The Fear Artist

33

As he stands up, his eyes go to it immediately, the brightest thing in his field of sight. It’s a small window, high up, and it’s lit, and the light flickers and then intensifies, and he realizes two things simultaneously: that it’s the window in Treasure’s bathroom and that it’s on fire.

He starts to run, splashing toward the doors that lead into the dining room, but he slows at the sight of a small cabinet, about three feet high and four feet wide, built against the rear of the house. It’s rough plywood, and its door lolls open. There, stacked neatly, are six one-gallon gasoline cans.

There is room for three more.

His feet nearly slip out from under him on the wet dining-room floor, and he sees that the living room carpet is on fire, flames inching up the sides of the couches. There’s a foot of gray smoke trapped beneath the ceiling, and the smell of splashed gasoline is overpowering.

Almost thick enough, he thinks, to trigger an explosion. He goes farther in, to the stairs, to see how advanced the fire is.

The carpeting on the stairway is burning, too, but it’s been burning longer than the living room and the flames are five and six feet high, licking at the banister and being drawn upward by the ravenous inhalation of the fire that’s already raging upstairs.

He envisions it all in a second: beginning in her own bathroom and bedroom, pouring the gasoline on cloth and wood, tossing a match and running, spewing gasoline behind her, the flames following obediently along on the wet trail, the gasoline splashing from the can until the can is empty-there’s an empty can at the entrance to the hallway that leads to Neeni’s room-and grabbing another can and then another.

The L-shaped hallway is on fire, its carpet saturated. Neeni’s room is dark and cool-looking beyond the flames. It’s been spared.

He wipes his stinging eyes and coughs out a lungful of smoke, and then he knows where she is, if she’s still in the house. He wheels around and runs back over the tile of the entry area and the bare wood of the dining room and the tiled kitchen floors and into the train room.

The train table is engulfed in flame. Murphy is still on his back below the window, below the green drapes that Treasure had hoped would protect her. The carpet near the hallway that leads from Neeni’s room is blooming ripples of blue flame, not yet hot enough to turn yellow. Treasure, her back to him, backs away from the open, wet closet, drops the gasoline can, and pitches into the closet a chunk of bright metal-a heavy military-style Zippo, its little wick emitting a bright yellow light.

He shouts “NO!” and rushes at Treasure from behind, getting his arms around her waist as she turns and fights him with pure animal rage, tearing at his hair and clawing for his eyes and kicking at his chest and stomach, and he throws her over his shoulder, her head hanging down behind him, and runs for his life.

As he clears the kitchen, Ming Li runs in through the front door to meet him, and he waves her out and charges ahead, practically banging into Murphy’s car, pulled up to the front porch, not stopping until he’s halfway across the front yard, and he shouts to Ming Li to give him one of the briefcases. She pulls one out of the trunk of the Toyota, and he snatches it with his free hand, the story he will eventually tell taking shape in his mind. He tightens his hold on the kicking, screaming Treasure and runs back to Murphy’s car, pulls the driver’s door open, and tosses the briefcase into the backseat. Then he yanks the remote for the gate from the sun visor above the steering wheel. Moving away from the car, he’s almost pulled off his feet by Treasure, who’s clamped her fingers over the window of the open car door. He pries her loose, pushes the button to open the gate, and calls to Ming Li, “Start the car!”

Backing away as fast as he can from the flaming house, he hears breaking glass, and Treasure suddenly goes so limp he thinks she might have passed out. He bounces on the balls of his feet once or twice to jostle her and says, “Treasure? Treasure?” but she’s dead weight.

He backs farther away, curling his other arm around her and taking her off his shoulder so he can look down at her face. Cradled in his arms, her fists clenched together at the center of her chest, she’s looking at the right side of the house, her mouth half open and her eyes as luminous as those of a nocturnal animal.

And her mouth closes, and she begins to hum again, that same broken, disjointed “Mmmmmm mmmmm mmmmmm,” tracing a melody as random as someone throwing stones at a keyboard. He looks away from her to follow her gaze, and something whines past him, and he hears the shot.

Bent half over, but holding the arm with the gun in it raised high, Murphy lumbers around the side of the house, firing twice more as he comes, but Rafferty can’t hear the shots over the scream that’s coming from Treasure, who shrills a single, glass-shattering note and somehow jerks herself upright, a convulsion seemingly involving every muscle in her body, and slips through Rafferty’s arms, running for the wall behind him. She stops a few feet from it, staring at the barrier, and her arms go straight into the air, fingers spread wide. Then she wheels around and splashes toward the still-opening gate.

Murphy fires again, but Rafferty is barely paying attention. At the edge of the driveway, Treasure stops, shoulders heaving, looking out at the world beyond the walls. Rafferty hears a ragged, almost-imploring shout from Murphy, and Treasure stiffens, turns, and emits that piercing unbroken scream again, and as she runs, it trails away behind her like a wake. At the last moment, Rafferty sees where she’s going and starts to follow, but Ming Li is suddenly there, with a foot hooked behind his, bringing him down into the mud. He watches, up on his elbows in the water, as Treasure runs directly toward the front door and through it, into the burning house.

Murphy stops his agonized shuffle, his mouth wide, the gun hand dangling down, and then he bellows “Treasure!” and breaks into a run. Seconds later he’s a dark silhouette against the flames in the hallway, and then Rafferty, up on his feet, feels a drop in air pressure as though the planet has taken a breath, and the flames increase in brilliance for a blink’s worth of time, and the house shudders and blows, sending pieces of burning wood and broken glass twenty and thirty feet into the air, deafening Rafferty and stunning him motionless as bits of fire arc lazily down through the limbs of the trees, and he sees the entire structure reflected upside down, the spirit house of the water gods afire on the surface of a lake.