Pyrophobia Read online

  As he lay in bed, he heard sounds in the house: rumbling and clattering drainpipes, groaning wood. Or was it crackling? Was that the sickly smell of fire he sensed?

  Jason froze. At length he slid out from under the sheets and darted out the bedroom door. What was that? Something glowing in the hallway? His fingers shaking, he searched for the light switch. The light went on, revealing no plumes of smoke, no crackling flames, nothing.

  Sweat trickled down his face. A wave of nausea washed over and through him. He reacted instinctively, running from the hallway into the living room and switching on the lights there. Then he ran into the kitchen and then into the bathroom. He even ran outside on to the back porch, but he found nary a flicker of flame there, either. Of course not, his mind chided him from somewhere deep inside.

  Calmer now, he circled Canyon View from the outside, dressed in nothing but his underwear.

  The fetid smells of fire and death slowly faded away. Until he smelled nothing. There was no fire, no cause for alarm.

  He clasped his hands behind his neck.

  Don’t let this get to you now, Jason, he thought. Stay calm, trust your common sense.

  By now, shards of morning sun were intruding upon the eastern sky.

  Jason went back inside to find the door open from the living room into the hallway. As he walked through it, he spotted something on the doormat inside the small entrance hall. He stooped to pick it up. It was an envelope. His heart sank and he felt a surge of nausea in his intestines.

  It was a manila envelope, of course. The blocky handwriting that he recognized stated only his name. No address, no stamp.

  This envelope had been hand-delivered.

  But when? Had it been here when he and Kayla returned from the hospital? He didn’t think so because he would have noticed it.

  Whatever it was, he held it in his hand now.

  Jason stared at the envelope, dreading to open it. Finally he did. As he tore it open, his fingers were trembling.

  It contained another Polaroid photograph, but this image was different from the other two. Instead of another graveyard he saw a single letter on a gray sandstone wall – a weathered wall, with irregularities, cracks and lichen. A strange wall …

  Then it suddenly hit him. He was looking at a gravestone. The stone filled the entire picture, and on the gray background, like graffiti, a single graceful red letter stood out.

  M

  The red curly M consumed a good part of the gray background. Jason quickly determined that the letter had been superimposed on to the photograph. Not hard to do for someone who knew how to do it. Jason could have done it in a heartbeat.

  He turned the photograph over.

  There it was, the handwritten text.

  August 18th, your date of death

  EIGHT

  An Old Dream

  The next morning Jason called Brian Anderson, and Kayla called Patrick Voight. Both men responded with shock and concern. Jason and Kayla tried to reassure them that everything was all right, the accident could have ended a lot worse.

  Kayla drove Jason in her Chrysler to Felix Auto Repair on City Terrace Drive. Together with chief mechanic Ron Schaffner, they surveyed the damage to the Buick. The grille was a mess, the fender had become partly detached, and the headlights were shattered. The hood was open and pointing up in a slight buckle; along its edges, the familiar aluminum shine had been defiled by streaks of charred black.

  Scratching his ample beer belly, Ron spat out a wad of chewing tobacco and said in his usual sharp nasal twang, ‘We should be able to fix her for you, but it’s gonna take a while.’

  ‘OK, Ron, thanks,’ Jason sighed. ‘Do your best, that’s all I can ask. You know I have faith in you.’

  Jason followed Kayla home driving a loaner car, a Tommy-cheapie Chevy Aveo. Once back at Canyon View, they received a visit from the local police captain. Guillermo Caiazzo had an Italian name and looked the part – complete with a dab of Armani aftershave, as Kayla was to later comment with a satisfied smile that made Jason jealous. Dressed snugly in a pinstriped tailored suit, he stayed for half an hour taking copious notes. As it turned out, however, there was not much more either Jason or Kayla could tell him than they had not already told Officer Dillon and Officer Herbert. In what seemed like a flash after they had first noticed the bright headlights of the other car, the Buick had been rammed off the road and the other driver had kept on going. Nodding in understanding, Guillermo said he planned on searching for trace evidence on the Buick and at the crash site.

  Jason said nothing about the photographs either to the police captain or to his father. Kayla kept giving him worried glances, as if sensing he was withholding an important piece of the puzzle from her. But she didn’t say anything about it, thinking, perhaps, that he was preoccupied with the fire that had erupted in his car’s engine. She knew that there was nothing she could do about his fire phobia.

  That night, in bed, while Kayla lay asleep and there were no distractions, his fear took flight. He wondered, again, what the pictures meant and who had taken them. He had a suspicion – growing into a conviction – that the person who had delivered the last photo was also responsible for the accident. He or she had rammed his Buick and then in the resulting confusion had sneaked up to the house and slid the third picture into the mail slot of his front door.

  If that were true, then the accident had been no accident. It had been a deliberate assault.

  Other Polaroid photographs might be waiting in the wings. And additional onslaughts.

  Is someone going to kill me on August eighteenth?

  Was that when this would all end? Did he have only one more month to live?

  He could no longer keep the photographs a secret from Kayla. He had to confess everything to her. But he was afraid to do that. Something still held him back.

  At some point in the middle of the night, Jason found himself in a darkness devoid of stars. From the corner of his eye, he spotted the glow of a fire. Where was the door? He couldn’t find it. His heart was pounding and rivulets of sweat were trickling down his back. He looked to his right and left. Flames were all around him! Was it a funeral pyre? He opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came. A blistering heat seared his face and burned away his skin. There was no way out. Flames towered over him, closing in on him. The pain, oh God the pain …

  Uttering a hoarse cry, he sat up with a jerk and gasped for breath.

  It’s not real! he struggled to assure himself. I’m not trapped, there was no fire, I didn’t get burned. It was a dream, a nightmare.

  ‘Jason?’ He heard Kayla whispering beside him, her voice a study in controlled fear. ‘God Almighty, Jason, what’s the matter?’

  He wanted to answer, but his teeth were chattering, his body was shaking as if from a winter blast. He rubbed his sweat-smeared face. Or were those tears? Yes, they were tears. Sweet Jesus, he was bawling like a baby!

  Kayla wrapped her arms around him.

  ‘Jason, say something. Talk to me,’ she pleaded.

  He took a deep breath, tried to suppress his uncontrollable sobbing. His head felt as though it might burst.

  ‘I had the dream again,’ he whispered in agony.

  She gazed down knowingly, as if expecting this. ‘You mean the nightmare?’

  He nodded. ‘Yes, the nightmare.’

  ‘No doubt it was induced by the accident.’

  He shook his head. ‘No. You don’t understand. It was the nightmare. The same one I’ve had before.’

  Kayla massaged his back and his trembling slowly subsided. She looked deep into his eyes. ‘About a fire, and you can’t get away?’

  ‘Yeah, that one. I’m in a dark place somewhere. It’s night and I can’t see anything except the fire. It’s all around me. It’s crawling closer and closer, closing in on me. It’s like I’m tied to a stake or something. I’m trapped, and I can’t move. All I can do is wait until the flames consume me and I burn to ashes. Then I wake up.’
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  Kayla swallowed. She wanted to say something to convey love and sympathy, but no words came. Jason put a hand on her cheek and saw the glint of unshed tears in her eyes. Suddenly he was no longer shaking, and he felt all the more guilty for the suffering he was putting her through. And she didn’t even know about the photographs.

  He sank back on to the pillows. The last time he had had this nightmare was more than four years ago, soon after they had met. He had no recollection of when the dreams had first started. As a small child, he had experienced the dream several times. In the twenty years since then the fire had often intruded upon his sleep, sometimes several nights a week; and then nothing for months. Occasionally the terror surged within him in broad daylight, like that time in Sherilyn’s house. His love for Kayla had released him from the horror of the dreams four years ago. For good, he had assumed.

  His fear of fire had remained, but it was less intense than before.

  Still, the thought of a fire raging out of control was about the only mental image that could bring him to the verge of panic. Burning candles, campfires, or the bonfires of Halloween, it didn’t matter. Jason Evans hated all varieties of fire – just about anything that could burst into flames – and avoided them whenever he could. Other memories floated to the surface. In his parents’ home, when he was young, he had never wanted his father to light the fireplace, not even during the bitter cold of a winter night. Edward had ignored his objections at first, but after his son suffered through a few dramatic nights filled with nightmares he had accepted the fact that the hearth would remain forever empty of wood and paper. In Canyon View they never lit candles, and Jason had convinced Kayla that they didn’t need a fireplace.

  Even though he had tried to deny it at first, he came to realize that his fear was irrational. There was even a scientific term for it: pyrophobia, an exaggerated fear of fire. That term had become embedded inside him. Why it had, he had no idea. He had never been involved in a fire, and nothing else could be tied conclusively to his terror. He had asked his parents if perhaps they could recall some event from his childhood, something that could help to explain his pyrophobia. An incident he did not recollect, maybe. Could his subconscious past hold the key to his recurring nightmare?

  But his parents had been unable to offer anything substantive. When he had fallen in love with Kayla, he had ended his search for clues. He was too happy to be obsessed with anything beyond making her happy.

  During the last four years he had led a normal life; the flames torturing his mind seemed to finally have been extinguished. For four years it had worked. But now an anonymous photographer had cruelly inserted his sinister sickness into the joys of Jason’s life. Jason had to find out who this person was and what message he was attempting to deliver. He felt like he didn’t have much time.

  August eighteenth was just around the corner.

  NINE

  Dead Ends

  On Friday they both returned to work, as they had agreed to do. As soon as he walked in the agency’s front door, Jason was besieged with questions and had to relate all the gory details of the accident to his co-workers. His account was so riveting, they hung on to his every word. After they finally dispersed to their work stations, he summoned Carol Martinez into his office and asked her how the divorce proceedings were going. Carol told him that Bruno had left her and that her lawyer would be filing divorce papers imminently. This would all be over soon, she assured him with a smile. Jason returned her smile and squeezed her hand.

  ‘I’d like you to look into something for me,’ he said in what he hoped was a casual tone. ‘This, to be precise,’ he added as he pointed to the image on his computer screen.

  He had scanned and saved the third Polaroid photograph to prevent Carol from seeing the message written on the back. ‘I can email it to you. It’s a weird, doctored photo. There’s a letter M in a stone that is probably a grave marker. It may have held a name that was brushed away by Photoshop and replaced by the letter M.’

  He looked at her calmly, as if what he was asking of her was a simple favor. ‘Please continue,’ she said, leaning in and studying the photograph. ‘What exactly do you want me to do?’

  ‘I was wondering if you could extract the layers of the image, to get the original name on the stone to reappear. If ever there was one,’ he added.

  ‘I can try. Where did you get this photograph?’

  ‘It arrived in some spam,’ Jason lied. ‘Just out of curiosity, I wondered whether you could determine the original name. You’re far better at this sort of thing than I am.’

  He could see that she was flattered.

  ‘I’ll have a look at it,’ she said. ‘Go ahead and email it to me.’

  He did, immediately after she left his office, although he didn’t hold out much hope she would uncover anything of significance. Only the original sender’s computer contained the individual layers the picture had been made with in Photoshop. And even so, he couldn’t be sure there had been a name in the original photograph.

  But it was worth a try.

  In the meantime, there was something he could try. Googling the key words ‘grave with pyramids’ produced a lengthy text about an Egyptian pharaoh. ‘Grave + pyramid’ resulted in thousands of links involving ancient Egypt. He tried a few other combinations of words, but this approach was getting him nowhere. Not that he was expecting anything useful. Finding something concrete using this method would be like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack.

  Carol appeared in the open doorway. She reported that her analysis had turned up nothing.

  Dead ends.

  The promotional campaign for Tommy Jones was by now in draft form, thanks to good work by Tony, Barbara and Carol. Their last brainstorm session had gone surprisingly well. Everyone had been focused, and one person’s idea had been fleshed out, reinforced and enhanced by another’s. Nothing else needed Jason’s attention today. He was free to start his weekend early, something that was most convenient at the moment.

  Jason was acquainted with a man whom he considered to be a genius with computers. If Lou Briggs couldn’t find any leads in the photographs, no one could.

  Jason punched in Lou’s number. At the third ring, when Briggs answered in his usual wheezy voice, Jason asked if could stop by.

  ‘Sure,’ Lou said, chipper as always. ‘When?’

  Jason glanced at his watch. It was only three thirty. Although expected to stay in the office until at least five o’clock, right now he could not care less about what he was supposed to do.

  ‘Could I come right over, Lou?’

  ‘Sure. See you when you get here.’

  In his Aveo – the Buick would be in the shop for a few weeks, according to Ron Schaffner’s latest update – Jason left the downtown office building and drove to North Hollywood, where wide asphalt streets were flanked by low-rise buildings with eye-catching signs and miles of garish billboards. Turning left on to Burbank Boulevard, he entered a middle-class residential neighborhood. He parked the car in front of a whitewashed wooden house, the most striking feature of which was its two asymmetric roofs. The second inverted V had been added on at a quarter-turn and was leaning against the first.

  A year ago, Lou had contacted Jason through a web forum they had both visited from time to time called ipyrophobia.com. In describing his life-story in an email to the forum, it turned out that Lou had incurred serious scars following a horrific house fire.

  Jason had responded to his email, offering his sympathy and his support. As time went on, they had exchanged additional emails. Then one day he was inspired to pay a visit to Lou. His self-described ‘serious scars’ turned out to be an understatement, and at first blush Jason had felt a spasm of revulsion toward the man. Lou, bald and skinny, looked more like a skeleton than a full-bodied man: he no longer had ears, a nose, lips, or eyelids. He was also confined to a wheelchair. Severe muscle spasms made it impossible for him to walk any distance. He was the same age as Jason, but his raw,
splotchy skin made him look decades older.

  Lou, who did not have many friends or relatives and lived in virtual isolation, said that the Internet had saved him. He was making a decent living with investments and stocks, and the financial crises that had ruined many of his contemporaries had not touched him. In certain circles he had acquired some fame as a guru of Wall Street. It proved to be an ideal situation for him, since he never had to meet anybody face to face, and still the money poured in.

  After his initial shock at Lou’s appearance, Jason had become increasingly involved with the man’s life and had started paying him regular visits, often on a weekly basis. Over time he became more and more impressed with Lou’s mental acuity. The fire may have claimed much from him and much of him, but it had taken neither his intelligence nor his wisdom. Lou always seemed to have a piece of solid advice or a good story with which to cheer Jason up. On one occasion he had even helped Jason with his work by offering a creative and useful idea for a campaign – although even the genius of Lou Briggs had not come up with anything for the Tommy Jones campaign. On another occasion Lou had fixed Jason’s personal computer after a virus seemed to have devoured everything on his hard drive. But usually they talked about mundane things, and Lou always managed to make Jason feel better about life before he left. The only subject that remained largely taboo was the pyrophobia they shared.

  Lou had told Jason that he had been burned because a gas pipe had exploded inside his family home when he was seventeen years old. Within moments, the house had become a towering inferno. Although he had been severely injured, he had survived the cataclysm. Not so his parents. From that point on, overcome by grief and emotion, he had been unable to continue his story. The memory of the tragedy was too painful for Lou, even now.