The Third Floor Part 30

"Where's Joey?"

Liz stopped batting at the flames and looked up at him. Her face was dumb and numb. "I don't know," she said. "I couldn't find him either. I went outside to look for him, but he's not out there. I came back in to look upstairs, but I saw the fire."

Jack turned back and ran for the stairs. Liz dropped the cushion she'd been using to beat at the flames, and took off after him.

Adam stood in the third floor's main room, a circle of ghosts accompanying, his brothers and sister, surrounding their father who'd reappeared semi-solid from the wall, stumbling and dead.

They caught him between them. He stood in the middle, looking from one to the next, first furious, but slowly calming, and finally looking at them pleadingly.

"Let us go," Adam said. Joey's shirt was soaked and stained, deep red. Blood flowed in a regular stream from his neck, but he seemed neither bothered nor weakened.

His father looked over. "No," he said. "You all belong with your father. We didn't let anything split us up when she died; we won't let anything split us up now."

"Let us go," Adam repeated.

Then his father's calm face went back to angry and he sneered, "You can't save yourself."

"Let us go," Adam said for the last time.

"Everyone will suffer now!" Milo Dengler roared as he lunged for Adam.

His hands found the bleeding throat and inertia carried them both into the wall. Adam banged his head and reeled from the shock. He noticed a high ringing sound, wondered what it was, then his attention was brought back to the stinking, rotted, green thing in front of him.

It smiled, showing dead, grey teeth. Its eyes were mad yellow orbs. The breath it blew into Adam's face when it spoke made his stomach churn, like breathing old diapers and rotten fruit.

"Please," Adam said.

"No," Dengler yelled, then yanked Adam's arm, swinging him around and tossing him across the room. He flew through his sister, hit the opposite wall, and stumbled around.

He realized suddenly that he didn't know how to end this. There'd been no plan, just a wish. Since the death, they'd been trapped here, invisible in the house, but present, roaming, floating, haunting. Their father had been stronger and his hold unbreakable. But Adam was physical now and that surely had to count against the wraith.

He looked around and saw, for just a flash, his brothers and sister dead again as they'd been that day, b.l.o.o.d.y on the floor, and when he blinked it changed and their spirits stood again in the center of the room, their eyes big and begging, looking at their father.

"You can't go," he said. Adam saw his anger had once again washed away. The look he showed now was one Adam had seen countless times in his original twelve years, a father's love. "I didn't mean to hurt any of you," Dengler said. "I was trying to spare you."

"Then let us go," the girl said.

"I can't."

"Why?"

"I can't be alone. And if you go, I can't follow."

Adam took a step forward, calmly. There came a pounding from the roof--Liz and Jack would have recognized it, as would the exterminator Carl and Charley Clark--heavy, frantic, and Dengler glanced up for a second. Adam used that glance and lunged at the man, pinning his arms back and doing what he could to hold him in place.

He looked over his shoulder at the other three and said, "Hurry."

Jack and Liz bounded up the stairs, yelling for "Joey!"

On the second floor, they searched the rooms, hoping to find him, hoping he wasn't upstairs. The rooms were empty. They ran up the last flight and found Joey--no, this wasn't Joey.

Jack stared, wondering what had happened in the forty-five minutes he'd been gone. His son was gone. No, he could see bits of Joey in there, but it looked as if someone had done a bad job erasing Joey and then drawing this new person on top of him.

His chest thumped, his stomach sank. His throat had acquired a curious new lump.

How did this happen? How did I not see it?

He looked at Liz who was watching, in shock.

Joey stood hunched and pressing something into the wall. They had to stare at it for a second before they realized it was a man, struggling against the boy, but having a hard time of it.

"Oh," Liz said and Jack followed her eyes.

They saw three others, two boys and a girl--Liz recognized them--climbing the walls like spiders with their hands and feet. They stopped every few steps and looked back at Joey and the old man. Joey's face was strained. He was getting weak, they could see it in him.

The children scurried up the walls and crawled along the ceiling.

Where are they going? Liz wondered.

She saw where they were headed and heard the pounding coming from the roof again. She thought, "So simple. All they have to do is get out."

They were headed for the trapdoor, which led, not only to the crawls.p.a.ce, but up to the roof as well.

"What's happening?" Jack asked.

Liz said, "They want out."

Jack's head pounded and he had to stop and think--he was forgetting. What was it? Then the drilling, shrieking sound woke him up and he remembered.

"Liz, the fire."

"s.h.i.t!" she yelled, and took off down the stairs. She got to the top of the last flight before seeing how far it had spread in such a short time. They'd only been upstairs just over a minute--maybe--and already it had grown down the hall. Flames licked upward, threatening to catch Liz if she came down any further.

The phone was down there; there was no way to call for the fire department. The most she could hope for was to get Joey out of here and hope one of the neighbors called. If not, they could call as soon as they were out.

She ran back up and told Jack, "We've got to get him and get out."

"What?"

"The fire," she said. "It's covered the first floor and it's coming up the stairs. We have to get Joey and get out before it blocks the door."

"How?"

"I don't know."

Jack looked at his son, struggling to hold the big man in place.

"Joe, we have to get out of here," he called.

Joey either hadn't heard him--which Jack didn't think likely, he was ten feet away--or he wasn't listening. Jack didn't know exactly what was happening, but whatever it was didn't lessen the urgency to beat the fire to the front door. Once that was blocked, so was their only exit.

The man shoved Joey off him, into the rail where he almost went over the side. Jack lunged to catch him, but Joey got his balance and held himself up.

Before anyone could stop him, the man ran to the wall below the crawls.p.a.ce and s.n.a.t.c.hed the children from it, tossing them to the floor again. One dodged him, but couldn't lift the trapdoor out of the way.

Something crashed downstairs and Liz took off to see what it was. Jack hesitated a moment, not wanting to leave Joey, then followed anyway. He had to know what was happening down there, how much time they had, whether anything was blocking the door besides the fire.

They got halfway down the flight leading to the front door when they saw how far the fire had reached. On the bottom landing, looking through the flames, Jack could see patches of unscorched wall, but the flames were closing in on those, too.

"How?" he asked. "How does a fire spread this quickly?"

"Maybe the house is doing it," Liz said. "Maybe whatever's going on up there with Joey is s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g with things in the house and it's trying to get rid of it all."

"Houses don't have wills," Jack said. "It's just a house. Despite anything inside it, it's just a house."

The flames took over the first flight of stairs. They retreated up the second flight to the second floor, then saw the fire was moving to the ceiling. In the case of the stairs, it was burning the underside of the flight leading to the third floor landing.

"s.h.i.t," Liz said.

"Go call the fire department," Jack said.

"On what?"

"Across the street. Hurry! Go!"

He gave her a shove toward the stairs and she finally got moving, dashing down the flight, close to the wall, away from the fire. At the door, Jack saw her stop, wondering how the gla.s.s got broken, then he yelled down, "Just go!" and she went, out the door and out of sight.

Jack leapt up the third flight. Halfway, the entire thing collapsed under him. He fell onto the bottom flight, knocked his head against the charred wood, and was out.

The heat awakened him and he couldn't have been out for more than a few seconds. But that was enough time to be pinned under more falling burning wood. He pulled himself up and hauled his weight to the landing. He glanced out the door and saw Liz across the street, banging on a door.

She fell asleep, he thought. She was smoking and she fell asleep. All this from a cigarette?

The frame above him cracked and creaked. He had a split-decision to make. Out the door or risk going up again. The decision was made before it had fully formed. Joey was upstairs.

Jack got to his feet and hopped to the second floor. He must have knocked his knee in the fall, too. Standing on it hurt and it wouldn't bend very well. How swollen would he be all over by the time he and Joey got out of here?

A run of four or five stairs were missing from the third flight, leaving a hole Jack didn't think he could bridge with his sore leg, never mind the flames dancing up through it.

But he'd have to try.

Looking up, he heard a voice cry, "Don't leave me alone!"

What was going on up there?

The front door was nearly blocked now, but he would have to chance it anyway.

The smoke in the house was horrible now, stinging his eyes, filling his lungs. It made forms in the room, swirling ethereal shapes. One looked like people, a boy and a girl, arm in arm. Parts of the smoke evaporated and the boy and girl changed to look like skeletal, rotten figures, still arm in arm.

What in the h.e.l.l had happened in this house?

There you go again, he told himself. Wasting time trying to figuring it all out. Just don't f.u.c.king worry about it and get your son!

That's what he had to do.

He moved back a little, flexed his leg. The pain in his knee shot up his back, but he flexed it a few more times anyway, trying to work it out. He took the best, widest stride toward the stairs he could, up the few that remained, and leapt, reaching with his arms straight, his hands open, his fingers searching for purchase, through the flames.

His hands closed, one on a step, the other on the rail. His chest rested on a step. He wrenched himself up, straining from the struggle, sweating from the fire, fighting against the burning in his chest.

He got himself up enough to lessen the pain and finally wriggled himself to his feet. On the landing, the wood cracked. He rushed a prayer through his head, Please, G.o.d, keep the house together long enough, and went up the last flight, limping.

The third floor was shrouded in smoke.

"Joey," Jack called. He waded through the fog, heat rising behind him, sweat pouring down his face and blurring his vision, watching for Joey or one of the others he'd seen up here, careful not to b.u.mp them.

You can't b.u.mp a ghost, he thought. Still, he kept his eyes out, just in case, for all the good they did in this mess.

The landing crackled again, then collapsed behind him. He turned, saw, then turned back and called again, "Joe! Come on. We've got to get out of here."

"Help me," Adam called.

Jack found him through the smoke, standing below the trapdoor.

"Where is he?" Jack asked.

"They're holding him while I get this open. But I can't reach it."

"Here," Jack said and lifted Joey onto his shoulders. This new version of his son was much heavier, but taller too and with Jack's help he was able to slid the trapdoor aside and lift himself high enough into the crawls.p.a.ce to lift the roof hatch cover out of the way, too. The pounding from the roof stopped and when the cover was clear Jack looked up and saw someone staring back at him.

"Wha--?" he asked.

A woman. Her face beamed with something that looked like relief and then she thrust her arms into the hole in the ceiling, fingers reaching.

The children saw this and immediately leapt off their father and climbed the walls again. Their mother grasped their hands and hauled them all up through the hole and out of the house.

The man, Dengler, clutched Jack by the arm, spun him around.

"You won't take them from me," he said. Foul smoke blew into Jack's face. He winced.

"I just want to get my son. We'll leave. Just give me my son."

"These are my children."

Jack pulled out of the dead man's grip, turned, and dove into the smoke in search of his son again.

"Come on, Joe!" he called.

There were screams behind him, whether from pain or fear, he didn't know, but the sound they made sent shivers up his back. His hands stuck out in front of him, the fingers flexing, searching. The smoke had gotten worse and he could see almost nothing at all.