a woman, Scarlett could see that now. Its snowy-white hair patchy and stringy, attached only in clumps to the burned and mottled skin of her scalp. She dragged herself toward Scarlett, and Scarlett let out panting yelps of pain as the radiator clunked and loosened. Back, forth, back, forth.
She cried out, her shoulder at risk of coming out of its socket.
Haddie. Haddie. I won’t let them hurt you. At the thought of her daughter, she upped her effort, gritting her teeth, pulling and then pushing with all her might, her entire body slamming and rocking along with the loosening radiator. HaddieHaddieHaddieHaddie.
The burned woman was almost to her, reaching, her mouth stretched open, revealing small yellow teeth. Her legs ended at the knee, her calves and feet burned away.
With a roar of pain and one last burst of all the strength she had in her still-drugged body, every molecule of herself infused with the fierce love she had for her baby girl, she wrenched her shoulder out of its socket, the radiator breaking free from the floor and crashing heavily against the wall.
The burned woman reached her, grabbing her ankles, lifting the shears and bringing them down on the top of her foot. The shears sunk into her flesh, and then the woman tore them out, raising them again.
With a scream of pain, Scarlett pulled her foot back, blood flowing from the wound as she attempted to stand. The woman grabbed her ankle again, twisting it so that Scarlett smacked back down to the floor before she could get her bearings enough to stand.
“We started that school,” the burned woman said. “We reformed those girls!” She brought the shears down again, stabbing into Scarlett’s calf. Scarlett screamed, then wrenched her leg away just as the woman pulled the shears out of her flesh again. Scarlett tried to push herself up with one arm, her other hanging uselessly by her side, but couldn’t get enough leverage to do so.
Instead she pulled herself backward, trying again to stand while the woman dragged herself up Scarlett’s legs. She was only half a person, old and horrifically injured, but she seemingly had the strength of ten men. Scarlett cried out, her head falling backward as she hit the side of the bed so hard the wall behind it shook and the crucifix fell, landing on the mattress above.
“When the lightning strike hit, I locked those doors and Jasper blocked them. He was a faithful servant.” She pulled herself farther up Scarlett’s body as Scarlett writhed and fought, attempting to kick her weighted legs from beneath the woman’s body, delivering blow after blow to her head with her one good arm. The woman’s face was almost directly over hers now and Scarlett could see the evil in her golden eyes, smell the brimstone on her breath. She reached blindly above, her fingers brushing the cold metal of the crucifix. “The Lord wanted them all to burn,” she yelled, spittle flying from her mouth. “But he spared me! He spared me for my righteousness!”
This woman, this living demon, hadn’t been spared from anything. She’d been made to suffer, to go slowly insane if she hadn’t been halfway there already, locked away in some dark corner. It hadn’t been a lightning strike that started that fire. Or if it had been, it was brutal human evil, and only that, that had caused the subsequent deaths. Scarlett’s fingers grasped metal, curling around one slim edge of the cross from which Jesus hung.
The woman raised the shears again, her mouth opening in an unholy scream, exposed tendons stretching, but Scarlett brought the crucifix down, arcing it toward her back, the long metal spike of the vertical portion of the cross spearing through her skin and coming out the other side of her chest right where her shriveled heart lay.
The woman’s eyes widened, her head snapping back, arm frozen above. The shears dropped to the carpet next to Scarlett’s head with a soft thud and the woman’s body went limp.
With a cry of horror, Scarlett pushed her off, suddenly as light as a bag of bones. She crumpled to the carpet, and shaking, Scarlett pulled herself to her feet. She wobbled before righting herself, a river of blood trailing behind her as she gripped her elbow in her hand, holding her dislocated shoulder still as she limped out to the office.
She picked up the phone, but there was no signal. Throwing it back down, she fled for the door, turning the