Slow Dance in Purgatory(70)

A huge crash shook the rotunda, and glass shattered and popped above them from the heat. Johnny had to get Maggie out of the school. Honeyville hadn’t had much of a fire department fifty years ago, and he was guessing she still didn’t. If there were firemen here, no doubt they were concentrating their efforts on the East end, hoping to keep the fire from spreading and consuming the whole school. They wouldn’t succeed. The fire burned like a raging disease, and he could feel the school succumbing. When it finally fell, so would he.

Maggie was clinging to him, and her breathing was labored. He had to get her out, now.

“I love you, Johnny,” she whispered hoarsely. Her eyes were rimmed in red but they spoke the truth. “I won’t leave you.”

“I love you too, Maggie. Never forget that. Hold on to me now, baby.” With a guttural war cry, Johnny gathered every ounce of energy available to him and blasted through the front door, Maggie held securely in his arms.

Maybe it was the force with which he hurled himself into the void, but he was not repelled like before. He felt the swarm descend on him instantly– that writhing black mass of something Other devouring him as he pushed into the barrier between Purgatory and hell that had held him bound. He clung to Maggie, to her sweetness, to her goodness, and to his pure intent to save her life at all cost. He kept moving. He felt the splintering, all-consuming blackness curl around him and within him. Just one more step…and then one more…he felt himself disintegrating and his thoughts scatter into nonsense as he surrendered himself to the demands of death. But still he pushed forward, with her cradled against him, until there was only oblivion.

***

Chaos was rampant beyond the shaky perimeter the local police and fire fighters had erected. The ten kids who were responsible for starting the blaze had been detained and were in varying states of shock and hysteria. Parents had been called, on-lookers blocked the roads, and every Honeyville policeman was present, and their flashing lights adding to the surreal atmosphere of tragedy and mayhem. The police were trying to question the teens while maintaining order of the growing crowds lining the perimeter. The local fire crew and their small fire truck shot a steady blast of water into the fiercest section of the fire, and the trucks and crews from nearby towns had arrived to help, but there weren’t resources, training, or manpower sufficient for the inferno before them. Amidst all of this, Irene Honeycutt Carlton cried and begged for someone to help her niece, who was believed to still be inside the school.

Gus Jasper had tried to go back inside for Maggie after he had wobbled outside with his grandson on his back, but he’d been forcibly restrained and had fought his detainment until he’d collapsed and had to be carried to the ambulance where his grandson was already being treated. So Irene continued to plead with whomever would listen - soot and tears leaving grimy grooves down her cheeks. But her cries fell on helpless ears.

The police and firemen were doing all they could. No one had actually seen Maggie inside the school or even entering the school, although her haphazardly parked car was a good indication that she was there. At Irene’s insistence, several attempts had been made before the firemen had been called out and all manpower was concentrated on fighting the fire. The fire chief couldn’t continue to send men into a building of that size and scope, with no idea where to look, while fire blazed around them.

To those gathered watching the high school go up in flames, it seemed as if the girl simply appeared through the smoke and ash. It was late – almost one a.m. on Saturday morning, but the sky was lit with a red glow and filtered orange light shown through the haze. A shout went up among those closest to the perimeter.

“There’s someone there!”

“Look! There’s someone coming out of the school!”

“Is it two people?”

For a moment the crowd was still, all eyes peering through the smoke that camouflaged the figures that appeared and then were lost again in the haze. Then the shouts went up again.

“Someone is being carried!” The waves of heat created a mirage that made the girl look as if she were floating above the earth or being carried in the arms of providence. And then she was down, tumbling across the ground as if she had been tossed from the bowels of hell.

“She’s fallen! Someone help her!”

Three firemen closest to the unfolding drama threw down their hose and raced toward the crumpled form. Just as they reached her, the whole right side of the school collapsed in on itself, shaking the entire structure and sending the huge beams that ringed the center rotunda domino-ing over like toy blocks. The firemen scooped up the unconscious girl and ran for their lives as heavy debris and fiery ash rained down around them.





20


“RETURN TO ME”

Dean Martin - 1958





The school was a blackened shell when the firemen eventually doused the last burning ember. The east wing was a pile of rubble and glass; the west wing was still standing but it looked gutted and skeletal. Only the rotunda that jutted out from the front of the school had escaped being consumed by fire, but it had been reduced to a heap of beams and balconies that had crumpled when the east wing collapsed. The firemen were beyond weary, their suits and faces slick with soot and sweat, their eyes kohl rimmed and bloodshot, their countenances grim. The popular old Mayor of Honeyville had arrived in the early morning hours and had held vigil along with an ambulance, several police officers, and the principal of the school – watching as the stately edifice completely succumbed to fire. It was all the more shocking to behold as the cheerful winter sun began to peek its rosy face over the eastern hills, lightening the sky, mocking the devastation before them.