The Fire (7 page)

“What a wharf rat you are, Christina,” remarked Mrs. Shevvington. “Good for nothing. Destructive behavior whenever you think nobody is looking.”

“There is no fire,” said Mr. Shevvington, and his voice laughed like a little brook in the spring, tumbling over smooth rocks. “Come, Christina. Let’s look.”

He dragged her up the stairs. He said, “You’ve been complaining about your little attic room, Christina. You’ve been telling the children at school that criminals have better housing than you do. If only you had confided in us — why, we would have moved you immediately. But we’re moving you now, Christina.”

He propelled her into room number 8. She tried to get free. He was as strong as Michael. She could not twist loose. She was the kitten, on her way to the vet’s, to be put down.

Where are the boys? thought Christina. Why aren’t they home yet? I need them. I need Benj.

“Michael and Benjamin are both staying at friends’ houses for the night,” said Mrs. Shevvington. “What a shame that you have no friends, Christina. Nobody ever asks you to spend the night.”

She was in Room 8. They were blocking the doorway. She was trapped. Mrs. Shevvington’s thick body and Mr. Shevvington’s striped suit filled the only exit.

Chhhhrisssstina
… said the voice beyond the walls.
Chhhhrisssstina
… it cried from behind the fires …
stay here
…

“A cold fire?” she said, confused. She stretched out her hands to warm them in front of the flickering flames. But the fire stayed cold and metallic. Behind it was a wall of foggy sea, painted with seawater itself, and a suggestion of an island: a mere whiff of island. Seagulls and twisted pines beckoned.
Chhhhrisssstina
… said the voice beyond the walls.
Chhhhrisssstina
…
stay here
…

“Home,” whispered Mrs. Shevvington. “This is home.”

“Home,” repeated Christina. “This is home.”

Mrs. Shevvington sat on the pretty bed, sinking in the soft mattress. She took Christina in her lap, as so often she had held Dolly. “It’s nice to be home at last, isn’t it, Christina, darling?”

Christina nodded.

“You’ll sleep well here, won’t you Christina, dear?”

Christina nodded.

“Among the fire and islands,” said Mrs. Shevvington, like a lullaby. “The sea keeps count, you know. It wants one of you.”

“Me,” said Christina. “It can have me.” Mrs. Shevvington rocked her and rocked her. “It will,” said Mrs. Shevvington. “It will.”

I
N THE NIGHT, THE
sea tried to crumble the foundation of the house.

Down in the cove, down among the rocks, the sea fingered every crevice, washed into every crack. The tide rose, and the sea shouldered its way into the cliff, calling,
Chhhrrrrissssssteeeennnaaahh.

She heard it break into the house, she heard it filling the cellar, she heard it lapping up the stairs, calling her name.

A foghorn blew deep and throbbingly out at sea.

Half of her woke up and half of her slid between cracks, like the sea. She did not know where she was. In a boat? On Burning Fog Isle? In her attic bedroom?

She sat up. The room around her slowly came into dark, nightlike focus. It was guest room number 8. She was alone in the house with the voices and the sea and the Shevvingtons.

Wake up all the way, she ordered herself. Or else you’ll wake in the morning and be part of the room … like the girls before you. The room and the Shevvingtons will own you. Like Val in the mental hospital, you’ll be a body for strangers to dress, drug, and prop in front of a television … while you, Christina, drift on a painted sea to a fiery isle. …

She dragged herself out of the drug of fear.

Had it been easier for Val to let herself sift like flour into insanity? Had Val tired of fighting, she thought, just as you have tired of keeping your eyes open?

She had never slept on the second floor before. The house creaked differently; the ocean was louder. But oh, so distinct! So clear! A voice like a solo in a concert.

Chhhrrrrissssssteeennnaaahh
… sang the ocean.

The creak, like the sea, came nearer.

The creak gathered rhythm, and volume, and creaked on into guest room number 8.

The door moved.

No, she told herself. It didn’t move. It was open like that before, wasn’t it?

She could actually hear the water in the house. The ocean had come for her. Just as Anya had foretold.
The sea, Chrissie, the sea wants one of us.
And last night Christina had promised Mrs. Shevvington — it can have me, Mrs. Shevvington!

Something moved behind the door.

Something that breathed and waited and reached.

She could not look; not even she, Christina, granite of the Isle. She closed her eyes while her lungs jerked for air and her skin shivered with fear.

And into the soft fog of the room came the ocean, crying,
Chhhrrrrissssssteeennnaaahh;
crying,
here I am, move over, I’ve come for you.

It came swaying. Crawling.

Christina whimpered, and the tears flowed down her cheeks, and she thought: Tears are saltwater; soon I will be all tears — all saltwater — vanished into the ocean.

It got into the bed with her.

Its fingers closed around her skin.

Christina’s scream of horror pierced the silent night. It cut through the plaster walls and through the cracks of doors and through the white forest of tilting rails on tilting balconies.

The hand of the ocean covered Christina’s mouth and the ocean murmured, “It’s just me. Val. I ran away from the Institute. I’ve been hiding in the room next door. I’ve been calling your name all night, Christina, so you’d come and find me. Instead you’ve gone and screamed, and now the Shevvingtons will come in to see what is the matter and they’ll know I’m here.”

Christina was as flat as one of the sheets on her bed. She thought she would probably never speak again, or think, or stand up. Val added proudly, “I’ve been so clever. I got out of the Institute, and nobody saw me. Even with all their cameras and bed checks and supervisors, nobody saw.”

Christina waited for her scream to bring the Shevvingtons.

But it did not.

She knew they had heard the scream. People in Utah had probably heard the scream. Her hair was damp from the sweat of terror and the pillow damp from the tears of fear. Why had the Shevvingtons not come running?

And then she remembered. These were the Shevvingtons. She was always expecting them to be like regular grown-ups, even after all this time. To protect and to worry. But they never protected. Never worried. No. The Shevvingtons planned and gloated instead.

“Don’t worry,” she said to Val. “They want me to be afraid. They are probably awake and happy because of that scream.” She thought of their smiles: Mr. Shevvington’s, smooth and hidden in the dark; Mrs. Shevvington’s, yellow and curled at his side.

And I, she thought, am no longer half here. I am all here. “Thank you, Val,” she whispered, hugging the other girl. “I nearly slipped into the crack. You saved me.”

She turned on the tiny lamp by the bedside table.

In the half light, fire and smoke seemed to creep out of the cracks of the walls. For a moment she was ready to run, ready to scream
Fire!,
to save Val as she had once saved Dolly.

It’s just paint, she thought. Anya fell into the changing posters of the sea that Mrs. Shevvington put in her room. I will fall into the mural they’ve painted on the wall. This afternoon I panicked. I was expecting fire so it became fire.

I must remember that. Things become what you expect them to become. But I am granite. Nothing can shatter me.

Christina lay back on the pillow again, comforted.

“Now hide me somewhere,” whispered Val.

“Why can’t you go home? I haven’t met your mother and father, but Robbie is nice. Just explain that you’re better and you can live at home now.”

“You don’t understand. They think the Shevvingtons know best. The Institute has probably already telephoned them. And all they would do is call an ambulance and send me back.”

A year ago, Christina would never have believed that. Now she believed.

“I can’t hide here, either.” Val’s voice was breath, without tone. “The Shevvingtons chose the Institute. They’d love driving me back there. Shutting the gates. Closing the glass. Smiling sadly when I tried to explain.”

The house creaked.

Val whimpered.

Even when there are no footsteps, thought Christina, in this house you hear them. You hear the ghosts of these rooms, all the souls trying to get free of the Shevvingtons.

Outside the ocean spit water against the cliff’s, but it did not call her name. Had it been Val whispering
Christina
? Or the ocean? And why wasn’t it talking now? Was the ocean just resting between tides?

Between victims?

In the morning, thought Christina, I will go to the hardware store and buy a gallon of paint. I will paint over these walls. I will paint away the fire and the fog. I will say to the Shevvingtons, “It’s my room and I like it plain white.” With a paintbrush I will end the nightmare.

She imagined herself flicking paint in their eyes if they argued.

She imagined them taking the tin can with the candle and the fingerprints to the police, and telling them of arson; imagined the ambulance coming for her as well as for Val. Imagined the Shevvingtons saying to her mother and father, You tried — but sometimes mental illness seizes a child no matter how well intentioned the parents; nobody knows better than we; are we not suffering the very same catastrophe that you are? Our only son locked up just as your only daughter must be? Be brave, like us, and say good-bye to the Christina you once knew.

“The storm cottage,” breathed Christina. “Val, that’s where you can hide! Nobody will look there. The summer people don’t come till August.” Christina slid out of the bed. She pulled on jeans and yanked her sweatshirt over her head.

“Step where I step,” instructed Christina in the softest voice she had. “Skip stairs where I skip.”

Val said, “Shouldn’t we wait till the sun comes up?”

Christina shook her head. “People might see us,” she whispered.

Down, down they went: ghosts on the run.

As they went lower and lower, Christina smelled the tide. For a moment she could not take the last step off the stairs, for fear she would tumble into the sea. It was right here — right in the house!

Val said, “The cellar is full of water. I know because I tried to hide there. It chased me up the stairs.”

The snick of the front door lock seemed loud as a cannon. They waited, but the Shevvingtons’ bedroom door did not open.

They slid out, and eased the door shut behind them.

The stars in the sky trembled.

The waves in the ocean fluttered.

They scuttled over rocks and sand, past deserted docks, and silent parked cars.

“I know what happened,” said Christina, disgusted with herself. Why, oh, why did she let herself yarn? Michael was right; Christina would stretch any story at all. The cannon strength of the tides had broken through the cellar passage, that was all. It was open again. The flimsy cement layer the Shevvingtons had used to block up their son’s creepy entrance had burst.

“Honestly,” said Christina to Val, “I’m such a dodo bird. I make such a big deal out of every little thing.”

The horizon glowed pink. The sun edged toward Maine. They had barely gotten past the wharf when the first lobsterman pulled up in his truck, stomped down the dock, started the engine on his boat.

Silent as seabirds they crept around the closed cottages.

“This is perfect,” said Christina happily. “You’ll be safe here, Val. Nobody can find you here.”

In a window high in Schooner Inne, the first ray of sun glinted off a pair of binoculars.

C
HRISTINA HAD ALWAYS WANTED
to stay up all night. Every time on Burning Fog Isle when she had a friend spending the night, she begged her parents to let them stay up all night, and her parents always said no.

But it was not as much fun as she had expected.

In school the next day, she was dizzy with sleepiness; her eyelids closed relentlessly. When her brain dredged for information, it found only grit.

She worried continually about Val, sleeping on bare metal springs in a vacant house. Was Val stable enough, well enough for such a night? Was it even safe for anybody to stay alone like that? Should Christina call Mr. and Mrs. Armstrong and tell them? Should Christina tell Robbie? Or Benj? Or her own mother and father?

But the Shevvingtons must have an ally she had not identified. What if the ally was Robbie? And when she said, “I have Val!” what if his mouth went thin and evil like Mrs. Shevvington’s … his eyes hot and yellow like theirs?

As for Benj, last night when she could have used his granite, he had been elsewhere. At some meeting for Band, working on fund-raisers. Oh, sure, he said he wanted her help, but when push came to shove, he got all stuttery and embarrassed and said he couldn’t bring a seventh-grader to the meeting. “I mean, girls like Astrid and Megan are going to be on the committee,” he said helplessly. Astrid and Megan were impressive, exciting seniors. Once they had been best friends with Anya. But when Anya began to collapse, Astrid and Megan vanished. They weren’t going to hang around with a failure. Christina would just as soon kick Astrid and Megan in the shins as work with them. “That’s why you can’t come,” Benj had said at last. “You act like a seventh-grader, too.”

I do not act like a seventh-grader! thought Christina resentfully, walking down middle school halls, passing middle school classrooms. Who saved Val, anyway?

But oh, how Christina wanted to lean on somebody. How she wanted a partner! Or at least some advice.

From some unknown source Val had acquired a surge of strength. But breaking out of the Institute, hitchhiking to the village, creeping into Schooner Inne, hiding from the Shevvingtons … all Val’s resources were used up.

Now Val expected Christina to accomplish everything else — bring food and news and company. Find a way to make her freedom last. Save Val from going back. Prove that Val was well again. Prove, in fact, that she had never been ill to start with. That it was all the Shevvingtons’ contrivance.