Pyrophobia

by Jack Lance

  ‘Now I feel better,’ he said, holding up his hand and smiling at it.

  He trained his eyes on Jason. Gazing at him intensely, he rolled his chair closer to the back doors of the van.

  ‘Go on, what else do you know? This is most intriguing.’

  It was almost impossible for Jason to control himself. Lou, the man he had trusted, was a murderer. He worked with a hit man, a thug who deserved to spend the rest of his life in prison. Kayla was their victim. Jason had never thought that he would be capable of murder, but at this moment he knew he was. But what could he do? More to the point, why had he let Doug take him by surprise at the hospital? Why hadn’t he tried to escape or cry for help? The answer to those questions was obvious. He had been too shattered, too stunned by Doug’s unexpected appearance.

  Try and stall for time, his survival instinct shouted at him.

  The fact that the Polaroid photographs had come from Lou, and that Doug had been the attacker, did not deter him. If anything, that knowledge gave him strength. Everything he did in the next few minutes or hours – or however long he had left – he would do for Kayla. But for now he had to keep Lou engaged in conversation for as long as he could.

  ‘Chris was at the funeral for the Chawkins family,’ he said. ‘I know I must have some connection to Mikey, who died in the car. A few weeks later, I was born. My pyrophobia may have something to do with what happened to Mikey.’

  Lou kept gazing at him with great interest.

  ‘And so?’ he prompted.

  ‘I think that, somehow, Mikey is inside of me. It occurred to me that maybe I’m his incarnation.’

  Lou tapped a finger on his chin.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘That’s about it,’ Jason said. ‘The photographs were about Mike Chawkins. Chris went to his family’s funeral. You and Doug killed him. But I don’t know why. And I don’t know why you felt that Kayla had to die. Or what you have against me.’

  Lou shook his head. ‘I thought you would have come up with more than that by now,’ he said dejectedly. ‘But I’m starting to believe that you really don’t know.’

  He sighed, as if Jason had professed ignorance about water being wet.

  He looked at Doug. ‘We’re doing this.’

  Doug picked a metal plate from the garage floor and wedged it between the floor and the back of the van. Then he pushed Lou, still in his wheelchair, inside and parked him next to Jason.

  Doug grabbed his black clothes and slammed the van’s back doors. A moment later, Jason heard the rattle of garage doors sliding up again. He struggled to sit up across from Lou by leaning his back against the spare tire fastened to the side of the van. His wrists burned from the chafing rope.

  Soon after, the van’s engine fired up and the van rolled backward out of the garage. Doug shifted gears and the car started moving forward. Above Doug’s head, visible through the glass partition window, smoke spiraled up. Doug was dressed entirely in black – his executioner’s uniform – and he had lit a cigarette.

  Jason looked around. He was thirsty and his throat hurt. But he was still alive. It seemed they were not going to kill him inside Lou’s house.

  Against the partition were a number of brown burlap bags. From one of them protruded several long sticks. Jason also saw a bale of hay, wrapped in foil.

  He looked back into Lou Briggs’s eyes. The man sat straight-backed in his wheelchair, watching him.

  ‘Since we have some time, I’ll tell you my story, Jason’ he said casually. ‘I’ll tell you all about it.’

  As the van continued on down the road, Lou made a sound as if he was having an epileptic fit. But it was only his garbled laughter.

  ‘It’s like a stage play,’ he continued quietly, barely audible above the hum of the engine. ‘Imagine a theater. The scenery is all set, the light in the room is dimmed, the spotlights go on. The first actor on stage is Pete McGray. You, the audience, know Pete. He’s a lazy drunk who talks with his fists. A second actor who will soon come on stage is Donna Campbell. For all the wrong reasons, Donna feels attracted to Pete. A romance develops between the twenty-four-year-old woman and thirty-year-old McGray. You might say Donna should have known better, but unfortunately she didn’t. Not at the time, when she let herself be won over by Pete. Oh, her brother Chris had warned her often enough, but in those days she was stubborn and didn’t listen to him. Her brother always thought it was because she had been forced to skip childhood and grow up too fast. Donna lost her mother at the tender age of fourteen, and her father had left her long before that. She hadn’t heard from him since. She never found out what happened to him, how long he lived after that, or where he died. The only person she had left in the world was her brother, two years older than she and something of an oddball.’

  To Jason, despite his misery, it was like having a cold hand around his throat as this mutilated madman told him things that, as far as he knew, were known only to him and a handful of other people. What Lou was saying was true. All of it.

  ‘Donna’s past was no picnic,’ Lou went on. ‘A children’s home here, a guardian there, never a place to really call home. She doesn’t want to live with her brother in San Francisco, even though he invites her to do that more than once. But she is restless, insecure; she feels hunted. Donna Campbell is different from Donna Evans. As Donna Evans she will eventually be transformed, but in this act of the play she is not there yet. She moves from one city to the next, sleeping with one guy after another. She never has any serious problems, however, until in Salt Lake City she runs into Pete McGray. Pete seems to be the one. He is big and strong. She is madly in love with him and for a few months she is happy, the longest Donna has been happy in her life to date.

  ‘But then she gets pregnant. And with that comes the end of the fairy tale. Pete wants her to have an abortion. She refuses; she’s determined to have her baby. A change comes over Pete. Suddenly he is not such a nice man any more. He starts boozing, and when he’s drunk, he hits the mother of his unborn child.

  ‘One day, inevitably, things blow up. This is a few weeks after Donna finds out she is pregnant. It’s July thirteenth, to be exact …’

  Lou paused, allowing Jason time to recall that he had received the first photograph on July thirteenth. Then he continued. ‘In a fit of rage Pete beats her up, even drawing blood. When he comes to his senses, he’s shocked by what he has done and flees from the house. He leaves her there, injured. She calls an ambulance and is admitted to the hospital, where she recovers. She then calls her brother, who takes her under his wing.

  ‘Donna survives, but her unborn child does not. And as if that weren’t bad enough, the doctors tell her she will never be able to conceive again. Pete has destroyed her present and her future.’

  Jason moved his backside a little to straighten up against the spare tire. It dawned on him that Lou had just said something that was new information for him. It seemed unimportant, since everything was unimportant compared to what Doug had done to Kayla, and his own impending death; but maybe it did matter. Lou was trying to explain why he had done what he did. Could Jason use that against him somehow?

  ‘Pete is my biological father,’ Jason said. ‘My mother told me that. Why would you think that …?’

  Suddenly it felt like something was clogging his throat. The answer revealed itself.

  Chris.

  Only Uncle Chris could have told Lou all of this.

  At the same time he thought of Pete McGray, a man he knew only from the rare times his mother had talked about him. Once she had shown Jason a picture of him. A slovenly man with long hair and unshaved cheeks had stared back at him. Jason had not understood how his mother could have fallen in love with a loser like that, and neither did she, in hindsight.

  Pete had sired him, she had told Jason. Then she had ended the relationship and found happiness with Edward Evans. Donna did not want to be reminded of Pete. Could Jason accept that and leave it at that? Jason had been young when he had this co
nversation with his mother. He had willingly agreed, and after that he had mostly forgotten about Pete.

  But had his mother lied? And if Pete wasn’t his father after all, who was?

  How had Lou figured it out? Why would he care?

  Perception dawned suddenly, as if a door into wisdom had opened.

  ‘As you know, Pete doesn’t get a happy end either,’ Lou continued. ‘He gets stabbed during a bar brawl. Apparently he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. His death, however, was no great loss to the world.’

  As Lou paused, Jason’s thoughts churned. A sense of knowing had formed inside his mind. It made him nauseous.

  At the same time, he thought of his mother. He had known about her tumultuous past, but in all these years he had never doubted her sincerity and that she had become a better person by what she had been forced to endure. But nothing added up. The image he had always had of her was now transformed into something black and unrecognizable.

  ‘Let’s get on with the play,’ Lou said, shifting around a little in his wheelchair. He was visibly enjoying the opportunity to tell his story.

  ‘It’s all coming together now. After losing her baby, Donna is depressed. Of course, she is also furious with Pete. But she knows she needs to get on with her life. Then it happens. On August eighteenth, 1977, she is driving along Highway 98 near Sacramento Wash. She has said goodbye to Salt Lake City and plans to make a new life for herself in California. A little over five weeks have passed since she last saw Pete McGray, when he left her bleeding on the floor, moaning and writhing in pain. As Donna is driving along, she sees black smoke rising up ahead of her. When she draws close, she sees a car on fire. Donna pulls over and runs toward it to see if she can help. She witnesses a terrible thing. The car has flipped over on its roof, and there are two screaming people in the front seat. They’re stuck and can’t get out. And then she sees something else. Crying, wailing babies in the back seat. Two of them …’

  Lou fashioned a V with two fingers.

  ‘The flames haven’t yet reached the newborns, monozygotic twins called Mike and Mitch, not yet three weeks old, but it won’t be long before they do. She has to act. She has to make a choice. Who should she try to save first? There’s no time to think. Donna squirms into the burning car, through the hot, stinking fumes, struggles toward the babies, and grabs the first one she comes to. She retreats from the car with the child – just in time. There’s an explosion and new flames shoot up from the cracked windscreen. Nailed to the ground in shock, she stands there for a moment, convinced that everyone inside the car must now be dead. But she’s wrong. Black smoke is wafting out. She’s afraid to approach it now; she’s panicked and scared to death. Imagine that.’

  Jason tried to. In his mind’s eye, as if he were watching a movie, Highway 98 appeared. Broken asphalt under the searing sunlight on a sweltering hot August day. The air shimmering from the vicious flames consuming the Chawkins’ car.

  There is Donna, a young woman, mother of an unborn, murdered child. Three people have just died, right in front of her eyes. She’s shaking, she’s trembling, maybe even crying. There are three dead bodies in the car, that’s what she is thinking. But she doesn’t know that there is one other survivor. Someone she has not saved.

  ‘Do you get it now, Mike?’ the mutilated man in the wheelchair asked.

  Jason nodded in resignation.

  Yes, I get it now, Mitch.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Secrets

  He who had murdered Kayla and Chris showed his macabre grin as he continued his story again.

  ‘Another car is approaching in the distance. The next few seconds are crucial in everything else that is going to happen. Donna thinks that the three people inside the burning car are dead. Then she makes the decision.’

  Jason did not need to guess what decision Mitch was talking about.

  ‘She puts the baby inside her own car and drives off. In the other car, closing quickly, is a man named Johnny Halper. He was a gas station attendant and a chronic alcoholic. He had been drinking heavily the night before. In the morning of August eighteenth he had not skipped his usual breakfast, a generous shot of Jack Daniels, as the police will ascertain later. Despite that, he acts bravely and decisively when he arrives at the burning car. He in fact performs a heroic deed. He too squirms inside, sustaining serious burns in the process, but manages to pull the other baby from the flaming inferno. The adults are burned beyond salvation, but the baby in his arms is still alive, although it has suffered many serious burns. By the way, Johnny is unaware that there was a woman who saved one of the babies. Donna drove off too quickly. And besides, the only thing he was paying attention to was the car on fire. And if he hadn’t acted the way he did, I would not be here to tell you all this.’

  From somewhere came a rattling sound followed by a metallic clonk. Jason had no idea what that was. A new cloud of smoke rose up above Doug’s head; he had lit another cigarette as he drove on.

  ‘The baby Johnny pulls from the car survives. But he is fated to go through life with severe disfigurements. Despite a series of surgical procedures over the years, that is one thing that can’t be remedied. And the child, later the man, is confined to a wheelchair most of the time because of irreparable contractions of his muscles.’

  Mitch Chawkins paused for a moment. Maybe he thought that Jason should feel sorry for him. Had he forgotten what Doug, in his name, had done to Jason’s wife? He remembered Joe Bresnahan’s words. There’s one missing – now where did that one go? He had thought that Joe was talking about a picture that he had misplaced; now he could imagine that the old man had been talking about the other baby. Had Jason asked him about it at the time, he would have found out more about the mystery nightmare he was living in. But he had neglected to do so and what was done was done, for better or for worse.

  Jason, formerly known as Mike Chawkins, clenched his teeth and struggled to pry his wrists and ankles apart. But it was to no avail. Doug had done too good a job tying him up.

  ‘Let’s go back to Donna,’ Mitch said. ‘Like I said, she assumes the people in the car have perished. So she takes off with the baby she rescued from the flames.’

  Jason briefly remembered the visions he had had while lying on Mark’s couch. It was becoming clear to him who the figure wreathed in flames – the fire spirit – had been. Donna Campbell, the woman he had always known as his mother.

  Mawkee, he thought. She called me Mikey, before I became Jason.

  ‘With me,’ he said hoarsely.

  Mitch grinned horribly. ‘Yes, with you, though at first that was unclear. You and I were only a few weeks old at the time, identical twins. So who could say which one is Mitch and which one is Mikey? Fortunately, one might say, our parents found out soon after we were born that we aren’t totally identical after all: our organs are mirrored inside our bodies. It happens sometimes with identical twins. The phenomenon is called situs inversus. Apparently it’s also the reason I suffer from colds more often.’

  Mitch paused for a moment, pensively tapping his finger against his chin.

  ‘Without the fire, or had Donna made a different choice, I would have looked like you,’ he whispered. ‘But I got burned, and you … well, we can see how you turned out.’

  Mitch swallowed, shook his head, and said, ‘OK, enough of that. Now on with the show. So Donna drives off with you. In the beginning, in those first minutes and hours, her feelings revolve mostly around shock and panic. After all, she has seen three people die in agony, right before her eyes.

  ‘And then, of course, she realizes she has committed a crime – she has stolen you. In utter confusion she drives away as fast and as far as she can. By nightfall, after she has calmed down somewhat, she calls the only person she trusts implicitly: her brother Chris. He listens to her story and urges her to join him in his house in San Francisco.

  ‘She can stay with him while they figure out what to do. Donna agrees, and drives there. In the next few
days she nearly drowns in panic; without her brother’s constant support her mind would surely have come undone.

  ‘Her brother makes some phone calls and does research about what happened on Highway ninety-eight near Sacramento Wash, and who the victims were, according to official reports. Then he decides to go to Mount Peytha City to attend the Chawkins funeral. Even though it’s risky, he wants to express his sympathy in some way. And he wants to find out what people are saying about the missing baby. It turns out that nobody so much as mentions the baby.

  ‘Donna is plagued by regret and remorse. There are times when it gets so bad that she wants to report the missing child to the authorities. But then she realizes that she cannot do that. She can’t go back now. Chris doesn’t report the theft of the baby either. What he wants most is to maintain his relationship with Donna. He fears he will lose her if he turns his sister and the baby over to the police. So he says nothing about it all those years.

  ‘Chris advises her to talk to Pete. If she wants to keep the baby, she will have to convince the world that this is her and Pete’s child, and Pete will have to corroborate her story if anyone should ask. Because Donna wants nothing to do with McGray, her brother pays him a visit. It isn’t a long or difficult talk. All Pete wants is to be rid of Donna, and he doesn’t care about anything else – he will do whatever it takes.

  ‘Then Chris comes up with a scheme to conceal the truth. They need a birth certificate saying that she and Pete are the baby’s parents. They can’t register him in Utah. Too many people there know she wasn’t pregnant any more in August of 1977. San Francisco, the city where she was born, is a more logical choice. It’s where Donna grew up, and where her brother still lives. They concoct a credible story about her visiting him and how the baby was born much sooner than expected. Her brother talks Pete into coming to San Francisco as well, to help manufacture the paper trail. They take photographs of Pete and Donna with the baby. Then Chris takes them both to the registry office to co-sign the birth certificate. Her brother even manages to find someone who is willing to testify that he has delivered the child. This man owes her brother something – what he owes is irrelevant – and he pays off his debt with his signature on the fake birth certificate.