It felt as though an electric cable had been stripped and set loose inside him. He thrummed with indecision, but as his hand touched the keys and twisted the vehicle into silence, he knew that there would be no leaving what lay in the house behind. His imagination would never let him rest. Horrific vistas would appear each time he closed his eyes, blood-soaked corpses of people he once knew. Perhaps he’d eventually tell himself that he didn’t know them, that it was all a story he’d imagined. But figments don’t contain memories and ghosts always know how to find you.
The rain soaked him instantly as he stepped out into its stinging embrace. The lake drew his attention as he walked around the back of the Trailblazer. He had never seen it in such turmoil. A calm area could no longer be found on the surface. All was churning and boiling waves that frothed and seethed onto the shore. Foam flew into the air as the waves pounded against the exposed rocks, and for a moment Lance thought the water looked closer than it had that morning. Not from the turbulence that gripped it but just generally higher, a new line on the shore where it refused to relinquish its hold.
As he approached the house, Lance watched the darkened doorway for movement of any kind. He wished more than he ever had before that Ellen would appear with John in the background, smiles of the newly acquainted on their faces. Only an arc of lightning on the far side of the house revealed that the entry was empty, its space devoid of both living and dead.
The rain was a roaring inferno burning atop the house as Lance stepped onto the tile just inside the threshold. He threw a quick look into the bathroom to the right and saw nothing out of place in the dim light. He pushed the entry door shut behind him while his eyes roamed the visible portions of the rooms.
A dark oblong shape sat just past the entry on the floor. It looked flat and had a radiant shine to it like oil in moonlight.
Blood.
Lance edged through the entry and noticed a scent that assaulted his nose.
Gasoline.
The cloying vapors were thick in the house, and some other odor hung just below it. Lance eased forward and peeked into the living room to make sure nothing waited just beyond the archway. When he brought his scrutiny back to the puddle near the kitchen, he saw the boots. They were pointed up at the ceiling, as if the wearer had decided that this was as good as any place to take an overdue rest.
A sinking sensation plunged down to the lowest point in his bowels and his throat constricted. They were John’s boots. He had seen them propped up on the edge of his steps many times over the past month, a beer in the old man’s hand with a story partially told in the air around him. As Lance inched farther into the room, more and more of the scene came into view. The boots were attached to a pair of dark pants. Above the pants a dark shirt lay hiked up over a slice of pale belly. No, he was wrong. He realized the shirt had originally been white, now that he could see the upper section near the shoulders where a few spots still remained untouched. But the rest had been colored black with blood. Lance stepped closer and knelt beside the caretaker’s still form.