The Bone House - Brian Freeman [146]
A tiny flame popped from the top of the lighter. There was an instant in which the entire room was nothing but that insignificant fire, no greater than the light of a candle. Then the flame found the gathering fumes, and the first fireball erupted, wispy and gaseous, burning itself out in an orange burst. Hilary and Amy leaped back. Katie held the lighter upright, still lit, and she tilted the neck of the gin bottle downward. The liquid streamed through the glass and became a silver waterfall splashing toward the flame.
'Get down!' Hilary screamed.
She threw herself and Amy toward the floor just as the alcohol struck the lighter. The flame defied gravity and shot upward in a burst of lightning into the bottle and turned it into a bomb. The heavy glass blew outward in a lethal explosion of needle-sharp shards. Katie's face and torso were instantly shredded. The fire latched on to the fuel on her clothes and skin and turned her into a column of flames. She spun like a dancer, her flesh charring, her body consumed. She screamed like a dying animal, but only until the fire sped down her throat and began eating her from inside out, choking off her voice as her lungs melted.
Hilary dragged Amy toward the windows on the opposite side of the room. She tore off the curtain rod, and the heavy fabric rippled to the ground. Outside, through the glass, the world glowed with the revolving red lights of police cars driving on to the lawn around them. Inside, the doorway leading out of the bedroom was engulfed in fire and impassable, as Katie's dying body became a pyre. Sparks arced toward the bed, smoldering on the linens.
Hilary tried to pry open the lock on the window, but it was painted shut and wouldn't move. She looked around the room and saw an antique brass lamp on the nightstand closest to her. She grabbed it with both arms, dragging the cord out of the socket and winding up as if she was holding a baseball bat.
'Duck!' she shouted at Amy.
The girl dropped to the floor. Hilary threw the lamp into the window, and it burst with a singing clatter. The lamp disappeared down to the ground below them, leaving jagged knives of glass clinging to the wooden frame. Air rushed in, feeding the fire, which gnawed closer to them as it spread across the bed and climbed the walls. Searing heat burned their faces. Sparks exploded like fireworks to the ceiling and fell inches away at their feet.
Hilary bunched the fallen curtains around her hands and knocked the remaining fragments from the window. She looked out through the open square, seeing lights and vehicles drawing closer, feeling the cold of the wind and the wet rain tease the heat of the fire, and seeing the waving branches of the nearest maple beckoning to her like a rescuer. The ground was a long distance below them.
She thrust Amy toward the window. 'Jump! Jump for the tree!'
'What about you?' Amy shouted as she squeezed her body into the frame.
'Jump!'
Amy leaped forward, arms outstretched, and disappeared into the arms of the air. Hilary glanced over her shoulder in time to see the entire room burst like a red ball and surge toward her. She forced her torso through the window opening and wedged her foot on the bottom of the frame. She felt a scorching heat erupt on her back, and she knew she was on fire. She didn't look down.
Hilary jumped.
She felt the tree branches stabbing her as they took her into their arms. Her fingers grasped like claws, and she found one thick branch with her hand, only to have it peeled away by gravity as she fell. She clung to another for a split second before her weight dislodged it, and it broke with a crack, sending her downward. Another branch