Ashes of Another Life Read online

  “He can’t stand it. That’s why he stopped me. That’s why he brought us here. Here, where you are his puppets,” Tara Jane said. She looked among the gruesome, burned faces for signs of a reaction but found nothing. Their mindless chanting made her sick. “All of you! Nothing but puppets!” she screamed.

  The fire grew past her knees, and she fell down, crying. “Jackson… Susie… If you don’t break the circle… if you don’t come with me… I don’t know what will become of me, and I don’t care.” She winced, shaking violently. “Because I do know what will happen to you.”

  Her face flushed as she pushed through the torture. “You’ll be trapped with him forever. You will never know happiness, just as he never did. I believe he loved us, once, in his own way, but he sacrificed us. There is no love in that.”

  Father groaned and raised the volume of his vile prayer, each chanted verse like gasoline to the flames.

  “This house is a place of guilt and misery and fear. And… and…” Heavy tears streamed down Tara Jane’s face. She made sure to look at them both. She needed to tell them, needed them to know. “And I wish I could change the past. I wish I could trade my life for yours. I came back. I wanted to save you… I live every day knowing I failed you.”

  She coughed and wheezed through weakening lungs, her nose and mouth filled with the smoke of her burning prairie dress. “Losing you, it tore a hole through my heart… but I never tried to mend it. I never wanted to fix it.” Susie glanced her way, and they locked eyes. “I wanted that hole to hurt, to feel the torment of it inside me…because that meant you were still with me. Still there.”

  Deep sobs shook her. Her arms trembled as she struggled to remain on all fours, filled with a mixture of pain, sorrow, and terror. “I’ll never let go. Not as long as you’re in this place. I’ll take it with me, that hole in my heart, even now. I won’t let go… not until you are free.”

  Finding that she had nothing more to say and no desire left to fight, she fell silent and slumped against the floor. The flames were at her torso now. She trembled.

  Little Susie broke free of the circle, sliding her fingers from the grip of her half-sister and urging Jackson to follow with a soft tug of his fist, clasped firmly in hers as usual. At first Tara Jane wasn’t sure what was happening, until the menacing prayer lost its structure and began to fall apart. The timing was off and half the words were confusedly mumbled. Susie and Jackson had weakened the circle by choosing to break it.

  The others joined hands again, reconnecting with a surge of rippling power as Father directed the jumbled murmur of voices, escalating the demonic chant again. But despite his efforts, the circle throbbed with less energy than before. His face grew red and he sneered, concentrating on the words. “Vessel of Satan, evil unto death…”

  Susie stood before her. Tara Jane pulled herself into a kneeling position so that their eyes were level. She hugged herself, fighting the pain. Flames still covered her skin, but they were weaker now, struggling to stay lit. They burned low against her clothes as if a harsh wind might extinguish them any moment.

  The little girl scrunched her melted brow and said, “Momma…”

  “Yes! Momma. Yes! I can take you to her. You can… finally meet her, Susie.” Tara Jane felt stronger now. The flames were dying off.

  Susie extended her toddler-sized fist, and Tara Jane’s heart filled with a happiness she hadn’t felt in a long time. Susie’s blackened arm was speckled with spots of raw tissue, but it didn’t cause Tara Jane even a second of hesitation. She wrapped the little hand in her palm and squeezed, just enough to savor the touch but not hard enough to break the fragile fingers.

  The air around her swirled with wisps of smoke as the fire disappeared from her body. Jackson, more mindful of Father’s brutal punishments than Susie, had been standing hesitantly behind his little sister. Now he came around and grasped Tara Jane’s free hand. Tara Jane was sobbing again, but this time for joy and hope. The fire fizzled out, leaving nothing in its wake but the memory of the pain it had inflicted.

  Father screamed the chant now, and the house began to tremble. Framed photos fell to the floor. Wild, dancing flames ignited the bottom of each wall and worked their way around the room, surrounding them.

  “Come on,” she said, pulling her siblings toward the front door. The children stumbled as if their feet were numb, and as she forced them along, she prayed she would not harm the damaged tissue of their arms. Despite being trapped in Father’s eternal nightmare, they acted dumbfounded, as if this was something they had never seen before.

  A soot-filled cyclone of rotten air enveloped the trio, dense and cloying. The entire house rattled as if caught in the throes of an earth quake, and Father roared. Susie shrieked and began to cry but continued following Tara Jane and her brother, hands linked, all three shaking like the house’s foundation.

  The family chanted louder. Pieces of charred wood rained down. The fire spread as if determined to finish what it had started twelve months ago.

  They neared the door. A wood beam fell. It sent a spray of glowing embers into the air. The beam exploded into flames, and a curtain of fire blazed in the empty door frame, effectively blocking their exit.

  Father chuckled mid-prayer.

  She took a deep breath and realized her only option. She knelt beside her brother and sister. “We’ve got to jump through. Can you do that? Jump through the fire?”

  A ghastly silence followed as the two stood frozen stiff with fear.

  “It will only hurt for a minute. On the count of three, jump through. Got it?”

  A simultaneous nod of two solemn faces was the only answer she received.

  The three of them joined hands and almost broke apart as the ground rumbled beneath their feet. Bursts of fire popped from the floor, filling the room, growing larger by the second.

  Father’s voice boomed over the roar of the blazing timbers, louder than the rumbling floorboards. “Thou art banished to a place where the worm dieth not!”

  Tara Jane took a deep breath and gave their frail hands a soft, reassuring squeeze. “One,” she started counting. “Two… three.” They ran. They jumped through the doorway, ablaze with golden, flesh-searing heat. They landed on the other side, barely keeping their balance on the unsteady rubble of the porch.

  “The fire cleanses thee, never quenched!”

  They turned in unison to face the house, stalled in their tracks as Father roared with anger and sprinted toward the door. The roof shrieked and crumbled. An orange timber fell in his path. He lunged over it and slid across the floor. He grabbed hold of Tara Jane’s ankle.

  Pain seared her flesh. She cried out as his fingertips dug in, hot pokers crippling her foot. His scorching palm cooked the back of her heel as she writhed away from him. His other hand reached for her as she kicked, landing a blow she couldn’t see. It loosened his grip, just enough.

  She scrambled out of the wreckage. She shook away the shock of the fiery doorway, the hurt of her father’s molten touch. She grabbed her sibling’s hands and pulled them into a run.

  Flames rose high above the roof, burning bright against the nighttime sky as they rounded the house, keeping their distance from the fiery walls. Chunks of red-hot wood littered their path as a gust of wind whipped the crumbling structure. They stepped around the debris and headed for the back.

  Mother’s woeful sobbing ceased as she saw them draw near, floating at the edge of her garden. She peered from her leafy prison with a look of excitement so pure, so intense, Tara Jane knew she’d never witness anticipation of this magnitude again. Mother had been yearning all this time, waiting to hold her children in her arms. Father had prevented it; she understood that now. He had exiled her, kept her at bay, left her to dwell in her sorrow alone.

  They stepped closer, and her blue glow faded to an effervescent white. She reached her arms out and Jackson ran into them, embracing her as he had done years before. Susie hesitated. “M-momma?” she said.

 
She placed a hand over her heart as a peaceful glow lit her face. “Yes, baby. It’s momma.” The soft, familiar voice caught Tara Jane off guard. A longing stabbed her heart, and she ached to reverse the hands of time. For a fleeting moment, she envied Jackson and Susie, until she realized there was nothing to envy. Their lives had been a brief flash of innocence, a picture-perfect existence shattered and ended too soon. Someday her time would come, and she would join their embrace. But not yet. She felt it in her gut, in the marrow of her bones. Not now. This wasn’t her time.

  Susie stumbled forward and joined Jackson in mother’s embrace. A luminous radiance shined around them. It encompassed all three as they huddled together. Tara Jane squinted. She drew a deep breath and locked her knees to keep from fainting. Her brother and sister were being restored. Their blackened skin turned a pale white, and their eyes filled with a brightness that had been absent in the deep, dark sockets.

  Mother smiled at Tara Jane as she stroked Susie’s hair, which was fully grown and braided in pig tails. Inside the house, a timber crashed to the floor, but no one in the garden took notice. “Thank you,” mother said softly.

  Tara Jane reached out a hand. Mother tried to grasp it, but her ethereal fingers passed through. For a moment, she stared at her hand and fought a fresh lump in her throat. Then she regained control of her tongue and mustered the words, “You’re welcome.”

  Mother smiled sweetly, and Tara Jane could no longer hold back the tears. Her cheeks were wet in an instant. Unconcerned with propriety, she wiped her nose on the back of her hand, and said “I miss you. I don’t want to cry, but I missed you so much when you left, and nobody would let me cry. I don’t know how I’ll ever learn to live without you.”

  Mother nodded her understanding, her arms tight around Jackson and Susie, who snuggled against her. “You will,” she said. Her warm smile returned. “You will live, and you will be happy, my love. My firstborn. My Tara Jane.”

  Someone called her name in the distance, a disembodied voice on the breeze. “Tara Jane, can you hear me? Tara Jane?”

  She looked around. Not just one but two voices called her now, a man and a woman, growing louder by the second. Then, crystal clear as if spoken in her ear, a woman pleaded, “Oh, please, Tara Jane. Please wake up.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Tara Jane did not remember being born. Nobody does. But now, she had an idea what it must feel like—the blinding lights, the confusion, the unfamiliar faces surrounding her.

  The people staring at her when she awoke were complete strangers. She tried fruitlessly to remember their names, their place in her life, but didn’t have the foggiest clue how to feel. Frightened? Overjoyed?

  They looked too wholesome, too good. She felt dirty, the smell of fiery ruin and decay still ripe in her nostrils. She felt tainted, left behind. She felt—loved, as the woman beside her reached out and squeezed her hand, bent down to kiss her cheek, and the man’s smile grew wider.

  “You’re okay,” he said, and the sound of his voice brought her memory back into focus. It was Mr. McKelvey. The woman holding her hand was Mrs. McKelvey.

  No, Rita… call her Rita. And over there is Bob. “Your new parents” as Father had called them. She shivered beneath the white cotton sheets.

  The ground moved beneath them, an engine hummed and tires hissed on pavement. An oxygen machine and IV stand rattled softly on either side of her. A young, brown-skinned man in a blue uniform with an EMT emblem on the upper sleeve cast a warm smile her way as she struggled to put the world back together.

  “You’re okay now,” the woman whispered softly, still cradling Tara Jane’s hand.

  “I knew you’d wake up soon,” Mr. McKelvey said. “That’s why I talked Mike over there into doing us a solid and letting me ride along.” He gave the EMT a look of gratitude. “It seems the hospital has a policy limiting one family member per ride, but I pleaded my case and convinced him that you’d want to see my pretty face just as much as Rita’s when you came to.” He chuckled a little, but it sounded forced, catching in his throat. Despite their persistent smiles, soft assurances and warm spirits, the couple looked utterly shaken.

  “What happened?” Tara Jane asked.

  A flicker of something passed over his face. Even in her groggy state of mind, she recognized it, a sadness behind his forced smile, a knot in his brow which seemed to say, I don’t want to think about it. Instead, he answered, “You were attacked. He had a gun. It was a young man from Sweet Springs.”

  She gripped the bed sheets with clenched fists, old panic renewed as she remembered.

  “He tried to take you by force, but I—I—” Bob lowered his gaze, unable to form the words. “You got away, but you were breathing so hard and so fast, and you looked so confused. You fell unconscious right there on the lawn.”

  “I remember,” she whispered, not wanting him to go on, not wanting to rehash his murderous deed any more than necessary. The look in his eyes said he’d be seeing that bullet enter Randall Syke’s skull for the rest of his life, maybe not every day, but every so often out of the clear blue sky he’d see it, and maybe that was even worse. Perhaps good men always suffer the most, and Tara Jane felt guilty that Mr. McKelvey should suffer over her own sordid past. She felt as though the blood was on her hands, not his.

  There was a long silence, and Tara Jane grew tense. This is all your fault, they must be thinking.

  Mrs. McKelvey slipped her hand from Tara Jane’s, bowed her head, and placed both palms to her face.

  She’s wondering why she ever invited this chaos into her life. The stress of raising a broken child has crippled her with sadness. It won’t be long now. She’ll give you back to the state.

  The woman’s lips quivered, and she sniffed. “I need to know.” The words came out muffled, so she moved her hands, revealing moist, tear-reddened eyes. “Do you… want to go back?”

  Tara Jane gulped. This was it. They’d had enough. They would send her back to Sweet Springs for sure. She wanted to scream, No! Please! Don’t send me back! but just twiddled her thumbs and said, “Whatever you think is best, ma’am.”

  “But do you want to?” Mr. McKelvey asked.

  A strange thing happened then. She felt a sob welling up in her gut, and she was absolutely helpless to repress it. Ordinarily she excelled at the act of self-restraint, having held back tears for most of her life. Never had she cried in front of others. Except for the night her family died, Tara Jane had always waited until she was alone before letting her emotions take hold. But now the tears came with such force that her eyes felt sore. “No, I don’t. Please, I don’t want to go back.”

  And Mrs. McKelvey’s arms were around her, Mr. McKelvey at her side.

  He lifted her chin so she was looking at him. “Tara Jane, you don’t have to go back.” He reached down and squeezed her hand. “We can’t replace your family. We don’t expect to, but if you’ll have us… we’d like to be your family, too.”

  Her chest hurt. The heart monitor’s digital screen showed no cause for concern, its steady green peaks rising and falling in rhythm. It was not a physical pain she felt in her chest but an emotional one. A familiar pain, like a piece of her heart had gone missing and it ached where it was empty. But as the ambulance slowed to a stop, she thought maybe it didn’t have to stay empty. Maybe it could finally start to heal.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Bob McKelvey groaned as he parked his cruiser and killed the engine. He sat staring at the one-story, brown brick house for half a minute before exiting his car and shambling up the driveway. The old maroon shutters were in need of a paint job, and the landscaping had gone the way of weeds and gophers, but otherwise the house looked the same. He’d only seen it in a snapshot, never in person. A framed photo in Casey Wendell’s apartment.

  The walk to the front door seemed long, though he knew it was less than twenty paces. His legs didn’t want to cooperate. He wished, now, that his partner had come along. He was off duty and doing this
of his own accord, because he felt the news should come from someone who knew Casey. Maybe, just maybe, it would soften the blow, if a blow of such proportions could be softened at all.

  He rang the doorbell. A woman with pale skin and piercing, blue eyes answered the door. For a moment he thought he was looking at Casey Wendell, but the woman’s skin was thin and wrinkled, and her hair was stark white, gathered into a puny bun atop her head. She did not flinch at the discovery of a uniformed officer at her door. Years of being married to a respected man on the police force had made her comfortable with such visits. Yet she regarded him with a nervous tightening of the lip, as though she were racking her brain for a reason why this man would be on her doorstep past 9 PM on a weeknight.

  “Mrs. Wendell?” McKelvey asked.

  She opened the door a bit wider, peering around. Her eyes locked on his.

  “Can I trouble you to come inside?”

  She pulled her robe together at the midriff and tightened the belt. A floral print nightgown hung just below her knees, and her red-rimmed eyes looked tired, as if she’d been woken up.

  “Why… yes. Of course. What can I do for you Officer…” she glanced at his badge, “McKelvey?” She stepped aside and let him into the quaint front room with its Norman Rockwell paintings and aged furniture.

  A voice called from the other room. “Cynthia?”

  “Henry, get dressed. We have company,” she called back. Cynthia Wendell gestured to the sofa, never taking her eyes from his.

  Bob wasn’t in the mood to sit. Standing helped him focus, helped convince him this was just another part of the job, but he took a seat anyway, hoping it might put the worried woman at ease.

  Henry Wendell walked into the living room. His collared shirt was buttoned crooked. He wore wrinkled dress slacks with bare feet as if he’d changed from his pajamas in a hurry. “Officer…” he said with confusion as he cast his wife a blank look and then approached the couch and took a seat.