The Burning Man

by Christa Faust

She was judging him right now, staring at him like he was some kind of bad guy, when Denise was the one who started it.

  “What the hell are you looking at?” he asked, glaring at her.

  The girl didn’t respond, but she didn’t look away. She just stared at him with those spooky green eyes of hers. Like grown-up eyes in a little kid’s face. He raised his hand to her, but she didn’t flinch. She just narrowed her expression.

  “To hell with you both,” he said, almost to himself. “Somebody has to make a living around here.”

  He turned on his heel and left, slamming the screen door on the pathetic snuffling and boo-hooing of Denise’s little pity party.

  * * *

  It was dark when Randy pulled his sorry-ass pickup truck into the empty parking lot of the Save Rite, and there was only one other vehicle there. Normally, he wouldn’t be caught dead within a mile of a police prowler, but this was Tony’s car, so Randy eased the pickup into the slot beside it and killed the engine.

  Tony Orsini was the older brother of this girl Sherry he used to bang a few years back. Handsome son of a bitch with a square, comic-book hero jaw and a toothpaste commercial smile. He was five years older than Randy, but he still had a full head of thick, perfectly gelled black hair while Randy’s was more like a dying lawn—thin, patchy and pale brown. Tony was the kind of guy who had a five o’ clock shadow by noon. A real he-man type. Chicks couldn’t get enough of him.

  It took Randy a couple of months to start trusting Tony, since he was a cop and all. But it soon became clear that he was as crooked as they come. He was also a generous friend. Always picking up the tab when they went drinking, always sharing the coke he’d confiscated from some lowlife, and always offering up freebies from the working girls he kept out of jail.

  Tony talked all the time about how the drug dealers he arrested had stacks of money just lying around, and how easy it would be to make that cash disappear. After all, if you rob a drug dealer, it’s not like he’s gonna call the cops. And even if he did, Tony was the cops.

  All Tony needed was a good trustworthy partner. Someone he could count on to stay cool under pressure, and back him up on the score.

  That’s where Randy came in.

  Randy got out of the pickup and slid into the passenger side of the prowler. It was nice and cool, air conditioning running at full blast. But even under the circumstances, being inside a cop car still made him sweat a little.

  “You’re late, Randall,” Tony said, instead of a greeting.

  “Sorry, man,” Randy replied. “My old lady’s been giving me grief all night. Practically had to chew my own leg off to get away. You’d think that bitch would be a little more appreciative, seeing as how I’m about to make her rich and all.”

  “Focus,” Tony said. “We got a big night ahead of us.” He looked over. “Let me see your gun.”

  Randy felt a rush of hot blood to his face.

  “Goddammit,” he said. “I knew I forgot something.”

  Tony just stared at him, flat black eyes ice-cold in his stony, expressionless face.

  “Get out,” Tony said.

  “Now just hold on a second, Tony,” Randy began.

  “I said get out.”

  “Look, man,” Randy said, palms out. “I’m sorry. I just let that whiny bitch get to me, break my concentration. Give me a second chance, willya?”

  “Now you listen to me, Randall,” Tony said, twisting a fistful of Randy’s sweaty T-shirt and pulling him close enough to kiss. “I’m trusting you with my life here. My life will literally be in your hands, do you understand that? If you screw this up, I’m a dead man.”

  “I understand,” Randy said, trying to keep his voice steady. “Honest. It’s not a big deal. We can just swing back by my place and pick up the piece, okay? It won’t take any time at all.”

  Tony didn’t say anything for a long, drawn out moment, leaving Randy to sweat in silence. Getting in on a score like this was by far the best and most important thing that had ever happened to Randy. No more smalltime action, this was his ticket to the big leagues. A score like this would change his life forever, and if he screwed it up before it even got off the ground, he didn’t think he could live with himself.

  “All right,” Tony said finally, letting go of Randy’s shirt and putting the prowler in gear. “I’m gonna let it slide, just this once. But I expect better from you from here on out.”

  “Absolutely,” Randy said, straightening his stretched out collar. “You bet. I won’t let you down. You can count on me, man.”

  As Tony drove back down Pearl Street toward the house, Randy had to fight to stop himself from fidgeting like an anxious kid. He’d already made such a bad impression, he needed to do everything he could to show Tony that he was cool. Trustworthy. That he really was ready for the big leagues.

  When they turned the corner and the sad little white house came into view, he felt a pulse of shame. He’d been to Tony’s high-rise condo, with the trendy leather furniture and the knockout view. That was the kind of place Randy wanted, not a trashy dump like this. He wanted to explain to Tony that he was better than this, that he had ambition, and that it was Denise and her nagging and lack of faith in him that kept him down. But it didn’t seem like a good time. Better to just go grab the gun and get going.

  When Randy walked up to the porch, the door was closed.

  That’s weird, he thought. The door was never closed, not in this kind of heat. But he didn’t really think much about it as he pulled the screen door open and turned the knob on the wooden door behind it. He half expected it to be locked, but the handle turned easily.

  When he opened the door, he saw Denise’s older daughter standing there in the middle of the empty living room. Denise must have gone to lie down or something, because although she’d left behind a smeary mess of blood and snot on the wall and floor, she was nowhere to be seen.

  That’s when Randy noticed that the little girl had his gun.

  For a fleeting second, he thought she’d realized that he forgot it, and helpfully brought it out to give to him. But he didn’t remember telling the kid that he’d be needing it, and he’d never talk about that kind of stuff with a nine-year-old, anyway.

  Then she raised the gun and pointed it at him, and any thoughts along those lines swiftly evaporated.

  “Olivia, don’t!” he said, hands held out in supplication.

  The little bitch shot him.

  2

  Tony was starting to regret having chosen Randall as his sacrificial lamb. You’d think it would be impossible to screw up such simple instructions. Clearly he’d overestimated his victim’s ability to distinguish his own sorry ass from a hole in the ground.

  Tony had orchestrated this exact same bait-and-switch set up half a dozen times before, cherry-picking some loser to take the blame for the murder of one of Tony’s myriad rivals and competitors. They would break into the target’s house, Tony would shoot both the target and the fall guy, and from there it was a cinch to doctor up the scene to make it look like they’d killed each other during a botched robbery.

  Should’ve been another no brainer.

  But in the past few months, Tony had been suffering through a tenacious streak of bad luck. Deals going south. Sure things that didn’t pan out. Worse, he’d been having these strange episodes of free-floating anxiety, combined with intense paranoia and an unshakeable conviction that very bad things were going on just outside the limits of his peripheral vision.

  He figured it was probably a side effect from doing too much blow, but it was starting to mess with his composure. Making him doubt himself. And given the kinds of animals he dealt with on a daily basis, you could never show a hint of weakness, or else they’d eat you alive.

  He lit a cigarette to calm himself as he watched Randall fumble around with the doorknob. This guy was really starting to get on Tony’s nerves. It was going to be a pleasure to kill him.

  Again, there was that icy twinge of paranoia
as Tony glanced back down the street. He spotted a man standing beside the mailbox of a Pepto Bismol-colored house, on the other side of the street. He really didn’t want anyone to notice him, or wonder why a petty criminal like Randall was getting into a cop car on the day that would become known as his last.

  But that wasn’t the only reason the guy was making Tony nervous.

  By the glow of a nearby streetlight, he saw that the man was wearing a dark suit and tie, despite the sweltering heat. Also, his face—what could be seen of it—was icy pale under the rim of a black fedora. No tan—not even a hint. Clearly not a local. Some stiff from Internal Affairs?

  A Fed, maybe?

  Tony was starting to think that the best option was to cut his losses and drive away. He could always come back and silently execute Randall some other time. He was about to turn the ignition key when he heard the shot.

  Instinct had him out of the car with his gun drawn before he had a chance to think about what a bad idea it was to get involved in Randall’s domestic mess. There was a second shot and Randall fell backward through the door and onto the porch, clutching his right thigh and making a noise like an angry donkey. Tony figured the guy’s bitch of a wife must have plugged him, and couldn’t blame her, to be honest.

  Stepping into the house, he was astounded to discover that the shooter was a little girl.

  Tony had always been uncomfortable around kids. It was like they could see right through his flash and charm, and knew that there was something off about him. Something rotten. So he avoided them whenever possible.

  He’d dealt with armed attackers more times than he could count, and was known in the department as a guy who always stayed cool under pressure. But he’d never faced off against a child with a gun.

  “Okay, kid,” he said, keeping his voice calm and even. “Why don’t you just put the gun down.”

  The girl was breathing fast and shallow, her pale blond hair crackling with static. Her eyes were wide, with too much white around the thin green irises and dilated pupils.

  “Come on, sweetheart,” he said, holstering his gun and taking a cautious step closer. “Now, why don’t you be a good girl and...”

  He reached out and grabbed the girl’s fragile little wrist, tilting the gun in her hand so it pointed up toward the ceiling.

  Suddenly it felt like he had grabbed a live wire, or stuck his hand into a microwave oven. Some kind of strange blistering heat seared through Tony’s fingers and up into his arm, causing the skin to bubble and blacken. He wanted to let go but it was as if his fingers had been fused to her wrist.

  And in a sudden awful flash, the house was gone. The whole neighborhood was gone and he and the little girl were standing in the middle of what appeared to be a massive junkyard, with wrecked cars and washing machines and twisted metal scrap. Only all of the cars looked foreign and strangely designed, and the brand names on the various broken-down appliances were unfamiliar.

  For a moment he forgot the pain. Then, before Tony could get a handle on this bizarre turn of events, he felt the intrusion of an unwanted presence inside his brain. The girl was in his thoughts. He could feel a weird resonant echo humming through his neurons, as if she was using them to play cat’s cradle. Like the two of them were twisting together, and synching up on a molecular level.

  Then, just like that, the connection was severed, and the two of them were back inside Randall’s house again.

  A fountain of sparks rained down from the light fixture above their heads. Light bulbs popped like corn and the dirty carpet burst into flame, releasing choking, toxic smoke.

  Tony’s right sleeve was on fire, too, and whatever plans he may have had for dealing with the little girl were forgotten in that instant as he spun away from her in a blind panic, shielding his face from the flames with his left hand.

  As he twisted his burning right arm, Tony’s uniform sleeve disintegrated into glowing ash and the fingers he’d clenched around the little girl’s wrist snapped and shattered like burnt breadsticks. The heavy gun in her hand thumped to the carpet and she just stood there, wide green eyes staring.

  Tony tore out into the front yard and dove to the sandy ground, rolling to smother the flames. But the feeling of burning deep inside his flesh could not be quenched. He felt as if his arm had been filled with napalm maggots that were steadily chewing their way up into his torso and head.

  He grayed out for an unknown length of time, woozy and dull with shock, but still able to hear shouting and sirens around him. Then there were hands on his body, lifting him. He tried to fight them, but there were too many. That’s when he realized he was on a stretcher, about to be put into an ambulance.

  “Officer Orsini?” a voice was saying. “Stay with us, okay? We’re gonna get you to the hospital.”

  A paramedic, a woman. Broad, bland face with no makeup, hair hidden under a cap. Cold, clinical blue eyes behind pale lashes.

  He turned away from her ministrations, back toward the smoky, burning house. Randall was already gone, carted away to the hospital—or the morgue, if Tony was lucky. But there was a woman and another blond girl, younger, standing together on the sidewalk. The woman looked like she had a broken nose, but seemed otherwise unharmed.

  The girl was physically fine, but clearly hysterical.

  Meanwhile, on his left side, another paramedic was coddling the little monster who had burned him, checking her vitals and asking if she was alright. Her eyes were still glazed over and far away.

  Tony lunged toward her, ripping the IV out of his good arm and screaming.

  “She did this!” he howled. “She’s a monster! A demon! Get her! She did this to me!”

  The woman paramedic tried to restrain him, but he let her have it, punching her in the gut with his good hand and then shoving her back as he climbed to his unsteady feet.

  Couldn’t they see that this little girl wasn’t a child at all? She was the goddamn antichrist. He had to find a way to stop her, before the unholy power she possessed was unleashed on the unsuspecting world.

  He staggered, dizzy and nauseous, sky and ground whirling, untrustworthy as he reached instinctively for his gun. The movement sent a bolt of blinding pain through the ruined stump that remained of his right hand. He nearly blacked out again, but forced himself to hold it together, fumbling to undo the grip of the pistol with his left hand, until he was able to pull it out of its holster.

  He managed to get his awkward left forefinger through the trigger and pointed the gun at that little blond monster, but then the ground seemed to spin beneath him, and his shot went laughably wide.

  Behind the girl a black firefighter staggered and dropped to his knees, his heavy yellow turnout coat going crimson down one side.

  Then Tony was being tackled by several enraged firefighters and restrained, howling and flailing as the red-faced woman paramedic filled a syringe. Next there was a sharp sting in the meat of his twisting arm.

  Then nothing.

  * * *

  Olivia had no idea how she wound up out on the front lawn. The last thing she remembered was Randall.

  Randall coming through the door all casual and preoccupied like nothing had happened. Like breaking her mother’s nose for the third time that year and threatening to kill her was no big deal. Olivia knew her mother would never have the courage to stand up for herself, so it was up to Olivia to stand up for her. Because she believed in her heart that if she didn’t, Randall really would kill her mother. Maybe her and Rachel, too.

  So what had happened? She remembered pulling the trigger—once, then again—and Randall falling back on the porch with blood soaking through the leg of his oily jeans. Then, as a rush of intense, conflicting emotions overwhelmed her, she felt as if her consciousness was eclipsed by a roiling, electrified thundercloud.

  There was a terrible smell of burning that filled her head, choking her, suffocating her. Then she was here, on the front lawn, the house behind her engulfed in smoke and flames.

 
; Rachel!

  What had happened to her little sister? What about her mother? Were they trapped inside the house?

  She scrambled to her feet, only to be held back by a burly Hispanic paramedic with glasses.

  “Hey, now,” he said. “Take it easy.”

  “My sister,” Olivia said, her voice rough and scratchy from the smoke.

  “She’s fine, honey,” he said. “She’s over there with your mom. Your dad has been taken to the hospital in an ambulance. He’s going to be fine, too, so don’t worry.”

  “He’s...” Her voice seemed to dry up in her throat. “He’s alive? But I...”

  She suddenly lost all the strength in her legs, and was forced to sit straight down on the scratchy grass. She felt as if she was going to throw up.

  She could see an ambulance in the driveway, and thought for a fleeting moment that she saw Randall strapped to a stretcher, but it wasn’t him. It was a cop in a singed uniform. Something about him seemed eerily familiar, like déjà vu or something from a half-remembered dream. He didn’t seem to be conscious, and one arm was all wrapped up and packed with ice.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  Before the paramedic could answer, Rachel came running out of the smoke and chaos, flinging herself so hard at Olivia that she nearly knocked her over backward.

  “Hey,” Olivia said. “It’s okay, kiddo. We’re okay.”

  She looked up at her mother, standing just behind Rachel. Her eyes were both swollen down to pink, puffy slits, and her nose looked like a rotten tomato. She seemed to be crying, but her face was so messed up that it was hard to tell.

  Olivia stood, keeping her arms around Rachel, and pulled her mother gently into the embrace.

  “We’re okay,” she said again.

  She really hoped that it was true.

  3

  SEPTEMBER 1995

  Olivia stood on the beach with her arm around her little sister. It was a Tuesday afternoon, at the tail end of the summer high season, and Neptune Beach was still humming with tourist activity. Mostly chubby, sunburned families with kids and leathery seniors in sun hats. A man played Frisbee with his dog while two girls Rachel’s age shook sand out of their towels.