Ashes of Another Life Read online

  Chapter Twelve

  Tara Jane tried desperately to fall asleep. It wasn’t even close to her usual bedtime, but she wanted this day to be over. It had been so long since she’d had a good night’s sleep, dozing off shouldn’t be a problem. But no matter how she tried to relax, she couldn’t.

  Then she smelled it.

  Her spine went rigid. She clenched the bedspread and turned toward the window with a reluctant grimace. There was a stench coming in from outside. A smell she would never forget.

  They’ve come for me.

  Smoke curled in through the window. It danced in thin swirls before it dissipated, leaving behind that terrible stench of burned flesh. Tara Jane covered her nose and gagged. With rattling knees, she took baby steps over to the window, bracing herself against the wall.

  Her heart broke when she looked out across the lawn.

  There’s so many of them, she thought as she stared down from the second story window. Her family had never seemed so large before, but then, she’d never examined them from a distance, as an outsider looking in.

  A herd of smoldering corpses roamed the yard. Blackened footprints dotted the lawn where they’d walked. A few blades of grass still burned bright orange. They angled their heads toward the window in unison, returning her stare with scorched eye sockets.

  Patches of their charred skin glowed red-hot as wisps of smoke rose from their fire-ravaged forms. It blew upward, carried on an otherworldly breeze. It crept in through the window. The godawful stench that she hated more than anything else in the world was everywhere now, surrounding her. Even the hand she held over her nose was not enough to block it out.

  This can’t be happening. I’m dreaming.

  She looked around her bedroom. searching for a sign that she was no longer grounded in reality, something changed or out of place. She found nothing, no proof that she was dreaming, and reluctantly, she turned to face the family of burn victims gathered on the lawn.

  All was quiet in the neighborhood. No children ran the sidewalk. No teenagers on a lover’s stroll. Not a single car passed by. Tara Jane desperately wished something, anything would happen. The silence, the stillness made her heart pound and her throat tighten.

  The calm before the storm.

  Or maybe I really am dreaming, all alone with them. A dog barked from behind a nearby fence—a frightened, high-pitched yelp, and she thought, the dog can see them, too, and it is frightened.

  The smoke seeping in through the window was beginning to fill the room. Soot coated the white fur of a stuffed bear on her window sill. She reached out to touch it, and dusty black ashes covered her fingertip.

  She gulped, trying to steady her breathing as she counted the family members on the lawn, their melted eyes fixed on her. She got to thirty-three, then counted again. Someone was missing. She shook her head and gulped, backing away.

  Where was Father?

  A heat wave hit her from behind and warmed her goose-pimpled skin.

  Fire crackled and an old, familiar voice said, “Tara Jane. Come back to us.”

  She spun around to see Father with open arms. Flames glowed orange and yellow on his burning form. She caught glimpses of his features through the fire, but mostly she couldn’t tell where the fire ended and Father began. She only recognized him by his deep voice and by his dark, pleading eyes, which looked right through her into her broken heart.

  “Come back to us,” he repeated.

  He held his arms out wide, as if to welcome her embrace.

  Instead, she backpedaled until her rear end bumped the window.

  “Tara Jane. It’s time to come home.” His mouth was a black void behind a veil of flames, but death had not altered his voice. So familiar. “Home with your family, where you belong.”

  Tears spilled down her cheeks as Tara Jane closed her eyes against the horror. “No-no,” she stammered.

  And then it came, just as she knew it would—a threat. Disobedience always triggered a threat. “Come with me or I’ll hurt the outsiders.”

  Tara Jane forced her eyes to open. She struggled to focus through a haze of tears. “What do you mean?”

  Father raised his outstretched arms into the air. Flames shot from his palms, reaching higher, burning hotter. His dark eyes watched her from behind a fiery veil. “Come with me now, Tara Jane, or I’ll take you anyway, and then I’ll pay a visit to your new parents.”

  She gasped. Beads of sweat formed on her skin as she realized the implications. He could set this house ablaze in an instant. He could hunt Mr. and Mrs. McKelvey down and hurt them.

  Heat filled the air between them, coiling around her like a hot, asphyxiating fog. Yet she shivered. She was in his grasp again. Instead of dragging her by the ankle, he had a different kind of hold on her this time.

  He’s not leaving here without me. Whether we do this the easy way or the hard way, he’ll get me.

  Her face poured sweat as Father’s flames rippled before her.

  He wants to take me with him because he loves me, she told herself, but her limbs rattled with fear. Some days she felt there was nothing left to live for, anyway, not with her family gone. So she wiped her sweaty face on her sleeve, then clenched her fists at her side and said, “Okay. I’m ready to come home.”

  Father approached the bedroom door. She couldn’t see his legs through the fire, but he left sizzling footprints and melted carpet in his wake. He walked like a man, but he floated through her closed bedroom door like a blazing apparition and disappeared.

  Tara Jane had to jog to catch up with him. She flung open her bedroom door and saw him halfway down the stairs. The sulfurous stench of burned hair and the odor of his flesh like charred, crispy beef hung in the air behind him.

  She held her breath that Mrs. McKelvey wouldn’t see him, wouldn’t smell him and come to investigate. For the first time in a long while, she prayed. Don’t let him harm her, please.

  Father turned his head as if making sure Tara Jane was going to follow. Then he walked through the front door. She saw him on the other side of the beveled glass window and gulped. She ran down the stairs, glanced around for her foster parents, then quietly opened the door.

  She slipped outside and was surrounded by faces she hadn’t seen in exactly one year. Only now they were burned and distorted. She recognized them by their height and facial structures and random locks of hair, but they were ghastly now.

  She focused on one face and thought, is that little Emma in the dress we sewed together? Emma had never sewn a dress before, and the awful job she did on the hand-stitched sleeves had always bothered Tara Jane, but now the entire garment was covered in soot and burn holes, and Tara Jane wondered why the crooked seams had ever bothered her at all.

  It looks so painful. So painful to burn.

  Father’s first wife, Deborah, stood next to him. Tara recognized her long nose, now crispy and missing a sizable chunk at the tip. Her dark prairie dress was tattered where the fire had eaten holes through the fabric, and her skin was charred down to the bone on one side. Betty and Rita, the other wives, flanked the gruesome couple. They looked frail and unstable on their blackened legs as the wind whipped the grimy rags of their skirts.

  Then there were the children, so many children.

  I used to cook for them, read to them. Now I can barely stand to look at them.

  Their blackened forms rose and fell over the landscape of the yard, eyes floating like hot coals above their blistered cheeks. Peter, Isaiah, Cindy, Josh, Monica. She resisted the urge to pinch her nose as their sickly stench grew even more putrid. Stephen, Beth, Dean, Jack, Tina. There were too many to name, too many for her weary mind to recognize in this moment.

  But she’d always recognize Jackson. Always Susie. She spotted them immediately, their tiny burned forms clasping hands at the end of the line. She felt the weight of their gaze as they stared at her. Deep sobs racked Tara Jane’s chest now. She had to look away.

  Father’s monstrous form burned like a
torch dead-center of the fire-blackened family, and he spoke again. “On your knees,” he commanded.

  Tara Jane knelt in the grass.

  What must it feel like to burn? How long does it take? How much pain before the heart stops beating? It must be the worst kind of death. She wondered if she would pass out before it was over or if her body would keep fighting, forcing her to endure the flames right down to her bones.

  She looked up at her family. Some of their lips were burned away, and moonlight glinted off their teeth. She scanned the line of them, ready to join them. Ready to help them move on. Her eyes lingered on the side of the yard where Jackson and Susie stood, clutching hands. Susie still had her pigtails. One of them was singed nearly to the scalp, gruesome burns covering her head. Jackson stood in his blackened clothes, head cast down. She couldn’t stand to see them like this. Maybe now Father would let them move on.

  She took a deep breath and prepared for the pain. Then… she spotted something.

  Through the gap between Jackson and Susie, she saw a woman at the edge of the yard. Dressed in a long gown, she stood under the plum tree. She appeared to be weeping, her face tucked into her hands. Her clothes rippled in a wind that swirled only around her, and she glowed against the dark night in dull shades of blue. Her long hair spilled down her back and shoulders, nearly touching her ankles.

  The weeping woman looked up, and Tara Jane knew her instantly. Mother. Those bright hazel eyes that used to sparkle with life were diffused by a dim blue ethereal haze that washed her features in sadness. So much misery in those eyes now, and they pleaded with Tara Jane. Mother looked to Father and the others, then back to Tara Jane. She hugged herself and wept, gently swaying with the branches of the tree.

  Tara Jane gulped.

  Father stepped through the grass and stood over her, holding his hands out. Giant flames rose from his palms. She could feel the heat coming from him. It burned her knees.

  Mother doesn’t want me to do this. But what can I do? God help me, what can I do?

  She cried and looked at Father, blinded by his glow. “Wait,” she said, sobbing harder, but she saw the resolve in those dark eyes as they floated in his fiery face. The flames grew higher and more violent as he raised his hands into the air over her head.

  And then, someone was shaking her from behind, jerking her around, hard, like a rag doll and yelling, “Tara Jane! What are you doing? Tara Jane?” Someone put their arms around her and hugged her, rocking her back and forth. “Tara Jane? Can you hear me? What’s wrong?”

  Father seethed with anger. He lowered his arms, and his flames danced wildly as he stared at Tara Jane.

  Someone helped her to her feet. It was Mrs. McKelvey.

  Oh no. Please don’t hurt her.

  She looked at Father, fearful of what he might do. But he only watched, as the Tara Jane headed toward the house, guided by her foster mother’s arms. The resurrected family stood in silence as the woman pulled her away from them, the rags of their crispy garments stirring in the breeze.

  “Let’s get you inside,” Mrs. McKelvey said.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Randall couldn’t believe he had failed. The girl had practically surrendered herself, and he’d missed his chance to take her. She had been right there in front of him, an opportunity dropped directly in his lap, and he’d brushed it off like a crumb. Well, not exactly. He had frozen up, unable to move. Now she was gone, back into the house, and he was kicking himself for letting down the prophet.

  It had been so eerie, the way she had slipped out of the house into the night and scanned the empty yard with wide eyes as if she saw things Randall couldn’t see. From his hiding spot in the bushes, he had watched in fascination. The girl had fallen to her knees, crying and on the verge of hysteria, and with her hand covering her mouth to stifle the sobs, she slowly turned her head from side to side as if taking in a horrifying view. Randall only saw trees and cars and fireflies ahead of her, but the girl seemed to be focusing on empty patches of air, as if gazing at ghosts.

  Now’s my chance. I should go to her.

  But something about the way she watched the shadows under the plum tree made all his body hair stand on end. She wasn’t just looking at a tree. Something over there, in that direction, appeared to be breaking her heart into tiny fragments and stomping on the pieces.

  Now goosebumps formed on his arms at the memory, rubbing against the stiff fabric of his shirt. He scratched them, angry at the irritation, but still they refused to recede. The girl had looked utterly broken, kneeling there in the grass, and Randall had spent so much time pondering why, he had waited too long and missed his chance. The woman who owned the home had appeared from the front door and ushered Tara Jane back inside.

  Seething at the lost opportunity, he emerged from the bushes and stood at the edge of the yard, just staring at the house, thinking. He’d get the girl tonight, one way or another. And this time, he wouldn’t back down.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “See? No footprints.” Mrs. McKelvey squeezed Tara Jane’s shoulders reassuringly from behind, then patted her arm and said, “Listen, it’s okay. I’m not showing you this to prove you wrong. I’m doing it to help you. You’re under enormous stress, and today holds a lot of meaning for you.”

  Tara Jane didn’t know what to say. She stood in front of the stairs and frowned at the unmarred carpet. She should feel relieved. She didn’t want the carpet to be ruined, didn’t want Father letting himself in and out of the McKelvey’s house, but she had watched with her own two eyes as Father had left smoldering footprints in his descent, and she couldn’t understand where they’d gone.

  She looked through the beveled glass on the front door at the pixelated view of the dark street and empty yard.

  Where have they gone now? They’ll be back. Mrs. McKelvey can’t scare them away.

  “Tara Jane, you haven’t been taking your medicine. Your post-traumatic stress, your anxiety, your lack of sleep, it’s all catching up with you, hon.”

  She thought about this. “Mrs. McKelvey, I-”

  “Please, sweetie, call me Rita.”

  “Rita… I—I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”

  The woman put her arm around Tara Jane, who didn’t shrink away from the contact. She needed the closeness, needed to feel the touch of another human, to counteract the memory of Father’s unnatural heat on her skin.

  “Don’t be sorry. It’s the whole world who should feel sorry for giving a nice girl like you a hard time.” She smiled. And they stood that way, gently squeezing each other for a few pendulum beats of the grandfather clock.

  “But he was here,” Tara Jane whispered with shaky breath. “He was.” A tear slipped down her cheek and splattered the floor.

  “Come on. Let’s go to the living room. I’ll make us some drinks. You sound parched.”

  They leaned on each other for strength as they walked toward the front room. Tara Jane turned to look at the small window on the door. Beyond it was only darkness where just earlier Father’s flames had awaited, their menacing orange flicker illuminating the glass.

  She shivered as Mrs. McKelvey led her to the couch. Rita, she reminded herself. She prefers Rita.

  “I’ll be right back with those drinks.”

  Tara Jane couldn’t stop shivering. Her eyes searched the shadows in the corners, darting to the entrance of the living room, then the window. The fear she’d felt as she had prepared to die out there under the moonlight coursed through her like sour blood and sat like a stone in her stomach. The image of mother’s weeping face, pleading with her not to go through with it haunted her every time she blinked.

  The sound of ice clinking in glasses sounded far away as drinks were set on the table beside her. Tara Jane’s mind was focused on the window that looked out onto the yard, its black curtains drawn. She rubbed her knee. It felt painful where Father had burned her. She couldn’t have imagined the whole thing. Could she?

  “Yoo hoo?
Have I lost you again?” Mrs. McKelvey sat across from her, a playful smile on her face. Rita, Tara Jane reminded herself. Rita, Rita Rita. It might take a while to get used to the idea of addressing an adult outside her family by their first name. She’d been taught that it wasn’t polite, though she was trying desperately to adjust.

  She smiled back. “No, ma’am, I’m still here. It’s just… it all felt so real.” She took a sip of her water. “I could swear they were here. Am I crazy?”

  “No. Not at all. Any person who has been through your ordeal, who is not sleeping, not eating… they’re liable to get so worn down, they start to dream while they’re awake.”

  “Really? Then… I’ll be okay? He won’t—” her voice quivered, “he won’t come for me?”

  The woman’s eyes looked worried and exhausted. She rubbed her chin and stared into the distance as if contemplating a chess move. Her brown hair was tussled from their skirmish outside, and bits of grass still clung to her pants. She clutched her hands together in front of her. “Tara Jane, did you dump out that lemonade earlier?”

  Tara Jane didn’t see why it mattered, but she pled guilty with a nod of the head.

  “I see.” She looked thoughtful for a moment, then nodded to herself and continued. “Mr. McKelvey and I—well, I suppose you should call him Bob now that we’re ditching the formality—Bob and I would appreciate it so much if you would give the medication a chance. We’re supposed to be enforcing it, and if you don’t take it, the courts could remove you from our care. It’s out of our hands, Tara Jane, and we don’t like that. We love you.” She reached her hand across the couch, but Tara Jane pulled away. “And much more importantly, the medication will help you. It won’t take away what you’re feeling, but it will help you cope with it, ease the pain as you work through it.”

  Tara Jane was silent. Her attention kept slipping back to the window. She could sense them. She could still feel them out there. Waiting.