Everything Burns

by Vincent Zandri

  When I’m certain the coast is perfectly clear, I check on Frankie’s food and water bowls and see that they’re still full. As if reading my mind, she comes running back into the kitchen, stuffing her snout into the dry dog food.

  “Where you been, Reecey Pieces,” she says, her mouth full.

  “Been a day for the ages, Frankie,” I say. “Wanna hear about it?”

  “Not at all. Besides, I was witness to the whole dog and pony show. Pun intended. Now I just wanna eat and go back to sleep.”

  “Can’t blame you there,” I say, grabbing a beer from the fridge, popping it open.

  Stealing a quick swig, I take the beer with me out onto the back deck. The air is cool but crisp. I eye the backyard and find it almost impossible to conceive of the fact that a grown woman was murdered by fire on the back lawn today. In my head I see her body laid out on the grass and I see the fire consuming her. Tears fill my eyes. I’m not sure if what I’m feeling is profound sadness for Olga or sheer blistering anger at Bourenhem over what he’s done.

  Both.

  I drink more beer and feel my head spin. The night is still young, which means this thing ain’t over. Not by a long shot. What the hell does David have up his sleeve now? What’s his next move? Who was he arguing with inside his apartment? Has the person partnered up with him? Is that person a woman, and is the woman Rachael?

  I shake my head and do my best to convince myself that my imagination is running away with itself.

  “What do you think, Dad?” I say aloud.

  Be prepared for anything, Son, he says. This guy David might not be a successful author, but he’s a slick operator and he’ll do anything to split you and Lisa up. Maybe even kill her, if that’s what it takes.

  I feel ice water shoot up and down my spine.

  “Why would he kill her if he loves her, Dad?”

  Because if he can’t have her, then nobody can have her.

  After a time, I glance at my watch. I’m surprised to see that it’s going on ten o’clock already. Time flies when you’re being set up for crimes you did not commit. I know that with Olga being examined by forensic pathologists, it’s only a matter of minutes until Miller and his team show up with a warrant to search the entire property, inside and out. That means I’ve got to pack up my shit and get the hell out. Do it ASAP. I should already be gone by now.

  Finishing my beer, I head back inside. At the dining room table, I open up my laptop. The message is still there.

  THE BESTSELLER IS A HERETIC AND LIKE ALL HERETICS HE WILL BURN FOR HIS SINS.

  Why the hell would Bourenhem think of me as a heretic when it was Lisa who broke up with his ass? I go into the screen-saver control and delete the message. I don’t bother with adding a new one. Time is of the essence. I would rather just pack up the laptop, gather up my things, and leave. I would do it immediately if the laptop’s Skype videophone doesn’t start to ring.

  Rarely do I use my Skype account. It comes in handy for communicating with Anna and Lisa when I’m travelling to a writers’ conference or a foreign country for research, but that’s about it. Too much social media makes me insane.

  So I might be surprised to simply be receiving this incoming video call at all, but I’m rocked back in my seat to see that it’s coming from Alexander Reynolds.

  My heart begins to beat rapidly. My brain heats up as my plot-building imagination takes over. Has something gone wrong with Lisa’s recovery? Did she suffer a bad reaction to the sedatives or the anesthesia? Has she suffered an allergic reaction? Or are her wounds becoming infected and now she’s spiking a high fever? Or maybe Anna is sick. My creative mind races with the ugly possibilities.

  I stare at the ringing Skype page and the name “Alexander” flashing on and off.

  “Why the hell not just call me on my cell phone?” I ask aloud.

  The caption on the Skype page asks me if I want to answer the video call. Like I have a choice. I hit “Answer.”

  The face that pops up on the computer screen tells me that the horrors of this day and night have only just begun.

  Chapter 59

  I see a close-up of Alex’s face.

  It’s as if the camera on his laptop were positioned only a half inch from the tip of his nose. His face is chalk white. His bottom lip is swelled to twice its size. It’s become black and purple, and there’s a string of blood and drool hanging down from it. Whoever or whatever did this to him just got finished.

  His eyes have been blindfolded by a strip of gray duct tape. There are words written on the tape in blood-red Sharpie marker. The words are penned in uppercase letters, just like they were on my computer. Like they were beneath the drawing of my head being blown off on the chalkboard wall. Like they were on the back of the author photo tacked to the bulletin board in Lisa’s office.

  THE HERETICS WILL BURN!

  The sentence is lifted right out of The Damned. Pyromaniac Drew Brennen paints the walls of his victims with blood: THE HERETICS WILL BURN!

  “Alex,” I say into the laptop screen. “Alex, can you hear me? What the hell is happening?”

  “The heretics will burn,” he whispers.

  But then something pokes him against the side of the head. Something long, hard, and made of plastic. But I can’t be sure of what exactly it is.

  “Louder,” comes a voice belonging to someone hidden from the computer camera’s view. “Louder. Like your life depends upon it.”

  “The heretics will burn,” Alex repeats.

  “Where is Lisa?” I shout. “Where is Anna?”

  I’m trying to look beyond Alexander’s distressed and damaged face. Look behind it, catch a glimpse of Lisa, Anna, or Vickie. But I can’t make out anything other than Alex’s beat-up face.

  The plastic object knocks against his head a second time.

  “Say it again,” demands the voice. The voice. The voice of David Bourenhem? Am I sure that it’s his voice? Not entirely. But in my gut I know that it is. That it can only be his voice.

  “The heretics will burn,” Alexander repeats, the blood from the wound in his bottom lip running thicker and thicker. His head is bobbing, chin against chest, like he’s drunk. But he’s not drunk. He’s beat to a pulp. He looks like he’s about to pass out. But that’s when he raises up his head and, looking at me as if he can see my face through the duct tape, shouts, “Reece, call the police now before they kill us all!”

  “Before who kills you all?”

  The plastic object appears in the laptop screen once more. A liquid of some sort is being squirted through the object. It comes to me then. I know precisely what the object is and what’s being squirted from it. It’s a kid’s toy. A high-powered Super Soaker squirt gun. And the liquid being squirted from it onto Alex’s face and head is gasoline. It’s one of the ways Drew Brennen kills in The Damned. One of the ways he rids the world of heretics.

  It’s then that I begin to make out the sound of crying.

  More than one woman crying.

  “No, please don’t,” someone shouts. It’s Victoria. “He’s going to light Alex on fire. For the love of God.”

  He’s going to burn them all. Just like in The Damned. Mother, father, daughter, granddaughter . . . he’s going to soak them in gasoline and he’s going to torch them all to death. Some will die outside like a pile of burning cordwood, while others will be burned alive inside pine caskets. Others, like Alex, will die while simply strapped to a chair.

  The Super Soaker disappears from view. In its place comes a lit match. The fire slowly approaches Alex’s gasoline-soaked head.

  His mouth opens wide and he issues a scream that I hear and feel like a swift punch to my sternum.

  The lit match comes closer.

  “Nooooo!” Victoria screams and the video feed disappears like black smoke into thin air.

  Chapter 60
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br />   My heart races while my eyes fill with tears of rage.

  I can hardly catch a breath.

  Maybe Alex and I never got along. But to see him about to be burned to death is too impossible to contemplate. Not even a diagnosed pyromaniac would wish such a death on his worst enemy. That kind of crime happens only in books. In movies. In war atrocities.

  I pull out my cell phone from my bush jacket and it drops from my sweaty hand. I retrieve it, thumb the command that will connect me with “Recent Calls.” I see Miller’s number. But just as I’m about to make the call, a multimedia text chimes in. It’s from a local number I do not recognize.

  I open the message.

  It’s a photo of Lisa and Anna. They are both seated on the bed in Lisa’s old upstairs bedroom. Duct tape covers Anna’s eyes and mouth. Her wrists and ankles have also been duct-taped together. Lisa’s mouth is covered in the thick gray tape and, like Anna, her wrists and ankles are bound. But her eyes have not been covered, as though whoever did this doesn’t want to risk damaging her surgical wounds.

  Bourenhem.

  A second message chimes in.

  Don’t call the cops, bro. Or fire burns the ones we both love.

  Using my thumbs I frantically type in a reply, letter by letter.

  What do you want?

  I wait for a reply.

  I want to hear your voice. I want to feel your fear.

  The phone rings and nearly startles me to death. I hit the green “Answer” button that appears on the glass screen.

  “I’m here,” I say.

  “Not even a hello?” Bourenhem says. “If that’s how you treat a friend, how do you treat your enemies?”

  I try to swallow, but my mouth and throat are so dry it’s almost impossible. How is it possible that I just saw Bourenhem standing in the window of his apartment almost an hour ago? How is it possible he was able to invade the Reynoldses’ house, take the entire family hostage, beat up Alex, and Skype me in that short amount of time? The only answer is that he either had this whole thing planned minute to minute. Or he has help. Maybe both.

  “Hello, David. Why are you doing this?”

  “That’s better.”

  “What did you do to my father-in-law?”

  “Ex-father-in-law, bro.”

  “Did you burn him? Just like you burned Olga on my back lawn and set me up for the blame?”

  “Let’s just say that Drew Brennen would be proud of me. I mean, it smells like a fucking steak house in here. I love the aroma of charred meat. You of all people can dig that. Isn’t that right, pyro boy? Makes me wet.”

  I can hear his smile.

  “Come on,” he continues, “you’ve got to admit that was some crazy shit, burning old man Reynolds with gasoline squirted out of a Super Soaker. The Damned comes alive for reals.” He says “reals” like all the kids say it these days. Realzzzzz. “Even you have to be proud of me, Reecey Pieces. See, I meant it when I said I want to be just like you. You and I, we’re two of a kind. We both burn with the devil’s flame.”

  “David,” I say.

  “Yes, Reece?”

  “Before this night ends, I’m going to kill you.”

  He laughs aloud.

  “Really?” he says. “That’s the best line you can come up with? I know for a fact that your now-roasted ex-father-in-law hated your guts and you weren’t particularly fond of his. Lisa and I used to talk about it all the time in bed. You should be thanking me. I wonder how many times you secretly imagined his flesh burning over an open flame. Bet it gave you a nice juicy hard-on.”

  “If you touch my daughter, if you touch Lisa, or my mother-in-law, I will make it painful when I kill you.”

  “Sticks and stones, bro. Their fate lies in your hot little hands.”

  “Tell me how.”

  “First, I would like you to apologize for coming back into Lisa’s life and fucking everything up for me. For destroying my family right before my eyes.”

  “They weren’t your family and I make no apologies for something beyond my control.”

  “Gee, I wonder what Anna’s scalp will look like when I burn her hair off?”

  I exhale.

  “David,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

  “Okay, good. Apology accepted. Don’t forget, we’re friends, Reece. And friends forgive. It’s important in a relationship, don’t you think?”

  “Then let Anna and Lisa go. It’s me you want dead.”

  “I don’t want you dead. I want to punish you for what you’ve done. I need Lisa and Anna to suffer because in their suffering, you suffer.”

  “Please, just stop now.”

  “We’re not done yet, Reecey Pieces. What did Churchill say? This isn’t the end. It’s not even the beginning of the end. But it is the end of the beginning.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “Honestly?”

  “Yes, David.”

  “A little humility and honesty on your part.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “I want you to think back a few years. Back when you were writing The Damned. You know, the one that finally put you on the map. The novel that broke you out of the desperation, your financial sinkhole, your depression, and your need to burn things up, like Lisa’s house for instance. The novel that made you who you are now, Reecey Pieces Johnston, best-selling tool-a-mundo. I want you to try and recall sitting down at the keyboard and, in the immortal words of Ernesto Hemingway, bleeding from your fingertips.”

  My blood boils. If I could reach into the phone and gouge his eyes out, I would.

  “You’re insane.”

  More laughing. Mocking.

  “In truth, Reece, and I mean this as a friend and a fan, you’re the insane one. I mean, who decides to dump the body of a young woman savagely burned in Lisa’s backyard in the river? Why not alert the authorities? Crazy shit, Reece, and you’re going to pay for your crime against humanity. Did you know that the poor Russian girl had come around the house only to borrow a couple of Lisa’s condoms? What a sad way to go.”

  He’s right. I should have called Miller. I should have exposed the murder to him as soon as I was exposed to it. But I didn’t. I panicked, thinking I would assume the blame.

  “Tell me what you want now,” I say.

  “I want you to recall when you were putting typed words on a page back in the fall of 2006. Think about where you were and how you were. What was the weather like? What color were the walls painted? What were you eating back then? Drinking? Did you work on a laptop, or a typewriter? Did you write the first draft out by hand? Did you listen to music while you wrote it? Did you take breaks to masturbate in front of the mirror? Did you think about Lisa when you did it? Lisa, who had only recently become your ex-wife and who was fucking her new boyfriend so hard night in and night out? Think, Reece, think.”

  No choice but to do it. Think back to the time when I was writing The Damned. It’s a disturbing exercise because I can’t actually picture myself sitting at the writing table in what was then my brand-new downtown studio, pounding out the words, sentences, and paragraphs. I can picture myself as a writer actually performing the act of writing by hand or on my laptop, but in this case, I can’t come up with writing anything specific. But then, I’m more than a little panicked right now. I can’t think of anything other than getting Lisa and Anna out of that house and away from Bourenhem.

  “What’s the matter, bro? The truth burning a hole in your tongue? Those treatments with electroconvulsive shock therapy erase your desire for fire and your memory?”

  The blood is speeding through my veins. Heart pounding up against my rib cage. I’m entering into a state of rage so profound, I am seeing through a filter of red.

  “Think, Reece, think. Are you thinking?”

  “Yes,” I lie.


  “But nothing comes to mind, bro. And nothing is going to come to mind.”

  “I write every day. Unlike you, creep, I’m a professional. A real writer. Why should I recall the exact events and moments of writing one single book?”

  “That’s because you can’t possibly remember writing The Damned.”

  “What the hell are you getting at?”

  “You ready for a shocker, my bro? It’s impossible for you to remember writing your first book because you didn’t write it at all.”

  Now it’s my turn to laugh. I’m laughing, but nothing is funny.

  “Now that’s a riot, Bourenhem. If I didn’t write it, who did?”

  “Taa daaa,” he sings. “I wrote it. And guess what? You are going to tell the entire world about it right now. Or else your family and mine becomes burnt toast.”

  Chapter 61

  “I don’t believe a word of this,” I say.

  “Believe it,” Bourenhem says. “In fact, I owe you a great debt. I never would have written The Damned without you. Or, without Lisa telling me all about your pyromania, that is, back when she and I first got reacquainted on the mighty Facebook. Let me see, that had to be around the summer of 2005. What a story you had. I had to write it before you did.”

  “You’re crazy, Bourenhem. Obsessed with Lisa. You’re trying to impress her in your own psychotic little way by acting out The Damned.”

  “Nothing could be more false,” he says. “It’s you I’m obsessed with.”

  His words hit me like a slap to the head. Because it sounds all too true.

  He says, “It’s because of you that I’m making The Damned become a reality. Because when the Reynoldses’ estate burns to the ground, all evidence will point to you, Reece. After all, you took the credit as the author of The Damned. Now you’re going to pay for it. It will make sense to the police. You tried to burn your boyhood home and, later on in life, you tried to burn down Lisa’s home with me and Anna inside it. Now you’re already suspected of staging the break-in and ransacking of Lisa’s new home along with the assault and battery of yours truly. And let’s not forget poor Olga. And to think all she wanted was a condom. Poor lonely girl. You are a known alcohol abuser, and rumor has it the police confiscated your unlicensed handgun. Once the charred remains of your loved ones are tagged and bagged and when your prints are discovered all over the remains of the Reynoldses’ estate, including the back fence, you will be the one who goes to prison for the rest of his life. Am I making sense, my friend?”