I spilled down the back stairs and tumbled into the lawn, rolling over and clawing away from the house.
As soon as I was fifteen or twenty feet from the house, it sounded like everything stopped. I heard someone weeping and then that was drowned out by the wail of an approaching siren.
I collapsed onto the ground and didn’t move a muscle.
It’s true that I was afraid to go back into the house even though I knew there were injured people inside who needed help. I told myself that if I went back in, the chaos might start again and hurt them even more. But there was another motivation that was much more selfish. I didn’t think that the house would really hurt me, but I thought that the only way I could avoid blame was if I was seen as a victim too. It didn’t seem like a victim would be able to go back in and help others. A victim would be found collapsed on the back lawn, so that’s where I stayed.
I heard the fire department come and shouting voices as they discovered the destruction. It took a long time before anyone came to rescue me. Obviously, it was immediately clear that I wasn’t in any real danger, so my cuts were bandaged and I was released. With a blanket draped over my shoulders, a pair of officers came to tell me about my parents. Someone had already identified the bodies.
# # #
Ricky looked down at the speedometer and realized that he was driving significantly less than the posted speed limit. He accelerated and then puzzled out the buttons to set the cruise control.
“So, your parents…”
“Smoke inhalation, I guess. Everyone was talking to me, but nothing was getting in. I kept trying to figure out how it had all happened. It seemed like if I could just puzzle it through, somehow I could reverse all the terrible events and get back to normal. It was a riddle and I was trying to find the trick to it so I could solve everything.”
“I’m so sorry.”
Amber shook her head. “It feels like this all keeps happening to me over and over. My mom’s will said the house would be put into a trust in my name until I was eighteen, which was only a few months after she died. A few short years later, I was put in the position to take care of Uncle Bill’s house. Now, I’m dealing with Evelyn’s. I’m so sick of this.”
Amber put her face in her hands and hunched over for a second. A moment later, she straightened back up and composed herself with a deep sigh.
“I take it that your relatives didn’t agree with what you decided to do with the house?”
“Correct,” Amber said. “It took a lot of wrangling, but I eventually got my way. They tried to block me in court. I spent a good chunk of my inheritance defending myself against their claims. I turned down all their offers to buy the place and eventually found a real estate agent who would carry out my wishes. We found a family who wanted the property, but agreed to tear down the house and rebuild it. I gave them an amazing deal on it. They even agreed to set the house farther back on the lot so that it wouldn’t even be on the same foundation. My extended family was furious, of course.”
“That must have been a really hard fight for a teenager.”
Amber laughed. “I was twenty by the time that it was finally completed. I had to go into debt with student loans and everything because all that money was tied up in the court fight. In the end I paid a lot to make sure that nobody would ever live in that place again.”
“Have you…” Ricky stopped the question before it could leave his mouth. He realized that there was very little chance that the answer would be good.
Unfortunately, Amber wouldn’t let it go.
“Have I what?”
“Nothing.”
“No, Ricky, I told you all my secrets. What’s your question?”
“I was wondering if you ever followed up with the new family to find out if they… You know?”
“If they were plagued by a murderous demon that ruined their lives?”
“Yeah, I suppose that’s the question.”
“I got lucky. The wife was a guidance counselor. She turned out to be much more intuitive than the one who made such a mess of my life in the first place. During the negotiation, I could see her looking at me. She was evaluating me and I thought that she came to the wrong conclusion. Maybe she had heard about me—how I had been orphaned by a car crash that happened right outside my door. But then, before we signed everything, she took me aside.”
Amber looked out her window for a moment to compose herself before she continued.
“She told me that her husband was intending on going back on the agreement. Legally, as careful as I was, there was little I could do to enforce the contract and make them tear down the place. I didn’t have the money to do it myself. The husband knew that I was fighting my relatives to sell the house in the first place, and he correctly guessed that I would have no recourse if they simply wanted to live there after we closed on the sale.”
“That sucks. I can’t believe she told you.”
“I couldn’t either. She told me that, at first, they both assumed that I was abused by one or more of my parents and that’s why I wanted the place torn down.”
“At first?”
“Right. But after one of our conversations, she changed her mind. She said that it occurred to her that it was something deeper. Her intuition told her that the house itself
