All Our Hearts Are Ghosts and Other Stories by Peter Atkins

Author:Peter Atkins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Encyclopocalypse Publications

* * *

Some survivors—for there were some survivors—stated later to the Police that the madman had been seen wandering around the edges of the Lounge at an earlier point in the evening, and more than one of them ventured the suggestion that what he must have been doing, for some obscure insane reason, was laying trails of kerosene or something similar all about the place, intending all along to wreak the havoc he wrought. This was one school of thought.

The survivors counted two among their number, however, who espoused a quite different theory. They were both older women, both Roman Catholics, and they both swore that the flames had issued spontaneously and diabolically from the boy’s mouth, nose, eyes, and fingertips and had spread almost instantaneously into circles of Hellfire that engulfed the whole of the club’s interior and all of its helpless inhabitants.

Whether the ultimate source was human malice or demonic magic, however, the one thing that was certain was that the flames had seized the Lounge in a rapid, virulent, and all but unshakable grasp.

Not a single one of the exits from the place was reachable without first passing through the fire and only those people driven enough by instinct to waste no time in dismay or speculation were able to run through doors or jump through windows without finding on arriving outside that they had brought the fire with them, still forcing its attentions in a more intimate but no less agonizing embrace.

The musicians alone were able to reach the open air completely unscathed as there was a fire door at the rear of the stage area which gave directly onto the car park.

The drummer, whose brother and sister-in-law were in the audience, held his ground for a few seconds longer than his fellows, his panic temporarily held at bay by a murderous rage directed at the person responsible for the carnage.

One look at the singer’s face, however, one heart-stopping glance at the unholy glee that lit his features, one moment’s listening to the unbalanced laughter, rich in perverse joy, that emanated from his mouth, changed the drummer’s attitude. Putting revenge on hold, he threw himself after his colleagues.

On the main floor of the Lounge people screamed, ran, stumbled, and burned. People cried for help, choked on smoke, wept with terror, and burned. People tripped over tables, they tripped over chairs, they tripped over the dead and the dying, and they burned. Hairs raced for scalps like terrified fuses, sweat turned to steam, skin bubbled and burst.

Everywhere was fire and chaos. Hungry flame ate at the oxygen for which panicked lungs were gasping. People ran blind, their eyes clouded both by the tears they were producing in useless defense against the smoke and by the smoke itself. Shattering screams of terminal terror competed for airspace with howls of blistered agony and with hideous racking choking coughs.

The crowd melted into disparate and desperate smaller sections. Some of these were miniature crowds themselves that ran in groups, surrendering individual

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.