Pyrophobia Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Titles by Jack Lance Published by Severn House

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Prolog

  Chapter One: Polaroid

  Chapter Two: Kayla

  Chapter Three: Fuss

  Chapter Four: Edward

  Chapter Five: Doubts

  Chapter Six: Fire

  Chapter Seven: Date of Death

  Chapter Eight: An Old Dream

  Chapter Nine: Dead Ends

  Chapter Ten: Confession

  Chapter Eleven: Torches

  Chapter Twelve: List

  Chapter Thirteen: Noam

  Chapter Fourteen: In the Fire

  Chapter Fifteen: Fire Spirit

  Chapter Sixteen: Mawkee

  Chapter Seventeen: Saddle Peak

  Chapter Eighteen: Mapeetaa

  Chapter Nineteen: Plans

  Chapter Twenty: Mount Peytha City

  Chapter Twenty-One: St James Cemetery

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Chuck

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Funeral

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Separation

  Chapter Twenty-Five: The Chawkins Tragedy

  Chapter Twenty-Six: ‘M’

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Man in Black

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: San Francisco

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: Abduction

  Chapter Thirty: Mitch

  Chapter Thirty-One: Secrets

  Chapter Thirty-Two: Final Resting Place

  Chapter Thirty-Three: Return

  Chapter Thirty-Four: Illusions

  Titles by Jack Lance published by Severn House

  PYROPHOBIA

  PYROPHOBIA

  Jack Lance

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  This first world edition published 2015

  in Great Britain and the USA by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  19 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM2 5DA.

  Trade paperback edition first published

  in Great Britain and the USA 2015 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD.

  eBook edition first published in 2015 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 2015 by Jack Lance.

  The right of Jack Lance to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  Originally published in the Netherlands as Vuurgeest,

  by Suspense Publishing in 2014.

  This English edition translated from the Dutch by Lia Belt,

  with additional editorial input from Bill Hammond.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Lance, Jack, author.

  Pyrophobia.

  1. Suspense fiction.

  I. Title

  839.3’137-dc23

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8490-9 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-597-1 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-648-9 (e-book)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Falkirk,

  Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  The fire that seems extinguished, often slumbers beneath the cinders

  Pierre Corneille

  Never light a fire you cannot douse

  Chinese proverb

  PROLOG

  As soon as he opened the door the man in black pounced on him like a mad demon. Broad-shouldered, he had a muscular, impressive frame. His eyes were squeezed nearly shut and held a vicious sparkle as he clenched his fists and snorted like a wild animal.

  His victim, older than he, could never hope to stand up to him. Before he knew it, he was shoved face down on to the floor, his cheek hard against the white floor tiles. The intruder placed the heel of his shoe squarely on the back of his head, increasing the pressure until the older man felt his nose break. Warm blood filled his facial cavities and flowed freely from his nostrils. Never had he experienced such excruciating pain. The scream he uttered emanated from his very soul.

  The nightmare had started one hour and fifty-eight minutes earlier, even though for the older man the minutes had seemed more like hours.

  The orange-red glow of the last sunset he would ever see had long since yielded to starlight. It had been almost ten thirty when the man had decided, a bit earlier than usual, to retire. He had hoisted himself from his hanging chair on the porch and had slid open the door to his living room.

  As he did so, he was surprised to hear the doorbell chime.

  He had decided not to answer the door immediately, but had instead crossed over to the window on the opposite side of the living room. His off-white bungalow featured a brick stoop that protruded a few feet from the front of the building. If he took a sideways glance through that window, he might be able to see who was calling at this hour.

  The feeble glow from his sitting room and from the street lights beyond his small, colorful flower garden failed to shed much light on the figure who was standing by the front door. All the older man could make out in the dim light was that the man, whoever he was, was dressed entirely in black.

  The older man was suspicious. He’d had a sudden premonition that this man’s intentions were as dark as the clothes he wore.

  But if that were true, he mused, why would he have rung the doorbell? If his intentions were sinister, he could simply have burglarized the house during the night.

  Maybe a friend had had a seizure, he thought, or a heart attack. At this late hour, when a stranger came to call, the news could only be bad.

  That was when the older man decided to go ahead and open the door.

  Almost two hours later, he lay on the blood-smeared floor beneath the foot of the man in black.

  ‘Right,’ a lisping, quiet voice snarled above him. ‘This is revenge.’

  The older man, unable to answer, could barely breathe.

  The bulky assailant pulled him up by the collar of his green-and-white checkered shirt and rammed a knee into his back, causing a new wave of flaming agony to course through his entire body and another tortured scream to explode from him. Then he flung him back down like a sack of potatoes. The older man squeezed his eyes shut, struggling to breathe, and pressed the ball of his right hand against the bloody pulp that used to be his nose.

  The horror ended quickly. He was dragged upstairs into his attic where the man in black put a rope around his neck and tugged something tight beneath his chin. It felt like a necktie, but no, it was something else. With great ease he was lifted up, to where he stood wobbling on a wooden chair from which the paint had long since flaked off. The intruder gave another yank on the rope that was cutting into the skin of the older man’s neck, forcing him to fight for balance on his toes.

  He suffered through it all, offering no further resistance. He had no strength left, no resolve. He could not think. His skull was throbbing unbearably where the attacker had put his full weight on it, almost crushing it.

  He was physically and mentally broken, a shadow of his former self.
<
br />   Only then did he notice that the rope around his neck had been looped up and over a massive wooden support beam located directly above his head and was tied securely to it.

  He stared into the face of his murderer. The man stank of sweat, and fire glowed in his eyes like the dying embers of a once raging blaze.

  The man in black kicked the chair, hard, and it fell away and over.

  Jason, was the older man’s final thought as he dangled in agony. Oh God, Jason!

  ONE

  Polaroid

  Jason Evans was worried. Usually he had scant cause for concern or complaint. But on the day the trouble began, something nagged at him.

  On that Monday, July thirteenth, he was making slow progress on a promotion campaign he needed to complete. Was it his client, or was he just having a bad day? Probably both. He had to come up with something original for Tommy Jones’s car dealership – or more specifically, for the used-car emporium of the ‘Automobile King’, a label repugnant to Jason. Tommy Jones had proclaimed himself the king of automobiles and was damn proud of the crown he had placed on his head.

  ‘Genius, ain’t it,’ Jones this morning had crowed to Jason and his colleagues. ‘I should go into advertising myself!’

  What new ideas could Jason possibly present to a man for whom, during the past thirty years, every advertising concept imaginable had been cooked up and warmed over, and whose product he detested? Jason’s mind wandered back to the days when, as a naive eighteen-year-old, he had bought one of Tommy’s second-hand rust buckets. The ageing red Plymouth Road Runner had given up the ghost after only two months. That had been the first and last time he had purchased a car from the Automobile King. And now this auto entrepreneur was his customer, a client with Tanner & Preston, the prestigious Los Angeles advertising agency where Jason worked as an art director.

  Of all people, the agency’s CEO Brian Anderson had selected Jason to head the team assigned to seal the deal with their newest client who had jumped ship from Foote, Grey & Hardy, a hard-nosed competitor of Tanner & Preston.

  Jason brushed strands of unruly black hair from his eyes and stared up at the ceiling, searching in vain for inspiration. But more reveries haunted him instead.

  Since forever, or so it seemed, Tommy Jones’s dazzling toothpaste-ad-smile had beamed down at him from posters and billboards scattered around town. Today was the first time he had looked the man in the eye and shaken his hand. Tommy, at age sixty-two, had looked a lot different from his public persona. He appeared older, balder and grayer in real life, without Photoshop’s false promise of eternal youth. Only his famous grin and plump face – and his indomitable energy – remained the same. He was a short, sturdy little man who stood chin-high to Jason.

  ‘I want something new, something exciting,’ Jones had grandly exclaimed during the morning meeting, when he had graced everyone at Tanner & Preston with his presence. ‘Make my cars stand out from the competition. Make them more attractive, better looking. Christ, Brian, make them sexy.’

  Fuck you, Jason had thought as he sat there, listening, the memory of the rundown piece of crap the Automobile King had sold him assaulting his mind.

  Of course, he hadn’t said anything derogatory out loud. Tommy Jones carried around a fat wallet and besides, times had changed for Jason. He was far better off financially these days, and the silver metallic Buick LaCrosse CX he was currently driving could not be found on any of Tommy Jones’s sales lots. It was too expensive and had too much class, even as a used car.

  But since he had assembled his Tommy Jones team, Jason hadn’t sketched as much as an outline for a campaign aimed at making the Automobile King’s emporium appear sexy – or even viable. His loyal and dependable copywriter, Anthony Wilson, hadn’t come up with much usable copy either.

  Jason’s gaze wandered around and he took note of the desk clock in the shape of two hearts, a birthday gift from his wife Kayla. It was after six o’clock. The other members of the team – Carol, Donald and Anthony – had gone home for the night. He was the last one still at work, and thus had the twenty-fourth floor of the Roosevelt Tower to himself. He stared out the window into the heat and haze of a Los Angeles summer evening. Just four more weeks, he thought, as if with a prayer. Just four more weeks and he and Kayla could finally leave the smog and chaos of this city behind them and immerse themselves in the glorious majesty and intimacy of the Rocky Mountains.

  But first he had Tommy Jones to deal with. He sighed with frustration, knowing he wasn’t going to pull off a miracle tonight. He stood up and was about to leave his office when George, Tanner & Preston’s mail delivery man, entered waving a manila envelope in the air.

  ‘Late delivery,’ George said, as he handed Jason the envelope. Without another word, he wheeled around and walked out of the office.

  Jason stared at George’s broad back as he strode down the long hallway. When he saw the delivery man disappear around a corner, he glanced down at the envelope bearing his name and company’s address written in a bold angular script, but with no sender’s logo or return address indicated. Frowning, he fished his silver letter opener from the pen stand on his desk and slid open the envelope. Inside he found a Polaroid photograph of a tall, rusty iron gate set between two wide-trunked oak trees. Behind the gate stood rows of gravestones jutting crookedly out of the earth. At first blush it appeared similar to an old graveyard he had once visited in downtown Boston. But on closer inspection this graveyard seemed more unkempt than the one on Tremont Street.

  Jason peered into the envelope but saw nothing else inside. His first thought was that Shaun Reilly had sent the photo. It would not have been the first time that Shaun had neglected to add a note. When Jason turned the photograph over, he noticed words on the back written by the same hand.

  You are DEAD

  He stared at the words, dumbfounded. Then he flipped the photograph back over and studied the gravestones once more.

  ‘What’s this?’ he mumbled to himself. He flipped to the back again.

  The same three words stared back at him.

  He was stumped. Struggling to make sense of it, he turned the Polaroid over and over. As he studied the photograph intently, he became convinced of one thing: he had never seen this cemetery. The grass between the headstones was tall; the field surrounding it gave the impression of going to seed; in the background, beyond the graveyard, was a distinct line of small, gnarled trees.

  Had Shaun sent him this? No, Jason reasoned; it was not his handwriting. And he would never do anything this morbid. So who had sent it? And why?

  He inspected the envelope, but it offered nothing beyond a stamp, his name and his work address. Nor could he make out the postmark, although clearly the letter had been delivered by the U.S. Postal Service.

  Jason didn’t know what to think. And George was long gone.

  He wondered how this letter could have only just arrived. There were no mail deliveries at this hour, were there? As far as he knew, office mail was dropped off early in the morning and again around one thirty in the afternoon. But never at the close of business.

  Had George gone home yet? If not, maybe he could shed some light on this mystery. Jason found the extension for the mail room, punched in the three numbers, and let the phone ring a dozen times. No answer. Perhaps, Jason’s thoughts whirled, George was still on his way back to the mail room, or maybe on his way out of the building. Acting on that hunch, Jason hurried toward the elevator. It seemed to take forever to reach his floor.

  The door hummed open. He stepped inside and pressed the button for the ground floor. The elevator door closed, but only after what seemed like needless delays. It was as if someone was trying to prevent the door from closing by inserting a hand or foot into the opening.

  Then, with a barely perceptible jolt, the elevator started its descent. When it reached the ground floor, Jason ran out of it toward the mail room.

  ‘George!’ he yelled as he entered the small office, its walls hidden
behind stacked-up brown parcels and boxes of paper and stationery. It appeared empty. On a whim, Jason scanned through the neat piles of envelopes and memos on the desk, hoping against hope to find there the solution – or at least a clue – to the mysterious Polaroid. But his search proved fruitless.

  God damn it, Jason silently cursed, where was George? Roosevelt Tower had forty-two floors. Going in search of the man seemed a hopeless exercise. His thoughts wandered back to the photograph. Who would do such a thing? Who in heaven’s name would go to the trouble of sending him this photo with its bizarre message? It was a sick prank; it made no sense; why then, Jason asked himself, was he so worried?

  At that moment George entered the room, surprised to find Jason there.

  ‘Good evening, Mr Evans,’ he said, formal as always.

  ‘George, listen,’ Jason blurted out, ‘I have a question for you. That envelope you handed me in my office. Where did it come from? Who delivered it? The mail truck doesn’t usually swing by at this hour, does it?’

  ‘Well,’ George said, scratching behind his ear, ‘it was in my in-tray. I must have overlooked it earlier.’ His bushy brows arched down as he pinched his lips together. ‘I could’ve sworn …’ He shook his head and cast Jason a worried look. ‘Was it important? Were you …’ He hesitated. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Jason snapped.

  ‘Well, excuse me,’ George fumbled. ‘But if you don’t mind me saying so, you look a mite pale.’

  Jason fought to calm himself. George was an endearing sort of guy, a bear of a man who would never hurt anyone. Jason felt guilty for making George apologize to him.