Page 47 of Shadows in Bloom

When I pulled him back, he was howling, the flesh of his face blackened, burnt, and bleeding profusely. The scent of his burning skin filled my nose before Justice’s high-pitched scream caught my attention.

I released my grip on Alex. His hands hovered over his face as he rocked back and forth, wailing cries spilling from his lips.

I ran down the stairs to the hidden door beneath the staircase and yanked it open. At the back of the small, dark space, Justice was huddled against the wall, tears streaming down his freckled cheeks. “Come on,” I said, reaching for his hand.

He shook his head, ragged breaths sawing in and out of his chest as he hyperventilated.

“It’s okay,” I encouraged, “I’ll help you get out.”

Slowly, he reached out, his hand almost in mine.

At the same time, I was yanked back, Alex’s hands tight around my throat as he dragged me away from Justice.

Sucking in a breath caused my lungs to fill with acrid smoke, and I began choking. As I heaved, I watched in horror as Alex dragged a kicking and screaming Justice from the space beneath the stairs.

“Fucking die!” Alex shouted. He shoved Justice towards the stairs where the timber balustrade was burning. Still choking and gasping, I took a step forward, but tripped on something and fell to my knees.

Head down, I stayed low and sucked in as much clean oxygen as I could manage.

When I finally looked up, Alex was holding Justice against the burning balustrade. Justice’s screams of pain fuelled my rage, and I leapt to my feet, using every ounce of strength I had to pull Justice from Alex’s grasp, and run.

As the ceiling caved in, flames engulfed us, and the smoke became so thick I had to close my eyes and blindly recall the way out.

By the time I reached the front yard, I was exhausted, and Justice was unconscious.

I dropped him face down on the grass and fell to my knees beside him, shaking him, and begging him to wake up before I was dragged away by a paramedic.

Two days later, I read the front page of the local newspaper…

BREAKING NEWS: HOUSE FIRE CLAIMS THE LIVES OF PARKLAKE FAMILY

A fire has claimed the lives of four members of a Parklake family. The blaze, still under investigation, engulfed the double storey, weatherboard house at around 3am on Wednesday morning.

Firefighters arrived on the scene to find smoke and flames billowing from the windows and roof.

Arnold and Susan Bane, their twenty-one-year-old daughter Jenny, and nineteen-year-old son Alex, perished in the blaze that’s left a close-knit community grief-stricken.

In a heroic act of bravery, nineteen-year-old Salem Frost, believed to be a friend of the family, raced into the burning home and dragged fourteen-year-old Justice from the inferno.

Justice was treated at the scene before being rushed to Parklake Heights Hospital where he remains in a critical condition with second and third-degree burns.

Our reporter on the scene spoke to shocked onlookers with one neighbour saying that the young man, Salem, “Just ran right into the burning house. We were shouting at him, begging him to stop. But he kept screaming, “I need to get Justice out, and he took off. A couple of the men tried to stop him, but he was determined.”

The community has gathered together to fundraise for fourteen-year-old Justice, while his extended family keep vigil by his hospital bedside.

A funeral for the Bane family will be held at Parklake Gardens Cemetery next Friday.

CHAPTER 13

SALEM

“Salem,” Justice whispers into the pillow.

With his head turned away from me, I can’t see his face. I stroke his hair, trailing my fingers down to the small burn marks on his neck from the shock collar.

“I’ll stay,” he says.

My hand freezes, my fingertips hovering above his neck.

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