Page 2 of Fear of Flames
Shelly took a sip of the water, then handed her mother back the glass. With her eyelids growing heavy, she asked, “Are you sure there aren’t monsters?”
Tracy tipped her forehead to her daughter’s. “Not the kind your friends talked about. Those came from stories and legends. They’re like the books in the library. Ideas that people made up.”
“Okay.”
Tracy kissed Shelly’s forehead. “Goodnight, sweetheart.”
It would be years later, but eventually, Shelly would learn that not only did monsters exist, but there was reason to fear the flames.
Chapter
One
Twenty-one years later
* * *
Michelle’s body trembled as she hunched down, hidden among a row of pine trees, her bare feet buried deep in the snow and her body wedged between the heavy branches. It wasn’t only the temperature or her lack of clothes causing her to shake—she’d run from the house in only her nightclothes and panties—the trembling came with the growing terror that someone nefarious was out there, the same someone who struck the match and sparked the flames now engulfing the house where she’d been sleeping.
“Michelle. Shelly.”
The deep voice carried by the cold wind confirmed her fear, taunting and stretching her nerves. Her breath caught, filling her lungs with chilled, smoke-filled air as the person walking around the perimeter of the remains of her father’s house came into view. While she hadn’t recognized the voice, there was no mistaking the person calling out to her.
In the orange illumination from the flames, she watched the man’s boots stepping in and out of the melting snow, the rifle in his hand, and most importantly the badge on his heavy coat.
Closing her eyes, she wished for invisibility. It was a childish wish for a grown woman, but there was something about losing your last remaining parent that had a way of sending your thoughts into childish dreams.
“Shelly, honey, I know you’re out here. I saw your car in the garage. Come on, honey. Denny wouldn’t want you to freeze.”
A lump of emotion caught in her throat. Denny, or Dennis Holdcraft—her father—would never again be concerned with Michelle or anyone. That was undeniable. The other fact that solidified in her chest with steely determination was the realization that Sheriff Perkins didn’t want to save Michelle from freezing.
His quest to find her was due to what she’d witnessed.
If Michelle made it to morning alive, she would have a story to tell, one that, no doubt, the sheriff wanted silenced.
When she opened her eyes against the harsh blaze, the silhouette of a second man came into view. He was standing with and speaking to Sheriff Perkins. With the crackling fire only yards away and the rustling of the branches above, Michelle couldn’t make out what the two men were saying, nor did she recognize the second man.
It wasn’t that she knew every person in this godforsaken town. Her father moved to Iron Falls in the middle-of-nowhere Massachusetts eight years ago after the passing of Michelle’s mom.
Michelle rarely visited, yet she and her father spoke often via phone or video calls.
Trying to ignore the pins and needles in her freezing extremities, Michelle kept watch on the two men. Every now and then, they would turn a full circle, their heavy boots trampling the slush and mud near the burning structure.
Michelle’s thoughts circled back to fleeing the fire.
Could those men track her footprints in the snow?
She hoped that the heat of the blaze melted away the evidence of her escape.
Escape?
She was trapped between the sheriff she feared and a frozen wilderness.
As the two men spoke, the sheriff maintained his grip of the long gun, the heel butting against his shoulder. It was the second man who seemed more animated, his head shaking and his hands gesturing.
If only she could hear their words.
Michelle fought the urge to fall apart. She couldn’t, not after what she’d seen. She knew why the sheriff wanted to find her. She was the last person to see Dennis Holdcraft, her father…
