Page 87 of Girl, Haunted

‘Don’t give me that rubbish. I’m not insane. I know I’ve been haunted for years.’

‘Sure you have. Ghosts are just the things we can’t let go. Mistakes, failures. If you kill us all now, there’s no afterlife for us. Just ashes to the wind and four wasted lives.’

For a heartbeat, it seemed her words had found their mark. Marrow's arm dipped and aimed the gun at the floor. Ella held her breath.

'The only way to get rid of these ghosts is to face them head-on, so…'

Vincent stared at Ella but looked beyond her. Luca held up three fingers, then two.

Ella readied herself. Her plans usually had fifty-fifty odds, but this one was barely twenty-eighty. The fulcrum point between salvation and damnation.

Showtime.

One finger.

‘Ella, now!’ Luca screamed.

He lunged; wrapped his free hand around Marrow's wrist and wrenched it skyward. The pistol barked once, twice. Bullets shrieked off the rafters in a hail of splinters as Ella stormed shoulder-first into Marrow’s mid-section. The main was frail, bony, easy to take down, but as they pounded against the floor in a tangle of limbs, Vincent was still clutching his weapon.

And in the chaos, she missed his final desperate gambit.

The bark of a gunshot, far too close. Then, with a whoosh like the devil's own breath, the world ignited. Flames roared to lifeand greedily devoured the gasoline racing across the floor with terrifying speed.

But Ella couldn't stop. Wouldn't. Not with Marrow squirming beneath her like a snake. She reared back and smashed her knuckles into his nose. Cartilage crunched; blood sprayed. A vicious elbow to the temple and the gun skittered from Marrow's spasming fingers. Ella's eyes frantically searched for Luca, and her heart seized when she saw him.

Flames engulfed his lower half. He violently writhed in the seat as Redmond hauled the entire chair up and threw it away from the flames, Luca's body still attached. Redmond dove on top of him and began wrestling with the restraints. Ella couldn't process the damage because the heat and the roar of flames ravaged her sight and hearing. The world was a blur of reds and oranges as fire picked its way up the walls and spread across props dangling from ceilings. Black smoke choked the air.

‘Get out of here!’ she vaguely heard someone scream. Luca or Redmond, she wasn’t sure. It meant at least one of them was alive.

‘Luca! Sheriff!’ Ella screamed.

Redmond’s voice carried on the flames. ‘Hawkins is free! Get out! Quick!’

Ella staggered upright with a wheezing Marrow at her feet. There was no time for cuffs, no time for threats. The child’s bed ten feet away was now pumping out a tornado of black smoke that had Ella’s eyes flooding.

She reached out to grab Marrow, but the scumbag twisted out of her grip. With a snarl that was more animal than human, he crawled deeper into the flames.

‘Marrow!’ Ella screamed.

For a single, surreal instant, she saw his silhouette flailing against the wall of fire. Then the flames swallowed him whole.

A solid hand clutched her shoulder. The Sheriff’s. ‘Ella, come on! This whole place is coming down!’

Marrow was suddenly no longer her concern. No time to think. No time to process the screams, the smell of roasting human meat. She needed to check on Luca to make sure he was still breathing. Everything else could go to hell.

So she ran then, stumbling and half-blind, sucking in great lungfuls of scorching air. The fire chased her and Redmond, licking at their heels, but somehow they made it to the door, bursting out into the cool night like divers surfacing from the depths. They landed on a dirt patch outside. Ella crawled over to her body’s body, reached out, grabbed Luca’s wrist and squeezed.

‘Luca! Are you okay?’

Movement. He rolled, grabbed her wrist with a seared hand.

Alive. Maybe with a few second-degree burns, but alive.

‘Sheriff, get medics here now!’

Flames pierced the barn and rose into the night sky, and somewhere in that inferno, Vince Marrow met his demise.

Ella's stomach lurched. Bile rose to the surface. She’d left him. Monster as he was, she’d left him to burn to death.

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