The Winchester Code

Chapter 2 - Raging Inferno

Raging Inferno

Chapter 2

The dream. The same dream I’d been having for weeks. It would start with a headache, then the tightening of my chest, the lights and sounds growing far too intense to handle, then the dream. The same dream that had plagued my nights and sometimes my days. I had dreamed of the fire for weeks, each time, always watching my family burning; feeling the heat, struggling to breathe, the fire engulfing my sister moments before I could reach her. Always the same.
I knew the feeling well enough to know when it was coming. I didn’t normally throw up after, but sometimes it was a very intense process and I couldn’t handle it very well.
I felt it coming on as I got ready for bed. I went to the kitchen and downed some pain killers, hoping that they would help lessen the blow that the migraines had on my body. Before I could escape from the kitchen, however, my father talked to me. I eventually excused myself, my head already throbbing fiercely.
I stumbled down the hall, hardly reaching my bedroom before my brain started closing in on itself. I kicked the door closed as I tumbled to the floor. I curled up, trying to somehow make my head stop hurting. I focused on my breathing, in and out. In and out. In and out…

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“I’m telling you Sammy,” Mr Hewitt from the day before said to his partner. This dream was different from the others. “You’re wrong about this one.” 

“I haven’t been wrong so far.” Mr Wyatt retorted.
“You didn’t see the kid, Sam. You’re barking up the wrong tree here.”
“It fits, Dean!” Sam said angrily.
“Fine.” The smaller of the two men sighed reluctantly. “We’ll check it out. Are you sure it’s tonight?”
“According to the birth certificate, yeah. It is.”
“Alright.” Dean sighed again. “Let’s go.”

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I opened my eyes, my head spinning a little. Thankfully, I felt no urge to violently throw up my dinner, so I laid on the floor for a moment longer. What was it that I had dreamt about? It wasn’t the fire that time, it was those two men from yesterday. 

For the past two weeks I’d been having those headaches, I had always had the same dream of the fire. Why had it suddenly changed?
My thoughts were interrupted by Grace crying in the next room. I tried to block it out, my head still throbbing a little. After a minute of her persistent screams, I decided to pick myself up and have a look. By the time I had stumbled clumsily to the door, Grace’s cries had simmered down to quiet whimpers. She was probably hungry.
Without going in to check on her, I walked back down the hall to the kitchen.
I flicked on the kettle and grabbed the tin of milk formula from the cabinet.
I waited for a couple of minutes, leaning my head in my hands. The TV in the living room was blearing loud enough that mum wouldn’t have heard Grace crying.
The kettle boiled and poured it into a glass and started to make a serving of the baby milk.
I imagined doing this for my own child. I imagined myself in mum’s shoes when she was seventeen, my age. She was living by herself, trying to look after a little baby, feeding it, changing it.
Dad, being nineteen, had enlisted in the Navy and was off training while my mother tried her hardest to keep me alive. And now, seventeen years on, she had another child to look after. But at least this time, she had both dad and I to help her.
I wondered back down the hall, shaking the milk mix in the baby bottle.
I walked to Gracie’s room and pushed the door open. Grace was no longer crying, so I took a little peek inside.
Dad was already taking care of her!
I cursed silently and walked out. I’d made the milk formula for nothing!
I walked back to the kitchen and started unscrewing the lid to the bottle.
I could hear the TV sing out a theme song to a late-night cop show and walked to the doorway and peeped in.
“What episode is it?” I asked, leaning against the doorjamb.
“The one where that man killed someone.” Dad answered.
“Funny.” I said sarcastically.
“It only just started.” Mum jumped in to defend dad.
I stood watching the show for a couple of second, trying to work out if I’d seen this one before. I probably had, and then I could probably win a bet against dad as to who the murderer was.
Dad.
Mum.
Both my parents were watching TV.
“MUM!” I shouted urgently. She turned and looked at me, startled. “There’s someone in Grace’s-”
Before I could finish my warning, mum was running down the hall.
Dad stared at me. “What’s wrong?”
“Michael!” Mum screamed before I could answer. Dad and I exchanged a glance and raced down the hallway.
“Jasmine?” Dad called as he entered Grace’s nursery. I stood in the hallway. No. This couldn’t be happening. “Grace?” He asked as he walked further into the room.
I stepped into the nursery just in time to watch my father’s expression as he followed my little sisters gaze.
“JASMINE!” He screamed. No, no wake up!
She was on the ceiling, her stomach slip.
“RUN!” I screamed, but before either of us could act, mum burst into flames. The blast threw dad against the wall and I was knocked off my feet. How many times had I dreamed this? Four, five? We didn’t make it. Please be a dream. Please be a dream!
I looked around me, time seeming to slow. I could turn and run. I could save myself from this inferno before it was too late for me, but, no. Hearing my baby sister screaming, I couldn’t.
I picked myself up off the floor, the raging heat intense and somewhat familiar. I tool a dragging step forwards, the air choking me, scorching my lungs.
“HEY!” I hear someone yell. I look over my shoulder and see Mr Wyatt running up the hall.
This is new.
The sight made me pause a moment, but my sister’s screams pushed me onwards. I could hardly hear anything inside the nursery, but I swear I head Mr Hewitt yell at his partner.
I shielded my eyes from the fire, trying to see around the nursery. The smoke was suffocating. I could no longer hear Grace’s screams. I could feel the fire licking at my skin.
“Zaviana!” I head someone yell. I looked over to see my dad pinned under a section of the roofing that had fallen. “Get out of here!”
“No!” I screamed. I heard more roof cracking. “Grace!”
“She’s dead!” Dad yelled, despite the fact that I could still hear her. “We’re all dead! GO!”
I looked at my father for a long moment. We were both in pain from burning, but he seemed to have accepted he was going to die.
In that moment, I made my decision. There were two options. Life and death.
“I love you.” I yelled, but he was no longer conscious. I could feel the smoke tightening around my throat, squeezing the air from my lungs. I nodded and looked around quickly. Fire had encircled me. The door to the nursery was blocked; debris had blocked the path. There was only one way out.
I charged forwards, stumbling over debris, the flames catching on my clothes and skin. I turned my body slightly so I was charging with my shoulder. I saw the window, the curtains burnt up. My eyes were watering, my face streaming with sweat and tears, my vision blurry. My head felt like it was shutting down, but I kept running through the blaze until I reached the window and smashed through it.

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I landed on the grass, coughing violently. Cuts and burns littered my body and I could hardly move. 

I laid there in pain, breathing in the clean air.
I coughed as I pushed myself up off the ground, adrenaline pumping through me. I wiped my eyes, brushing a mixture of ash and sweat into the, making them water even more.
The fire was still raging behind me, the open window making it burn even faster.
In the distance I could hear the screams of a fire truck.
I looked back at the burning house. I heard some more cracking and watched as the roof collapsed in on the nursery, sending flames leaping into the yard.
I opened my mouth to scream, but nothing came out except for more violent coughing.
Water.
I need water.
I turned back around and stumbled to the front of the house. The fire was spreading quickly, but it hadn’t quite reached the front porch. I rounded the corner and saw two men standing out the front.
“Sam, they’re dead!” One of them yelled.
Sam? My mind flashed and I felt pressure begin to mount behind my eyes. No. Not again. Not now.
My eyes focused on the black Impala. My focus seemed to hone in on a bottle sitting on the back seat. Water!
The pressure in my cranium continued to build as I stumbled to the car. Without thinking, I opened the door and reached in. The car only had two doors and I couldn’t reach the bottle from the front passenger seat. I climbed in, desperate to reach the water.
My head was screaming in pain and colours were starting to blur. Sounds were merging together into a high pitched ringing.
I unscrewed the cap to the bottle, my hands shaking violently. I reached the lip of the bottle to my mouth and drank the lukewarm liquid. As my vision grew darker, I started curling myself up on the floor of the car, the same position I assumed when my brain attacked itself. I didn’t even have time to screw the lid back on the bottle before I passed out.

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I came to when water splashed on my face. I blinked it from my eyes and looked around. I was shivering, even though it wasn’t cold. I was stiff and felt like I’d been stomped on by a dinosaur. I slowly looked around. Where was I? I looked up and saw a bottle of water emptying on me. 

I reached up and clumsily grabbed it, bringing it to my lips.
I choked it down. The liquid felt thick as it ran down my throat. I drank the rest of the bottles contents and put the bottle on the floor in front of me.
I felt tired.
I reached up my hand again, feeling the seat above me. My hand clasped a jacket and I tugged at it, pulling it over my shivering body.
I closed my eyes again and fell asleep.