The house stood on the southern shore of Seven
Stones Lake, a body of water southwest of Machias.
It was an unspectacular family dwelling with a view of the water
partially obscured by pine trees, and a two-car garage,
half-filled with the accumulated junk of a family with three teenage
children, and otherwise occupied by a
battered Mitsubishi Lancer station wagon.
Dream catchers, made by a Penobscot craftsman using twigs
and natural feathers, were visible in two of the upper windows
Through the yard, its grass recently mown, its borders trimmed.
Past the rose bushes, past the herb garden.
Up the porch steps,
taking in the paintwork that remained
just about presentable for another year.
Into the living room
Four bodies lay side by side on the floor: a father,
a mother, and two daughters aged thirteen and fifteen.
The radio played, and the table was laid for breakfast.
A newspaper lay open, and had anyone been left alive to read it,
they might eventually have come to an article
below the fold about a body washed ashore at Boreas
The parents had been shot first - their blood was on the
kitchen floor - and then moved into place on the carpet.
The two girls had been killed next, one on the stairs,
the other in the bathroom,
and then carried down to the living room to lie beside their parents
One child remained missing.
He was outside, watching the house.
His name was Oran Wilde,
and his parents and teachers sometimes despaired of him.
He was seventeen,
and among his high school peers had not-so-secretly been voted '
Person Most Likely to Die a Virgin.
' He had few friends, but he wasn't a bad kid.
He was just angry and confused and solitary.
He listened to music of which no one else had heard,
read thousand-page fantasy novels,
and liked most kinds of clothing as long as they were black.
His bedroom window,
unlike those of his younger sisters, did not contain a dream catcher
Oran should already have been at school along with his sisters,
even if they always tried their best in
public to pretend that they were not related to him.
His father should have been behind his desk at
the plumbing and bath supply company that he owned.
His mother should have been doing whatever it was his
mother did when her husband and children were not around.
Oran sometimes wondered what that might be, but never asked.
His job in life was to show as little interest as possible in his
parents and their movements,
in the hope that his lack of curiosity about
them might be reciprocated, although it never was.
They persisted in caring, which frustrated Oran greatly
Somewhere in the house, a telephone rang.
The sound stopped,
only to be replaced by his mother's cellphone trilling.
That was followed by the cavalry
charge ringtone of his father's phone.
It was probably the school, Oran figured.
Mrs Prescott, the school secretary,
was responsible for tracking down students suspected of truancy.
Not that Oran had ever skipped school: it wasn't in his nature.
By doing so he would have drawn attention to himself, and Oran,
as has already been established, preferred to fly under the radar.
He just kept his head down and tried to
avoid getting the shit kicked out of him.
He hated high school.
He couldn't countenance the possibility that there were people in the
world who looked back on their schooldays only
with fondness; as the best time of their lives.
How bad could your life be, Oran wondered,
if your days in high school represented the best of it?
He had always imagined that the happiest moment of his life would
involve leaving his school behind,
and perhaps blowing it up immediately after
Would Mrs Prescott call the police if she got no answer?
Maybe.
Clare and Briony, Oran's sisters,
were the stars of their respective years.
Everyone liked them, aside from a handful of bitches.
The sisters wore their popularity easily,
and did their best not to look
down on anyone, their brother excepted.
Even Oran liked them, and he thought that they secretly liked him too.
They just put a lot of effort into not showing it.
Their parents, Michael and Ella,
turned up for school concerts, and basketball and field hockey games.
They were a pretty regular family, Oran apart - and, truth be told,
Oran was pretty regular too, despite appearances to the contrary.
In a bigger high school he would probably have
blended in better, or found more young people like himself.
Tecopee Fields High was simply too small to allow the Oran
Wildes of this world to grow and prosper, or even just to hide
The first of the flames flickered in the hallway, then,
with startling rapidity,
spread to the living room and raced up the stairs.
In less than a minute,
Oran thought that he could smell his family burning.
He was shocked at how quickly the house ignited.
He saw birds flying away in panic.
The wind shifted, blowing some of the smoke back at him.
His eyes watered.
He tried not to breathe in the fumes,
and the odor of roasting flesh that underpinned them.
He was crying now, sobbing and retching,
speaking the names of his mother and father and sisters in a language
that could not be understood,
the words emerging only as muffled sounds,
as though in dying their identities had been lost and their names
could no longer be spoken clearly,
the flames stealing them away letter by letter along with their skin
and flesh, turning them to black spirals that rose in the late
morning sky and dissipated against the clear blue of a fall day.
He was sorry, so sorry.
He wanted to tell them that.
He wanted them to know that he loved them, and had always loved them.
He just couldn't say it, but he would have done so, eventually.
He would have made something of himself too.
He was writing a book.
It wasn't bad, and it would get better.
He had planned to show it to them,
once he'd gotten a little more done.
He'd already won an essay competition - so it was a religious essay
competition, which was a bit embarrassing,
but it had still earned him $100 as first prize,
which wasn't chump change - and he'd seen how happy it had made his
mom and dad, even if he'd been too embarrassed and tied up
in his own world to enjoy their pride in his achievements.
He'd wanted to make them prouder
still, but now that would never happen
His home was a fiery specter of itself,
its shape visible only as yellows and
oranges and, here and there, spikes of angry red.
He heard an explosion deep inside,
and the frame seemed to shudder in shock
And then the trunk of the car closed
upon him, and there was only darkness