(Sounds of hot summer evening – frogs, cicadas, insect drones)
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Episode 54: Conflagrations.
[Short pause]
NARRATOR
It is the fourth day in a row that her parents have told her she cannot play outside, and Amelia is bored and frustrated to the verge of tears. All of six years old, she understands well enough that the summer break before she starts the first grade is coming to an end, but all of her parents’ patient explanations of distant wildfires and air quality mean very little to clarify why she is not allowed to walk to the little spring-fed stream and the small stand of eastern cottonwoods it nourishes. This latter, she likes to pretend, is a great forest, the name of which is constantly changing but which always offers some new adventure. For a child of her age, who has never seen a true forest, this is easy enough – far easier than spending all of her days cooped up in the house, especially when her mother insists that she get no more than ninety minutes of screen time each day.
Worse still, her parents’ tempers seem shorter than usual. Her father leaves for the car dealership in town before she wakes up and comes home only a few hours before her bedtime, and seems to have no interest in playing or watching a movie with her during that time, instead sitting in his armchair and scrolling on his phone as he sips some foul-smelling grownup drink. Her mother spends the days at home with her, but shuts herself in her office for hours at a time, typing away on her laptop or talking irritably on her phone, and shouting at Amelia if she plays or turns up the TV too loud.
It’s not fair, she thinks, staring out of her bedroom into the sundrenched August fields, not fair at all. The sun, far above the horizon, burns a sullen red behind its veil of smoky haze.
[Short pause]
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An hour later, she lies on her bed flipping through a book about dinosaurs, mostly just looking at the pictures. She remembers her father reading it to her little more than a year prior, before she’d set foot in school, remembers him patiently explaining how and why the dinosaurs disappeared. And she remembers asking him if that could ever happen to people too, and the way he paused just long enough before answering to cast doubt on his assurance that it would not.
The sound of her father’s car in the drive breaks her attention, and she leaps to her feet, excited at the change, forgetting for a moment her father’s recent disinterest in interacting with her. She races down the stairs, smiling, and throws herself at her father as he steps through the door.
He offers a wan smile and tiredly returns her embrace, then ruffles her dark hair and asks how her day was. Boring, she replies, and she asks him when she’ll be able to play outside again.
What little there was of good humor in his face fades now, and he responds with a breathless admission that he doesn’t know. He pulls away from her and shuffles toward his armchair, slumping down bonelessly into its sagging seat. He switches on the television, and some news program begins to play, a middle-aged woman talking into the camera about how all of this calamity could likely have been avoided, if humanity had only shown a little more concern about the long-term consequences of its collective behavior. Her father’s eyes droop heavily, and despite Amelia’s flurry of questions, he is soon snoring softly, and the woman on the screen is replaced by an angry-looking old man talking about the economic burdens of something called mitigation. From behind the office door, Amelia can hear the rhythmic clacking of her mother’s fingers on the computer keyboard.
Feeling alone and forgotten, Amelia retreats once more to her bedroom and falls on the bed, burying her face into a pillow and crying.
[Short pause]
NARRATOR
Another week passes, and still, Amelia is confined to the house. Her father has stopped going to work and sits in his armchair, coughing wheezily and staring at the TV screen, which is perpetually set to a twenty-four-hour news broadcast that fills the wide digital screen with the flickering of flames, with panning aerial shots of burning, smoking forests and fields and houses. And intercut between these are interviews with various experts, none of whom agree on anything, and the president’s repeated appeals to the public to remain calm and stay in their houses because everything is under control, everything will be fine again soon. Whenever these latter air, her father swears darkly under his breath, low enough that he can pretend to think Amelia does not hear him. To Amelia, the old man’s fleshy face looks tired and confused, like a wrinkled baby rudely awoken.
The air begins to smell funny, even inside the house, even with the new air purifiers set up in every room humming constantly. Amelia and her mom begin coughing too, and Amelia thinks again how unfair it all is, that she is getting sick too even when she obeyed her parents and never went outside.
During the stifling nights, she lies awake, listening to her parents argue between wracking coughs, about whether they should abandon the house, about where they would even go.
When she dreams, it is of flame and smoke, and a chorus of distant screams in the hot black night.
[Short pause]
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There is something new on TV when she comes down the next morning, to the smell of the last of the bacon frying on the stovetop. Her father is staring red-eyed at the screen as a young man in a suit roars at the viewers, his eyes wide and wild.
Death, he says, is the wages of sin is death!
Shut it off, her mother calls lowly from the kitchen.
The broad cast looks strange, fuzzier than usual and drained of color. Sometimes the picture shifts and blurs, sometimes it flickers in and out or ripples with strange bands of intrusive, alien iridescence.
The Lord our God is a consuming fire! the young man continues. We have been found wanting in His eyes, found full of iniquity and lowness, and He has brought down His holy wrath upon the land to chastise His wayward children.
Shut it off! her mother says again, more harshly now, before another bout of coughing steals her voice.
Amelia’s father, as if awaking from a trance, raises the remote, turns the screen mercifully dark and silent. As if in sympathy, the light overhead flickers and dies, the mingled hum of the refrigerator and the climate control and the air purifiers cutting out abruptly. Wan and ruddy daylight filters in through the windows, and outside, Amelia is certain she hears a loud, distant hissing noise, but when she mentions it, her parents both tell her she is only imagining things.
That afternoon, her father rises from his chair and says he’s going to drive to town, see what is being done. He and her mother argue for a long time at this pronouncement, but her father is set on his chosen course, and he finally simply stops responding to her protests. Taking his car keys from the dining room table, he strides outside, pressing his nose into the crook of his arm. The car rolls out of the drive and down the road, disappearing into the thickening grey haze that obscures the land like fog.
(Unsettling music)
[Long pause]
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Amelia’s father does not return that day, or the next. Her mother tries to call him, but the phone never connects, and after she hangs up, she pours herself a tall glass of the same stinking grown-up drink he likes so much, and drinks long and deep. She does not answer any of Amelia’s questions, instead lying on the couch and staring at the ceiling, sometimes crying loudly but still saying nothing.
In the evening, she at last rises and starts to boil some water, asking Amelia if she wants mac and cheese but showing no hint of a smile at the girl’s predictable enthusiasm. Her eyes, Amelia thinks, look strange and almost empty, and a fear unlike any she has known before and which she cannot name steals over her and stills her usually eager voice.
The pasta is overcooked and mushy and the sauce too thin, but Amelia eats it without complaint. Her mother does not eat, but stands on the porch, smoking a cigarette for the first time since before Amelia was born and staring into the dark choking cloud that has enveloped the world and brought on night an hour too early, trying to convince herself that she cannot hear the distant hissing roar of that which devours the land.
[Short pause]
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Amelia does not know what wakes her, late in the night, but when she looks out her bedroom window, she sees a long thread of orange light stretched across the black horizon, an open wound in the night. Almost on the edge of perception, a distant rumble hums through the air and the earth, vibrating up through the floorboards and into her bones. As Amelia stares out, the door creaks softly open behind her, and her mother steps into the room. Amelia can see little of her face in the gloom, aside from the reflection of the distant burning in her wet eyes. Her mother is speaking, very quietly, she realizes then, saying over and over: go away, go away, please go away.
Mama? Amelia murmurs faintly, feeling tears gathering at her eyes, feeling more lost and frightened than she ever has.
As if realizing she is present for the first time, Amelia’s mother reaches down and seizes her arm, pulling her into a tight and uncomfortable embrace.
I’m sorry, baby, her mother whispers frenziedly. We ruined it, ruined it all, and now you’re going to pay for it too.
Mama, Amelia’s voice breaks, you’re hurting me.
It’s all catching up to us now, her mother hisses. We let it all burn, and now it’s burning. Or maybe he was right… we sinned, and this is our punishment… Maybe this was always coming…
Amelia tries to pull herself free, but her mother’s arms are clenched like seizing talons of iron, and the woman shows no signs of even noticing her daughter’s rising distress.
Please, God, her mother screams into the night. Please, Jesus, spare us! Spare my girl! You fucking bastard, spare my baby!
The glow rises, the thin line now swelled to a rising wave of red and gold.
Mama, we have to go, Amelia screams, sobbing into her mother’s soft nightgown.
I’m sorry, baby, her mother whispers. There’s nowhere left to run.
Lashing tongues of flame leap skyward, licking across the parched grass and streaming toward the house. Her mother’s grasp suddenly weakens, her body going limp as she slowly crumples to the floor, sobbing, her silver-white satin nightgown spilling around her like a puddle of tears.
With the flames so near, Amelia can now hear that they are indeed screaming, shrieking like the open throats of ten thousand wild beasts. Her ears pop, and she feels like she cannot breathe, let alone move. She sinks down next to her mother, tugging at her gown, begging her to do something, anything. The woman reaches out to embrace her, firmly, but gently now, stroking her hair and kissing her brow.
I’m sorry, baby, she whispers. I’m so, so sorry.
Mama, Amelia says again, we have to go!
Her mother shushes her tenderly, says that they don’t have to do anything anymore, except learn to let go. She tells Amelia to stay with her, here, and that they’ll be together again soon, somewhere nice and cool, somewhere where there is no pain or sorrow or worry. And it is then, despite not fully understanding what is happening, Amelia’s young mind finally grasps that there will be no help forthcoming from her mother. The house around them has already begun to groan and crackle with the fury that consumes it.
Mama, Amelia whimpers, her voice strangled by tears of confusion and terror, please!
Her mother only holds her, rocking gently back and forth and humming the same lullaby she used to sing Amelia to sleep with, Hush Little Baby. Sobbing uncontrollably now, Amelia untangles herself from her mother, who does not fight to keep her. Clearly lit by the bright glow that has banished the night, Amelia can see that her mother is not angry, only confused by this response.
Please, Mom, come with me, Amelia says, and when her mother reaches out for her again, Amelia turns and runs out into the hallway, bawling, choking on the noxious fumes that rush up from below. Behind her, her mother cries out in new alarm for Amelia to come back and stay with her.
Remembering something they practiced in kindergarten one day the prior autumn, Amelia sinks to her belly and crawls along the floor, where the smoke is thinnest. She can see the growing light from downstairs, hear the rushing hiss and roar of the spreading flames, and knows that she will not be safe until she is out of the house, maybe not even then. Fumblingly, she begins to scoot down the stairs, coughing harshly and her eyes stinging as air hotter than an oven’s breath blasts into her face. The ceiling overhead blackens and begins to burn, and she wants to cry out in terror, but there is not enough air in the room for her to scream.
Somehow, she makes it downstairs. All around her, the house blossoms with the insatiable calamity, the noise of it deafening, the heat intolerable, cutting off all escape.The flames burn impossibly bright, rippling sheets of golden and white. Amelia stares at them, full of terror and awe, as if looking into the face of some dreadful primordial god. And now she sees that, within the protean flickering tendrils, dance tenuous forms. Some of them are recognizable: great elk and bison, wolves and bears, pronghorns and cougars, innumerable birds and even human silhouettes. But others are strange, as indefinable as the shape of fire.
The house screams, collapsing in on itself, and Amelia can feel and smell her hair burning away, her own cries of pain and terror drowned out in the terrible voice of the conflagration.
Something takes form within the flames, moving toward the girl. It is like a great snake in shape, except there are strange twisting suggestions of great antlers sprouting from its head, and it looks like it is formed of liquid, glowing gold.
It rears, its flat eyeless head coming level to Amelia’s face, and she can feel unimaginable heat even greater than that of the surrounding inferno blasting her skin. A long, white-hot tongue darts forward and licks her on the brow, searing her so badly, that she loses all sense of herself, and the world fades into a welcome darkness.
[Short pause]
NARRATOR
When next she is aware, Amelia finds herself lying on the hot ash and soot that blankets the earth. She opens her eyes to discover that she does not know where exactly she is, all familiar landmarks having been devoured by the fire, until she recognizes the charred bones of the house less than a hundred feet away.
She sits up, finding that all of her body hurts, her skin stiff and painful, reddened and speckled with large blistering sores. Her pajamas are scorched and black, some of the fabric seemingly having partially melted, and her socks are burned away entirely.
Yet, miraculously, she is alive and relatively well.
Rising carefully to her feet, she trudges across the blackened earth, wincing and hissing with every contact between her tender feet and the crunching, seething cinders. Her voice harsh and sounding alien to her own ears, she cries out for her mother repeatedly, but receives no answer. Nearing the paltry wreckage of the house, she finds that the aura of heat that radiates from it is still far too intense for her to even consider clambering through it, and so she simply stands there, calling out to her mother until she weeps drily, her body too dehydrated to produce tears, calling until her voice finally fails completely, until long after she knows that no answer will ever come.
She crouches then, still weeping tearlessly, until her exhausted body can continue no longer, and she lies down on the coolest stretch of ash she can find nearby. She lies looking up at the sky, which is no longer blue, but a lifeless, filthy grey, and she waits for someone to come, waits to hear any sign of life aside from her own ragged breathing and the rush of blood in her ears.
There is nothing, though, except for an oven-blast southerly wind that stirs the dead ash.
Sitting up again, Amelia surveys the broad plains. In every direction, it is the same – a hellish expanse of featureless charcoal wasteland beneath the dead sky, no structure or growth intruding upon the razor’s edge of the surrounding horizons.
She wants to cry again, but her body is too parched, her muscles too weary.
Once more, she remembers her book of dinosaurs, now reduced to grey powder, remembers sitting in her father’s lap as he read it to her. For a moment she wonders where he is now, but she knows now, knows what her mother knew at once, that he was driving to meet his end rather than to wait for it, even if that meant leaving his family alone. She remembers the question she asked him, and she remembers how he’d lied to her.
A strange sound, like the call of some ancient bird gone from the earth long before the first apes walked upright, tears itself from her throat and hangs, warbling and keen, upon the searing, sighing wind.
(Uncertain music)
[Darker Pastures Theme - Outro]
NARRATOR
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[Darker Pastures Theme - Outro - Continues]
