VII - RoseRed

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Scratch waggled the bottle of lighter fluid over the linoleum floor. Inside, the
classrooms still had books on the shelves, posters on the walls, and writing on the
chalkboards. When the place was abandoned it was just left as it was. The principal
or whoever just locked the door and tried to forget the place ever existed. Almost half
the building, however, had turned into a flaking black mass in the fire. Smoke
stains reach up the hallways like black hands. To find something that would really
burn, Scratch and Price had to sort through the second-floor classrooms.
When Scratch snapped open his Zippo, Price jumped. The spot of light from the little
flame made the rest of the room darker. Scratch lit a chalkboard eraser on fire and tossed
it onto the fluid-soaked teacher’s desk. It whooshed into a yellow brick of fire and the
whole room lit up, orange and hot.
Price and Scratch hadn’t spoken since they got inside. Price read the recipe card
twice while he waited for Scratch to get the fire ready. For the most part, it suggested
the appropriate way to speak so as to avoid offending a ghost. It also described
how to spot a person possessed by a ghost. It also said that the ghosts of
burn victims could sometimes be seen by firelight.
But after a while, the desk’s fire weakened and Price got tired of pacing the
room. He headed for the hall. “Don’t go out there,” Scratch said. “If we don’t see
him in here, we’re not going to see him. Be patient.”
“This isn’t working,” said Price. He leaned into the blackened hallway, his shoes
sticking on the softened linoleum. Looking into the dark, he instinctually pushed
blood into his eyes. “There’s got to be something in here,” he said to himself.
“Just wait,” said Scratch.
Without really meaning too, Price stirred the blood in his eyes again and flexed
his vision, pulling the colors out the walls and the air. To his eyes, everything in
the school began to smoke with a halo of light.
When Scratch pulled his gaze away from the fire again, he found Price staring at
him. His head moved like he was watching bugs in the air. “What are you doing?”
Price stopped, looked away, then looked back at the fire. “I thought I saw something.
In the fire.”
“Show me,” said Scratch, pointing at the fire.
Price stepped closer to it, stiff and hesitant. “It’s, uh, it’s gone now.”
“What did it look like?”
“A child’s face. It was... a child’s face,” Price lied. What he’d seen was rippling
black lines growing out from the Scratch’s halo, like the black snakes Price used to
light up on the Fourth of July. His sire had told him what that meant — he said it
was the “bleeding out of a Kindred’s soul.” Scratch was a diablerist.
“What did it look like?”
“It was a, uh, white kid. A boy. Wearing a school uniform.”
“Uh huh,” said Scratch. “Funny I missed it.” He walked over to one of the
small, metal student desks.
“Maybe it was my imagination.”
“Maybe it was the sight, Price. Maybe it was—“ Scratch hurled the desk into Price’s
back, knocking him against the burning teacher’s desk. The fire was resurrected in a
flash. Price’s human grunt as he was hit became an animal shriek. He started to stand,
to get away from the desk, but Scratch was on him, pinning him down with the legs of
a student’s desk, like lion tamer. “Maybe it was your fucking promise, Supplicant!”
Scratch hollered at Price and waggled his head.
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