Everything Burns Page 22

  In my mind I’m trying to figure out how it’s possible for him to be spreading my fingerprints all over Lisa’s parents’ house. Or maybe he’s just bluffing. But can I afford to call his bluff? Bourenhem is obviously the crazy one here. He’s already beat himself up to make it look like I did it. He murdered Olga by fire. By the looks of things, he’s burned Alex to death. Who’s to say he wouldn’t burn Anna or Lisa? What if he literally loves them to death?

  “What do you want me to do, Bourenhem?”

  “I want you to record a video confession. A confession that declares the absolute truth directly from your own pieholio: that you stole my novel and published it as your own. Then, I want you to post it on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, you name it, until it goes viral.”

  “And when exactly would you like me to make this false confession, you fuck?”

  “See, that’s exactly the attitude we don’t need right now, Reece.”

  “Okay, confession. Not false confession. When would you like me to make it?”

  “You have until eleven o’clock to get it done and make it viral, or else I resort to ‘burning down the house . . .’ ” He sings the last words to the tune of the famous Talking Heads pop song.

  “You really think you’re going to get away with this scam?” I say, gripping the cell phone so tightly I feel like it might explode in my hand.

  “I’m already getting away with it, precisely because it isn’t a scam. I also know that once it’s done it will destroy your career forever, and I know that you know it too. No reputable publisher or agent will touch you once you admit the terrible, evil truth. You betrayed us all, Reece Johnston. You went against the writers’ code so firmly established by Hemingway, Faulkner, hell, even Stephen King. In their eyes you are a heretic. You betrayed Lisa, Anna, and yes, Rachael. You remember Rachael, don’t you? But most of all, you betrayed yourself and your gift by resorting to the lowest act a writer can possibly engage in. You did it because you craved fame more than anything else in the world.”

  It’s not his speaking of Rachael by name that raises the hairs up on the back of my neck. Naturally he’s heard the name Rachael before, having spent so much time with Lisa. But how is it that he believes I betrayed Rachael? Sure, Rachael certainly thinks I betrayed her by my not letting go of my love for Lisa. But where in hell would Bourenhem get that idea? It’s like Rachael fed him that line.

  Once more I see the silhouette of Bourenhem up in the window of his Troy apartment. I see him arguing with someone. A woman. My instinct keeps trying to tell me that maybe the woman was Rachael, but that I’m over-imagining things due to the close proximity of Rachael’s apartment to his. But perhaps it’s all too true. Maybe she’s in on it with him.

  I feel the floor shift out from under my feet, feel myself falling into a black, bottomless pit, my body spinning clockwise, spinning down and down and down and never hitting ground.

  “Reece, my friend,” Bourenhem goes on, “the source of the fire that burns in you so ferociously is the devil, and you have sold your soul to him, lock, stock, and two smoking barrels. If I were you, I’d take another look at the message that was left for you on the back of the author photo tacked to the bulletin board in Lisa’s office. The one about becoming a posthumous best seller. The message isn’t accidental. Like a good sentence, it’s entirely thought out. Entirely deliberate. Or take another gaze at the chalkboard. What’s there isn’t just a cute drawing rendered out of anger or jealousy. It was a way of speaking the truth to you. Do the honorable thing and take the Hemingway way out. Do it as soon as you post the video. It’s the only way to save Lisa and Anna.”

  “What if I just call the police?” I say, the words feeling like they’re peeling themselves from the back of my throat.

  “Of course you could call the police. Though the sound of a police siren will only result in instant death to Lisa and Anna. Or you could choose to do nothing at all and simply take the chance that I’m bluffing. But I assure you, I am not bluffing. This thing we’ve got going tonight is as serious as a heart attack. Just ask Alexander—errrr, well, scratch that. He’s looking terribly fried right now and I’m not so sure he’s up to answering questions from the likes of you or me.

  “So what will it be, Reece Johnston, best seller? Which do you wish to save more? Your literary career, or the lives of your precious loved ones? You have until eleven to decide.”

  He hangs up.

  My brain once more fills with the chalkboard drawing of the back of my head being blown away with a double-barrel shotgun. He’s crazy. Of course I wrote The Damned. He’s just setting me up for the ultimate fall. First he wants to destroy my career, and then he’s going to destroy my family and I’m going to take the blame for it all. The police will testify that I had been acting irrationally and even violently all day. I’m a certifiable pyromaniac who was detained on two separate occasions by the APD, and even arrested. Then came the strange occurrence of a badly burned young woman being fished out of the Hudson River. A woman who lived down the street from Lisa. It’s all culminated in a confession on Facebook and then the murder of my family. Naturally, all that will be left is for me to commit suicide.

  I see my dad standing in the living room. This time he’s accompanied by my big brothers Patrick, who’s wearing a loose black T-shirt that says “Led Zeppelin” across the chest, and Tommy, who’s dressed in a white wifebeater that shows off his muscles.

  You can’t let this shit happen to you, Reece, Tommy says.

  Yeah, you can’t let that Bourenhem dick get away with it, Patrick adds.

  Your brothers are right, Son, says Dad. You need to fight for what’s right. You need to fight for Anna and Lisa’s lives, Reece. You can’t imagine the horror fire would do to their pretty faces. I saw your mother’s face when they pulled her out. It was a horror, Son. A horror. That’s why I didn’t want you to name Anna after her. Too many memories. Bad memories. He pauses for a moment, fighting with himself to keep it together. But there’s something else you have to do, Son. You also have to ask yourself something. Why can’t you remember writing The Damned?

  I stare down at the cell. I know all it would take is a simple phone call to Miller and he will send his troops to the Reynoldses’ estate. I could beg them to do so quietly, stealthily . . .

  You can’t take that chance, Reece, Dad insists. What if that dumb ox Burly Cop hits his siren or engages the flashers on the cruiser? Bourenhem will set the house on fire and they’ll all die.

  I have no choice but to make the video. No choice but to make it go viral. Do it now. Even if it ruins everything I’ve worked so hard and so long for.

  Everything I hold dearest to my heart.

  Chapter 62

  I sit and stare at the computer screen knowing that I should be making the video immediately. The video will save my family. Instead, I once more stare into the living room. But I don’t see my dad or my big brothers. I see something else. I see my past. Late October 2006, to be precise.

  I see the white lab-coated anesthesiologist getting up from his stool. See him standing behind me, pressing a black plastic mask against my mouth, telling me to “slowly inhale.”

  I inhale a sour, plastic-like odor. When he releases the mask, he sits back down and begins making some adjustments to the airflow by typing in some commands on his laptop. The whole time, I’ve been watching his inverted reflection in the stainless steel ceiling-mounted surgical lamp.

  The attractive presiding doctor gently brushes back her lush black hair behind her left ear, tells me to open my mouth. She slides a smooth but rigid plastic device onto my tongue so I don’t choke on it during the procedure. It’s the part of the process I hated the most as a boy, so that Dad had to hold my hand tightly when the doctor slid it onto my tongue. I recall holding his thick, cold hand, while trying hard not to cry.

  “Lie back,” says the doctor. “Chill out. Thin
k of a song; maybe that will relax you.”

  “We’re caught in a trap . . . I can’t walk out . . . Because I love you too much, baby.”

  Through my sedated haze I focus on her dark hair as it drapes her face like a dark veil. I concentrate on her smile and her deep brown eyes. I suddenly have this enormous urge to sit up and kiss her mouth, as if that were physically possible.

  But just then a young black man enters the room. Dressed in black scrubs, he’s as wide as he is tall, with gigantic hands.

  “Armando is going to prepare you,” the doctor says while typing more commands into her laptop, which causes some of the illuminated red and green lines on the display screen it’s wired to to fly up and down, like on an old-fashioned radar readout.

  Armando doesn’t smile. Nor is his tight, meaty face a pleasure to look at. Armando goes right to work, reaching for a thick belt that’s attached to the lowest end of the table. Bringing it across my lower legs, he secures it to the other side of the table. He abruptly tightens the belt so that there is little or no slack against my shins. He then pulls a second belt tightly around my thighs and, following that, a third belt around my chest.

  Shifting himself further up the table, he reaches under it and pulls out a narrow, hidden panel. Taking hold of my right arm, he sets it onto the panel, palm up, strapping it down tightly at the wrist. He goes around the table, pulls a second hidden panel out, and straps the left arm down tight at the wrist, palm up. His final task is to place a kind of hollowed-out block under my neck so that I can’t jerk it during the procedure and injure my spine.

  When his job is done, he shoots me a wide-eyed look like I’m insane and he knows it. Which isn’t too far from the truth, given my circumstances. I tried to burn my wife’s house down. To him, I must be the devil.

  “Are you at peace?” asks the doctor with a reassuring smile.

  I try to nod, but I can’t move. I’ve never known peace. Not since my mother and brothers burned to death . . . my mother in her bed, my brother Tommy while trying to climb out his second-floor bedroom window, my brother Patrick on the floor curled up fetal by his locked bedroom door. We were told that the smoke made them pass out long before the fire burned them, but that never made me feel any more at ease.

  Once more the doctor takes hold of the pump that sends air into the blood pressure device wrapped around my right bicep. I feel the device filling with air, getting tighter and tighter as the doctor records my pressure one final time. When she’s satisfied with the results, she lets the air out of the device and the pressure on my bicep is released.

  “Armando, the electrodes, please,” she says.

  Armando takes hold of a translucent plastic bottle that might hold ketchup or mustard in a diner and squirts some thick clear liquid onto two spongy pads that are attached to a long fabric strap. When he places a set of electrodes over each of my temples and tightens the strap around my skull, I feel the cold liquid against my scalp like a crown of thorns, only cold as ice.

  Losing her smile, the doctor turns to the anesthesiologist to her left.

  “Let’s do this,” she says. Then, to me, “Let’s free the demon inside, Mr. Johnston.”

  Once more I eye eight identical versions of the anesthesiologist in the overhead lamp reflector panels, but in my head I see the faces of Tommy, Patrick, and my mother reflected in the square glass panes. I see the way the faces were before the fire got to them. The anesthesiologist reaches over my face with that black, bad-tasting mask and again sets it over my mouth and nostrils. This time for keeps.

  The doctor turns, places her manicured hands onto the laptop keyboard.

  “Initiating,” she says.

  I’m staring into a burning white spotlight as the first rush of electric shocks bombard my brain.

  Chapter 63

  With a quick shake of my head, I return to the present.

  Front and fucking center.

  My eyes glued to the laptop screen, I search for a place on the menu called “Media Center.” If I click on it, it will bring up the built-in camera that’s located at the top of the laptop screen. All it will take for me to film this so-called confession and save my family is to click on the button and make the recording. It should be easy peasy. A no-brainer. Just double-click on “Record” and recite the following words:

  “I, Reece Johnston, of Albany, New York, do solemnly swear that I did not write the best-selling novel The Damned. That I stole it from its true author, David Bourenhem, and published it as my own.”

  That’s all I have to say before I click on “Stop.” From there I can upload the video onto YouTube and then copy the video’s link and hope it goes viral via the many social networks. Accomplishing the task should take no more than ten or fifteen minutes if I’m expeditious about it.

  Ten minutes to ruin my life. But ten minutes that will save my family.

  Inhaling deeply, I click on the Media Center. I see the link for “Video Camera.” Positioning my thumb and index finger on the keypad, I stare into the camera and double-click. A bright white light turns on at the very top center of the computer screen’s hard plastic frame. It doesn’t shine onto my face so much as attract my eyes like insects to a flame.

  The camera is filming. I try to speak, but something happens. I can’t do it. This is one fiction I’m not capable of. I can’t lie about stealing Bourenhem’s manuscript. It didn’t happen. He wants me to lie not to save my family, but so that he can ruin my career. He might be envious of my renewed relationship with Lisa, but he’s pathologically jealous of my success as a novelist, and for that, he wants to see me crash and burn. That’s what this is all about.

  What if I were to go public with a fiction about stealing The Damned from Bourenhem and he doesn’t honor his end of the bargain and let my family go?

  The damage will have been done. My career will be finished, and it will all have been for nothing. Even if I somehow manage to prove that I made the statement under duress, I will always be suspected of having plagiarized and that will make me untouchable to all publishers and readers.

  I finger the command for “Stop,” sit back in my chair, and glance at my watch. I have fifteen minutes to make the video or else risk my family’s murder.

  But here’s the deal: I don’t believe Bourenhem is going to burn my family. I think it’s all a bluff. It’s possible he hasn’t even burned Alex and that the whole thing has been a charade designed to manipulate me. I never saw proof of a burned body on Skype. So here’s what I’m going to do instead: He’s ordered me to make a video and that’s exactly what I’m going to do. As it’s going viral, I will already have arrived at the Reynoldses’ estate, totally undetected by Bourenhem.

  My plan?

  I’m going to bring terror to the terrorist. If he wants to play with fire, then so be it. Fire is my lover and I will bring him a fire that he will never forget. Pulling the lighter from my jacket pocket, I thumb a high, hot flame. I smell the burning fuel, feel the calming heat. In my head I see Bourenhem’s face. See it melting as the flame consumes it.

  Burn Bourenhem!

  Chapter 64

  It takes only eight and a half minutes for me to make the video and set up an auto-scheduler to air it on the social media networks at the top of the eleven o’clock hour, leaving me a half hour to get myself to the Reynoldses’ house. With the distance being only one mile, all I need is five minutes. That gives me plenty of time to prepare for what it is I’m about to do.

  I head into Lisa’s bedroom, go to my one allotted drawer, pull out a pair of black jeans and a navy blue long-sleeved sweatshirt. I undress and change into the clothing, then step into a pair of black cross-training shoes.

  Frankie is asleep on the edge of the bed, but the commotion wakes her.

  “Where you going dressed like that?” she says. “You look like a cat burglar. You know how I feel about cats.”
>
  “Go back to sleep, Frank. Tomorrow, I’ll bring Mommy and Anna back home with me, and we’ll all live happily ever after.”

  “Ain’t no such thing.”

  “I’m gonna make it happen. For all of us.”

  “That’s what David used to say,” she says before licking her chops, laying her chin back down on her paws, falling back to sleep.

  In the medicine cabinet over the sink I find Lisa’s black mascara and brush some of it onto my forehead and the parts of my face not already shaded by scruffy growth. I find a black watch cap in her walk-in closet in a box where she stores winter mittens and hats. Out in the vestibule, I find my black leather coat. Inside one of the pockets is a pair of black leather gloves that used to belong to Dad.

  “Mind if I use your gloves, Dad?” I say.

  Since when did you start asking if you could use my stuff?

  Down in the basement I locate a full can of Raid wasp and hornet insecticide, which I take back upstairs with me. Out in the garage I find a can of gasoline, three old dish towels that are now used as rags, and some empty Budweiser bottles sitting idle inside the blue recycling bin. Back in the house, I empty out my writing satchel and add the can of Raid, the empty beer bottles, and the rags. Then, in the kitchen, I locate the long Bic butane barbecue lighter and stuff it into the right-hand pocket of my leather coat. In the drawer beside the stove, I find a stainless steel paring knife, which I attach to my right ankle with two separate strips of duct tape. Last, but not least, I stuff the .38 snub-nose into my coat pocket.