The Shining Girls

Harper and Kirby ^{13 JUNE 1993}

He kicks open the door, covered in blood and grinning insanely with anticipation, holding the knife and the key. But the grin dies when he sees what she is doing. Kirby is standing in the middle of the room, jerking the Ronson Princess De-Light to spray lighter fluid over a mound of stuff she’s gathered in the middle of the room.

She’s torn down the curtains from the window, soaked through with wet patches, piled up on top of the mattress from the spare bedroom upstairs. There are empty bottles carelessly tossed at the base. The kerosene from the kitchen. The whiskey. She’s upturned the chair and torn it open so the stuffing leaks out in white clumps. The gramophone is smashed to pieces. Glossy splinters of wood and hundred-dollar bills and betting slips rammed into the dented brass horn. She’s brought down everything from the room. The butterfly wings and the baseball card and the pony and the cassette with a snarl of unspooled black ribbon tangled up in a charm bracelet, the lab ID badge and a protest button, a bunny clip, a contraceptive pill packet, a printer’s letter Z. A chewed-on tennis ball.

‘Where’s Dan?’ Kirby says. The light from the fireplace behind her shines in her hair like a prophecy.

‘Dead,’ Harper says. The snowstorm of December 1929 whirls behind him through the open door. ‘What are you doing?’

‘What do you think?’ she mocks. ‘You didn’t give me anything to do but wait for you to come back.’

‘Don’t you dare!’ Harper says as Kirby flicks the flint. A steady golden flame flares up. She drops it into the pile. It catches a second later, oily black smoke twisting up from the paper, leaping orange flames.

He yells in anguish, lunging for her, the knife out, but something brings him up short.

He smashes violently into the floor, dropping the key, as Dan half-tackles him, on his knees, his arms clutched around Harper’s legs. Still alive, even though blood is pooling under him, black and thick. He is pulling at Harper’s pants to drag him back and keep him from getting at her. Harper kicks at him, frantically. His heel sends the key skittering across the floor, skidding through the blood, and coming to rest on the doorjamb at the very threshold of the House.

He manages to get in a lucky blow, catching Dan under his jaw with his shoe. Dan groans and his fingers release their hold on his jeans.

Freed, Harper scrambles to his feet, still holding the knife, triumphant. He will kill her and put out the fire and then carve up her friend slowly for the trouble he has caused him.

But then he meets Kirby’s gaze as she levels the gun at him. The flames are hot at her back. She opens her mouth to say something and thinks better of it. She exhales slowly and squeezes the trigger.