Behind the Fire: A Dark Thriller (7 page)

He’d worked at Kelly’s near on three years. In a mining town with a huge transient population, staying in this kind of work for that long made him an old hand. Bobby had filled in for most jobs in the yard. With thirty-plus vehicles coming and going during most shifts, never for a moment did he feel comfortable putting up his feet and goofing off like most of his co-workers. He’d rather be busy. Being busy made the day shoot by, and he could get home to Em and the kids feeling satisfied he’d done a good day’s work.

He had never thought he’d be one of those sappy fathers, cooing over a bassinet and living for his children. The day Em placed his hand on her still-flat belly and told him, “There’s something precious in here,” he changed so deeply he would always think of that day as a dividing line between living life and understanding life. From the outside, he looked the same. On the inside a new man was born alongside their first child Timothy.

He wasn’t supposed to be in the yard when the van was returned. He’d been scheduled to rework the gearbox on the two-ton tipper known as
The Removalist—
so named because most customers relocating house used that vehicle to move their household goods. As the rented van pulled into the yard, none of his fellow crewmembers were where they should be. So he was it.

He figured he’d check the van back in, give it a once over, ready it for the next pick up—that afternoon according to the bookings—and still have time to finish his work on the
The Removalist
.

Bobby paid little attention to the guy returning it. He looked normal enough: two arms, two legs, a wallet, and an I.D. Later, despite racking his brain, Bobby couldn’t have even sworn to his hair color. He was an average guy with an average attitude, and all Bobby could say was he’d never seen him before or, if he had, he hadn’t made an impression.

What he did remember was the frazzled look in the guy’s eyes. He seemed wound up, like a spinning top waiting for someone to pull the string. At the time Bobby put his look down to the stress of moving, or a massive cleanup, or whatever errand for which he’d rented the vehicle.

By the time Bobby climbed into the cab of the van and fished all the rubbish from the floor and center console, Mr. Average had long gone. Even before this, Bobby had taken six phone calls, finally found one of the boys to prep a few trucks—and handled two car washers who’d gone AWOL.

He did notice the van needed a good wash. They usually all did, but this one had been beyond the town’s borders. You couldn’t drive five miles outside of Karlgarin before the fine red dust coated your car and you as well if you left the windows down. Even the dashboard needed a good wipe-down.

Bobby reached under the driver’s seat. Sometimes that could be a gold mine of cash—if you called a few dollars a gold mine. Still, a dollar was a dollar. Once he’d even found a roll of five hundred big ones, which ended up back with the owner, but for a whole afternoon he’d enjoyed imagining what could be done with the money.

His fingers clasped something snagged on the seat-adjuster rails. Unfortunately, it didn’t feel like money. Just a scrap of paper. He pulled at it gently, but the paper stayed stubbornly fixed. So he tried a sharp yank and felt it tear free. If he’d damaged it, that was tough luck. The guy shouldn’t have left it if it was important.

Turned out to be just a scrap of paper with what, initially, looked like scribbles. Bobby came to realize the scribbles were, in fact, a list of long number chains. The numbers peaked his curiosity.

Instead of shoving the paper in the plastic trash bag in his hand, like he usually would, he flattened the paper on his knee and studied it. The creases clearly showed it had been folded and unfolded countless times. Well used, dirty, and smudged.

-30.802886 φ, 121.461599273 λ, 04:51:22 6/29/2013
Great Gretin Highway

-30.774492 φ , 121.451317 λ, 06:08:52 7/3/2013
196 McKay Drive

-30.727302 φ, 121.501064 λ, 23:29:06 7/15/2013
5 Parkerley Way

-30.754065 φ, 121.470353 λ, 21.23:17 8/02/2013
26 Connolly Street

-30.790462 φ, 121.485586 λ, 2:32:51 8/19/2013

1163 West Road

-30.802886 φ, 121.461599273 λ 21:03:26 9/18/2013
51 Hopkins Drive

-30.789945 φ, 121.480252 λ, 14.43.26 10/6/2013

-30.706567 φ, 121.513081 λ, 22:28:14 10/21/2013

Old River Road

-30.802886 φ, 121.461599273 λ 22.43.26 10/29/2013

51 Alston Drive

30.780465 φ, 121.425535 λ, 03:59:12 10/1/2013

Market Street (Canning factory)

-30.794118 φ, 121.526273 λ, 22:15:41 10/23/2013

-30.747007 φ, 121.474861 λ 01:22:42 11/3/2013
118 Main Street (Jerry’s A-Mart)

-30.747007 φ, 121.474861 λ, 15:27:43 12/13/2013

Bobby immediately recognized the numbers as longitude and latitude points. He knew this because Kelly’s rental agreements contained a clause about longitudinal lines below which the trucks couldn’t be taken at certain times of the year. Tornado season. If customers ignored this stipulation then the insurance didn’t cover them. Using exact coordinates meant everyone knew where they stood.

Next to the coordinates were dates and times and addresses written in red pen. Three entries were missing addresses and the second to last had “Jerry’s A-Mart” printed in green pen after the address, as if an afterthought. Three addresses had been crossed out.

He assumed each address on the list corresponded to the coordinate written on the line above. A few were around town, with the rest farther out past the town limits. Bobby recognized some of the street names and wondered if they were delivery addresses.

Then he looked more closely at the times and discounted the thought. Who would be making deliveries on Old River Road in the middle of the night? As far as he knew, no one worked at Jerry’s A-Mart at one in the morning, either.

One address in particular stood out. Twenty-six Connolly Street, only two blocks from his home. He knew the street well, passing by there regularly on his way to work.

Coincidentally, the date was the day after tomorrow. The time listed next to the address, 9.23 p.m., wasn’t too late in the evening.

It couldn’t hurt to simply take a stroll over there. The idea they might be timings of robberies crossed his mind.
Maybe I’ll be a hero
, he thought, chuckling to himself.

He folded the paper along its well-worn lines and leaned sideways to pull out his wallet. As he turned it over to slip inside, he noticed writing on the back. A single word written in big, disjointed script, like a hurried doctor’s scrawl:

A curious word to be written on its own, made even more curious by the fact there’d been no fires in the area for a long time. If there
had
been a fire at Jerry’s or on nearby Connolly Street Bobby was certain he’d have heard. Small town gossip moved quicker than the Internet.

Bobby liked a good mystery. If the sleep-inducing couch hadn’t claimed him by nine—a regular occurrence lately thanks to Casey’s 4.30 a.m. wake-ups—then he’d go for a wander. If it were something illegal, then Mr. Average’s paperwork would be handed straight to the police.

He tapped his forehead as he climbed out of the cab, a little habit he’d created to embed a reminder in his brain.

Leave the house at 9 p.m. the day after tomorrow. You’re going for a walk.

Bobby smiled at the thought of a little adventure.

Chapter 9

Bobby felt conspicuous standing under the lamppost across the road from twenty-six Connolly Street. He wasn’t doing anything wrong but loitering here with no good reason made him feel like a suspicious character.

He checked his watch constantly as though the action would make time move faster. He didn’t tell Em why he was taking a walk at an hour when they would normally be snuggled together on the couch watching an episode of
Law and Order
or one of the other television shows whose plot they wouldn’t remember the next day.

The whole thing seemed ridiculous now he stood here. If he’d mentioned it aloud and told Em, he probably wouldn’t have even bothered.

Twenty-six Connolly Street seemed like your average three-bedroom house: cream brick walls, tiled roof, mailbox on a post, three red steps up to the door, and white lace curtains flapping through wooden window frames. With those open windows, who could blame the thieves? Almost an invitation.

After checking his watch again, he pried his cigarette pack and lighter from his inside jacket pocket. If Em knew he’d taken up smoking again, he’d catch an earful. This walk was actually a welcome opportunity to indulge the habit he’d promised himself he’d quit this past New Year’s. Same promise he’d made three years running.

Sometimes just half a cigarette made all the difference to your view on life. He loved Em and the kids more than anything, but lately, between Casey’s exhausting early-morning rises and Timothy’s incessant screams as he asserted his four-year-old rights, some days were tough. Em was amazing though. She held it together.

He drew deeply on the cigarette, amused by the thought today was as good a day as any to spy on his neighbors, or catch a thief, or whatever was going to happen at 9.23:17 p.m.

After one final puff, he dropped the cigarette to the ground, grinding it into the pavement as he checked his watch: 9.22. A shiver caught him off guard. A cool tinge to the air reminded him summer was nearly done.

Though the shiver could have just as easily been from the idea that only a minute away lay the unexpected. Most likely, it would turn out to be nothing, an amusing story to share at the bar. Haha—the night he waited and waited and then … suddenly … nothing happened.

Glancing up and down the road for headlights, he listened for a car engine noise. His other thought was that this might be a meeting place for a cult. Or one of those multilevel marketing meetings one of Em’s friends had tried to drag them to. Everything was eerily quiet, save the sound of a lone dog barking in the distance.

Across the road at number twenty-six, all was still. The muted glow of lights at the back of the house revealed someone was home, or the owners wanted passersby to believe someone was home.

Another check of his watch: 9.23 p.m.

This had to be a waste of time. The list had said 9.23:17. It was past that now. Whatever was happening or wasn’t happening was now late. He would give it a few more minutes and that was it.

Something suddenly caught his attention.

A strange shimmer that shifted like shadows chasing other shadows beneath the leaves of a windblown tree. So faint, he almost mistook it for the movement of a person behind the house’s curtains. Instead, of passing by, it grew darker.

He stood mesmerized as the image grew solid, drawing itself into a circle, gray around the edges, growing blacker toward the middle like a bruise. The surrounding light appeared drawn to it, causing the front wall of the house to take on a similar gray hue, nearly absent of all color.

Then the center of the darkness began to fold and refold in on itself in waves. The window disappeared into something, which could only be described as a thick, yawning mouth. A sudden wind from nowhere emanated from the house and swirled outward, over Bobby, to kick up the ground debris around his feet. The trees and shrubs in the front garden, standing peacefully moments before, now thrashed about, assaulted by the strong gust that strangely made no sound. Just as it did with the color and light, the blackness seemed to draw in all sound.

Bobby wanted a better look, so he moved toward the edge of the sidewalk, straining his head forward. His mind searched for a reference point to understand what he was seeing. His first thought was it was some kind of chemical reaction.

Now the wind slowed and, as it did, an image began to form in the center of the hole—a dark-blue shape tearing into the black and beginning to bulge outward.

He should have backed away, hightailed it out of there, gone back to his own house, to Em and the kids. The surprise of the spectacle, though, rooted him to the spot. He needed to understand what was happening. This was only two blocks from his house. If it was some kind of experiment or chemical spill and might be dangerous, he needed to know to protect his family.

Then the bulging eddy of blueness suddenly stopped. A face appeared in the middle. Bobby closed his eyes and rubbed his knuckles back and forth across his eyelids.

What the hell was he looking at?
The light must be playing tricks. He blinked several times in an attempt to clear his vision.

When he looked back it was there still. In those few moments while his eyes were closed, it seemed to have grown. Now most of the black circle covered the outside wall of the front room of the house. What he registered as a face, he realized, was actually a collection of facial features blending in and out as though they were painted on a huge black flag blowing in the wind.

The face strained and stretched as though pushing or pulling against a barrier holding it back. Then it bent to one side and a long, dark, knotted arm emerged, stretching outward. Although there were human qualities to the arm, it was not human. At the end, instead of a hand, were two clicking claw-like fingers. Liquid-like skin writhed up and down the appendage as the arm shifted and stretched.