Danvers Pointe— Episode Twenty

Last week: The mill erupted in fire and chaos. Darla, pinned to the ground by a burning beam, watched helplessly as her brother stood inches from doom.

Danvers Pointe, Massachusetts — 1938

He was inches from the thing. Darla’s stomach sank. She knew this was the last time she would see him; she was going to be alone.

“No!” Darla choked.

Dark tendrils unfurled from the tear. They reached for him like curious fingers. They touched his chest. His throat. His face.

He went rigid. Every muscle in his body locked. His back arched as if a rod had been driven through his spine.

Darla tried to scream through tears as she watched her last remaining family member face the void.

The air around him shimmered.

For one terrible heartbeat, she thought she saw right through him. Tiny motes of light in an endless depth. Like stars in the vast ocean of the night sky.

“No,” he said. The word wasn’t audible over the thundering flames; she read his lips.

He inhaled sharply and looked directly at her. Then louder, with something like panic in his voice.

“No. Not her too!”

The words tore through her. The same words her father had spoken.

Who were they talking about?

The tendrils tightened. There was no electrical discharge. For the smallest fraction of a second, she wondered why he didn’t vanish.

But he didn’t. The darkness surged into him instead. His eyes flared white. The brightest light she’d ever seen poured through the cracks of his clenched teeth.

Then—

Cody collapsed forward onto the boards. The tear shuddered violently and floated backward.

Darla coughed, smoke filling her throat. The beam pressed down, suffocating. Her vision darkened, her muscles felt heavy.

“Jackson!” she tried again. The word was weak. It barely passed her lips before being drowned in the cacophony of the burning building.

She closed her smoke-stung eyes.

And then he was there.

One pant leg blackened and smoldering, face streaked with soot and blood.

He dropped to his knees beside her and shoved both hands under the timber. She could smell the charring flesh.

“On three,” he growled. She couldn’t even nod. He heaved.

The beam shifted a fraction of an inch. Enough to take a breath, no more.

Hope that had bloomed moments before withered as Jackson was unable to move the heavy beam.

Tears blurred her eyes as smoke filled her lungs and she couldn’t cough.

And suddenly, another shape loomed beside him.

A large, robed man stared down at them.

Familiar.

The innkeeper, his face was calm in the storm.

He grabbed the other end. Together they lifted. The timber rose just enough.

“Move!” Jackson barked.

She rolled sideways, pain flaring white-hot through her ribs. The beam crashed down where she’d been. Sparks landed where she’d just lay. Flames caught anew and surged up the length of it.

“Get her outside,” he coughed to the innkeeper.

Then he was gone.

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Jackson didn’t hesitate. He lunged forward and grabbed Cody by the collar.

For one awful instant, the stain leaned toward them.

The air thickened. Ash and chalk lifted off the floor and spiraled inward.

Jackson felt his guts tighten.

The stink of stale whiskey breath rolled over him. He thought he could hear mocking laughter.

Jackson hauled. The moment Cody’s body was removed from its immediate vicinity, the tendrils evaporated.

Then a rush of winter-fresh air chilled his skin as the thing vanished.

The mill gave a long, splintering groan. The last warning they were going to receive, he thought.

Jackson peered through the smoke and saw the innkeeper carrying Darla out. Her head bounced with each step, but she peered back over his shoulder. Her eyes were locked on Cody.

“Move!” Jackson shouted.

They staggered toward the door, Cody bouncing along over Jackson’s shoulder.

The roof collapsed inward with a roar that swallowed every other sound.

They stumbled out into the yard as the mill folded in on itself, sparks shooting into the night like an angry swarm of fireflies.

Screams from inside as well as outside erupted.

Only flame remained.

He heard people yelling for water. Buckets. But it was too late.

Jackson saw Darla struggle to her knees on the hard dirt.

The innkeeper turned and looked like he was going to go back in until someone grabbed him.

Darla knelt and coughed hard enough gag. Jackson kept going and lowered Cody against the side of the DeSoto.

The remainder of the town was gathering at the edges of the yard now. Silent. Watching the mill burn.

Jackson helped Darla to the car, and Cody.

People coughed and wailed all around her. Jackson heard several people ask where Eleanor was and what had happened. Some questioned whether “it had worked or not”.

Darla looked up at Jackson. Her face was a smear of ash. Tears reflected the flames, brightening her eyes.

The kid’s eyes were open, but they stared right past her.

His fingers began moving slowly in the air. Tracing shapes.

He whispered. The words were sharp, guttural, wrong.

Jackson stared at him.

“What the hell did it do to him?”

Darla’s throat was too raw to answer. A few moments later, a doctor appeared with a leather case and offered to look at their injuries. He began cleaning and bandaging their wounds.

He looked up at Jackson and said, “who are you? Why are you here?”

“Just passing through,” he said. “Saw the fire and tried to help.”

It didn't look like the man bought it, but there wasn’t time for follow-up questions.

The dark-clad Chief stood beside his car talking into the handset. They’d have to wait until he was busy to make their getaway.

Behind them, a pair of explosions whumped, sending waves of sparks into the sky.

He looked back at the ruins. At the place where the stain had hovered. Then at Darla and Cody in the yellow light from the fire.

His fingers moved through the night air like a child drawing in the beach sand. But this seemed much less innocent.

A cold shiver seized him.

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Mike