Pyrophobia Read online

  ‘Things change,’ Mark countered. ‘Again, don’t get your hopes up about this first session. It’s just a start.’

  ‘Understood,’ Jason said.

  ‘Are you comfortable?’ Mark asked several minutes later.

  Jason nodded. ‘Getting there.’

  Mark’s gaze traveled across Jason’s body. ‘You could loosen your belt a notch, if you want to,’ he said. ‘It may help you relax.’

  Jason admitted that yes, his jeans were a bit tight, and loosened his belt. When Mark asked him again whether he was comfortable, he felt he was.

  ‘Close your eyes, Jason.’

  He did, but in truth he wasn’t fully relaxed yet. He could imagine Mark and Kayla both watching him as if he were a patient. In his mind he was one, no matter how much Mark had tried to reassure him to the contrary. At the moment Mark was not his bar buddy. He was his psychologist.

  ‘Tell me what you hear, Jason.’

  He heard a truck rumbling by in the street. A siren wailing in the distance somewhere. He became aware of the sounds of footsteps and unintelligible mumbling from people outside Mark’s door. A chair, Mark’s or Kayla’s, creaked. She coughed. He knew all her little sounds. He considered saying this, but instead he answered, ‘I hear all sorts of things.’

  ‘I want you to concentrate on the sounds you hear coming from inside you,’ Mark said.

  ‘From inside me?’ Jason asked, confused.

  ‘Yes. The beating of your heart. The blood in your veins. Imagine it is the sound of the ocean, and your heartbeat is the sound of a beautiful old clock. You once told me that your father owns an antique wall clock that you love.’

  He pictured the eighteenth-century clock in his parents’ house. Small and elegant, its mechanism encased in an oaken cabinet with a mahogany veneer. When he was a boy, his mother had let him wind the clock while she smiled down at him. She remembered her always smiling at him. His mother … His dear mother …

  In his mind’s eye he saw her standing beside the clock as if she were still alive. A warm, sensitive human being made of flesh and blood, not yet claimed by death. He had always been the apple of her eye, and she had spoiled him in every way possible. If he wanted something, he simply needed to tell her what it was and it was his. God, he suddenly realized how much he missed her.

  ‘Talk to me, Jason,’ Mark said. ‘Tell me what’s going through your mind.’

  ‘I’m at home, in my parents’ house. I’m looking at the clock. My mother is there. She’s smiling.’

  ‘That’s good, Jason, very good. Now look around. I want you to be in a good place. The place where you feel most comfortable. Near that clock, or someplace else; it doesn’t matter. Where would you like to be?’

  He looked around, and realized he was somewhere else. Green treetops swayed overhead; nearby he saw the centuries-old bole of a giant tree. He stood on the steep sandy trail toward Saddle Peak.

  ‘I’m in the Santa Monica Mountains, where Kayla and I often go hiking.’

  Saddle Peak was their favorite place in the mountains. Sometimes they climbed to its summit to enjoy the panoramic vistas and the blue of the Pacific. If they arrived early in the morning, they often found fog clinging to the rocks like a cool blanket.

  Near this old tree they had made love one summer, hidden within the tall grass. But because Mark was present, he said nothing about this gold-framed image in the photo album of his memories.

  ‘OK,’ Mark continued, ‘breathe in the air deeply, listen to the birds, look around, feel it, Jason.’

  He did hear leaves stirring, birds chirping, a cascading waterfall nearby. There was no other place like this on earth. No place where he would rather be.

  Then he heard Mark’s voice.

  ‘What are you doing now?’

  ‘Lying on my back,’ he said drowsily.

  ‘Would you stand up for me?’

  He complied, rising up from the tall stems of the grass.

  ‘Now I would like you to go somewhere else. Someplace where there is fire. But before you do, listen closely: you can return here any time you want, to the Santa Monica Mountains. All you have to do is snap your fingers and you’ll be back here, where you are completely safe. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jason said, or thought he did; he wasn’t sure. Mark’s voice reached into him like the voice of an invisible deity.

  ‘I want you to start moving now, Jason. Start walking. Very carefully, very slowly. And remember, you can go back anytime you want. Just snap your fingers.’

  Jason peered ahead. He saw no fire on the forest path.

  ‘Where are you now?’ Mark asked.

  ‘In the same place. I don’t know where to go.’

  Again, he couldn’t tell whether these words were part of his thought process or whether he was actually speaking them.

  ‘Take your time, Jason. Take all the time you need. This is your place, you can always come back here. Just walk somewhere. Anywhere.’

  ‘I’m not sure …’

  Jason started walking. About fifty yards ahead, the path veered sharply to the right and disappeared from view. Straight ahead he saw a patch of tall thickets, with pale gray mountain peaks rising up behind them.

  The thickets seemed to be beckoning him. The closer he got to them, the more clearly he saw that the plants formed a broken wall of green. There were openings without branches or leaves, big enough to walk through.

  Black holes.

  Without thinking, he walked straight into one of the holes. As he did, the sun disappeared. It was as dark as night. He was surprised, but he stumbled on.

  In the darkness ahead, flames suddenly clawed up furiously, like distorted red-hot fists. Now he did stop, his heart pounding hard. The fire seemed to sense his presence, because the flames started crawling toward him like snakes hissing at him, licking at him, surrounding him. This was a nightmare. The nightmare. Jason screamed.

  Several things happened at once. The first was a realization that he was not alone. Something or someone was hiding inside the fire. Something that was using the flames as camouflage. He knew instinctively that it was there, but he couldn’t see it – not yet. The fire was hiding it.

  The second was that the deity was calling his name.

  ‘Jason!’

  And another voice he knew very well: Kayla’s.

  ‘Come back, Jason!’

  He listened to their voices. It was vitally important to listen to them and to leave this place, this blaze. He thought about going back. He wanted to go back and then—

  And then Mark’s office reappeared in his vision. There were no flames in the room, no searing heat. The heat he felt was inside him. He was drenched in sweat.

  Kayla was crouching beside him. Behind her stood Mark.

  ‘What happened?’ she asked, nearly as upset as he was. He wanted to talk, but his voice failed him.

  ‘Let him catch his breath first, Kayla,’ Mark said in a stern voice.

  ‘Could I have a glass of water?’ Jason managed.

  ‘Coming right up,’ Mark said.

  A minute later, Jason downed a glass of water in nearly one gulp.

  ‘I never want to go through that again,’ he said, his voice quivering.

  ‘Go through what?’ Kayla cried fearfully.

  He told them what he had seen, the words coming in fits and jerks.

  ‘Mark?’ he said after he had finished. ‘What do you make of this?’

  ‘It’s too soon to jump to conclusions. We’ll have to—’

  ‘There was something with me,’ Jason interrupted in a gruff voice. ‘I wasn’t alone. Something or someone did come in the fire.’

  ‘It seems that way,’ Mark said. ‘But we’ll leave it for next time. Calm down, try to come to grips with this first.’

  Jason shivered. ‘If there is a next time.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You heard me.’ He averted his gaze. ‘The nightmares are bad enough. This time
I felt like I was really on fire. I don’t ever want to go through it again.’

  Something had been hiding in the flames. Of that he had no doubt whatsoever. What sort of thing could exist, survive, inside an inferno like that?

  FIFTEEN

  Fire Spirit

  During the next two days Jason tried to avoid thinking about the session in Mark’s office. Whenever he closed his eyes he worried he would have nightmares, but blessedly they failed to materialize. At work, the days seemed to grind on endlessly. But at least he received no additional manila envelopes.

  On Thursday afternoon, after work, he stopped by his father’s house. He found him busy in the shed preparing for next winter, when he wanted to have the wood siding on his house replaced. Jason waited until Edward had carefully trimmed a board to size with a circular saw and had put the wood aside. Sensing his son’s presence, he turned around.

  ‘Thanks again for the toolbox, son,’ he greeted him good-naturedly. ‘I’m really pleased with it.’

  ‘You’re welcome, Dad, I’m glad you like it.’

  They went inside for an ice-cold Corona. In the living room, Jason stood staring at the antique wall clock for a while. It had been there for as long as he could remember. Just as he had on Mark’s couch, he imagined himself as a little boy, when his mother was still alive, remembering her sweet smile.

  He felt privileged to have had two very special women enrich his life. One of them was Kayla, and he prayed that she would stay with him for eternity. The other had been Donna, his mother. She had died on the twenty-seventh of June, nine years ago – taken by inoperable cancer at much too early an age. She had been diagnosed with the illness in November of the previous year, and for several months after that diagnosis she had lived a perfectly normal life. If Jason hadn’t known better, he could have sworn that the cancer did not exist, let alone be running rampant inside her body. Before June, her weekly chemotherapy session at the hospital was the only thing that indicated everything was not as it should be. At the time, Edward and Jason had prayed that they would at least have Christmas with her.

  But in early June Donna’s health had deteriorated rapidly. Until the end she had remained resilient and loving, no matter how awful her pain and suffering she had to endure in those final days. She had already lost so much weight, and her wasted body was weakening further by the day. Jason and his father kept vigil by her bedside until she drew her last breath, and then both of them had collapsed in tears.

  His mother was a good Catholic with strong religious beliefs, but not to an extreme. When her son brought home girlfriend after girlfriend, she had never said anything against it. Donna understood that Jason had other interests besides the church – even though, to make her happy, he rarely skipped the weekly masses presided over by Father Abraham. Donna had been president of the local Bible society, a rare phenomenon in liberal California. But she had given it her all and had recruited a healthy number of new members.

  His father had never been much of a churchgoer either. Until he retired he had been a production supervisor for a manufacturer of farming equipment. As such, he was more interested in machines, tools and gadgets than in religion.

  Donna showered her family with love, particularly her son Jason, who never understood why she of all people had been the first to go. It was as if she had been rewarded for her good work with a brain tumor. It made no sense.

  And it went a long way toward proving Kayla’s point. Death was a monster.

  Jason felt a stab of sadness at the memories and the injustice of it all. After Edward joined him in the living room, they finished their beers and chatted about the birthday party – one that his father had enjoyed immensely. Of course, Jason told him nothing about the photographs. What good would it do? Edward wouldn’t have any answers either, and Jason would only be burdening him with worry.

  As he drove home through the green of Malibu, he felt alone. And it wasn’t just because of his mood; he was alone on this stretch of road. Even this close to the frenzied metropolis of Los Angeles, on some smaller asphalt roads surrounded by olive and oak trees, you could still imagine yourself to be either the last man on earth or the first man to discover this fair land.

  But in truth, he was neither.

  He was not alone.

  He had had company, with whoever was in that fire.

  The vision from the hypnosis returned, unbidden. The fire that had surrounded him had been terrifying. That in itself was nothing new. But something mysterious had been hiding inside the fire. Certainly he had never experienced that vision before.

  It was alive. The fire was alive.

  Now he wondered, because of his session with Mark, whether the fire had always been alive – from the first time his recurring nightmare had encroached upon his sleep those many years ago, until the last time in Mark’s office.

  If Mark and Kayla hadn’t called him back, maybe he could have seen more of what had been there with him, camouflaged by the flames.

  Was it looking at me? Did it sense me? Does it know me?

  Intriguing questions with no answers. And the only way to get answers was by taking the same road again.

  The same road that led into the fire. The thought tortured him and made him break out in a sweat.

  Although he discussed it with Kayla, he had already made up his mind. Only one man could shed light on these matters. One man he trusted enough to let him poke around inside his mind. That man was Mark.

  Jason decided to take the plunge. He had taken the first step. The second one was inevitable, however terrifying it might prove to be. Going to the dentist to have his wisdom teeth extracted was nothing compared to this prospect.

  Kayla listened to him with mixed feelings and said she would do anything to have a future without fear. She stood quietly beside him as he called Mark.

  Jason made an appointment for the next day, Friday, again at five o’clock. When he went to sleep that night, he was convinced the bad dream would return.

  I have no worries, he kept telling himself in an effort to stay calm and composed. But this was an outdated mantra, because he most definitely did have worries. If he denied them, he’d be fooling only himself. But first there was another night to get through. Jason turned off the light, prepared for the worst.

  When he woke up the next morning he had slept through the night, without incident.

  Late the following afternoon, when they met together with Mark in his office, the tension was palpable. For Jason and Kayla this was to be expected. What gave Mark away were his little coughs; he always coughed when burdened with stress. Jason was reminded of a midterm exam at Cal State, when Mark got under the skin of his classmates, coughing and clearing his throat so often, he had to be taken into another room to finish the test alone with a hastily summoned professor as a private proctor. Jason hadn’t been there, but had believed the stories. Yes, Mark was cool and collected most of the time, but when he felt uneasy, his seemingly unshakeable equanimity could turn into a spate of coughing.

  The reason for his nervousness today he left undefined. A psychologist, Jason believed, was supposed to radiate knowledge, empathy, confidence and security at all times. After all, he was the professional, with the authority that came with his lofty position.

  Jason suspected – or hoped – that Mark’s tension was based on nothing more than his wish to help an old friend. What if these sessions led nowhere? What if all they did was make Jason even more confused? If he were Mark, those would certainly be questions he would ponder.

  He had resolved to stay in control of his emotions on this day, come what may.

  Mark asked him to lie down on the couch again. Jason did so and tried to relax. As he had before, Mark asked him to journey to a place where he felt safe.

  ‘But don’t go to the Santa Monica Mountains. Pick somewhere else this time. Where else do you feel safe?’

  He remembered the salt plains in Utah where he had once visited with Bill Hallerman, an old frie
nd from college. They had spent that summer driving around in Bill’s rusty Buick – about the time Jason had first become acquainted with Tommy ‘the Automobile King’ Jones – and chasing girls. Together, they had burned their share of rubber on the snow-white plains.

  Then he heard Mark’s voice seemingly from somewhere far away, like a voice coming over a telephone line asking whether he was ready to return to Saddle Peak, where the fire was.

  He stood there in Utah, on the endless white salt, in clear view of jagged mountain ranges in the distance. He felt calm, at peace, safe. He and Bill were sole rulers of their vast domain and it felt good.

  He didn’t want to leave there.

  He had no desire to return to the fire in the Santa Monica Mountains.

  But then, reluctantly, his mind started wandering back to that place. Getting there was no effort at all; in no time he was walking on the steep mountain trail again, retracing his steps.

  When he saw the patchy foliage, he felt a surge of fear and anxiety. This time he knew what lay beyond it. It was a gateway into horror and he was afraid to continue. But he had no choice. Beyond the green foliage lay the secret to his recurring nightmare.

  As if an echo from a faraway place he heard Mark asking him where he was.

  ‘I’m back before the wall of leaves,’ Jason answered.

  ‘Continue on,’ Mark said.

  ‘I don’t know …’ Jason said hesitantly.

  Mark told him that he didn’t have to do it, that they could do this some other time if he didn’t feel up to it now, it was no big deal.

  ‘I have no choice,’ Jason argued. ‘I’ll never be ready for this, but it needs to be done. Better to get it over with.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Mark asked.

  Jason thought for a moment, considering the alternatives.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘OK. Keep going. You can come back any time you want. It’s easy. Just snap your fingers. All right, Jason?’

  Jason repeated that he was going for it and started walking tentatively toward the wall of foliage. As before, he walked into one of the black holes and found himself in the deep black of a moonless night.