The Last of the Moon Girls(100)

“You,” he slurred, as he continued to close the distance between them. “You think you’re so smart. Coming back here after all these years, poking around in things that are none of your business. Like you’re goddamn Columbo or something.”

“Heather and Darcy Gilman are my business.”

“And my sister-in-law—she your business too? And my brother?”

Lizzy sidled to her left, another step closer to her phone. “I never really knew Hollis—”

“Don’t you say his name to me! Don’t you ever say his name!” He dropped his head as if suddenly exhausted. “You should have stayed gone.”

“Is that what you came to tell me last night? That I should have stayed gone?”

Dennis lifted his head, eyes glittering. “I didn’t come to tell you anything.”

“I know,” Lizzy said quietly, unnerved by the admission. He’d said it without blinking. Like a man with nothing to lose. “The police found your knife.”

“I gave you three chances!” he bellowed at her. “Three chances to leave it alone. That stupid doll and the note. Burning down the shed. When none of that worked, I showed up with a knife. But you just kept poking, asking your questions. That stops now.” He was sweating heavily, and paused long enough to drag a sleeve across his face. “A man protects his family. My old man taught me that. Took a while, but I get it now. A man does what he has to.”

Lizzy squared her shoulders, refusing to be cowed. “So does a woman.”

Dennis’s mouth curled unpleasantly. “I wonder if you’ll think it was worth it.”

The glint in his pale eyes turned Lizzy’s blood cold. She wasn’t sure what the remark meant, but she wasn’t sticking around to find out. She darted to her left, grabbing blindly for her phone, then wheeled back to her right, ducking as he lunged for her.

She was almost in the clear, her eyes on the door, when Dennis caught her arm and jerked her back. Terrified, she flailed at him with both arms, managing to land a solid blow to his chest, another to his left cheek.

In the end she was no match for his size and strength. Her head snapped back as his fist connected with her jaw, the white-hot crack of pain all but blinding her as she went down. She lay sprawled on her back, her jaw throbbing like a pulse, the taste of blood metallic on her tongue. Black spots danced at the edges of her vision as she attempted to get up. At some point during the struggle she’d lost her phone.

Dennis stood nearby, his face sheened with sweat, a welt already forming on his left cheek. He looked on dispassionately as Lizzy struggled to get to her knees. He craned his neck, running his eyes around the barn, finally coming to rest on the workbench. He stepped closer, picking things up, putting them down again.

“Some setup you’ve got here,” he said with a lazy smile. “Some flammables, I see.” The smile widened as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a lighter. He flicked it briefly for effect. “Be a shame if there was an accident.”

Panic fizzed through Lizzy’s limbs, the hot-and-cold prickle of adrenaline surging through her arms and legs. The room spun as she dragged herself to her feet. There seemed to be two of everything, like binoculars out of focus. For a moment she thought she might be sick, but the sensation vanished when she saw Dennis unzip his jacket and reach inside.

Her throat convulsed when she spotted the bottle of red liquid, a rag stuffed into its neck. The investigators had found one just like it among the ashes of the shed. He inverted the bottle several times, soaking the rag. Lizzy caught the oily reek of kerosene as some of the liquid trickled through his fingers, down his sleeve, and onto the floor.

“Dennis, please.” The pain in her jaw was so excruciating she thought she might black out. She grabbed the edge of the workbench to steady herself, willing herself to stay conscious, to keep him talking. “You don’t want to do this.”

He looked at her with a twisted smile, then took a step back. “Don’t I?”

“The police know everything,” she blurted, scanning the bench for something, anything, she might use as a weapon. “They know why Hollis killed himself. They know about the doll and the note, and that you burned the orchard. They have one of the torches you used to start the fire. If you do this, they’ll know it was you. They’ll put it together, and they’ll come for you.”

“It won’t matter by then.” Lizzy was stunned to see tears in his eyes. He blinked hard, but they spilled anyway. He smeared them away with the heel of his hand. “We paid enough, Hollis and me. Hollis most of all. It was supposed to be over. Paid in full. Now here you are, wanting us to pay all over again. Only that ain’t how this is going to go.” He paused, staring through her suddenly, his eyes dull and far away. “They say the only way to kill a witch is to burn her.” He paused again, taking another step back, then gave the lighter a flick. “A man does what he has to.”

“Noooo!”

Lizzy watched in horror as Dennis brought the kerosene-soaked rag toward the flame, aware in some terrified corner of her mind that she had slipped into one of those fractured moments when nothing seems real, when everything speeds up, and at the same time slows down, flickering one horrifying frame at a time.

The beaker felt cool as her fingers closed around it. An instant’s hesitation, a ribbon of fear, and then it was airborne. She watched, transfixed, as it arced cleanly toward its target, a tail of alcohol in its wake, then erupted in a rush of blue flame as it connected with the lighter in Dennis’s hand. His sleeve caught first, quick tongues licking up the spilled kerosene. He stared at it, eyes wide and blank, as if he were stunned to find himself on fire. Eventually, he began to flail, beating wildly at his jacket as the flames spread, blue-orange and hungry.