Epilogue
Cole Walker
I heard about the fire at Blackthorn Manor the way everybody else did: on the news.
It was the late-night edition because I can never sleep, but as soon as I saw the name Blackthorn on the ticker on the bottom of the screen, I sat bolt upright in my recliner and turned the volume up to ten.
They called it a conflagration, which is just a fancy word for fucking huge.
I watched the dramatic images of enormous flames devouring a sprawling structure in the woods in frozen fascination, until I came back to my senses, packed a bag, and got a few hours’ sleep in.
First thing in the morning, I set out in my Chevy for the long drive from Burlington to a sleepy little town called Solstice.
When I arrive, the sun is just setting over the craggy rim of the purple mountains. It’s a beautiful November evening, clear and cold, crisp and windless.
Of course, the press are swarming the scene, the maggots.
I push my way through the jostling crowd of looky-loos and cameras and flash my credentials at the cop standing guard in front of the big iron gate.
He doesn’t want to let me in, so I drop a few names of guys I know in local law enforcement and tell him I’m Maven Blackthorn’s PI, even though technically, she fired me.
When that doesn’t make him budge, I slip him some cash.
Works like a charm.
I can’t blame him. Public servants are all grossly underpaid.
The forensic team is already on site, picking through the smoking hulk of the mansion. It took a dozen rigs from four surrounding city stations to douse the blaze.
The trucks are still parked on the property, red lights flashing. The scene has the chaotic feeling of a circus whose animals have all broken loose from their cages to stampede through the big top, terrorizing guests.
I pull aside an investigator and ask him what he knows.
“So far? Not much. The paramedics took away two people in an ambulance, an adult female and a kid. We also got a few adult bodies inside.”
He flashes a grin. “Barbequed, so we don’t know what genders yet.”
He’s excited by the gore, the freaky fucker.
“Any preliminary ideas about cause?”
“Talk to him.” He points at a young guy in a cop’s uniform, then walks away to converse with another investigator.
The cop is too green to know to keep his mouth shut. He’s so eager to talk, I only have to introduce myself and say I worked for the family to get him going.
“Oh, man, it’s crazy, isn’t it? Place as ancient and badly ventilated as this one was, you got a recipe for disaster right there.
All those wood-burning fireplaces and sealed-up windows, you know?
It’s actually a miracle it didn’t happen sooner.
Those gases build until you got a toxic cloud so flammable, all it takes is a match to blow the whole place to Mars. ”
He’s so excited, he’s bouncing on his toes.
“Gases?”
He nods. “Carbon monoxide. Maybe methane, too. Solstice has high concentrations of it in the soil, which is probably why everyone around here’s so nuts.
We won’t know for sure about the methane for a while, but first responders who found the victims did a pulse oximeter test on them to confirm the CO.
Levels were through the roof. They talked to the family doctor, too.
Apparently, the woman was suffering from severe symptoms of CO poisoning when he examined her recently, but he misdiagnosed it as flu.
“He’s feeling pretty guilty, but the symptoms are the same, you know?
Dizziness, headache, nausea, all that shit.
Confusion, too. I had a friend in the academy whose sister had carbon monoxide poisoning in college.
Said she felt like death before they finally figured out what was going on.
Hallucinated a bunch of crazy shit, too, angels and demons and monsters crawling up the walls.
Real spooky stuff. Back in olden times, they probably woulda thought she was possessed, talking that shit. ”
I think of how convinced Maven was that Ronan Croft was conducting illegal experimental human trials in the basement of his family church, how frantic she sounded—crazy, if I’m being honest—and nod.
“Do you know the name of the person the doctor examined?”
“Maven, I think? Weird name, if you ask me.”
Looking at the smoking hulk of blackened stone and smoldering timber that used to be Blackthorn Manor, I say absently, “It means a person with a high level of knowledge. An expert. It’s Hebrew.”
“Huh.” He thinks for a second. “Hebrew, like in the Bible?”
I give him a look that makes him shut up.
Embarrassed, he wanders off, leaving me standing alone on the rutted dirt driveway choked with weeds, gazing at the smoking shell of the house.
I know it’s only my imagination that makes me think that blackened ruin is somehow staring right back at me … and plotting.
Something moving fast in my peripheral vision makes me turn and look up at the sky. For an instant, I glimpse a huge and monstrous black form winging between the stars, but when I blink, it’s gone.
With a shiver running down my spine, I turn around and head back toward the gate.
From its perch on an iron bench across the yard, a red fox watches me go with preternatural golden eyes, canines flashing as it smiles.