The truck shudders again and again over potholes as we climb their hill to its bare top. Mr. Madliner sure never kept up this drive. Tough on visitors, I think, before wondering if maybe that ain’t the whole point.
We’re getting near the top of the hill now, and there’s other smells among the smoke—roof tar and plaster and rubber. Orange cinders float above me, searing into the dark and leaving trails like comets. Those sparks are especially dangerous: riding clouds of black smoke, they stay hot and travel far on high winds to start fresh fires in places you don’t expect.
Dad hits the brake and I slide again in the truck bed. That orange glow in the sky is much brighter now, and I hear a snapping sound over the truck’s engine, like a flag on its pole in a strong wind.
The Ford comes to a stop. Truck doors open and slam. I wait a good ten seconds before craning my neck to peer through the windshield. What I see makes me gasp.
Madliner House is on fire.
Sheets of red and orange flame ripple behind the wavy glass of the second-floor windows. Smoke curls out from under the eaves and rolls in black clouds into orangey night. The first-floor windows are dark: the fire is only eating the second floor now, but the front door is ajar and a stream of smoke blows from it too. Dad and Pete follow it inside.
I suck in a breath of smoky air then, for I imagine that roof collapsing down on them, trapping my father and my brother in an avalanche of fiery timbers. But it doesn’t. The roof holds, and from inside I hear them shouting for Mr. and Mrs. Madliner and Caleb.
Next thing I know I am down from the truck and running for the house too. All thoughts of finding Butch are gone as I realize now how stupid I am. My dog has more sense than to be anywhere near here. I don’t.
I’m a stone’s throw from the house and feeling the fire’s fierce heat on my face and on my bare arms when, away to my left, a movement catches my eye. As if by instinct I turn toward it, away from the house. Rounding the corner, I come to the crown of the hill and the empty space where that old oak tree once towered. The whole of the valley lies before me. Stairways twinkles in the distance, on the far side of Knee-Deep Meadow.
But the yard is empty. There’s no one and nothing, just that old oak stump sitting short and fat in the flickering firelight, and—
I stop.
There’s someone there. Someone sitting with their back against that stump, so low I almost didn’t see them in the twitching shadows.
It’s Mr. Madliner.
I run to him. Drawing closer, I see he’s got his long scarecrow legs splayed out, and his bony hands at the end of his long arms rest in the dirt, fingers curled like he’s pulling weeds. His head leans back against that stump like he’s just sat down to rest and watch his house burn.
“Mr. Madliner!”
He don’t answer me but just stares at his house, which is beginning to pop and creak and hiss. The roof is going. I shout to him again, but still he don’t answer. I know when some people get awful scared they just go rigid so they can’t talk or think or hardly move, and I wonder if that’s what’s happened to him.
And then I see it in his forehead, above his right eye: a small, dark hole.
The eyes are open, and in the white places I see twin reflections of the burning house behind me. But that’s the only light left in Arthur Madliner’s eyes. He’s dead.
My mouth goes dry, electricity surges down my spine, and I hear a new sound in the night: my own voice—screaming. A plank drops somewhere in the house behind me. There’s a fresh hiss of sparks. Hot smoke blows on the back of my neck. But now I’m the one so scared he can’t move. I am rooted to that spot in the yard, like the dead tree stump and the dead man propped against it.
Mr. Madliner is dead. Shot through the head.
Scared as I am, I know he didn’t die here. Someone dragged him here and set him up to watch the burning of the house. The marks in the dirt made by the heels of his boots are clear as day in angry firelight. And there was that movement that caught my eye before—the shape that first drew me around this side of the house.
Shadows writhe across the yard. They are joined by one more. A tall, broad shadow that appears beside mine in the fire’s hellish light. The hand on my shoulder turns me around, and now I am staring straight into the eyes of my father. His face is dark with soot. His clothes are singed. Smoke curls out of his hair.
The anger at seeing me lasts only an instant. In its place comes a deep and terrible sadness. My father’s eyes move to Mr. Madliner, then quickly to the yard, and the trees rimming the hill. They sweep the dark trunks, then the fringes of the meadow grasses below us.