The Architecture of Fear Read Online Free Page A

cleaning it. Maybe you stick your head in so you can see what you're doing." He thrust her head into the oven. "Then you reach for the cleaner or something, and your arm hits a button."
    Gail screamed, shrill and terror-stricken. I won't, Tina told herself. I won't scream. She set her lips, clenched her teeth.
    The screaming continued. Henry yelled and released her, and she slid to the floor. Flames and thick, black smoke shot from the microwave.
    She wanted to laugh. So Hansel, so little Gretel, cooking a witch is not quite so easy as you thought, nicht wahr? Henry jerked a cord from the wall. Tina noted with amusement that it was the cord of the electric can-opener.
    Gail had filled a pan with water from the sink. She threw it on the microwave and jerked backward as if she had been struck. The flames caught the kitchen curtains, which went up like paper.
    On half-numb legs, Tina tried to stand. She staggered and fell. The kitchen cabinets were burning over the microwave, flames racing along dark, varnished wood that had been dry for a century.
    The back door burst inward. Henry fled through it howling, his shirt ablaze. Stronger, harder hands lifted her. She thought of Gretel—of Gail—but Gail was beside them, coughing and choking, reeling toward the open doorway.
    As though by magic, she was outside. They were all outside, Henry rolling frantically on the grass as Dick beat at the flames with his jacket. Sirens and wolves howled in the distance, while one by one the dark rooms lit with a cheerful glow.
    "My house!" she said. She had meant to whisper but found she was almost screaming. "My home! Gone... No—I'll always, always remember her, no matter what happens."
    Dick glanced toward it. "It doesn't look good, but if you've got something particularly valuable—"
    "Don't you dare go back in there! I won't let you."
    "My God!" He gripped her arm. "Look!" For an instant (and only an instant) a white face like a child's stared from a gable window; then it was gone, and the flames peered out instead. An instant more and they broke through the roof; the house sighed, a phoenix embracing death and rebirth. Its wooden lace was traced with fire before its walls collapsed and the fire engines arrived.
    ***
    Later the fire captain asked whether everyone had escaped.
    Tina nodded thankfully. "Dick—Lieutenant Price—thought he saw a face at one of the attic windows, but we're all here."
    The captain looked sympathetic. "Probably a puff of white smoke—that happens sometimes. You know how it started?"
    Suddenly Henry was silent, though he had voiced an unending string of puerile curses while the paramedics treated his burns. Now the string was broken; he watched Tina with terrified eyes. More practical, Gail edged toward the darkness under the trees.
    Tina nodded. "But what I want to know is how Dick came just in time to save us. That was like a miracle."
    Price shook his head. "No miracle. Or if it was, it was the kind that happens all the time. I'd come at eight, and the kids said you were still out. Somebody I'd like to talk to about a case I'm on lives a couple of blocks from here, so I went over and rang the bell; but there was nobody home. I came back and spotted the fire through a side window as I drove up."
    The captain added, "He radioed for us. You say you know how it started, ma'am?"
    "My son Henry was cooking something—eggs, wasn't that what you said, Henry?"
    Henry's head moved a fraction of an inch. He managed to answer, "Yeah."
    "But the oven must have been too hot, because the eggs, or whatever they were, caught fire. The kitchen was full of smoke by the time Gail and I heard him yell and ran in there."
    The captain nodded and scribbled something on his clipboard. "Cooking fire. Happens a lot."
    "I called Henry my son a moment ago," Tina corrected herself, "and I shouldn't have, Captain. Actually I'm just his stepmother, and Gail's."
    "She's the best mother in the whole world!" Henry shouted. "Isn't that