PROLOGUE
BEFORE THE DARK
November 13, 1976
With only minutes to live, he crawled, covered in blood, up his basement steps. Moaning and grunting with the effort, he pulled himself over the threshold into the kitchen, closed the door behind him, and secured the metal bolt. He would have prayed for the bolt to hold, but he was too tired.
At thirty-six, he was a young man, healthy, full of vigor, handsome, but sprawled across the kitchen floor, he looked like a man twice his age. His loose, wrinkled skin was the color of ash. His face was smeared with soot and blood that plastered his short black hair tight to his skull. His normally clear blue eyes were glazed, jacked wide with fear. They darted in every direction, scanning everything and nothing.
He dragged himself across the green linoleum, leaving a wide smear of blood as his bony hands clawed for purchase, fighting for every inch. When he reached the oven, he opened the door and turned the gas to HIGH. With that done he had little left to do but sit and wait and apply what pressure he could to the vertical gash that ran from his abdomen to his sternum.
A river of warm blood flowed through his thin fingers as he sat listening for the footsteps that would eventually come. For now all he heard was the hiss of gas and the crackle of the fire eating its way through the basement ceiling.
Maybe she was dead, he thought. Maybe ...
His breathing grew shallower, his heart slowed, coming down off the adrenaline boost that had got him up off that basement floor and all the way to the kitchen. His sight grew dim, curling in at the edges. Soon he would sleep.
A coil of barbed wire shivered in his belly, ripping him back to this world when the first footstep dropped heavily onto the riser in the basement. His heart trip-hammered, slamming painfully against the cage of his ribs. His body shook violently.
The footsteps grew closer as they charged up the stairs. The wounded man imagined its legs moving like pistons as it picked up speed with every step. He braced himself.
The impact nearly ripped the door off its hinges. The solitary bolt bent in its cradle. The door showered splinters of wood and plaster dust, but it held.
The other side of the door was where chaos lived.
The frenzied thing flew into a rage, fuelled by frustration and survival, clawing at the door, digging its nails into the wood, slamming its body against the frame again and again as tendrils of black smoke curled into the kitchen through the gaps between the basement door and its frame.
He couldn’t move even if he had wanted to. And he wanted to, desperately. The door creaked and groaned as the bombardment wore down its defenses. He felt the heat of the flames climbing the stairs. He choked and coughed as he swallowed smoke. His vision swam from breathing the gas. He wondered how long the door would last. Would it be long enough?
The door shuddered violently with one last blow, and a two- foot crack ripped up the center. A pale arm snaked through the gap, its little fingers searching wildly for the locking bolt. The man whispered. It wasn’t a prayer exactly, more of a plea. He begged forgiveness, for what exactly he wasn’t sure. But there was nothing left to do. He hoped God would understand.
The pale hand found the bent bolt and slipped it out of its cradle. The door swung wide. Darkness and light flooded in together. The figure was clothed in flame as it charged across the kitchen floor, arms outstretched, reaching, searching, screaming.
The man whispered, “I’m sorry.”
In the next breath, a hurricane of flame obliterated the house.
