Pyrophobia Read online

  Edward had loved Donna dearly. But she had passed away nine years ago, and if time cannot heal the pain of a grievous loss, it can at least numb it. So he had moved on as best as he could. Things are what they are, was his motto. A simple one, perhaps, but to his mind a compelling one.

  Jason had inherited his father’s pragmatism. Life could be made complicated, perhaps, but normally it wasn’t. Crying or feeling sorry for oneself accomplished nothing. Worse, such emotions revealed weakness in a man. His beliefs bothered Kayla sometimes. She believed that men who cried now and then were expressing their true selves. They were not wimps or softies; often just the opposite. But Jason rarely cried. The few hard times he’d had, he had resolved the matter on his own, without having or wanting to lean on anyone.

  Jason conceded that he’d had a happy childhood. Even though his dad was by no means rich, he had always put aside as much as he could for his only son. Jason had gone to the college of his choice and had picked his own major. As a result of receiving such assistance, Jason wanted to ‘repay’ his parents in his own way.

  While his father made coffee, Jason gazed out the window, where a rich tapestry of canyons and forests shimmered beneath a clear azure sky. He and his father shared a love of nature. They were country people, not cut out for city life. The magnificent view that Jason enjoyed from his front porch in Fernhill was one his father had known for most of his life. It was also the view his father hoped to see on his last day on earth. He would never move, not even when he was old and decrepit and no longer able to care for himself. Jason well understood that when that time came, he would have to address his father’s stubbornness, which after all was part of his own genetic make-up. But he would cross that bridge when he came to it. In the meantime, Edward Evans was a strong man capable of tending to his every need – and then some.

  Jason turned away from the window and accepted the steaming mug of coffee his father held out to him. For a moment, their eyes met. No smiles, no frowns, just a simple, knowing expression.

  ‘Your first party without Uncle Chris,’ Jason commented softly.

  ‘Yeah,’ his father said.

  Jason decided not to push the subject of Chris, who had hung himself because of his incurable cancer, unable to endure the pain any longer. After several moments of quiet reminiscing, Jason drained his coffee mug and put it down.

  ‘Well, Dad,’ he said, ‘if there’s nothing I can do here, I guess I’ll mosey on home to Kayla. See you tomorrow.’

  ‘See you tomorrow, son.’

  Jason arrived home at Canyon View half an hour later. Breathing in the pleasing aroma of freshly cut flowers, he searched for Kayla and found her in the bathtub, her head and neck visible above a thick layer of suds.

  ‘Hey, my hubby’s home,’ she said cheerfully.

  He knelt down beside the tub and kissed her. ‘I am,’ he said. ‘And I’m glad to see you taking some quality time for yourself.’

  ‘Uh-huh. It’s heavenly. How were things at your dad’s?’

  ‘Just fine. He’s all set. How was your day?’

  She blew bubbles at him from the palm of her hand. ‘Nothing special. We had to step it up for a while to get the holiday mailing out. Patrick insisted on it. I felt it could wait until tomorrow, but what the boss wants, the boss gets. How about you? Any progress with the Automobile King?’

  ‘A little, thanks to Tony. He had a flash of inspiration this afternoon, and after a few hours we had turned blank paper into a pretty decent outline. I have until the beginning of next week to finish the draft. We need to finish production for the campaign before you and I leave for vacation.’

  ‘That’s wonderful,’ she said, straightening up. ‘Care to hop in? There’s plenty of room. It’s a big tub.’

  He smiled. ‘Thanks for the offer, but I think I’ll go read the paper.’

  She gave him an arch look. ‘You don’t want to scrub my back? And other body parts?’

  When he didn’t answer right away, she dismissed him with a wave of her hand. ‘OK then, off with you. You’re no use to me.’

  As usual, today’s mail was piled beside the phone on his home office desk in what he and Kayla dubbed the postal basket. Casually he flipped through the stack of bills and brochures until he came upon a manila envelope with no return address. Only his name was printed on the front. Jason tore it open.

  The temperature in his home office seemed to soar as he fished out the contents. It was another Polaroid photograph. His heart pounding, he noted a cluster of gravestones depicted on it, but different from those in the previous photo. He turned the photograph over and instantly recognized the angular handwriting.

  You think you’re alive, but you don’t exist

  Jason stood stock still. He shook his head, as if in denial of what his eyes beheld, trying to understand. The words seemed to jump out at him and slap him across the face. He flipped the glossy paper over again.

  In this photo there was no gate between the trees and other elements were different from the previous photo. The photographer had trained the camera lens on a pyramid-shaped structure seemingly made of dark marble. The pyramid looked to be a tomb and was positioned in the center of the photograph. Behind it, more headstones.

  As if he were handling some kind of explosive, he gently placed the photograph and its envelope on his desk. With sweat breaking out on his brow, he looked around the room without a clue of what he was searching for. Hesitantly, he picked up the envelope and examined it. On its upper right-hand corner was a regular stamp – just as the first one had had – indicating it too had been delivered by the U.S. Postal Service.

  Nothing unusual about that.

  What was unusual was the photograph with its macabre message. As his thoughts focused on the words, he shook his head in utter bewilderment. As far as he could tell, he was still very much alive.

  Could the sender be planning to murder him? Was that what those words foretold? Was this a death threat? If so, why? And who was behind it? Mentally he listed the few people in his life with whom he’d had a serious disagreement, but no one of consequence came to mind. He had no real enemies – certainly none who might want to kill him.

  He stood where he was, staring at nothing, his mind blank, until he felt something touch his shoulder.

  FIVE

  Doubts

  Jason whirled around and found himself eye to eye with Kayla, wrapped in a skimpy bath towel.

  ‘Oops. Did I scare you?’ she apologized.

  ‘No,’ Jason quickly assured her. ‘My mind went somewhere else for a moment.’

  He slipped the photograph into his pocket. ‘By the way,’ he asked as casually as he could manage, ‘did you happen to be here when the mail was delivered?’

  She shook her head. ‘Here? No, of course not. You know the mailman does his rounds in the morning. I was at work.’

  She adjusted the bath towel that had slipped down her breasts and gave him a questioning look.

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  He bit his lip, his thoughts swirling with questions. Should he tell her about the photograph? If so, how much? What possible good could that do? Would she dismiss it with a laugh? Or would she crumple in dread and worry? His mind made up, he forced a broad smile.

  ‘I’m sorry, Kayla,’ he apologized. ‘It’s been a busy day. I’m talking nonsense.’

  She folded her arms across her chest and gazed at him pensively, a signal that she was not yet convinced.

  ‘Are you all right? You seem overwrought about something.’

  ‘No, I’m just tired,’ he said with a mock sigh. ‘I had a hectic day at the office. Like I told you.’

  ‘And that’s all?’

  ‘Isn’t that enough?’

  She mumbled something incoherent before heading for the bedroom to get dressed.

  For the rest of the evening he steered the conversation toward work and his father’s birthday party. The next morning they telephoned Edward to wish him many happy retur
ns.

  ‘Another step closer to the end,’ Edward grumbled. ‘And you kids tell me to be happy.’

  He didn’t mean it, Jason realized. It was simply his father’s attempt at humor, which often came across as dry as a desert gulch.

  As was his wont, Jason followed Kayla toward the Pacific Coast Highway and waved at her when she stayed on Interstate 405. When he joined the congestion on the highway, he began to feel guilty. It was as if he were hiding something intensely personal from Kayla, such as an affair. This sort of cover-up went against his nature. They kept no secrets from each other. Trust and honesty were the cornerstones of their relationship.

  I need to sort this out first, he thought; but deep inside a silent voice warned him that he was not capable of ‘sorting out’ this conundrum.

  Blissfully, the morning at the office was free of interruptions from Barbara, Carol and Brian. Still, he found it hard to concentrate on his work. In his mind’s eye he kept seeing the two Polaroid photographs. The first photo had simply inspired confusion. But with the second one, things had turned ominously serious. The only conclusion he could draw was that someone was out to threaten him, if not kill him.

  Alone in his office, he placed the two photographs side by side on the desk in front of him and studied the images. Had they in fact been taken in the same graveyard? He searched for similarities and found several. The same row of small trees in the background was an obvious one. Behind the pyramid-shaped structure – whether it was a tomb or a sculpture, he could not ascertain – he made careful note of the same haphazardly placed gravestones jutting up through the tall grass.

  He concluded that yes, the photographer – whoever he was – had shot the two photos in the same graveyard.

  But where was that graveyard? And who the hell was the photographer?

  Jason turned both photographs over and again studied the writing on the back. Then another, equally interesting question surged within him: is this really a threat?

  What did the messages say, exactly?

  You are dead. You think you’re alive, but you don’t exist.

  If he put them together and interpreted them literally, the message said that he thought he was alive, but no longer was. It did not say someone wanted to kill him. It just said that his death was already a fact.

  The message was bizarre, to say the least. But what really lay beneath it?

  Jason recalled a heated discussion he had once had with a few friends from college. It had been one of those circular debates, lasting into the wee hours of the morning. Their favorite fuel for those pleasant, often nonsensical conversations had been Four Roses Bourbon with a few cans of Budweiser thrown in for good measure. Stu, who now worked for an IT corporation in Phoenix, Arizona, had considered himself quite the philosopher in those days.

  That night he had questioned whether he was actually alive at any given moment. At the core of his argument was the phenomenon of time. Stu had argued that there was no such thing as the concept of ‘now’. Everything one says or does is ‘now’ only after his brain has processed the statement, he had argued. And that process happens a fraction of a second after you actually say or do it. Our faulty senses therefore leave us constantly behind the times. So, in fact, we are completely unaware of what is happening in the real ‘now’. Stu had finished his argument on a strangely upbeat note: ‘Maybe I’m not even alive. Prove to me that I’m alive right now.’

  Jason had never cared for these kinds of elusive philosophical pontifications and was usually the one who ended them.

  He leaned back in his chair and stared up at the ceiling.

  The two same simple but inescapable questions kept churning through his mind. Who had sent the photographs? And why?

  It was another lost day at work and he decided to leave early and get home before Kayla. He struggled to keep his mind focused strictly on everyday matters, but found that impossible to do. After he arrived home, he showered and changed and greeted Kayla, who quickly followed suit. As they were about to leave the house for the birthday party, Kayla stopped short.

  ‘Your father’s present. You forgot it, didn’t you?’

  Jason bit his lower lip. ‘Damn,’ he muttered.

  He stepped back inside and retrieved the nicely wrapped tool chest from the kitchen table. This kind of thing rarely happened to him. He was often the one who had to remind Kayla of what she had forgotten.

  ‘You’re distracted again, aren’t you?’ Kayla said as he backed the car out the driveway. ‘So what’s up?’

  Is it that obvious? he thought dejectedly. One Polaroid photograph had not overly disturbed him. But the appearance of the second photograph had brought him close to the edge.

  Again he considered telling Kayla about the pictures, and again he decided against it. They were on their way to a party. Telling her would ruin the evening for her. And if her evening was ruined, his father’s would be too.

  Later, he silently vowed. I will tell her later.

  ‘I’m tired,’ he said. ‘The campaign for the Automobile King is taking its toll on me.’

  It sounded like a hollow excuse, even to him. He had never excelled at telling white lies.

  He was relieved when Kayla seemed sympathetic.

  ‘You’re busy at the office,’ she stated, ‘because you put up with a lot of fuss for a campaign for an uninspiring client who sells basically junk. I know how it is. Just hang in there a little while longer. Our vacation is coming up soon.’

  He nodded, he hoped with sufficient enthusiasm.

  ‘I can hardly wait,’ he said from the heart.

  They found Edward’s house packed full of people when they knocked on the front door and Jason’s father opened it. As they walked inside, Jason spotted a few familiar faces in the sitting room: family members, friends of Edward’s, neighbors, a few people he knew from his hometown of Cornell. Clearly his father was enjoying himself. His smiles and laughter suggested that no one had yet had the bad taste to introduce the subject of Uncle Chris. But Jason felt confident it was only a matter of time before some social bungler broached the taboo subject. And he knew who that would be.

  ‘Happy birthday, Dad!’ Kayla exclaimed. She gave her father-in-law a hug and an enthusiastic kiss on the cheek. Jason grinned at his father’s bemused reaction and then handed him the gift. Edward put it aside, promising to open it later after the party had died down.

  They greeted the other guests, Jason mentally counting the people he liked and those he would rather avoid. The score was about even.

  Let the party begin, he thought without much excitement.

  He participated in conversations, laughed on cue, fetched drinks for the guests, and passed snacks around. But there was only one thing on his mind: the photographs with their cryptic messages.

  Trying to shake off such thoughts, he directed his attention to the exchange between Aunt Ethel and Kayla. Ethel, he was certain, was fishing for information. She had made it her life’s mission to find out when Jason and Kayla would finally start having children. She no doubt thought she was being discreet about it, but she was about as subtle as a toilet full of unflushed bodily waste.

  Apparently Kayla had had enough of that topic. ‘We haven’t decided yet, Auntie,’ she said in no uncertain terms. ‘We have all the time in the world.’

  ‘But you’re married, aren’t you?’ Ethel countered. ‘You have been for two years. Maybe it’s about time.’

  In her own way, she was being delicate. Ethel was one of Edward’s five siblings. She and her husband Hank had raised eight children together. Two of them, John and Ernest, were standing in a distant corner of the living room, as far removed as possible from that theater of action.

  ‘There’s plenty of time, Auntie Ethel,’ Kayla said, her voice calmer and more patient. ‘Jason and I are only thirty-one years old. Nowadays couples wait a while before having children.’

  That is, if they start having them at all, Jason could hear her saying to herself.


  He turned to Hank – six foot tall, good-natured Hank – and asked him how things were going with his business. He wasn’t really interested; he simply wanted to stay clear of Ethel’s awkward questions. He had a good notion, based on experience, of what subject would come up next. Ethel would invoke God and the sacred duty of all married couples to sow their seed and procreate.

  Hank owned a thriving construction materials business. And he loved to talk about it. He took Jason’s lead and launched into an animated monologue about all the things he had done to ‘optimize his baby’, as he referred to his company. Business was excellent, couldn’t be better, he enthused. He finished his one-way dialogue with the same stale joke Jason had heard on too many occasions. ‘Tell me, Jason,’ he asked magnanimously, ‘are Tanner & Preston in the market for new clients? In the construction business, maybe?’

  Jason gave him the standard answer. ‘Oh, you know, Hank, you’re just too big for us. That’s just the way it is.’

  Hank grinned, patted him on the shoulder, and disappeared into the kitchen to refill his glass.

  Jason found the rest of Edward’s siblings gathered in a corner of the sitting room.

  At seventy-four, Stephanie was the eldest. She had outlived her husband Frank, who had died three years earlier. She wore glasses that were much too big for her, with frames in the shape of butterfly wings. She often reminded Jason of Dame Edna, the showbiz transvestite, and she jabbered at least as much. The older the woman got, Jason observed, the less she seemed able to keep her mouth shut. Even now Jason was overwhelmed by an avalanche of well-intended words that went in one ear and out the other, as he stood there forced to listen to her.

  She’ll keep ticking for another quarter century, Jason reflected. The undertaker will bury himself and his entire family before this dragon lady kicks the can.

  At fifty-six, Hilary was the youngest of his father’s siblings. She didn’t talk nearly as much as her sister, but when she did, it was to bemoan her real or imagined ailments. Jason couldn’t remember ever having had a conversation with her that had not ended in a lamentation on her fragile health and her need to see a laundry list of physicians on an ongoing basis.