass.
I twist my fingers around the steering wheel. I didn’t like this kid at the start of the night, and I like him even less now. I’d just as soon leave him to rot. But I don’t know where I’m going. I open the window back up. “What road?” I ask.
“Chad’s all the family I’ve got. I’m going with you.”
“He killed Emma,” I snap. Even in the dim light of th
e truck’s dashboard, I can see his face pale.
“You’re gonna make it right by killing him?” he asks. I start to roll the window back up and ease my truck forward. “Wait!” he yells, skipping alongside the truck’s door. “You’ll never find it without me. The road’s gone. You’ve only got a few hours left before he can take her soul. Then she’s gone forever.”
I slam on the brakes of the truck, and it jerks to a sudden stop. I jerk my head at the passenger door. Zach runs around the front of the truck, hops in, and slams the door behind him.
“I’m there for Emma,” I say. “You don’t get in my way.”
“Yes, sir. I’m there for the same reason,” he says, shaking water from his hair across the cab. A map glows faintly across the windshield, and Zach jabs at it with a finger.
“Here,” he says. “After that, it’s all back roads. Won’t show up on any map you’ve got.”
I engage the auto drive, and the truck pulls out onto the road. I never once look back. There isn’t anything left to see.
The road is riddled with pockmarks and potholes made worse by the rain, and the truck makes worse time than I’d like. Within minutes, I slip the truck into manual and resume control. The potholes give me something to focus on. Zach sits on the other end of the bench seat, staring out the window, his knees pulled to his chin. There are times over the next hour when I wonder if he hasn’t fallen asleep. But every once in a while he rouses himself to give me directions across back roads.
“I don’t care about Chad,” I finally tell him.
“What?” His voice is thick with emotion.
I clear my voice, then speak louder to be heard over the rain on the cab roof. “You asked if I was going to kill him. But this isn’t about Chad.”
Zach nods mutely into the dark, like he understands. But I don’t think that he does, and I need him to know. I need to say it out loud so that I will understand. I need to pick the thought clear of the swirling mass of memory and emotion that won’t stop replaying itself in my mind.