Wildefire Series: Wildefire Part 9

"Besides," Jackie continued, "I figured for the finale to the evening we could clip out that picture of Bobby from last week's newspaper, soak it in kerosene, and then see what the hot plate has to say about Blackwood's Scholar-Athlete of the Year."

Ash squinted at Jackie. "I can only envision that ending with one of us getting our eyebrows singed off, and possibly burning down the national park. I'd rather not give Bobby Jones that much credit."

Jackie shrugged and took a swig of chocolate milk.

Ash wasn't sure how the girl could drink a gallon of it a day yet still remain so twiggy. "We'll bring a fire extinguisher," Jackie cajoled her. "I'm sure the guys will get a kick out of it too. According to Darren's senior friends, Bobby tries to act like their best friend, but they all think he's just a thickheaded douche."

106.

"If it walks like a duck . . . ," Ash said.

Darren came wandering back from the next table with a broad grin on his face.

"What's got into you?" Ash asked. "You look like Jackie at a handbag sale. Did some lucky guy just ask you to next week's ball?"

"Even better," he said without missing a beat. "You know how we always suspected that Monsieur Chevalier was an alcoholic?"

"He smells like a liquor store," Ash replied. "I don't think 'suspected' is really the accurate term."

His grin intensified; any wider, and Ash figured it would split his cheeks open all the way to his earlobes.

"Well, for Brad Archer's community service he had to repaint some of the rooms in the faculty lodge . . . and he finagled his way into Chevalier's apartment."

"He used his detention sentence as an opportunity for breaking and entering?" Jackie asked.

"Who cares?" Darren said. "Brad Archer's a moron."

He grabbed a fork from Jackie's tray and without consult-ing Ash attacked her macaroni cheese.

"Help yourself," Ash muttered.

"Thanks." He pulled the bowl of pasta across the table, shoveling the food into his mouth. "Point is," he said between mouthfuls, "Brad Archer found a rack in the monsieur's room stacked with bottles of brandy. So he took one."

Ash rolled her eyes. In the prep school scene it wasn't enough just to make trouble-it was about continuing to 107 push boundaries. When the thrill of underage drinking waned, what did you do? Steal liquor from teachers.

"Won't he notice that one of his darling children has gone missing?" Jackie asked.

Darren glanced at her as if this were the stupidest thing he'd ever heard. "This is a dry campus, for students and faculty. What's he going to do? Tell Headmistress Riley that he's not sure but he thinks one of the students raided his easily accessible liquor stash? False. "

"It's all a moot point." Jackie sighed. "I get the distinct impression that Ash is going to say no to our little s'mores-making excursion."

On cue Darren and Jackie turned and gave her identical puppy dog faces, complete with the hopeful eyes and drooping frowns.

Ash huffed. "Okay, okay. I'll come to your little faux bonfire on one condition: you let me take a nap until ten and don't wake me one minute earlier."

"Yes!" Darren thumped his fist on the table. "We're getting started in Jackie's room around eight when Brad comes by with the contraband, but we'll stop by and kidnap you around ten-ish."

Ash shuddered at the word "kidnap." That was her cue to return to the womb she called a bed. She mumbled something about getting her rest and ten o'clock to Darren and Jackie and slipped away before they could protest.

When she reached her bedroom, she took a running 108 stumble across the floor and sprawled onto her bed. She was out nearly as soon as her head hit the pillow.

Ash hadn't dreamed of Lizzie Jacobs in weeks. Normally the dead field hockey player found her in the Scarsdale High School parking lot. The therapist Ashline had visited last fall thought there was a very simple explanation for why the scene in the parking lot was the one she replayed, instead of Lizzie's tragic "fall" from the rooftop.

He believed that Ash was so burdened with guilt over her cla.s.smate's death that she wanted to travel back in time to stop herself from confronting Lizzie in the first place. According to the therapist, Ash subconsciously believed that if she hadn't instigated a fight with Lizzie, the other girl wouldn't have sought retaliation by vandal-izing Ashline's house, thus setting in motion the chain of events that would lead to her untimely demise. Like it or not, Ash admitted that there was probably some accuracy to the way he'd interpreted her dreams.

Tonight, submerged in the nocturnal shallows of a late evening nap, Lizzie found her again. And this time the two of them were on a rooftop-but not the familiar spray-painted roof of the Wilde residence back in Scarsdale. This time when Ash materialized in the dream, she was standing on top of the academic building.

Lizzie stood at the edge of the roof, just beside the spire of the clock tower, wearing the same black checkered trench coat and jeans in which she had spent her 109 final minutes among the living. The neon circle on her back gazed at Ash like an all-seeing eye. But Lizzie didn't turn, even as the plastic roof echoed hollowly beneath Ashline's footsteps.

Ash came up beside Lizzie, so that both of them had their toes perched on the edge of the roof. They were like two gargoyles scanning the earth below. The air around Lizzie reeked of ozone and burned hair. Her cheeks were blackened, grill marks seared along her cheekbones as if Lizzie had been roasted over a barbecue.

Worst of all, her eyes were missing.

"It's coming, you know," Lizzie said calmly.

"What's coming?" Ash asked. A strong wind picked up from the north, sending her hair rippling back.

Lizzie ignored the question and responded only by reaching up and brus.h.i.+ng a dried piece of bloodied dirt from her hair-a souvenir from her fall to the Wildes'

yard. "Do you really believe that you can escape the sins of your family, Ashline?"

Ash paused. "Yes. I think I can."

Lizzie shook her head, her charred face souring. "You can never escape them. And sooner or later . . ." Her head snapped around, rotating grotesquely to face Ash.

"Sooner or later we pay for those sins."

Her skeletal hand shot out and locked around Ash's throat. Her burned flesh flaked off in layers, revealing blood-caked finger bones beneath.

Lizzie's grip tightened, and Ash choked as she was lifted up into the air. The long fingers crushed her 110 windpipe, cutting off her air flow even as she made panicked gasps. And as she dangled over the ground below, she felt that familiar charge of electricity. Her hair parted and rose until it formed an orb around her face. She could even feel the static charges jumping from tooth to tooth within her mouth.

"Lightning is nature's proof," Lizzie yelled over the climbing wind, "that when positive and negative forces come together, the only outcomes are release and destruction."

"You don't have to do this, Lizzie," Ash croaked. The electricity crackled between her eyelashes.

Lizzie bowed her head. "G.o.d help us all this time."

The lightning forked down from the sky, and then there was only white.

When Ash opened her eyes, she was facedown on her carpet. Her face was pressed into the ropey ta.s.sels around the rug's edge, and when she pulled her cheek away, she could feel the rippled imprint of the cords in her skin.

She sneezed a few times to cleanse her sinuses of the dust that had ama.s.sed there during her floor-bound slumber.

She had no idea how she'd slept through a fall to the floor, although there was a telltale soreness on the left side of her ribs, where she'd probably landed.

The lights were still on; she hadn't even flipped the switch before she'd pa.s.sed out.

As she pulled a long hair from her mouth-gauging from its color and length, most likely one of hers-she 111 glanced at the alarm-clock-shaped void in the clutter on her nightstand before she remembered that she'd pulverized her clock in a failed attempt to maim Bobby Jones.

Her hand fumbled around on the nightstand until she found her cell phone, half-buried beneath a pile of gum wrappers. She flipped it open. 11:37 p.m. She groaned and flopped back onto the carpet. Her meager rations at dinner hadn't done much to satisfy her hunger, and the thought of melted marshmallow and chocolate smeared between graham crackers was heavenly. And now Jackie and Darren had run off to their mock bonfire without remembering to wake her.

Or had they? She rolled onto her side and noticed a folded paper half-wedged under her door. She crawled across the hardwood on her hands and knees and unfolded the note. It was written in Jackie's familiar nearly illegible scrawl: Sleeping Beauty: We knocked for several minutes.

We yelled. We even pretended to be Bobby Jones, desperate to win you back. But you did not wake. We leave you now; however, please follow the marshmallow trail to Turtle Rock in the woods when you wake.

Love, J, D, and the Seven Dwarves 112.

Ash opened her door, and sure enough, there on the hallway carpet was a marshmallow. Planted into the marshmallow, like a flag on the summit of Everest, was a toothpick with a little pennant taped to it that said "Follow me!"

Ash laughed. "Oh my G.o.d, Jackie. You are such a loser."

Her stomach took the opportunity to growl, and she hesitated, looking back and forth between the marshmallow on the floor and the dingy carpet beneath it, which was so grimy and worn that it could have come from the floor of a horse's stable. But her stomach growled a second time, louder, making up her mind for her. Ash scooped up the abandoned marshmallow, tossed the toothpick flag aside, and popped the sweet into her mouth. She s.n.a.t.c.hed the electric lantern out of her closet before sweeping out of the room, down the corridor, and out into the open air.

The Blackwood quad was less quiet than expected this time of night. A group of freshman boys had instigated a water balloon fight in the nook between the boys'

residence and the dining hall. A trio of girls loitered on the outside of the circle, giggling and darting into the fray daringly from time to time. One girl had just hopped into the battle zone when one of the boys launched a balloon her way. It splattered against her sandaled feet, soaking her ankles and sending a splash of mud up her legs.

She shrieked and swatted at the mud on her knees as if 113 she were covered in leeches, while the boys and her two female confidantes erupted in laughter.

Ash rolled her eyes. It would be only a few minutes'

time before the faculty on rounds overheard their post-curfew war and forced them to scatter.

Ash cut around the front of the dining hall to avoid becoming the victim of any rogue balloons. Darren's hot plate wouldn't dry wet clothing the way a real bonfire would. As she pa.s.sed under the dining hall's dim auxiliary lighting, she caught a glimpse of her own unfortunate reflection in one of the windows. Her jeans and polo were crisscrossed with wrinkles, rumpled from sleeping on the floor. She sighed. With Bobby Jones out of the picture, she should probably put some effort into her appearance, especially if she was going to be enjoying the company of eligible seniors for the evening. She could have at least pa.s.sed a brush through her sleep-matted hair.

Then she remembered Colt and the way he'd lit up even when she'd approached glistening with a tennis match's acc.u.mulation of sweat.

Maybe she wouldn't have to work so hard after all.

She found an escapee tennis ball in the gra.s.s as her journey continued past the clay courts. She side-armed it across the court and threw her hands up in silent celebration when it just barely cleared the net.

At the edge of the trees she stared off into the abyss.

The spring mists had set in for sure, a gift from the not 114 too distant ocean. It was this same temperate wet climate that had allowed the redwood to thrive in this corner of the country and this corner alone.

Ash felt a connection to the redwood tree. It was all about moderation. The redwoods needed at least a few miles of cus.h.i.+on between their soil and the coast in order to grow and thrive. But it was the coastal moisture that allowed the redwood to grow wider and taller than any other tree in the world. Too little moisture and it would not grow. Too much and it overdosed and died, doomed to rot and topple prematurely. But any tree in that pocket of moderation not only grew to its own epic potential, but had a life span that could out-survive even history's great civilizations.

In the distance Ash heard shrieking. From the sounds of it, Monsieur Chevalier had stumbled upon the after-hours water balloon war. Several French curse words echoed through the air, leading Ashline to believe he'd discovered the missing bottle of brandy as well-or rather, the empty berth where it used to be-and was now proceeding on the warpath for its captors.

Time to hurry up and get off school grounds.

She gave it a good ten paces into the forest before she clicked on the electric lantern. It buzzed to life, blinking several times before a steady beam shone out. It may have been less practical than a flashlight, but Ash liked the primitiveness of it. Sure, it wasn't a kerosene lantern or fueled by whale fat. But bathed in its soft electric glow, 115 enveloped in that orb of light as if it were her own personal halo, she could feel as though she lived in a different century.

"Just call me Sacagawea," Ash said quietly to herself, and started in what she hoped was the direction of Turtle Rock. She'd been there three or four times, and the route seemed fairly straightforward-simply start from the water bubbler behind the clay courts and work your way straight into the woods. After a quarter mile's walk she would reach a dense thicket where the trees had clumped uncomfortably together. Beyond that lay the clearing and, within it, Turtle Rock, a large stone outcropping resembling a tortoise sh.e.l.l, complete with a gnarled protruding head.

After several minutes in the knee-deep mist, Ashline's confidence in her navigation waned, replaced by a nagging sense that she should have stumbled upon the meeting place by now, or at least heard the laughter of her troublemaking cla.s.smates.

Instead she found herself in a disquieting vacuum of silence and a pervasive darkness that even her lantern failed to illuminate. In fact, the glare was keeping her from seeing much beyond her own bubble. She turned off the lantern and waited for the light to fade from her eyes so she could restore her bearings.

Alone among the wooden skysc.r.a.pers, she might as well have been a flea. Without the dim pall of the stars and moon to light the way, Ash couldn't even see the tops 116 of the redwood trees, which in the darkness looked like pillars holding up the roof of the heavens.

Then she heard the crackle of a footfall on dry leaves.

The fingers of terror wrapped themselves slowly around her internal organs and squeezed. The sound had come from the gap between two trees straight ahead.

Ash stumbled back until she felt the soft bark of the redwood behind her. She slid into a sitting position and hugged her knees in silence, praying that whoever it was would be equally night-blind.

Maybe it was Jackie or Darren. h.e.l.l, maybe it was Colt doing some late-night ranger work. But this near to the midnight wanderer, Ash should at least have been able to see the glow of a flashlight or lantern. Logic said that anyone moving around in the tar blackness of a redwood night was either crazy or didn't want to be seen.

Ashline was still contemplating this when a figure emerged from behind a nearby tree. And when it did, she wished she was still back in her nightmare with Lizzie Jacobs's corpse.

It-for Ash wasn't going to make a hypothesis as to its gender-lumbered forward with sinister patience. At twice Ashline's height, and many times her circ.u.mference, its enormity was dwarfed only by the mighty redwoods.

Behind its slow cautious saunter there was untapped physical strength, yet as far as Ash could see on its thick, dark body, it had no limbs at all except for its squat rep-tilian legs. Its skin-or scales, or hide, or whatever it was 117 that coated its body-was darker than the night itself.

Ash had a notion that if she turned on her lantern and held it up to its belly, the creature's body would simply absorb the light, which would be lost and gone forever.

Ashline remained perfectly still, frozen in place against the trunk of the redwood. The dark creature had paused and brought its "snout" low to the ground. Then it straightened up. And it turned its head in her direction.

Whereas Ash had thought it was all black before, she saw that the creature had two distinguis.h.i.+ng features when it turned to face her head-on, no longer in profile.

Where its eyes should have been (if the creature had had a true face) was a single blue flame with an iris at its center. Beneath that was an enormous gray mouth with large interlocking teeth that closely resembled the jagged jaws of a bear trap.

Simultaneously mesmerized and terrified, Ash might as well have been petrified into the tree bark, a stone sculpture with a heartbeat. What sort of night vision it had with its one blue burning eye, Ash didn't know. If it did see her, it showed neither interest nor surprise.

Instead it just swung its head in the opposite direction, as if it were a reasonable expectation to see teenage girls slumped against a tree, and there were more Easter eggs like this lurking around the forest floor, waiting to be discovered.

With its head turned, the spell was broken, and Ashline quietly but eagerly sidled around the thick tree 118 trunk. She had made it ninety degrees around when her foot caught a root and she went down on one knee-right onto a patch of crispy leaves.

The phantom whipped its head around, its humble sloth-like movements abandoned.

Ashline took off. She jettisoned her previous attempts to be stealthy and instead focused on speed, ignoring the volume of her footfalls. Her previous love for the redwoods abandoned, she cursed them for their lack of lower-level branches. With no hope of going vertical, she would have to outrun it.

Just when Ash was running out of steam and the moisture in her lungs was pus.h.i.+ng her toward an asthma attack, she saw her savior.

The project adventure course.

An enterprising Blackwood student-a vandal-had smuggled nails, lumber, and ropes into the forest and set up his own private project adventure course. With zero respect for the ecosystem or the well-being of the gentle giants, he'd nailed a series of wooden rungs into the trunk of one tree to form a makes.h.i.+ft ladder. Nor had the health of the bark concerned him when he'd tied two ropes between the redwoods, forming a footbridge with handrails twenty feet above the forest floor.

When Ashline reached the base of the ladder, she took the grip of the electric lantern and placed it in her mouth, fastening her teeth down on it like it was a horse's bit so she could have her hands free. She ascended the 119 wooden rungs quickly and ignored the splinters in her fingers as she climbed. Adrenaline had kicked into overdrive at this point, urging her onto the rope bridge. The fear capacitors in her brain were already overloaded by whatever the h.e.l.l that thing was on her trail. Any fear she may have had of heights was quickly replaced with the instinct to survive.

The rope bridge had more slack in it than she'd antic.i.p.ated as she walked carefully across. The other side had a wooden platform where she could hide, but for now she was out in the air and vulnerable. With each step the rope swayed out perilously, threatening to pitch her to the ground.

She had just made it halfway across the rope bridge when her jaw gave out and released its grip on the electric lantern. The lantern quickly dropped toward the earth below, and Ash instinctively reached out to grab for it.

But the s.h.i.+ft in her weight set her off balance, and her other hand, which had been steadying her on the handrail, lost its hold. Ash plunged toward the ground.

The world opened up beneath her. Her hands groped through the air and miraculously found the foot rail. Her arms were pulled taut, her elbows locked, and for an agonizing moment it felt as though her shoulders were going to dislocate right out of their sockets. The lantern mean-while thudded heavily to the earth, bouncing once before landing at an angle against an exposed root.