Chapter 5: A Warm December Night

"Really?" said Justin. He jiggled the doorknob, tugged on it, but it was no good. "Eff..."

He backed away from the house, hoping to see a side door somewhere, but the place was just a tiny hut, probably no bigger than three or four rooms. There were no other houses in view, and he still couldn't see a road anywhere.

"Well, look on the bright side," he whispered. "At least you're not freezing. Couldn't ask for a nicer night to get locked out, really. A nice, warm... December night."

Justin cleared his throat. He tried the door again. If there really had been a party here last night, the parents weren't likely to be home, but if they were, pounding on the door in the middle of the night would not go over well. Never mind that this did not look like any front door he had ever seen before and there was no house number in sight. But that was too much to think about right now.

He had almost decided to pound on the door in spite of his reservations when he looked up from his phone and saw something he hadn't noticed at first. At the top of a nearby hill, about two hundred yards away, the black of night was broken by an orange flicker. Then he heard someone yelling.

Justin shoved his phone back into his pocket and moved cautiously through some ankle-high grass. He reached the hill and moved up the incline to get a better look. The yelling, wherever it was, was getting louder.

At the top of the hill, Justin looked down and saw what he thought at first was a massive bonfire. Then he noticed a group of men and women assembled in a line, passing buckets in a relay. They were tossing water into the raging flames one small pail at a time. Within the flames, Justin saw the outline of four walls, a chimney, and a glowing front door.

My God, thought Justin.

It was not a bonfire. It was someone's house.

***

Men and women rushed toward the fire, some joining the relay and others circling the building. A snapping sound erupted somewhere nearby, and Justin turned to see a wooden fence being pushed down by a herd of cattle panicked by the flames. The animals broke free from their pasture and stampeded past the fire, casting larger-than-life shadows over the ground as they fled into the night.

He heard rapid footsteps behind him, and a tall man in dark clothing suddenly materialized out of the shadows. The man raced past Justin and ran down the hill in long-legged strides. When he reached the site of the fire, he grabbed a member of the bucket relay by the collar and appeared to shake him for information. Then he dropped the poor fellow and sprinted straight at the burning house. He lowered his shoulder and broke through the front door, disappearing into a wall of fire. Men and women shouted in horror at the sight.

A few people tried to follow after the tall man but came up short of the door, shielding their faces. Justin watched from a distance, feeling his blood pulsating through his head like bass notes through a subwoofer.

"Justin!" someone yelled.

Justin turned. An elderly man was shuffling toward him. He had a long, thick white beard and wore black robes like a monk. He approached Justin and grabbed his shoulder in a bony grip.

"Where is he?" the old man said in alarm.

"The guy who just ran past?" said Justin. "He-he went into the building." Justin trailed off, pulling away from the old man's hand. "How do you know my-?"

But the old man was already hustling down the hill toward the fire. Justin followed.

As they neared the house, the sweat on Justin's forehead turned searing hot, and he wondered how the people with the buckets could stand to be so close to the fire. A flaming joist toppled outward, and the man at the front of the relay team dropped his bucket in surprise and stumbled backward, barely avoiding the falling wreckage as it slammed into the ground, spitting sparks and red coals. The rest of the line of people backed away, too, apparently recognizing that it was a losing battle.

The old man got closer to the fire, but Justin had to stop. The heat sucked the air from his lungs, hurt his skin, and made his eyes feel like they would melt like wax in their sockets. Flames fluttered from the windows. Whole sections of the roof had been eaten through. And the doorway where the tall man had disappeared was solid flame.

A shadow appeared in the doorway. A figure stepped out. It was the tall man-with a limp body slung over his shoulder.

As the tall man stepped forward, a support beam gave way with an ear-splitting snap. The roof caved in behind him. Fire reared up from the collapsed foyer in orange and yellow spectral arms, and the tall man dropped to his knees with the body still over his shoulder. Rescuers rushed forward and bludgeoned the flames riding his back as he laid the body on the ground: a young man in scorched clothing.

The young man lay unmoving for a few frightening seconds. Then his chest convulsed. He hacked out smoke, blinking rapidly.

The tall man sat down in the grass, coughing hard as everyone in the crowd tried to speak to him at once. But the old monk with the white beard elbowed his way to the front and shooed the rest away, barking, "Give him some room to breathe, would you?"

Justin looked at the tall man, and the tall man looked right back at Justin. The whites of his eyes looked bright against his face, which had turned licorice black either from soot or charred flesh-Justin couldn't tell which.

"Are you okay?" Justin asked.

The tall man gestured with his chin toward the burning building behind him. Fingers of smoke trailed from the edges of his charred hair. He coughed and said in a strained, hoarse voice: "My house."

"What-?" said Justin.

He meant to ask "what happened," but the words caught in his throat before he could finish the sentence. Something in the sky had caught his eye. The wind had pushed away the clouds, and the blue-gray moon shone in a crescent. And higher still, previously hidden by cloud cover, was a second crescent moon, bronze, craggy, mountainous, and several times larger than the first.