Mystery Walk

The bonfire heaved, as if something were growing within it. Suddenly there were several ear-cracking pops that stopped all laughter. From the fire's center exploded three multicolored streaks of light that shot in different directions over the field.

Roman candles, Billy thought. How did Roman candles get inside the. . . ?

But then there was an earth-shuddering whummmmmp! and the entire mound of flaming timbers exploded from within. Billy had time to see jagged shards of wood flying like knives before a hot shock wave hit him like a brick wall, flinging him to the ground so hard the breath burst from his lungs. The earth shook again, and again; the air was filling with whistlings and shrieks, human and fireworks noises.

Billy sat up, his head ringing, his face scorched with heat; he numbly realized his hands were bleeding, and he'd left most of their skin in the fence's mesh. Caught all along the fence were shards of wood that could've sliced through him like butcher knives. Roman candles shot across the field, a golden flower of sparks opened up high in the air, M-80s hammered at the sky, purple and blue and green fireworks zigzagged from the center of the bonfire's rubble. People were running, screaming, rolling on the ground in agony. Kids with their hair and clothes on fire were dancing now to a new and hideous rhythm, others were staggering around like sleepwalkers. Billy stood up; a rain of cinders was falling, and the air stank of black powder. He saw a boy crawling away from the still-exploding bonfire, and then Billy was running toward the center of the field to help. He grasped the boy's blackened shirt and hauled him away several yards as Roman candles rocketed overhead. A girl was screaming for her mother, over and over again, and when Billy grabbed her hand to pull her away from the mound of fire her skin came off like a glove; she moaned and passed out.

A green pinwheel whistled toward Billy's face; as he ducked it he smelled his hair burn. A red star exploded in the sky, washing the field with bloody light. The chilling shriek of the Civil Defense air-raid siren began whooping from atop the high school, cutting through the night like a clarion of disaster.

Billy grasped the collar of a boy whose shirt had been all but blown off his back, and he screamed, 'I TOLD YOU! I TRIED TO WARN YOU!' The boy's face was as pale as marble, and he walked on as if Billy were invisible. Billy looked wildly around, saw June Clark lying on the ground in a fetal curl, Mike Blaylock lying on his back with a shard of wood through his right hand, Annie Ogden on her knees as if praying to the bonfire. Above the screaming, he heard the sound of sirens approaching from Fayette; suddenly his knees gave way and he sat on the black ground as fireworks kept whistling all around him.

Someone staggered out of the haze before him and stood looking down. It was Mr. Kitchens, blood leaking from both his ears. A white spray of sparks exploded behind him, and his face worked as if he were trying very hard to open his mouth. Finally, he said in a hoarse, chilling whisper, 'You. . . !'

25

The Creekmores found their son sitting on the floor in a corner of the tense, crowded Fayette County Hospital waiting room. They had heard the Civil Defense siren, and Ramona had sensed tragedy.

Billy's face was heat-swollen, his eyebrows all but singed away. There was a thin blanket draped across his shoulders, and resting in his lap were his bandaged hands. The stark overhead lighting made the Vaseline smeared on his face shine, and his eyes were closed as if he were asleep, removing himself from the noise and tension by sheer willpower alone.

John stood behind his wife, his spine crawling from being stared at by all the other parents. Someone at the high school, where they'd stopped first, had told him that Billy was dead and the boy's body had already been carried away in an ambulance, but Ramona had said no, she'd have known if her son was dead.

'Billy?' Ramona said, in a trembling voice.

The boy's eyes opened painfully. He could hardly see through the swollen slits, and the doctors had told him there were maybe forty wood slivers in his cheeks and forehead but he'd have to wait until the burned kids were treated.

She bent down beside him and hugged him gently, her head leaning against his shoulder. 'I'm all right, Mom,' Billy said through blistered lips. 'Oh God . . . it was so terrible. . . .'

John's face had been gray ever since they'd left the school and had seen those bodies lying under the blankets, the gurneys being pushed along the hallway with burned teenagers on them, parents shrieking and sobbing and clinging to each other for support. The night was filled with ambulance sirens, and the burned-flesh stink floated in the hospital like a brown haze. 'Your hands,' he said. 'What happened?'

'I lost some skin, that's all.'

'Dear God, boy!' John's face crumpled like old sandpaper, and he put his hand against the tiled wall to support himself. 'Lord God, Lord God I never saw anything like what I saw at that school!'

'How'd it happen, Dad? One minute it was just a bonfire, like every year. Then it all changed.'

'I don't know. But all those pieces of wood . . . they cut those kids up, just cut them to ribbons!'

'A man there said I did it,' Billy said tonelessly. 'He said I was drunk, and I did something to the fire to make it explode.'

'That's a damned lie!' John's eyes blazed. 'You didn't have a thing to do with it!'

'He said I have Death inside me. Is that right?'

'NO! Who said that to you? Show him to me!'

Billy shook his head. 'It doesn't matter now, anyway. It's all over. I just . . . wanted to have fun, Dad. Everybody wanted to have a good time. . . .'

John gripped his son's shoulder, and felt something like deep ice crack inside him. Billy's gaze was strangely dark and blank, as if what had happened had blown all the mysterious fuses in his head. 'It's all right,' John said. 'Thank God you're alive.'

'Dad? Was I wrong to go?'

'No. A man goes where he wants to, and he has to go some places he don't want to, as well. I expect you've done a little of both tonight.' Farther along the corridor, someone wailed in either pain or sorrow, and John flinched from the sound.

Ramona wiped her eyes on her sleeve and looked at the tiny slivers embedded in Billy's face, some of them dangerously close to having blinded him. She had to ask, though she already suspected the answer 'Did you know?'

He nodded. 'I tried to tell them, I tried to warn them something was going to happen, but I ... I didn't know what it was going to be. Mom, why did it happen? Could I have changed it if I'd done anything different?' Tears slipped down his Vaseline-smeared cheeks.

'I don't know,' Ramona replied; an honest answer to a mystery that had plagued her all her life.

There was a sudden commotion over at the far side of the waiting room, where a corridor led to the main doors. Ramona and John both looked up, and saw people thronging around a large, thick-bellied man with gray curly hair and a boy about Billy's age, lean and red-haired. A shock of recognition pierced Ramona. That bitter night at the tent revival replayed itself in her mind—it had never been very far beneath the surface, not in all of seven years. A woman grasped Falconer's hand and kissed it, begging him to pray for her injured daughter; a man in overalls pushed her aside to get to Wayne. For a few seconds there was a shoving melee of shoulders and arms as the parents of hurt and dying kids tried to reach Falconer and his son, to get their attention, to touch them as if they were walking good-luck charms. Falconer let them converge on him, but the boy stepped back in confusion.

Ramona stood up. A state trooper had come in, trying to settle everybody back down again. Through the mass of people, Ramona's hard gaze met the evangelist's, and Falconer's soft, fleshy face seemed to darken. He came toward her, ignoring the appeals for prayer and for healing. He looked down at Billy, his eyes narrowing, then back into Ramona's face. Wayne stood behind him, wearing jeans and a blue knit shirt with an alligator on the breast pocket. He glanced at Billy and for an instant then-eyes held; then the boy's gaze locked upon Ramona, and she thought she could actually feel the heat of hatred.

'I know you,' Falconer said softly. 'I remember you, from a long time ago. Creekmore.'

'That's right. And I remember you, as well.'

'There's been an accident,' John told the evangelist. 'My boy was there when it happened. His hands are all cut up, and he ... he saw terrible things. Will you pray for him?'

Falconer's eyes were locked with Ramona's. He and Wayne had heard about the bonfire explosion on the radio, and had come to the hospital to offer consolation; running into this witch-woman again was the last thing