Mystery

He bumped into the door and reached up. The brass knob felt warm, not hot, and he turned it. Voices and screams and the roaring noise came in on a rush of hot air. He flattened himself on the hot floor and snaked forward to look into the hallway.

A wall of boiling black smoke rolled toward him from the back end of the house. The door of the big bedroom and half of the staircase were invisible behind or within it. Dry wood snapped, sending streamers of glowing sparks through the blackness.

“Breathe through the sheet,” he yelled, and looked backward at Sarah. Her face peered out into the smoke from beneath the blanket, dazed and puffy, like that of a suddenly awakened child. She crawled forward another inch, tried to move the sheet up over her mouth, and collapsed under the blanket.

Tom wound his own sheet around his neck and went back and got his arms under Sarah. The blanket slithered off when he lifted her body, and he went back down on his knees and grabbed for it and pulled it over her. The blanket seemed important, essential. He got his right arm behind her shoulders, his left under her knees, and staggered upright. His eyes burned. He carried her out of the bedroom into the hall.

The force of the heat nearly knocked him down, and Sarah struggled in his arms, awkward in the blanket. His own sheet trailed like a shroud. Tom ran straight into the blast of heat—like a hand trying to hold him back. Burning air moved into his mouth and singed his throat and lungs, and he nearly fell again. Something banged into his hip, supporting him, and he realized it was the top of the banister. With sudden strength, he slung Sarah’s body over his shoulder. A loose flap of the blanket curled against his face. He was already moving down the stairs. Voices drifted toward him through the noise of the fire, but they were not real voices.

Halfway down the stairs, he saw sparks and red lines of fire jumping across the sitting room. A beam thundered down from the back of the house, and a shower of sparks and individual flames flew out from the study, encased in dense smoke. Curls of smoke rose from the sofa and chairs. The rugs had begun to burn inward from the edges, and ovals of flame from the rugs were just now touching the legs of the chairs and tables and running up the walls. The curtains snapped into flame.

He ran off the stairs and turned in a circle, unable to see any way out. He had not taken a breath in minutes, and his chest fought for air that would kill him. The front door was locked, and flames coursed across its top. A runner of fire sped across the floor, and an old chair went up like a candle with an audible poof! A heavy piece of wood came crashing down into the study. Flames ran across the ceiling. He went across the floor, jumping over a low distinct line of flames, sobbing with frustration. Sarah was a limp heavy weight over his shoulder. His eyebrows and eyelashes sizzled away in the heat.

Tom reached the front door and reached for the lock with a sheet-entangled hand. The metal burned his fingers. He fumbled, then grasped it through the sheet, and turned it over, freeing the door. The sheet came away from his hand. He put his palm on the doorknob, and felt his skin adhering to the metal. He screamed, and turned the knob. A thunderous crash and an explosion happened at his back. Fire sprang across the wood directly in front of his eyes. Tom closed his eyes, ducked his head, and pushed at the door. Cold sweet air poured over him, and the fire directly behind him roared like a thousand beasts. He staggered forward into the screen door, heard it splinter and crash, and then moved across the porch on legs made of water, gulping in air. People he could not see screamed or yelled. His stomach turned itself inside out, and he vomited down the front of his body, soaking his sheet. He tasted smoke and ashes, as if he had thrown up a full ashtray. He could hear the top of the porch roaring away above him.

Tom walked off the porch on his wobbling legs and felt the weight of Sarah magically disappear from his shoulder, as if she had flown away. He opened his eyes without seeing, stepped into empty air, and sank into someone’s arms.

Some time later he came to in the act of vomiting again. Hands held his shoulders. The air was unnaturally hot, but cooler than he expected: how could that be? He pushed himself back from the pink and brown puddle on the earth, and his feet snagged the bottom of the blanket that encased him. His vomit stank like charred wood, and so did the contradictory air. He tilted his head and saw flames jumping into the air on the other side of a row of people in robes and pajamas. A siren screamed. He remembered screams—a siren’s? Bitsy Langenheim, in a yellow Japanese kimono with flapping sleeves and chrysanthemums the color of fire, looked over her shoulder and frowned at him. Leaves burst into flame on a tall oak tree ahead of them, and everybody backed a step toward him.