Hell Fire

“Something got at him,” Chance said finally. “Are there bears here? Wolves?”

I had no idea. I wasn’t a wildlife expert in any location, and I hadn’t been back to Kilmer in nine years. Things changed; habitats evolved. But times must be tough if wild animals had been forced to resort to hunting dogs.

I couldn’t seem to look away from the shadow-dark flesh. The animal gave one final whine, as if he understood we couldn’t help, and then he died. I saw the moment his eyes went liquid still, living tissue reverting to dead meat. There was a blood trail we could follow, but I didn’t think that was a good idea. Sizable claws created those wounds; nothing we need to mess with just before nightfall.

I glanced down at the Chihuahua as he sniffed around next to my feet. “What do you think? Do you smell anything you recognize?”

He yapped twice. Hm, so it probably wasn’t a regular wild animal. I shivered, wanting nothing more than to get off this road.

We’d acquired Butch after his prior owner was killed, and we were astonished to learn he could communicate on a basic level. There was something special about him for sure, but I had lacked the opportunity to investigate what his other talents might be. This certainly wasn’t the time.

Never one to miss an opportunity, Butch scampered into the weeds and did his business. I exhaled a long, unsteady breath, and then pulled myself to my feet using the Mustang’s hood. If I believed in omens, we were off to a hell of a start.

Chance went to the trunk and wrapped his hands in rags used to wipe off the oil dipstick. Before we left Laredo, Chuch—our mechanic friend—had taught him how and threatened to beat him if he didn’t look after this car properly. So far Chance was doing fine.

Wordlessly, he reached under the chassis and towed the carcass to the side of the road. Without a shovel, that was really all we could do, but I appreciated the kindness. Otherwise, that poor dog would be splattered all over the road when the next car came, and he had suffered enough.

Even if we did have digging tools in the car for some unlikely reason, I wouldn’t have been interested in hanging around. My intestines coiled into knots over the idea of losing the light out there, within a stone’s throw of those dark trees. The whorls on the bark resembled demonic sigils in the wicked half-light, and the long, skeletal limbs stirred in the breeze in a way I simply couldn’t like.

There was a reason I hated these trees. I’d hid among them while my mother died.

While Chance took care of the dead dog, I gave Butch a drink and tried to reassure him that he wasn’t doomed to suffer the same fate. His bulging brown eyes glistened with what I’d call a skeptical light as I hopped back in the Mustang. Chance joined us shortly, working the manual transmission with a dexterity I couldn’t help but admire.

“What a welcome.” He shook his head.

“Tell me about it.” As I said that, we passed a faded white sign that I knew read WELCOME TO KILMER, HOME OF THE RED DEVILS AND THE WORLD’S BEST PEACH PIE.

“Think anyone will recognize you?”

I shook my head absently, taking in the familiar sights. It was bizarre. The road into town hadn’t changed at all. Ma’s Kitchen, an old white clapboard restaurant, still sat just outside the city limits. The shopping plaza on the left had been given a face-lift—fresh paint and new lines in the tiny parking lot—but the general store, the dry cleaner’s, the Kilmer bank, and a coffee shop still occupied it. The names on the dry cleaner’s and coffee shop had changed, but otherwise, the town seemed just as I’d left it.

If we stayed on this street, we’d wind up in the town square, where the old courthouse reigned like an aging duchess who refused to admit her day had passed. The clock on the tower hadn’t worked since before I moved away, and I couldn’t imagine, given the faded air, that they’d come into the money to fix it since. The “historical” district simply contained the oldest houses; most hadn’t been restored.

But Kilmer retained a certain turn-of-the-century charm, if you didn’t know what lurked beneath its exterior. I recognized Federal-inspired houses with their rectangular structure and slim, delicate iron railings; those stately old dames mingled freely with Georgian homes with hipped roofs and quoins.

Most of those neighborhoods exuded a genteel aura of decay. The streets hadn’t been paved in a long time; they were faded to the pale gray of rotting teeth from years of neglect, and Chance had to turn smartly to avoid the deep potholes.

“It seems sadder,” I said at last. “Smaller.”

“Well, you’re older now.” To his credit, he didn’t say I was bigger. That would’ve earned him a slap upside the head.

Anyway, I wasn’t bigger. I still needed to lose a few pounds, but I’d been pretty chunky at eighteen when I climbed on that Greyhound bus. At the gas station-cum-video store, I’d begged a lift from a farmer headed into Brunswick. I’d known buses ran from there, so I’d used my school ID to get a discount ticket and I rode all night. The next morning, I got off in Atlanta with just a backpack and a few dollars in my pocket.

My chest felt tight, remembering. I’d gotten work at a used bookstore the following day. The owner had felt sorry for me, I think, but I loved that job. I rented a room in a boardinghouse, and I was happier than I’d ever been in Kilmer. I had been sadder than Roy to see the bookstore go under. With no friends and little money in the bank, my life took a turn for the worse. I’d left Atlanta with only enough money for a bus ticket, and things went south from there.

But I didn’t want to think about that.

By the time Chance met me, I’d put myself back together somewhat. But I’d held eight different jobs in half as many years, and I seldom stayed in one place for long. There was nothing like running from your memories while trying to fit in, though I never made it. People always seemed to suss out that I wasn’t quite like them.

It was more than the scars on my palms that came from a gift I didn’t want. My mother’s death stayed with me in the form of the pain that subsumed me each time I read a charged object. There was a name for what I did. Most people called it psychometry; I called it a curse.

For years, I tried to forget.

When Chance came into my life, he changed everything. But I wouldn’t think about that, either. Sometimes the past needed to stay buried; it was the only way you could move on. And sometimes you had to dig it up, because that too was the only way.

For my mother’s sake, I had to deal with what’d happened in Kilmer. I’d find answers about the men who came by night to our house and burnt the place with her trapped inside. I’d discover why. Maybe then the dreams would stop. Maybe then she could rest. In the twilight, the town looked so quiet, almost peaceful, but to me, it hid a fetid air. Corruption fed in the stillness, like a pretty corpse that, when split open, spilled out a host of maggots.

I’d be the knife that cut this place wide and the fire that burnt it clean.

The Kilmer Inn

Chance parked the car because we were just driving aimlessly. He turned to me and rested his elbow on the back of the seat. “You all right?”

Well, no, I wasn’t. The bruises hadn’t completely healed from our last outing, and I had a fresh scar on my shoulder that’d come from a dead woman’s teeth. In addition, there was a secret society of Gifted individuals that I’d only just learned about, and the mentor who was supposed to teach me how to go on probably never wanted to see or hear from me again. That bothered me on a personal level as well, as I’d shared one smoking hot kiss with Jesse Saldana the night before everything went wrong.

This wasn’t the time to complain, and Chance certainly wouldn’t be interested in my emotional conflict regarding another man. In fact, bringing it up would just provoke him, considering he hoped we would be reconciled before this trip ended.

So I merely nodded. “We should find a place to stay. An old woman on Second Avenue used to rent out rooms. . . . I don’t know if she’s still alive, or if the boardinghouse is still open, but it’s a place to start.”

He checked the nearest cross street. “This is Tenth and Main. Which way?”