The Burning

This story deals with the death of a creature.

“I can’t see in here! “Let me out, Jake!”

Esther slapped both hands on the underside of the boot lid. Alice laughed when Jake shut her in. "He'd give me five minutes," he said. Esther counted for well over five minutes before she lost track.

“Come on, Jake!

She listened for his step. Outside, nothing moved.

She drew her knees up to her chest. She turned to one hip and felt along the lining, searching for something she could pull. Her fingers found a latch. She tugged at it until it gave, the lid popping up.

Esther scrambled from it.

The car headlights glittered through the trees. The front doors were wide open, and the keys were in the ignition.

“Jake?

She walked around the car. Alice’s cardigan was on the passenger seat. Esther checked the ground beside it, then looked past the headlights.

“If this situation is a joke, it’s no longer funny.”

A twig broke somewhere among the trees.

Esther got into the driver's seat and closed the door. She locked the passenger door. Jake brought her here. Their parents were gone, and he was supposed to watch her and take her with him. All evening he whined about babysitting.

She turned the key. The engine cranked but didn't fire. She tried again, then stopped, afraid she'd make things worse.

The phone was not in the console. She looked under his seat and in the glove compartment.

“Please, Jake.

She honked the horn.

The sound startled her, but she kept her voice down. If he had eloped with Alice, he would be aware of it. He'd come back furious, and she'd let him yell. She would even say sorry if he took her home.

She blew the horn until she grew tired of it.

Someone pulled at the passenger door, and Esther screamed.

Alice stood outside, one hand on the glass.

Esther opened the. Alice fell into the chair, mud on her clothes.

“Where is Jake?”

Alice shook her head. One shoulder of her blouse had torn, and her hair had come loose.

“Where is he?

“I don’t know.

"You were with him."

A light through the windshield. Alice clung to her seat. “We couldn’t go. Then we were out.

"Outside of where?"

"In the swamp. I woke up there.”

‘Where’s Jake?’

Alice covered her mouth with her hand.

Esther grabbed her arm. “Alice.”

“I heard your horn. “And that’s how I found the car.”

She pulled out her phone. She swiped twice across the screen before she dialled. 

***

Their parents beat the cops up there.

Her mother snatched Esther from the car and held her so close she could scarcely breathe. Her father kept asking Alice, "Where is the last place you saw Jake?"

Alice led them to the marsh.

She stopped at the edge of the trees.

“Here. I woke up here."

An officer took her back to the car while the others kept up the search. Esther’s mother gave one of Jake’s shirts to the sniffer dogs. The dogs pulled their leads tight and went into the reeds.

Esther stayed with her father until dawn lit the water.

Each snapped twig pointed her to the trees. Each voice made her look for Jake.

Her father spoke to an officer when she spotted something pale beyond the marsh. She walked to it, stepping around a fallen branch.

Jake’s shirt was open on a tree.

For a moment she thought he'd just fallen asleep on his feet. His head was against the trunk, his chin down.

“Jake?”

She stepped again.

His body caved in on itself, the clothes hanging loose around him. The skin on his neck, in the folds, was above his collar, and one empty sleeve rubbed against the bark.

Esther screamed.

Her father found her before the police. He caught her around the waist and turned her face up against his coat.

She tried to look behind her.

“Jake. This is Jake, Dad.”

And as she called her brother’s name, he swept her away. 

***

After the funeral, her mother had left Jake’s bedroom door open.

Nancy washed his clothes, folded them, and put them back in his dresser. One morning Esther's father went to work and returned before lunchtime. He sat at the kitchen table in his coat until Nancy took it off him.

They couldn’t operate. Nobody ate a thing. The phone rang until someone yanked the cord out.

Esther talked to Alice every night.

They discussed Jake. And sometimes Alice wept, and Esther heard. Neither of them mentioned the boot until Alice said, “I should have made him let you out.”

Esther pressed her thumb into the dent in her palm where the latch had caught.

“You didn’t know?” I laughed.

To that, Esther had no answer.

Then Bobby Spencer vanished.

His parents slept in the hall. His bed was empty underneath, but the window to his bedroom was closed.

Two days later they found him.

Bobby, Esther knew. He was on Jake's team and had come to their house after practice. He had once raised her high enough to get a ball off the garage roof.

She saw his picture appear next to Jake’s on the news.

Both boys had been young, strong, and well. They had both been stripped down to their clothes, what was left of them.

The police told people to stay inside after dark.

Every night Nancy checked Esther’s windows. Her father carried a chair upstairs into the hall.

No one had explained how a locked window could hold anything in.

***

Esther was on the phone to Alice when the white light crossed her bedroom wall.

She got up off the bed.

It flew over the nearby roofs, outside, and stopped past the houses.

"Esther?" said Alice.

"I see it."

“That is the light."

A siren began.

Esther raced downstairs. Her father stood by the front window. Nancy had already unlocked the door.

People in slippers and dressing gowns came out across the street. Russell’s name was shouted.

Esther went to the house to get her bike.

Her father yelled, “Stay here!”

She pedalled on toward the light.

In the last row of houses she saw it, bearing Russell toward the woods.

The creature loomed above him. Its black limbs bent about its body, and its yellow eyes were turned toward the trees. Its long funnel-shaped mouth was pressed to its chest. Membranes unfurled from its feet, and it rose off the ground.

Russell gave one kick.

Esther screamed, “Stop!”

The creature spun around.

She left the bicycle and ran back to it.

“Put him down!"

It was walking on the road. It opened its arms, and Russell fell to his knees. He stumbled past Esther into the gathering crowd behind her and scrambled up.

Alice took hold of Esther’s hand.

“There’s more than us,” she whispered.

Esther turned around. Her parents forced their way through the crowd. Police cars blocked the road; firemen wheeled a tanker toward the trees.

The creature slipped back into a glade.

An officer pulled his pistol. The fire chief forced the barrel.

“Hold up.”

The creature opened its mouth wide.

“Hungry.”

The word came slowly, but Esther understood.

Nancy stepped forward.

“You killed my boy.”

The creature dipped its head.

"Food wasted. Ship.”

It pointed to the trees. Beyond the clearing, she could see a pale, curved surface beneath a covering of branches.

“You had a ship?” the chief asked.

The creature nodded its head.

“That was your food on?”

Lost. It sucked in air through its mouth. 

“Starving.”

Nancy tore herself away from Esther's father.

“How dare you take our children out of this community! We won’t put up with it any longer!”

She stopped a few yards away from the creature. Nancy put out a hand to stop Esther’s father.

“You took the best of my parenting skills and turned it into a meal for you.”

The creature looked at Russell, who was standing there wrapped in a fireman's coat.

Nancy stepped into view.

"No. You look at me.”

Its mouth was drawn up against its chest.

“Other food,” it said.

The chief looked at the tanker.

“We have brought you some drink.”

Two firemen brought a hose into the clearing. Another had a wide metal trough. They set it down in front of the creature with a water-sugar mixture.

The thing sank to its knees.

It dipped the tip of its mouth into the liquid, then pulled it out and looked at the chief.

“Food?”

“That’s right,”

An officer opened a fuel can behind the tanker.

Esther saw him give it to a fireman. The man carried it around the edge of the clearing, and everyone turned to face the trough.

The mayor hurried beside the chief.

“There’s more,” he said to the creature. “Enough to get us all living in harmony.”

Alice's fingers closed around Esther's hand.

The creature dipped its mouth in the trough.

It drank it all. A fireman filled it, and the creature drank. The shoulders sagged. The membranes inside its feet folded in.

Nancy didn't move.

Esther looked at her mother, then at the fuel.

They had it on them. They brought the sugar water, the trough, and the fuel.

The creature reached for the hose, then stopped and waited for the firefighter to fill its trough for a third time.

“Come on,” said Esther.

The chief looked at her.

“Do it,” he said.

He raised a hand.

The fireman circled behind the creature and doused its back with fuel.

It sat up stiffly. Another man struck its chest.

The creature turned toward the trough, its mouth still dripping sugar water.

The chief applied a flaming torch to its side.

Flames licked its body. 

***

The creature beat its breast.

It struck the trough, overturned, and fell, its knees underneath; sugar water lay on the ground.

"Food," it said.

Esther heard the word amid the shouting.

The creature dragged itself to the hose. A firefighter pulled it away.

It came again.

Esther let go of Alice's hand.

The monster waited for them to fill the trough again. It tucked its legs up under it and dipped its head to drink. Even struck by the fuel, it turned back toward their offering.

“Water,” said Esther.

No one heard her.

The creature rolled against a tree. The bark caught, and the flames shot up. The monster clawed at its burning flesh, then turned toward the firefighters.

“Water it! Douse it. Hurry. It’s burning.”

Before she could dash forward, her father caught her arm.

“Don’t, Esther. Stay back.”

“They have water, sir.”

He pulled her into him.

The crowd found its yellow eyes. The creature looked from face to face. Esther stood, frozen in her father’s arms.

She wanted it to hurt. Originally, she had wanted it dead when she saw it carrying Russell.

It now scuttled through the spilled sugar water to the empty trough.

There were a few cheers.

Esther covered her ears, but she could still hear it all.

The creature fell beside the trough. One arm was still extended toward the hose.

The chief waited until it sat still.

Then he ordered the firefighters to put out the burning trees.

Water slammed into the clearing. Steam boiled around the body and blackened scraps washed into the grass.

Esther’s father relaxed his hold.

Nancy covered her mouth at the clearing. She stood looking at the ruins until her husband came to her side.

The mayor said something to a cop. People moved with their children and made their way back toward the houses. Russell’s parents helped him into the car.

Alice stood next to Esther's bicycle.

“You coming?”

Esther looked at the trough lying on its side.

A firefighter crouched to pick it up. Sugar water dripped off the rim.

“Yup.”

She took the bike from Alice and carried it over to her parents.

Nancy held her hand.

Esther shot her a look.

The firemen sprayed the clearing behind them. Esther heard the water crash to the ground all the way back to the road.