Strange Highways

perhaps his curiosity had begun to be pricked by Joey's exploration of the house.
     In spite of her advanced years and her cane, Hannah had slept on the second floor, and in her bedroom Joey found what he needed. A shrine to the Holy Mother stood in one corner, on a three-legged table in the shape of a pie slice: a ten-inch-tall ceramic statuette with a built-in three-watt bulb at the base, which cast a fan of light over the Virgin. Also on the table were three small ruby-red glasses containing votive candles - all extinguished.
     Using the flashlight, he confirmed that the sheets on the bed were white, and then he pulled them off. He carefully bundled the statuette and other items in the sheets.
     He went down to the living room again.
     The wind was pushing through the broken window, tossing the drapes. He stood tensely at the foot of the stairs for a moment, until he was certain that, in fact, nothing else was moving at the window besides those streaming panels of fabric.
     The dead remained dead, and in spite of the inrushing night air, the room stank like the car trunk in which the tarp-wrapped blonde had been kept.
     In the kitchen, the refrigerator door was open a few inches, and by that cold light, Celeste was still searching the cabinets. "Found a half-gallon plastic jug, filled it with water," she said. "Got some matches too, but no candles yet."
     "Keep looking," Joey said as he put down the sheet-wrapped articles from Hannah's room.
     In addition to the entrance to the dining room and the exit to the back porch, the kitchen contained a third door. He cracked it open. The influx of freezing air, bringing the faint scent of gasoline and motor oil, told him that he'd found the attached garage.
     "Be right back," he said.
     The flashlight revealed that the only window in the garage was in the back wall and covered with a flap of oilcloth. He switched on the overhead light.
     An old but well-maintained Pontiac with a toothy chrome grin stood in the single stall.
     Beside a rough workbench was an unlocked cabinet that proved to be full of tools. After choosing the heftiest of three hammers, he searched through boxes of nails until he found the size that he needed.
     By the time Joey returned to the kitchen, Celeste had located six candles. Beth Bimmer evidently had bought them to decorate the house or the dining table at Christmas. They were about six inches tall, three to four inches in diameter: three red, three green, all scented with bayberry.
     Joey had been hoping for simple, tall, white candles. "These will have to do."
     He opened the sack that he'd made by gathering the bed sheets, and he added the candles, matches, hammer, and nails to the items that he had collected earlier.
     "What is all this?" she asked.
     "We're going to play into his fantasy."
     "What fantasy?"
     "No time to explain. You'll see. Come on."
     She carried her shotgun and the half-gallon jug of water. He carried the makeshift sack in one hand and his shotgun in the other. Thus encumbered, if they were threatened, they wouldn't be able to raise a weapon and fire with any accuracy or quickly enough to save themselves.
     Joey was counting on his brother's desire to play games with them for a while yet. P.J. was enjoying their fear, feeding on it.
     They left by the front door - boldly, without hesitation. The point was not to give P.J. the slip but to draw his attention and engage his curiosity. Joey's gut was clenched in dread anticipation of a rifle shot - not so much one aimed at him but one that might smash the porcelain beauty of Celeste's face.
     They descended the porch steps into the rain, went to the end of the front walk, and turned left. They headed back toward Coal Valley Road.
     The series of mine vents along North Avenue, set sixty feet on center, suddenly whooshed like a row of gas-stove burners being ignited all at once. Columns of baleful yellow fire, shot through with tongues of blue, erupted from the top of every pipe along the street.
     Celeste cried out in surprise.
     Joey dropped the bed-sheet sack, grabbed the shotgun with both hands, spun to the left swung to the right. He was so jumpy that he half thought P.J. was somehow responsible for the spontaneous venting of the fires under the town.
     If he