Stations of the Angels

Clarence

When I was fourteen my family moved into a burning house. The movers complained of the smoke but we handed out masks, opened windows and set up fans to keep the conflagration towards the back. Mom organized us kids in a bucket-line to splash water into the kitchen so they could start unloading the silver-ware and china plates. We took it for a game, drenching each other more than the flames.

Soon as we could we dropped our buckets and dodged into the smoke to explore. We found a stone-lined basement the fire never seemed to visit, and a living room with a light continual shower of sparks from rooms above. A door beyond led to a library with shelves of bug-husk shells of burned books. I picked one up, scanned the ashen title: “The Great Gatsby”. We’d had that in English last year. When I put it back it crumbled to ash.

On the floor lay a yellowed copy of Blake. The pages looked singed and soaked, soaked and singed, tempered to some state beyond destruction. I picked it up, read of tigers and anvils, brains and hammers. I put it on the shelf in the ashes of Gatsby.

We ran out into the main hall before the stairs. Crystals of a chandelier tinkled faintly in the winds of flame, the slight continual shaking of the house. On the wide stairway, tendrils of smoke poked between steps, gray weeds in the cracks of the path. We raced up laughing and coughing.

The second story offered branching halls and mysterious rooms. Only the south wing burned in open flame. We leaped through curtains of white smoke, feet kicking heavier wafts that slunk along the floor for black snakes. We chose random doors, flung them open. My sister Alice found a room centered by the charred skeleton of a grand piano. We gathered around it, studying the charcoal sketch of legs and wires and keys. She tapped an E-minor and the construction collapsed.

“No more piano practice,” cheered my sisters, dancing upon the ruin. “Die, tyrant!”

I shook my head. “Mom will find something fireproof. Just wait.”

A shelf held a French horn; brass circle heat-warped to a ‘?’. When I coughed a few notes the sound came out a battle cry; not against fire but against dust and ash and opposition to glorious conflagration. With that C-sharp call to attack we ran back into the smoke.

Down the hall I pulled open a door to find racks of yellow fireman’s coats and asbestos boots. Alice hissed. “Don’t show mother or she’ll make us wear them. Ugh.” I agreed but put on a bright red hat; I thought it reasonably not-nerdish for a boy. I’d been a fireman for Halloween two years past.

We argued over the second-floor bedroom overlooking the garden, where a beautiful oak flamed. We each separately and secretly noticed how one of the smoldering branches came within reach of the window. Perfect for sneaking out at night. Not by dark, alas; flames would turn the garden to eternal day.

“Said ‘dibs’ first,” I said first, same time as Alice said “Said dibs first”.

“Liar you coughed,” she lied, coughing.

"Did, didn’t, didn’t, did,” we shouted, and then realized the others had gone on in search of prizes we risked missing. We raced up stairs launching pre-emptive ‘dibs’.

The third floor felt older, darker; with the musty-dusty smoky-smell of a fire-pit. Floors and walls were burned black and hard as the back-bricks of a chimney. Window-glass rippled warped from endless meltings till they seemed panes of ice, reforming sunshine to folded cloths of light upon the floor. I wiped soot from a pane and peered out. The house across the road stood a wonder of peace and cool shadows. I studied it. Big and old as our new home; and not a spark flew up, not a puff of smoke for sign of life.

Then a face appeared in one of the windows; pale and oval, framed by dark hair, pools of cool thought for eyes. A girl, who stared at me as I stared at her. She seemed antique, peering out from another time. A young face in the faded photo of an antique locket. The warped glass denied me a clearer view.

“Who lives over there?” I asked.

“Dunno,” said my mom, coming up the stairs with an armful of wet towels. She began tamping down the floor and hall. A patch of sparks hissed like an angry cat. “Maybe no one. The real-estate agent mentioned it’s haunted. You kids steer clear after dark.” My parents were not over-protective types. Haunted. The word gave me a shiver. I looked through the window again. The face was gone.

My father shouted that neighbors were at the door. We rushed down the stairs, grown wise to covering our mouths from smoke, ducking showers of sparks. Dad held a great cardboard box, staggering in search of some place to set it neither damp nor fiery. “It’s the family from the fun-house,” he coughed.

That house? Cobbled from slides and merry-go-rounds, distorted mirrors and inflatable rooms, with a giant clown-face for a front and a gaping red-grin for an entrance. Gave the creeps just to drive past. We opened the door expecting harlequins with pies. But no, we faced a puritan gathering in black clothes and serious attitudes, bearing fresh-baked bread, tin-foil wrapped. A boy my age greeted us; called my mother ma’am, called our father sir. My sisters and I exchanged glances. Obviously living in a fun house drilled into one a certain sense of seriousity.

“Sinclair,” he said, offering me a hand to shake.

“Clarence,” I said, shaking his, feeling very grownup. I straightened my fireman’s hat, worried I looked a kid in costume. “C’mon, help me explore.” We raced off into the smoke. Our mothers shouted not to get our clothes burned, smudged, torn, smoked, dampened, singed nor any other adverb-state of change and destruction.

“I’ve been here before,” he shouted over the smoke-alarm-shrieks. “Did you find the game room?”

I shrugged, annoyed he knew my house before I did. He dove down a hall into a curtain of sparks to reach a door I’d thought a closet. Beyond waited a stairway, spiraling up like some magic, secret path.

My sisters followed, and we spent an hour inventing games from burned remainders. Metal monopoly tokens moved upon a stone chessboard against charred ivory dominos, to win colored lumps of plastic poker pieces. Sinclair was fascinated with my sisters, letting them win. Inwardly I laughed. They’d eat him alive.

Finally the movers drove off, still swearing and sweating. Dad called us back to work. The rest of the day we spent unpacking, arguing which items to garage-sale before they burned or melted. Table linens and winter clothes went into the basement. Woolens and parkas seemed absurdities; costume pieces from the previous play. For dinner we ordered five large pizzas. We used moving-boxes for chairs, moving-boxes for tables. Why do they always forget the pepperonis? I won the coin-toss for the bedroom overlooking the garden. This victory made me nervous; Alice would plot revenge.

Mom helped me maneuver a fire-proof mattress upon the skeletal frame of the previous bed. I piled on sheets and my old summer-camp blanket, thinking it unlikely to get cold at nights. Definitely a plus, our last house was drafty. Smoke began wafting through one of the vents; she sighed and closed it; poured a bucket of water about the doorway to be safe, then told me to sleep.

I lay in bed listening to the south end of the house burn; a faint grumbling thrum of a purr. I watched the comforting dance of fire-light under the crack of the door. I wondered about the face of the girl in the window. I now lived across from a haunted house. I’d probably seen a ghost. Wow.