had tipped over, its chimney shattering.
The cap of the fuel tank had been knocked loose, and the kerosene had spilled out, running quickly in all directions. And then it ignited, and suddenly Tracy was surrounded by flames. She stared at the sudden blaze in horror, and then, dimly, heard the sounds of childish laughter. All around her the faces of the children — the children who couldn’t possibly be there — were grinning now, their eyes sparkling with malicious pleasure. She turned to the door, and started toward it. And then, as she came close to it, she saw another child.
A girl, no more than twelve years old.
She was thin, and her clothes were charred and blackened, as if they’d once been burned. Her eyes glowed like coals as she stared at Tracy, and then, as the flames danced close about her feet, she backed away, through the door.
The flames, fed by the spreading kerosene, followed her.
As Tracy watched, the door slowly began to close.
“No,” Tracy gasped. She took a step forward, but it was too late.
The door slammed shut.
She hurled herself against it, trying to push it aside, but it was immovable. Then she began pounding on it, screaming out for someone to help her, someone to open the door.
But all she heard from beyond the door was the mocking sound of the girl’s laughter.
Behind her, she could feel the spirits of the other children gathering around, waiting to welcome her.
The flaming kerosene spread rapidly across the floor of the basement, oozing under a pile of lumber, creeping around the pilings that had for so long supported the weight of the floor above.
The lumber caught first, and now the fire spread quickly, tongues of flame reaching out to find new fuel. Then the pilings began to catch. Tinder-dry after more than a century, they burned with a fury that filled the basement with a terrifying roar. Then the floor itself began to ignite, the fire spreading through its hardwood mass, turning into a living thing as it ranged ever wider.
The temperature rose, and cans of paint thinner began to explode, bursting into new fires that quickly joined the main blaze.
The heat reached the level of a blast furnace, penetrating even the metal door that sealed off the room beneath the stairs.
Tracy was surrounded by blackness now, the kerosene having burned itself out.
But she could feel the fire, and hear it raging beyond the metal door.
And then, as she watched, the door itself began to glow a dull red.
She backed away from it, whimpering now as terror overwhelmed her. Then she tripped, and fell heavily to the floor. Dimly, she was aware of Beth’s body beneath her.
Then, as the brightening glow of the door began to illuminate the room once more, she remembered the window.
She stood up, and tried to reach it.
And the sound of that awful laughter — Amy’s laughter — mocked her efforts.
She began screaming then, screaming for her father to come and save her.
Each breath seared her lungs, and her screams began to weaken.
She slumped to the floor, her mind beginning to crumble as the heat built around her.
Her father wouldn’t come for her — she knew that now. Her father didn’t love her. He’d never loved her. It had always been the other child he’d loved.
With the remnants of her mind, Tracy tried to remember the name of the other child, but it was gone. But it didn’t matter, because she knew she’d killed her, and that was all that was important.
Her grandmother.
Her grandmother would save her. It didn’t matter what she’d done, because her grandmother was always there.
But not this time. This time, there was nobody.
She was alone, and the heat was closing in on her, and she could feel her skin searing, and smell her singeing hair.
She writhed on the floor, trying to escape the death that was coming ever closer, but there was nowhere to go — nowhere to hide.
The whole room was glowing around her now, and she was afraid, deep in her heart, that she had already died, and would be confined forever to the fires around her — the fires of hell.
Once again she called out to her father, begging him to save her.
But she died as Amy had died, knowing there would be no salvation.
Her soul, like Amy’s, would be trapped forever, locked away in the burning inferno.…
27
By the time Phillip reached the mill, it was already clear that the building was doomed. Three fire trucks were lined up along the north wall, and two more stood in the middle of Prospect Street, their hoses snaking across the sidewalk and up the steps to the shattered remains of the plate-glass doors. But the water that poured from the hoses into the building seemed to evaporate as fast as it was pumped in.
The roar of the blaze was deafening, and when Phillip found Norm Adcock, he had to put his mouth to the police chief’s ear in order to be heard at all.
“It’s no good,” he shouted. “There’s no way to stop it.”
Adcock nodded grimly. “If they can’t get it under control in ten minutes, they’re going to give up on the building and just try to keep the fire from spreading.”
But they didn’t have to wait ten minutes.
The main floor had burned through now, and the fire was raging through the new construction. The heat and flames rose upward, and suddenly, as Phillip watched, the great dome over the atrium seemed to wobble for a moment, then collapse into the firestorm below. The gaping hole in the roof combined with the shattered front doors to turn the entire structure into a vast chimney. Fresh air rushed into the vacuum, and the blaze redoubled, lighting the sky over the town with the red glow of hell. Over the roar of the inferno, the wailing of sirens sounded a melancholy counterpoint, a strange dirge accompanying the pageant of death the mill had become.
“The girls,” Phillip shouted, straining to make himself heard over the deafening crescendo.
Again Adcock shook his head. “By the time I got here, there was no way to get inside. And if they were in there …” There was no need to finish the sentence.
The firemen had given up on the building now, and the hoses were turned away, pouring water onto the ground around the mill. And yet there was really little need for this. Always, the mill had stood alone between the railroad tracks and Prospect Street, the land on either side of it vacant, as if no other building wished to be associated with the foreboding structure that had for so long been a brooding sentinel, guarding the past.
Prospect Street itself was filling now as the people of Westover, hastily dressed, began to gather to witness the last dying gasps of the mill.
They stood silently for the most part, simply watching it burn. Now and then, as a window exploded from the pressure of the heat within, a ripple of sound would roll through the crowd, then disappear, to be replaced once more by eerie silence.
It was a little after two in the morning when the brick walls that had stood solid for well over a hundred years finally buckled under the fury of the fire and the weight of the roof, trembled for a moment, then collapsed.
The entire building seemed to fall in on itself, and almost immediately disappeared into the flames.
All that was left now was a vast expanse of flaming rubble, and once more the fire fighters turned their hoses
