Page 38 of Like A Moth To A Flame

“Then how the hell would I know?!”

A while later, I convinced him to drive me home, even while he argued that I should stay.

“You need to get out of that house.”

“I’m not letting him win!”

And so, frowning at me the entire time, Barrett took me home. My stomach was in knots as we pulled into the driveway, but I struggled to swallow it away. I wasn’t giving up, and I wasn’t running away.

Holding my head high, I walked into the house and pushed the door shut behind me. I’d been fighting to keep my eyes open on the drive here. Now, I would struggle to sleep.

I kicked off my flip-flops by the door and moved into the living room, carefully checking every corner to make sure I was alone. The shadows were like shifting monsters, reaching out to grab me and drag me under the weight of my worry.

Reaching over, I flipped on my dad’s old lamp, and the light appeared in a wave, chasing away the shadows, and with them, my fears. Looking across the living room, nothing but the normal dust bunnies and piles and piles ofstuffgreeted me. I allowed myself to take a moment, pulling in a deep breath and calming the shaking of my limbs.

“Breathe, Ness,” I said, flopping onto the couch. “Everything’s fine.”

Maybe some reading would calm my nerves enough to let me sleep.

Laid across the coffee table, one of Dad’s journals awaited me, propped against the remote and an old, chipped coffee mug. Untying the cord, I propped it open across my lap and reached over, tipping up the lampshade and allowing the light to spill across my lap. I spent the first few minutes flipping through it, trying to find where I had left off, but all the words were blurring into one big mess. I remembered the page about the arsonist and the next couple after that, but I couldn’t recall the last one I had read. I continued to flip, my fingers moving across the pages until a sharp, acrid scent reached my nostrils, and I stopped.

“The fuck?” I muttered, looking around. Something smelled hot, like it was burning.

My heart leaped to life in my chest, and I snapped the journal closed, tossing it down onto the coffee table and jumping to my feet.

It didn’t take me long to find the source.

Thick, inky black smoke billowed out from behind the couch, rising into the air like a biblical leviathan. I yelped, tearing across the room and into the kitchen, my feet slapping over the hardwood and my lungs burning. I still couldn’t find my phone, and I couldn’t waste time looking, so the kitchen landline was the next best thing. Ripping the receiver down, I punched in the numbers, eyes wide as I stared towards the living room. Part of me was expecting to see flames leaping towards me. The phone rang just a couple of times before it connected.

“911, what’s your emergency?”

“Y-yes, this is Vanessa Harper. There’s smoke. I think maybe fire, but I don’t see flames.”

“Chief Harper’s residence?”

Thank goodness for a small town. I didn’t even need to rattle off the address. Good thing, too, cause I wasn’t sure I could remember it at that moment even if I tried.

The next few minutes were a blur. I remembered once Dad showed me where the breaker box was, in the closet under the stairs, just in case of a situation just like this. I dropped the phone, and I heard it clatter to the floor as I skidded around the corner and threw myself under the stairs. Pulling the door open, I shoved a couple of boxes aside and found the pull string, popping the lightbulbon and reaching past it. The grey steel breaker box grinned at me from the darkness, but I could barely reach it. Grunting and cursing, I pushed up onto my toes. By the time my fingers could grasp the handle and tear it open, I already heard the sirens screaming down the road toward me.

I found the breaker marked ‘living room’ and flipped it off. That had to be it.

By the time I pulled myself out of the closet, the sirens were louder, and I could see the ocean-blue and blood-red lights coming down the driveway. I hurried to the door and pulled it open just as the enormous truck came to a halt in front of the porch, and all four doors popped open.

I watched Tommy Eades and Dale Watchman, clad in all of their gear, file past me and into the house. A couple of newer, clearly very young firemen followed suit, eerily eager for the circumstance. Sheriff Banner stepped onto the porch, his hand wrapping around my bicep and pulling me away from the door. I hadn’t even seen his patrol car pull up. Had he come in the truck?

How long had he been here?

“Vanessa?” he asked, gently leading me away from the door. “You okay? What happened?”

“I-I don’t know. I was just s-sitting there reading and all the sudden I saw smoke and—”

I stopped, stealing glances over my shoulder, waiting to watch the house erupt in flames.

But nothing happened.

I stood shivering on the porch with Sheriff Banner, despite the lingering heat of summer that still hung in the air. The shadowswere quiet, every insect and animal seemingly holding their breath right along with me, waiting to hear the worst.

“Don’t you worry, now,” the Sheriff told me. “You got two of the best firemen I’ve ever known in there.”

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