The Mephisto Club

THIRTY-NINE

Dark clouds hung low, and Lily could smell the tang of impending snow in the air as she stared up at the house where she had grown up. She did not see it as it was today, a derelict shell, the porch sagging, the clapboards weathered to gray. No, she saw it as it once was in summertime, with clematis flowering on the lattice and pots of red geraniums hanging from the eaves. She saw her brother Teddy come out of the house, heard the squeal and the slap of the screen door swinging shut behind him as he ran grinning down the porch steps. She saw her mother in the window, waving, as she called out, “Teddy, don’t be late for dinner!” And she saw her father, sunburned and whistling as he carried his hoe across the yard toward his beloved vegetable plot. She’d been happy here once. Those were the days she wanted to remember, the days she’d hold on to.

Everything else, everything that has happened since, I will consign to the ashes.

“Are you sure about this, Ms. Saul?” said the fire chief.

His crew stood fully garbed in firefighting gear, waiting for the order. Farther down the hill, a small crowd from town had gathered to watch. But it was Anthony Sansone and Gottfried Baum whom she focused on. She trusted them, and now they stood with her, to witness the exorcism of her demons.

She turned back to the house. The furniture had been removed and donated to local charities. Except for the straw bales that the firemen had stacked inside an upstairs bedroom, what stood there now was merely an empty husk.

“Ms. Saul?” said the fire chief.

“Burn it,” she said.

He gave the signal, and his crew moved in with their hoses and their cans of kerosene mixed with diesel fuel. Not often was a house this substantial offered up in sacrifice for a training burn, and the men went at the task with gusto, eager to touch off the fire. For practice, they would douse it, then reset it again and again, until it was time to let the flames triumph.

As black smoke spiraled into the sky, Lily backed away, to stand between the two men whom she had come to regard as mentors, even fathers. Sansone and Baum said nothing, but Lily heard Baum’s sharp intake of breath when the first flames appeared in an upstairs window, and she felt Sansone place a steadying hand on her shoulder. She needed no support; she stood with her back straight, her gaze fixed on the fire. Inside, the flames would be consuming floorboards still stained with the blood of Peter Saul, and licking up walls that had been defiled by unholy crosses. Such places should not be allowed to survive. Such evil can never be cleansed; it can only be destroyed.

Now the firemen retreated from the house to watch the final conflagration. Flames crackled across the roof and melting snow hissed into steam. Orange claws reached through windows and scrabbled up tinder-dry clapboards. Heat drove the firemen backward as the flames fed and grew, like a beast roaring its victory.

Lily gazed into the heart of that fire, now consuming the last remnants of her childhood, and she saw, framed in the glow, a single moment in time. A summer’s evening. Her mother and father and Teddy standing on the porch, watching her scamper about on the grass, waving a net. And fireflies-so many fireflies, like a constellation of stars winking in the night. “Look, your sister’s caught another one!” her mother says, and Teddy laughs, holding up a jar to receive the prize. They smile at her, from across the years, from a place that no flames could ever touch, because it was safe within her own heart.

Now the roof collapsed, and sparks flew into the sky, and Lily heard the gasps of people caught up in the primal thrill of a winter’s fire. As the flames slowly died, the spectators from town began to drift down the hill, back to their cars, the excitement of their day now over. Lily and her two friends remained, watching as the last flames were extinguished and smoke curled from blackened ash. After this rubble was cleared, she would plant trees here. Flowering cherries and crab apples. But there must never be another house on this hill.

Something cold kissed her nose and she looked up to see fat flakes fluttering from the sky. It was a final blessing of snow, sacred and purifying.

“Are you ready to go, Lily?” Baum asked.

“Yes.” She smiled. “I’m ready.” Then she turned to follow them, and the three demon hunters walked together down the hill.