Apparition (31 page)

Then Ethan grabs another metal container and whips it hard at Kip’s face. There’s a horrible clunking sound as it connects. Kip tries
to pin him down and pull him out at the same time. Ethan rolls onto his back and kicks out his thick boots, landing a solid blow against Kip’s chest. I hear the thud as Kip staggers back under the platform and hits his head hard on a wooden beam. He slumps forward to his knees. Ethan rolls over and crawls out from under the platform, scrambling to his feet. Kip staggers out behind him, weaving, facing Ethan with raised fists. He’s bleeding from his forehead and cheek.

Ethan starts laughing. He has something in his hand, something orange that he’s waving at Kip. It’s Joyce’s cigarette lighter! They’re both covered in oily black fuel; the fumes fill the air.

“Ethan, NO! Please don’t!” I scream. “Kip! You’ve got to get out!”

Kip staggers backwards a step but holds his ground. His eyes are on the lighter. I lunge at him from behind, grabbing two fistfuls of his open coat, pulling him away from Ethan and back toward the barn door. Blood runs down his forehead, the side of his face. Ethan keeps laughing, waving the lighter.

Just then, a voice behind us roars like thunder. “Ethan, what the HELL do you think you’re doing?”

It’s Joyce. She steps in front of Kip and me, turns to us and points us both toward the door.

Ethan sneers at her. “Get out!” he growls.

She looks at him, shocked. “Outside!” she yells, turning back to us. She helps me get Kip to the door.

I can see Jack outside, hopping on one crutch, petrified with fear. We stagger out and stand a few feet back from the door. Kip is dazed, blood dripping everywhere. Joyce looks down at his fuel-soaked clothes. She turns back and takes another hard look at Ethan. He’s swaggering, smirking, her lighter in his hand. “Stay here. Keep him clear,” she tells me, nodding at Kip. Then she turns to someone standing behind her.

“Mrs. Ross? Are you sure?”

M
rs. Ross steps around the corner of the barn, clutching her white cane. She looks tiny and terrified.

“Mrs. Ross?” I hold my hands out to her and she takes them, squeezing tight. Behind her thick glasses, her eyes are full of tears. I don’t know what to say. “It’s my baby brother, Ethan. Please be careful.”

“You take care of Pip,” she says with a quivering smile, glancing in Kip’s direction, and she lets me go. She turns to face Joyce. “Yes, I’m sure,” she says, and leaving her cane leaning up against the barn, she shuffles inside, alone.

I look at Joyce. “Hold on to Kip,” I say.

“I’m okay. I’m okay.” He’s angry. “Amelia, don’t!”

Joyce puts an arm around him as I turn toward the barn door. “Amelia!” Her voice is severe.

“I have to go in. I’m the only one who can see them.”

She opens her mouth to say something, but I’m already on my way into the barn when I hear it: “Just like her mother.”

Part of me wants to turn around and have it out with Joyce right there, but I need to focus on Mrs. Ross. She’s taking baby steps, shuffling toward Ethan, who still stands in the middle of the barn, soaked in fuel, lighter in his raised hand. He’s no longer smiling, though. He’s trembling, his eyes growing wider as she approaches.

“Dot?” he whispers.

“Let that boy go, Jimmy. You let that poor boy go back to his family.” She looks around the barn, then back at Ethan. I know she can barely see him.

He’s still trembling. “Dot? Is that you?”

Mrs. Ross looks hard toward Ethan now. “Let him go, Jimmy. You’ve caused enough suffering. Let him go.”

She walks to within about five feet of him. Ethan turns to her. His baby face, barely out of puberty, softens into an eager grin. He’s covered in sweat and oily fuel and straw.

“I knew you’d come, Dot. I always knew it. I’m the one you love. I’m the one you’re going to marry.”

I can’t believe this. Ethan, my baby brother. His eyes still glisten with tears, but he’s brightening up. He keeps the plastic lighter held high.

“And I’ll take good care of your daddy’s farm. And we’ll live here forever. And we’ll be happy forever.”

Mrs. Ross shakes her head. “It was never going to happen, Jimmy. I told you it was never going to happen. You wouldn’t listen.”

Ethan’s expression changes. His features tighten. His mood is growing dark again. “Don’t say that. Don’t ever say that again! You said you’d come. You lied to me!”

“I was afraid of you. I wanted you to leave me alone.”

“You loved me. You … you kissed me.”

“Yes, I kissed you once. It was a mistake.”

“You broke my heart. You humiliated me!”

I step closer. I see shadows moving in the background.

“I’m sorry, Jimmy. I’m so sorry. What we did … it was mean.” Her voice is full of regret. “But that was a long time ago. Please let this boy go. He’s done nothing to you.”

“You were my girl.”

“No. I was
never
your girl. I was Philip’s girl. You know I was always Philip’s girl.”

“You said you’d come.”

“I was afraid of you.” Tears begin to trickle down her cheeks. “Willy said he’d fix it so you would leave me alone.” And then she stiffens and raises her voice in accusation. “And then you killed Willy.” She screams, “You killed Willy!”

“
Your
fault,” he shouts back.

Crying hard, she raises her thin arms at him, her hands fisted.

Ethan’s chin suddenly falls to his chest. The hand that holds the lighter slowly lowers, like he’s exhausted. Then he raises his hand again, his thumb moving toward the cap of the lighter, his sad eyes on Mrs. Ross. His arms, head and shoulders are glistening with fuel.

“Don’t!” she yells.

“
Your
fault.” He whispers it this time. His thumb moves over the lighter.

“NO!” Two voices—mine and Joyce’s, from somewhere behind me—scream in unison.

As we both lunge forward, I see Matthew appear from the shadows, his arm arcing, his hand swiping for the lighter. It flies out of Ethan’s grasp, hitting the edge of the platform and falling to the ground. There’s a spasm of shock on Ethan’s face and his eyes blink hard in disbelief. Then he collapses to his knees on the dirt floor, shaking. He looks up with terrified eyes and a tear-streaked face.

“Mom?” he whimpers. “Mom?”

He’s free. Jimmy has let my brother go. He’s choking on tears, his shoulders shaking, his face full of pain. And in that one confusing instant, I realize it’s Mom he’s crying about.

Joyce and I both run to him. We throw our arms around him and half carry him out of the barn, and he falls in the snow, crying. He’s okay. He’s safe. On my knees, I hold him, rock him. I realize that when we lost our mother, Ethan’s heart was broken. And to Jimmy, heartache is heartache.

“Everything’s going to be okay, Ethan.” He looks at me, his face twitching between sobs. Why didn’t I get it before? “I’m sorry, Ethan. I’m so sorry. We love you.”

Joyce has an arm around him, and I feel her hand on my shoulder as well. “We all miss her, Ethan,” she whispers to him. “It’s okay. We all miss her.”

Then I hear Mrs. Ross’s voice again, from deep inside the barn, and I pull away. I need to get her out. Kip steps into my path, trying to block me. We stand face to face, breathless, and I look up into his eyes.

“Get out of the way,” I whisper. “And stay back. Don’t be stupid.”

“Don’t
you
be stupid.”

I push past him into the barn. I hear him step in behind me. “You’re not doing this alone.”

The sun is setting and it’s getting harder to see, but I can just make out Mrs. Ross standing in the middle of the barn. Now the real Jimmy stands before her, his head resting sideways on his shoulder, his neck snapped. As his head slowly lifts up and straightens, blood gushes from his mouth.

“Mrs. Ross, it’s time to get out of here.”

She’s not hearing me. Jimmy’s stomach is drenched in blood. Holes in the pattern of a pitchfork ooze dark red across his abdomen.

“Go away, Jimmy!” She’s shouting at shadows. “Never come back!” She can’t see him, it seems, but she can feel him in the air. Her arms are folded. She’s shivering. Her eyes dart in his direction—she must sense that he’s circling her. Now the blood on his stomach is gone and I see yellow foam flowing from his nose and mouth, down his chin, to the ground. He’s choking, gasping, bent at the waist, staggering in the straw. But his bulging eyes still watch her.

“Mrs. Ross!” I shout, but she doesn’t look back.

“Leave us alone,” she cries to Jimmy.

His arms now hang loose below the elbows, bone exposed, blood flowing heavily down his forearms, through his fingers.

“I’m sorry we hurt you,” she cries, “but that didn’t give you the right.” She’s gasping now, like she can’t breathe.

With the side of his head blown away, Jimmy drops to his knees by the platform, where the orange lighter is lying in the straw. He looks up at her, his face torn and bloody. His movements are quick. I hear a click, see a flash.

“MRS. ROSS!” I scream.

It’s too late. There’s a blinding yellow explosion and the roar of fire. I spin around and push Kip toward the door. We look back to see flames spreading like fireballs under the platform where Ethan spilled the fuel, surging like a river along the platform, spreading up the beams, jumping across the rafters, racing along the straw-strewn floor. Mrs. Ross, kneeling in the middle of the barn, is on fire. Her arms are slightly raised, fingers held open. A wall of flame rises between her and us.

Outside, Joyce and Jack are screaming our names. We stagger backwards out of the barn and into the snow, which is glowing in the light from the flames. Smoke pours out of the doorway, and I can barely see Kip’s fuel-covered clothes, his bleeding face.

“Kip, get up. Move!” I’m desperate to get him farther from the barn, which is now a monstrous roaring bonfire.

The fire lights up the cracks between the boards. Right up to the roof, the barn is leaking smoke and flashing orange light. Dry wood crackles and crashes. A dark cloud rises and fills the air, and we huddle well back—Jack and Joyce, Ethan, Kip and me, crying in disbelief.

I barely recognize the sound of the siren until the police car tears up the driveway. Morris and Detective Grierson run toward us as the entire right side of the barn collapses with a sound like thunder, filling the air with smoke, ash and flames.

Morris, his eyes wild with fright, sees Kip crouched beside Ethan in the snow, blood on his face, holding a red wad of tissue. He falls to his knees, hands on his son’s shoulders.

“I’m okay,” Kip says, before Morris can form the words. “But Mrs. Ross. She … she didn’t get out.”

Morris’s eyes search for mine. Then he staggers to his feet, runs toward the barn door and shouts for Mrs. Ross.

Grierson has raced back to his car. He’s on his radio. I can hear him reporting the fire, calling for an ambulance and police backup. Then he runs around the collapsed side of the barn. He and Morris circle the building, but they can’t get close. They stand helplessly, watching the massive structure completely engulfed in flames, small explosions coming from deep inside.

Morris stares at the inferno. Then he walks back to us, head down, eyes brimming with tears.

“She was ready to die if that was what it took.” Joyce is crouching beside Ethan, holding his hand. “She told me everything on the way over. She said she and her brother were cruel to Jimmy. And he paid them back.”

I can’t believe my ears. Is this my grandmother? Talking about a ghost?

Grierson walks toward us, his voice threatening. “What are we looking at here, people? Are you going to tell me this was an accident?” He glances from Ethan to Kip, takes in their clothes, damp and stained. “This isn’t just arson. Someone is dead.”

As he says that, the far wall of the barn collapses with a tremendous crash.

“Just a minute, Detective. Before you jump to any conclusions, hear me out.” It’s Joyce again, rising to her feet this time. “I gave your mother riding lessons, you know. She can vouch for the fact that I don’t suffer fools much, and superstitious fools even less. But there are two things you need to know. First, Dorothy Ross was born and raised on this farm. And second, she came here tonight of her own free will, went inside that barn of her own free will. She had unfinished business, she said. And something else. I’m not saying these boys didn’t get into a scuffle in the barn, spill some stuff. But when that fire ignited, it started inside, and we were all out here. Nobody here started that fire.”

Grierson has been standing nose to nose with Joyce, his mouth open in surprise. Now he shuts it tight, looking grim.

“Nobody here?” he asks, looking her in the eye.

“No,” she says. “I saw it all.”

“Who started it, then? Are you saying Dorothy Ross started it?”

There’s a long silence. Finally Joyce replies, “I’m just saying that nobody standing out here started the fire. How long would those two have lasted if either of them had lit a match?” She nods toward Kip and Ethan, both reeking of fuel.

While Joyce and Grierson are talking, I keep my eyes on the burning barn. I stare hard into the flames, through the smoke and the collapsing walls. Finally I see someone, and I get to my feet and step as close as I can bear to the heat. A young man is standing in
the middle of the inferno. He has shoulder-length red hair and wire-rim glasses. He’s facing me, and I see him lift one of his hands. He gives a small, awkward wave with his fingers, then turns and walks away, beyond the far end of burning barn, toward the road.

It’s a wave goodbye.

Following him through the smoke and flames are Mrs. Ross and Willy in his army cap. Mrs. Ross stops to look back and I raise my hand. Tears and smoke cloud my eyes, but it looks like she’s smiling. Brother and sister walk away from us, out of the burning barn, her arm on his. Farther behind, in the heap of burning boards, charred frames and supports and fallen rafters, I can make out two more figures following the others out of the fire. Jimmy and Paul, side by side. They all move together over the fallen back wall of the barn and, leaving no footprints, across the snowy field toward the road.
Matthew? Where are you?