Too pretty to burn
There had been many theories about how she had been murdered.
The first one started when they found her at the bottom of the cliffside, body laid flat as if she had been sleeping when her life was taken from her. It wasn’t what Constable George was expecting when his partner had told him that socialite Lucy Mills had been found dead—he expected a more gruesome murder scene on Mount Hope and had mentally prepared himself for it. Now, with Ms. Mills on her back with her hands positioned across her chest like a prayer, it almost felt… disappointing.
The second theory started when Doctor Hagan Mills didn’t cry at his wife’s funeral. Of course, the good people of Barton, Arkansas said that it was something to do with a shock to his system, but I knew better. I wondered better. In fact, I got the distinct impression that Doctor Mills knew what had killed Lucy, and that his fingerprints were all over her death record. He may even have been in cahoots with Constable George, but that was a depth far beyond what I was capable of getting involved in.
The final theory, one that felt the most far-fetched, was that Lucy Mills had been pushed. Of course, Constable George had immediately and completely wiped his hands of that theory because of the lack of relevant broken bones in Ms. Mills’ body, but her shattered hyoid bone indicated strangulation according to the newspapers. It was the first time I’d ever seen the Barton Sentinel report on a murder, a death, a prominent passing like the one of Lucy Mills. Especially with the details the reporters went into in the city newspapers.
Everyone was mystified.
Everyone but me.
That’s because when I put Lucy Mills’ body in the incinerator after her family verified her identity for the final time, she didn’t burn. In fact, like so many of the Barton women who pass away at the bottom of Mount Hope, she was fit to walk out of the funeral home as if nothing had happened. At least, that’s how it looked to me. Because I could still see her there, plain as daybreak, in the Sunday dress that Doctor Mills had chosen for her cremation outfit. There were no char marks on the hem of the fabric, no burns on her hands, no blackening of the skin. She was just as she was when she was found. Hands crossed, body flat, eyes closed. Too pretty to burn, not pretty enough to stop time, the clock on the wall still ticking away.
But when Lucy Mills sits up on the gurney table, I lower the flame and look at her and smile.
“Well now, what do we have here?”
Ms. Mills narrows her eyes before she laughs, brushing some errant ash from her dress that must have flickered onto her clothing with the heat.
“I guess you’re The Almighty. I’ve heard about you.”
I can’t help but laugh, running a hand through my long hair, sticky with sweat and heat. “Oh, Ms. Mills. Please, we’re far beyond formalities now that you’re here. I’ve told you not to call me that.”
“Do they think I’m gone?” The blonde woman grins, showing off a tiny gap between her two front teeth. Her hand gestures absently toward the door, like she’s making a flippant wave.
I dial down the switch to turn the flame off, the temperature of the room still stifling the two of us as we approach one another in the furnace room. We take one another into our arms, her lithe body hot and explosive in the stagnant summer afternoon while mine feels as if it’s going to need to be peeled from the thick yellow dress she’s wearing.
“Absolutely.”
Lucy chuckles to herself more than to me, running her fingers through the tangled waves of my hair. “I can’t believe you managed to do this again. And again, and again and again. Soon all the women of Barton will have their escape.”
“Maybe not all of them, my love.” There’s a wilted tone to my voice. “Maybe just most of them.”
“Come now, Kit, you’ll have your leave of this impediment. We’ll find someone with the gift of Mount Hope and allow you to convince them to trade places. You can’t expect to be stuck here for eternity.”
My life for eternity here in my own personal hell. I made a deal with the devil, and not the kind of devil you’d expect. He looked nothing like the devils in movies, nothing like the demons in romances that I’d read about. This fiend was a perfectly presentable, reasonable, average person who bought me off with the idea of forever and a promise of perpetuity. I still bear his mark on my wrist, a slice of my skin that’s missing and has been since the time when he decided he was done with me. But I wasn’t done with him, and that’s the part that hurt the most. That’s what brought me here, to the furnaces of Barton, where I was told through gossip and southern rumors that I could save others from Doctor Hagan Mills.
I have a gift—an adaptation—for fire. And the women in Barton have a custom for not burning, which is a brilliant and beautiful thing.
Lucy looks at me and clears her throat, a little puff of acrid smoke coming from between her lips. “Kit? You okay?”
“I’m fine, Lucy. Just… thinking.”
“A dangerous pastime.”
“A dazzling skill to have though, especially for someone as dreary and wearisome as a furnace worker.” I swipe at my brow, wondering for a moment if I’ve just gotten ash all over my forehead instead of wiping away the heat.
Lucy grins again, twirling her hair around a single finger. “What shall my pastime be, then? Knitting? Sewing? Pushing people off cliffs?”
“Whatever you want it to be. You can haunt your ex-husband during the nights for all I care. I just… I just request that some of those nights be spent with me.”
She slides her hand up my bare arm, allowing me the opportunity to feel the gooseflesh crawl from my hand to my elbow to my shoulder. She’s always been able to touch me, though most of the time when we’ve connected, it’s been the briefest of moments, in secret. But now, now I’m the only one who can see her other than the other women who I’ve cured of Barton and Doctor Mills; seven women, seven wives now, seven mysterious deaths from Mount Hope. At least, seven who I’ve been able to save. I don’t know how many more were taken elsewhere—out of state, perhaps—under the guise of an evening blue or a midnight black where their lives were stolen in ways that I wouldn’t have been able to save in the first place.
You’d think at some point that there would be suspicions around the murders. But instead of uncertainties, there were more marriages. One after another after another, as if women were cattle or robots or broodmares only meant for the satisfaction of one man who ruled the town with fear and lust and money.
Thankfully, with Lucy, I knew he was going to kill her in advance. I was able to whisper sweet somethings into his dreams from the fireplace in his bedroom, convincing him that another murder on Mount Hope would never get examined. That Constable George would be convinced to look the other way with money and madness. And because I managed to find a way to speak through the fire, I was able to talk to Lucy, make our plans, soothe her, and convince her that life would be better after death.
Though the concept of death may be terrifying, it must be less terrifying than loving the wrong person for an eternity.
“Kit?” The way Lucy says my name sounds like music, a sing-song lilt to her voice that echoes around the room off the stony walls. “You don’t look well.”
My forehead has begun sweating more than it was earlier, the heat in my cheeks turning my skin a bright red despite not being able to see it. I feel warm, too warm, an intense heat from the furnace room despite the furnace itself not being turned on. I run a hand along the back of my neck, droplets gathering on my fingertips like a tiny river. I’m too hot. My skin prickles with what feels like heatstroke, figurative ants crawling along my arm hairs and making me uncomfortable.
Lucy’s expression doesn’t change, the smile still on her face, even as small watery blisters form on my hands and my arms where I had touched her. It must have been all from the heat of her skin, from the flames, the way she didn’t burn but still absorbed the heat. Even if she’s dead, I’m not, and I must still avoid the flames, even though I can control them, see through them, speak through their power.
“I think—I think I burnt myself.”
I run a boiling finger over my wrist, trying to feel for my pounding pulse, the echo in my ears cascading down my spine and settling somewhere in my feet until I can no longer stand. I find myself collapsing to the stone floor of the furnace, eyes blurry, brain banging against my skull as if it suddenly needs to escape from the fever inside of my body. I hit the ground with a noisy thud, and Lucy doesn’t even attempt to catch my fall. She allows me to crash and burn—the scent of flesh and crumbling hair irritating my nose despite the fact that I’m probably more familiar with the aroma than most.
“Lucy…” I manage to whimper out her name, the delirium of the sudden fever making it difficult for me to know which way is up, where the chimney faces, and what direction the door is in. “Open the door. I need air.”
But Lucy doesn’t open the door back to the main building. Instead, she reaches for the dial next to the incinerator. The flames quickly lick out of the open door, curling around the steel entrapment, filling the furnace room with smoke and ash and unbearable heat. Salty sweat gets into my eyes as I try to turn over and crawl away from the high temperature, but Lucy’s fingers hold me by the ankles, slowly pulling me with a laugh toward the opening in the wall. What is she doing? She’s hardly supposed to be real, and she certainly isn’t supposed to be capable of this… whatever this is.
I scream at the fire to stop, I whisper at Lucy to obey, but everything is overpowering: the flames, the heat, the very familiar sound of the devil’s voice in my furnace room when he asks me a final question, “Kit, where do you think you’re going?”
I want to tell him that I’m escaping, escaping from Barton, from Mount Hope, from everywhere near him, but I can’t. The words don’t come out because soon enough, I don’t have lips to speak and I’m nothing more than ash and fire and flame and a leftover marriage that ceases to exist where Lucy has become eternal.
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