Pyrophobia

by Jack Lance

  The last time he’d used this trick to get his way hadn’t been long ago, when they had been unable to agree on where to travel for their vacation. She had wanted to explore the Cascade Mountains in Canada. He had preferred Utah. Their last bath and dinner session had decided that they would visit Utah this year, and Canada the following year. Blackmail me all you want, but that’s what we’re going to do, she had told him firmly.

  ‘Am I that transparent to you?’

  ‘I’m listening, Jason.’

  He nodded and started talking. Calmly he told her about how he had thought of Mount Peytha City. Maybe he had been mistaken with that strange word ‘Mapeetaa’. Although he had never been to Mount Peytha, he now felt a strong urge to visit the desert town. Maybe he would find something of value there.

  ‘Like what?’

  He cleared his throat. ‘This Mapeetaa didn’t just enter my mind out of the blue.’

  Quietly, as if this were a small matter, he told Kayla about the drawing. She let him finish, but the expression on her face was not welcoming.

  ‘In other words,’ he concluded, ‘it could be that Mapeetaa refers to Mount Peytha City, and that’s where the cemetery with the headstone in the third photograph is located.’

  She hit the edge of the tub with the flat of her hand; flakes of suds flew up.

  ‘So now we have another new thing – this drawing. You’re still a man with secrets, Jason Evans.’

  ‘There was no reason to show you. It’s not like it’s cheerful for you to look at.’

  ‘A cemetery in flames? No, thanks,’ she sulked.

  Jason wiped a streak of foam from his nose.

  ‘But you’re right of course,’ he said. ‘I need to put all my cards on the table. So that’s what I’m doing.’

  Kayla groaned. ‘OK. Supposing, just supposing, you’re right about Mount Peytha City. What do you think you’ll find there?’

  ‘Hopefully this particular grave, like I said.’

  She leaned across to him and carefully placed her wine glass on the tile floor. For days now, he had missed the cheerful sparkle in her eyes that made her so irresistible to him.

  ‘And what do you think is so important about that grave?’

  Jason knew he was treading on thin ice. This was not a subject Kayla wanted to discuss. But he needed her support. He didn’t want to proceed without her.

  ‘If you read carefully what’s written on the photographs,’ he started cautiously, as if he were crossing a floor covered in glass splinters and any misstep would cause agony, ‘then I may have an explanation. I could be wrong, but it’s a possibility. If we don’t think of something, we’ll get nowhere. I did think of something. So please, keep an open mind and listen to me.’

  ‘I’m listening,’ she said in a steely voice.

  ‘Past lives,’ he said.

  Her eyes went wide. When he remained silent, she said, ‘Now that’s pretty far-fetched.’

  ‘Kayla, try to bear with me,’ he continued. ‘It’s not unheard of in cases of pyrophobia. Believe me, in the last twenty years I’ve read quite a bit of material on phobias. I found more of those kinds of stories on the Internet today. One of them was about an eight-year-old boy who was afraid his house would burn down. In other words, my life story in a nutshell. This boy also got edgy whenever someone lit so much as a candle. But he underwent regression therapy, and during that therapy he went back to a past lifetime. In that life he was twelve, and he described a wooden house. One night he woke up and smelled smoke. The house was on fire. The boy, or the child he was then, tried to get out, but he couldn’t. He was trapped and perished in the flames. After this session the boy knew where his anxieties had come from, and that made them go away.’

  Jason paused.

  ‘Another account involved the mother of a five-year-old son. He kept talking about “before, when he was big”. The child, whose name was Tyler, said that he had been called Doyle “before” – meaning in another life. At some point, when his mother sat Tyler down and talked to him about it, he described a battlefield where men had shot his fellow soldiers.’

  Jason gazed intently at Kayla.

  ‘Tyler went down on his stomach and copied the stance of a soldier about to shoot a gun. He stretched back his left leg, drew up the right and said that he had his “finger around the ring”, meaning the gun’s trigger. After that he’d been “winged”, or hit by a bullet. He had suffered a lot of pain, his heart had started racing, and his fear had almost choked him. Then the soldier had arrived, the one who had cut short his previous life. “I still had my finger around the ring, but this man came toward me. I wanted to move, but there was too much pain. He shot me, and then I was dead,” Tyler said. When the mother asked him what happened after her son had taken his last breath, he cheered up. “Then I grew inside your belly and my heart started beating again”.’

  Jason took a sip of wine to lubricate his parched throat.

  ‘Since Tyler could not supply dates and places, his mother went to see a regression expert. He thought Tyler could have been a soldier during a conflict on the Mexican border around the year 1880. Tyler, as Doyle, could have been part of a government force fighting a rebel army, but the superior strength of the rebels had been underestimated. His memories had left Tyler with certain anxieties. His mother said her son recoiled in fear if one person were to crawl toward another person in any sort of threatening way. This probably had to do with the way he had been killed when he was Doyle, she thought. Trapped there on the ground, terrified and in terrible pain, he could only lie there waiting for the final, inevitable shot.’

  He looked at Kayla and said, ‘Who knows, maybe it is that simple. If reincarnation is real – and there are billions of people who think it is – then we have the possibility that I lived in a previous life, and that maybe I died in a fire.’

  Kayla rested her head on the edge of the tub as she blew suds off her hand.

  ‘You don’t really believe in these things, do you?’ she asked at length.

  ‘I never said that. I know that you don’t believe in them.’

  ‘You’re right. Why do we need to start dragging in past lives? Who says there aren’t other, perfectly down-to-earth factors at work here? What would a psychologist say about this? What would Mark say?’

  ‘I asked you to keep your mind open to other possibilities.’

  ‘Excuse me for being a skeptic and not accepting with open arms what I believe to be pure bullshit.’

  ‘That’s taking the easy way out, Kayla.’

  ‘You’re doing it, too.’

  He bit his tongue. No fighting. He didn’t want this to turn into an argument.

  ‘I admit there’s a hole in my theory,’ he said.

  She scowled at him. ‘Do tell.’

  ‘Without the photographs, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. But how could the photographer know if I did have a past life? And how would he or she know the exact date of my death? That’s impossible. I don’t believe it for a second.’

  ‘So, no past lives?’ Kayla asked, with a hint of hope.

  ‘I haven’t finished yet.’

  ‘Oh.’

  She couldn’t hide the disappointment in her voice.

  ‘It’s the only theory I have, and I’m not ready to throw it under the bus yet. I still want to go to Mount Peytha City. I have to see the place for myself.’

  ‘I knew you’d want something from me,’ she said.

  He held his tongue, embarrassed.

  She continued, ‘You’re going to ask me to come with you. And if you don’t, or if you don’t want me to come, that’s almost like leaving me.’

  ‘You’re overreacting, Kayla. I’m not leaving you; that is the very last thing I would ever want. But yes, that is what I wanted to ask you. Come with me. Please?’

  She glared at him. ‘Do I have a choice? You’re going, no matter what. And if I’m not there with you, I’ll feel even worse.’

  Kayla was si
lent for a moment, staring at the wall behind Jason’s head.

  ‘But I do have one condition.’

  ‘Name it.’

  ‘After Mount Peytha City, if the nightmares continue, you go back to Mark. But maybe they’ll go away if you forget about this whole mess. They had gone, remember? They’re back now only because of the photographs, right? I’d much prefer if you’d just sit tight and do nothing for a while. The photographer, whoever the bastard is, seems to have stopped what he was doing. Maybe you’re right and this wasn’t meant as a threat to your life. He’s lying low, thank God, so we could do the same.’

  ‘Sitting tight and doing nothing will get us nowhere, Kayla. Besides, maybe something is going to happen on August eighteenth.’

  ‘Sometimes problems go away if you ignore them. You’ve told me so yourself, on more than one occasion.’

  ‘You’re calling the guns on to my own position,’ he demurred.

  ‘And what is our problem here?’ she continued, unperturbed. ‘Someone is saying you died. That’s insane. Yet despite that, you want to set out to look for that cemetery …’

  She peered up at the ceiling, as if the answer to the enigma resided up there. ‘How can I explain this? I’m worried you might be sticking your hand into a hornets’ nest, and that awful things will happen as a result. You might set something horrible in motion. Who knows? I want to get on with our lives. Just move on. Will you promise me you’ll try that?’

  ‘Of course, I’ll try.’

  ‘Promise me.’

  ‘I …’ He gazed into her blue eyes, begging him to please say yes.

  ‘I promise,’ he said.

  She rested her head back against the edge of the tub, into the cloud of white suds. ‘And you really haven’t been to that town before?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, I find all this very peculiar.’

  ‘So do I,’ he confessed.

  ‘When do you want to go?’

  ‘Soon. Not tomorrow, but the day after.’

  ‘How should we arrange this with work?’

  ‘We’ll take off three days, but leave open the possibility that we’ll need four days. That will give us the weekend if we need it.’

  ‘You’re in a hurry.’

  ‘Kayla,’ he started, more calmly than he felt, ‘I just can’t postpone this.’

  She sighed. ‘How long would this trip take?’

  ‘Three days. One day to drive there, another day to look around, and then we drive back the third day. If we take the rest of the week off, that gives us Friday as a buffer, should we need it.’

  Kayla eyed him cautiously. ‘And that’s the whole story? Have you been doing anything else this afternoon, besides concocting incredible theories and making me dinner?’

  ‘Guilty as charged,’ he admitted. ‘I’ve been searching the Internet for information about Mount Peytha City. Apparently, it’s a charming place. Lots of water sports. It’s right by the Colorado River and Lake Mohave, and near Laughlin, Nevada. They call that place Little Las Vegas. And ah …’ Jason coughed. ‘It has one large graveyard. I have the address. I couldn’t tell you what it looks like, because there’s no website for it, and the undertaker couldn’t paint me a clear picture.’

  She straightened up abruptly. ‘The undertaker?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, gazing at her sheepishly. ‘I’d meant to bring that up. This afternoon I called Cleigh Abbeville’s Funeral Home. I found it in the Yellow Pages. I spoke to the funeral director and told him I was working on my family history, that my genealogic research had led me to Mount Peytha City, and that I was hoping to find the grave of a relative there. He left me with the impression that he gets those kinds of phone calls all the time.’

  ‘Jason, stop beating around the bush,’ Kayla admonished.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘I’ve made an appointment to see him. He’s expecting me – us – Wednesday morning at eleven.’

  ‘Jeez, you really haven’t been sitting still,’ Kayla said wryly. ‘Wednesday? That means that yes, we do need to leave here on Tuesday. What do you want to ask this man? What was his name again?’

  ‘Cleigh. Chuck Cleigh. It’s a family company. He said something about a son he’s training. I’m not sure what I’m going to ask him. I think we should see the graveyard first. Maybe I shouldn’t have called him until after we get there, but what’s done is done.’

  ‘And that’s it?’ she asked.

  ‘Basically, yes.’

  She nodded. ‘So this may be over on Wednesday. You will have completed your investigation, and we can move on.’

  As she said this, her body language spoke volumes. He put both hands on the edge of the bathtub.

  ‘You don’t believe a word of this, do you?’

  She shook her head no.

  ‘Listen,’ he continued. ‘It’s possible I’m a long way from being done before August eighteenth. Maybe Mount Peytha is just the beginning. I could promise you all kinds of things, but I have only a few weeks to go, and no idea of what’s in store for us. Kayla, I need your support, dammit.’

  His last utterance had been too harsh, and he regretted it instantly.

  Again she shook her head. ‘I’ll go with you, I’ll support you, and I’ll behave. But after our little escapade to this pit-hole of yours, this sort of nonsense is over and you’re going back to Mark. Or you talk to the police, if any new threats arise. If you love me, listen to me for once.’

  She spoke in a voice of granite, and Jason knew she meant it.

  Kayla had drawn a line in the sand and if he crossed it, he would do so at his peril.

  Then he had a thought, or maybe a little voice that spoke into his ear. It said he was going to lose her. He was going to lose everything he had.

  He tried to silence the little voice.

  He woke with a start and glanced at the glowing red numbers on the digital alarm clock – it was 2:12 a.m. His head was cluttered with hazy thoughts that collectively made no sense whatsoever. Beside him Kayla slept.

  Jason got out of bed and sat down in his chair on the porch. When would he finally get another full night’s sleep? It had been days. As the bouncing balls inside his head finally settled down, he gazed out into the balmy darkness, listening to the familiar sounds of the crickets and other creatures of the night.

  Everything had changed. In Jason’s mind, his old life was over.

  He was standing on the threshold of a new existence.

  TWENTY

  Mount Peytha City

  The drive was just shy of three hundred miles. The day before, on Monday, Kayla had arranged to take three, maybe four days off from work. For Jason it had been a little less comfortable, compliments of that wretched Tommy Jones campaign. He was forced to stand on his contractual right to use his allotted vacation days at his discretion. Enduring his boss’s displeasure he accepted as part of the deal.

  Interstates 10 and 15 took them to Interstate 40, straight through the hot, stifling Mojave Desert. After they passed by the town of Needles, it was only another twenty miles on Highway 59 to Mount Peytha City. They had lunch in a small town called Ludlow. Besides a rusty gas station and a small, ramshackle grocery store – with a sign out front proclaiming IF YOU DON’T SHOP HERE, WE BOTH LOSE MONEY! – Ludlow featured a Wendy’s, a Kentucky Fried Chicken and the Desert Rest Steakhouse. Kayla and Jason opted for the steakhouse. After their meal they got back into the car and drove on across a shimmering tarmac past sun-bleached land with desert sand, dry shrubs and cactuses, waving reed grass, blown-out truck tires, garbage dumps and one trailer park after another clinging to both sides of the road.

  ‘What have you discovered about Mount Peytha City on the Web?’ Kayla asked.

  ‘It was founded in the nineteenth century by an eccentric pioneer named David Laurel,’ Jason explained. ‘He started a postal service and stuck his nose into everything. For that reason the locals started calling the place Laurelville, much to David’s satisfaction.’

&
nbsp; ‘Modest man,’ she remarked.

  ‘You might say that. In those days, Laurelville was popular mainly with prospectors,’ Jason continued. ‘Apparently there are quite a few abandoned gold mines around the area. But the good times didn’t last. What little gold there was played out, forcing the prospectors to move on to other stakes. With them went the town’s lifeblood. Laurelville became a ghost town. That was around the start of the twentieth century. Coincidentally, the old cemetery is the only thing remaining of Laurelville. And that old cemetery abuts the new one.’

  ‘Sounds cozy. Nice place for a wedding trip.’

  ‘For tumbleweeds, maybe.’ Jason chuckled at his turn of phrase, then continued. ‘Eventually, Laurelville got back on the map as Mount Peytha City, thanks to a dam that was built in Lake Mohave. They started building it in 1942, but then construction was delayed for a few years during World War II. It took until 1953 to finish it. For half a century …’

  At those words an icy claw seemed to wrap itself around Jason’s throat, and his breath faltered.

  For half a century Laurelville had been dead, only thinking it was alive. But it no longer existed. After those fifty years, Laurelville reincarnated and became known as Mount Peytha City.

  ‘Jason?’ Kayla asked. ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘No,’ Jason said, recovering. ‘Half a century later,’ he continued, ‘they built the new town, named after, you guessed it, the highest peak in the mountain range there. At first it was just a village. But by 1980, twenty thousand people lived there; today that number is closer to forty thousand. According to information on the Internet, the city council is planning on a hundred thousand residents in another fifteen years. They hope to achieve such rapid growth by stressing tourism and leisure in their promotional campaigns. More importantly, they hope to benefit from the Laughlin casino resort, located a few miles away across the Nevada state line. That seems a sure bet.’

  ‘Cute. Pun intended?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ He smiled across at her.