by Dale Mayer
Now he had to figure out why.
Chapter 8
Phoenix sat on the bus, patiently waiting for it to leave. As she’d found with every stop, stragglers always delayed their departure by at least five minutes. It was often the same couple. Sure enough, it was them again. Probably in another argument.
She didn’t understand it. She often wondered about combative relationships. Did these people have any joy? Why stay together if all they did was fight? Or worse, how could they enjoy or derive any benefit from all the conflict? And, from the looks of them, they were in their early sixties and had been doing this for a long time. Maybe they got comfort living with the certainty of this same routine. They certainly argued loud and long to make sure they couldn’t be ignored. Maybe they did it for attention?
After the bus driver called for a head count, he finally closed the bus door, sat down, put the bus in gear and backed up. One of the buses was ahead of them, and another was still parked, gathering the last of its group. They had only a half-hour drive to get where they were going, but, on a bus, it would probably take ten minutes longer.
When they arrived at the massive parking lot, their bus stopped, and everybody filed out. The heat from the Burning Fires could reach them even here. Why had she never considered that? She should have. She listened to the spiel as she got the history on the hows and the whys and the whens.
And the fact that science couldn’t explain the consistent start and stop of this burning fire.
Several other such Burning Fires were found in other places around the world too. This was one of the smaller, lesser-known sites, and the only one she cared about. This town? It was her heritage. It was where her father was born.
It was where she had to return to.
They walked up to the lookout, feeling the noise and the heat increase with every step as they got closer. She sighed with disappointment. The entire area had been truly commercialized. Not only were the tourists kept back enough to stay safe, but also because of the extreme heat. Again, why had she never considered that? How foolish to think she could just let go of her letter and drop it—and everything attached—into the fire. She could throw it into one of the many tourist garbage cans readily available, but she wouldn’t get anywhere closer to the lava than where she now stood.
Heartache ate at her. She’d hoped and planned this for years. And to come so close and to not complete her mission was a crushing blow.
She stared at the fire, mesmerized by the flames that continued to burn bright. Something was both devastatingly horrifying and exhilarating about seeing something contained, and yet so powerful within that space.
She listened as the bus driver droned on. She thought about what Rowan had said about suicides and wondered how one could even do that. They were set back so far. With the heat pouring out from the fire, how could anybody knowingly and willingly throw themselves into the flames? It didn’t seem likely. She began to wonder if he was teasing her, yet he had been too serious and too worried about her intentions to not take his words literally.
As she walked farther along the path, she came to an area much less traveled and found it was hotter. She also spied steps going down, probably for maintenance. A gate stopped people from traveling in that direction. But, if somebody was seriously interested in committing suicide, they wouldn’t let a gate like that stop them.
She frowned, wondering if she should follow the same path. If Rowan caught sight of her down here, he’d think she was about to take her own life. And yet, nothing inside her said she was supposed to do that; yet the letter on the strange paper in her hand burned hot.
She so badly wanted to release it in the fire. But how could she make that happen?
Frustration ate at her. She had been dreaming about this single act for years. Dreaming of walking away and being free. Free of the influence of her father and all the nastiness she had endured. She stroked the scar along the side of her face. One of so many. Yet the most visible one. The one that pained her the most because it was always there, something that other people looked at, glanced away and then, almost as if they couldn’t help themselves, glanced back at again.
She glanced at the gate and the sign she presumed read Do Not Enter, although she couldn’t read the local language. A voice called out from behind her.
“Phoenix? What are you doing?”
She looked up to see Rowan.
She gave him a crooked smile. “I was just thinking to myself that, if you saw me, you’d think I was about to commit suicide. I’m not,” she said. “But the fact that people were doing that here made me wonder how they could breach the fire with this protective barrier.”
“Which is, of course, why we have it,” he said. “A lot of space exists where people can get away from the tourist area and head to the trees and come up on the other side of the fire. More often than not, they are not even close to the tourist trap here.”
She motioned at the steps. “Which is why I was thinking that might be important.”
He looked down at the fire. “It’s one of the servicing areas,” he said. “We do have to deal with the gases sometimes. Plus the concrete here has to be maintained.”
She nodded and smiled. “That’s what I figured. I was thinking anybody down there would likely have better access for taking their own life.”
“I sincerely hope I don’t have to find out,” he said, his tone quite abrupt. “Please come back up here.”
Hearing the tone in his voice, she nodded and headed toward him. She could see him relaxing more as she got closer.
“I’m really not suicidal,” she said in a low voice. “It is just very important to me that I get this letter into the fire.”
He looked at the paper she had clenched in her fist. “Why?” he asked bluntly.
She hesitated and shrugged. “It would be nice if you would just accept the fact that it’s important for me.”
“Does it have to do with the scar on your face?”
She flinched. “Definitely,” she replied, her voice turning more defiant. “I’ve been through more than most people could even dream of. I tried to write some of it in this letter, but that didn’t work well. And I really, really, really wanted to let it all go into the fires, as that represents my childhood to me.”
He didn’t appear to be reassured.
She slipped her arm through his. “I promise. I’m not in that mental state.”
He nodded and looked again at the letter in her hand. “Why can’t you just light a match to it?”
“Because he always told me about the Burning Fires,” she murmured. “I figured, with that refrain always working through my mind, I needed to come to the actual Burning Fires and toss this in.”
“He? Your father?” Rowan asked, his tone dry. “But you can’t do it from here.”
Her father? Had she told him about her father? Her family? Her suspicions arose. Then, after what they’d been through with Irene, if Phoenix could get information on Rowan, wouldn’t she have tried? And her name would flag a mess of files. Determined to not let it bother her, she looked at him. “Is there another way to do it?”
He frowned. “Do you have to do it yourself?”
She bit her bottom lip. “No, but I think I have to see it go in.”
“I might be able to help,” he said. “It would mean calling in a favor.”
“Understood,” she said. “I really did think I could just stand here and throw it in.” She gave him a wry smile. “I know that’s naive. The heat hit us way back at the parking lot. I can’t imagine getting any closer.”
“If you tied it to a rock, you might be able to throw it in,” he said, eyeing the distance.
“Only if it’s with a trebuchet,” she said with a laugh.
“Or a slingshot,” he said, cocking his head at her.
“Oh,” she said, staring at him. “That seems highly possible.”
“You’d only get one chance.”
“True,” she said. �
�I’d have to practice for a bit.” She glanced around. “How late does this stay open?”
“We didn’t used to close it, but now, unfortunately, it gets shut down at sunset.”
“But you could come in, couldn’t you?”
He frowned.
She looked up at him hopefully. “It’s why I came. I know it doesn’t seem like much to you, but, with what I’ve gone through, I’ve always thought I needed to do this very thing.” To her own mind and ears it sounded foolish.
Why the heck would anybody care, when he was right. She should just light a match to it. How did she explain all the horrors she’d been through and the pounding recitals about the Burning Fires? Or that the paper didn’t burn …
“Maybe if I understood a little more.”
She glanced around at a lot of people, literally hundreds. She clutched his arm tighter chest again.
“Does it have anything to do with what happened to Irene?” he asked finally.
Startled, she stared at him. “I don’t even know what to say about Irene,” she whispered. “I’ve never seen anything like that before.”
“So, what you’re doing here isn’t psychic stuff?”
She wanted to say no but wasn’t sure. “My father believed he had powers,” she said. “I don’t know if he did or not.”
From Rowan’s quick frown, she decided that wouldn’t be enough of an answer. She wished she knew how much he already knew about her. She looked around once more to make sure they were out of earshot of anyone, and then, in a lowered voice, she said, “I’m the child of a cult.” She searched his face to see if he had any inkling of what that meant. From the look in his eyes, he already knew.
“Tell me.”
She nodded, and, with her suspicions confirmed, she said, “My father was a cult leader, and my mother was one of his many followers. He had abilities that seemed to keep everybody fixated on him and only him. The way the women swooned and gushed over him was awful. But what was even worse was the way he treated me.”
“You? Or everyone?”
“Me, and only me.”
“Why is that?” he asked, his eyebrows pulling together, and a heavy frown crossing his features. He leaned against one of the retaining walls. “Why were you so special?”
“If only I had the answer to that million-dollar question,” she said with a bitter laugh, “I might understand.”
“Is that why your name …”
She nodded. “He felt I would rise from the ashes,” she said, unable to keep the bitterness from her tone. “He felt he had to prepare me for the fires to come.”
At the term fires, Rowan sucked in his breath.
“So you can see why I have an affinity for the Burning Fires,” she said.
“Maybe,” he said. “But I don’t want you getting any closer and testing that theory.”
“I’m not planning on it,” she replied adamantly. “I spent my life being tortured by him and his fire.”
His gaze darted to the scarring on her face.
“That’s nothing,” she said, her voice hoarse. “He usually managed to stop himself from scarring me where everybody could notice.”
Rowan’s gaze widened, and then his face hardened as he understood. “Why did nobody stop him?”
“Not only did nobody stop him but they all joined in.”
He stiffened. “Your mother?”
“She was proud because I was the Chosen One,” she said, her tone bitter. “The thing is, my father was the one and only all-powerful leader in that clan. He seemed to think I would have his abilities, and, therefore, I would be a threat to him at the same time.”
“What did he think would happen?”
She shrugged. “The thing about cult leaders is they’re greasy salesmen,” she said. “Their stories change from day to day to suit the situation. All I ever really understood was that I was special, and I had to be prepared for my future. The other kids hated me because they were supposed to treat me like I was something special. They also loved that I was tortured on a regular basis and did a lot of chanting and laughing at me because of it. Let’s just say, I had an incredibly dysfunctional childhood.”
“That’s not a childhood at all,” he said, his voice hard. “How long did it go on for?”
“Until the property was raided by the cops when I was eleven. My mother tried to kill me and herself at the same time. I managed to get free, and she took her own life.”
“I did check into your history a little,” he offered, “but it was missing quite a few details.”
“Good. Who wants to relive those?” she snapped. “I hope it said he’d been shot during the raid. I wanted to see his body. I insisted on it. I know the cops thought something was wrong with me because of it, but I had been tortured for so long. He was the stuff of my nightmares. I needed to know he was dead and gone and couldn’t come back and hurt me anymore.”
“I think even the cops would have understood that,” he said.
“At the time they didn’t realize how badly abused I had been,” she said. “Only after I was taken to the hospital, and some of my more recent wounds were treated, did they understand how extensive it had been.”
“Do you really think throwing this letter into the fire will give you closure?”
She could tell he was working hard to keep the doubt and the disbelief out of his voice. But he didn’t understand everything she’d been through.
“He kept talking about me rising from the Burning Fires. I believe this one here is the one he referred to.”
“Why the hell would you even want to come here?” he asked. “That is absolutely insane.”
“Not as insane as what I went through,” she said calmly. “When you spend eleven years being programmed by an insane father, it’s hard to toss that programming away. You understand it doesn’t make sense, but, at the same time, you can’t not listen.”
He nodded. “But you’re an adult now. You should know the insanity of who he was is why he tortured you.”
“He kept saying I was special,” she said with a sad smile. “So special he used to burn me all the time.”
“He tortured you with fire?” he asked, standing up straighter. “Burn marks are horrific to heal.”
She stood back from him. “You think I don’t know that?” She turned her gaze to look at the fire burning in the distance. “Now I understand how foolish what I wanted to do is, but I can’t let go of the idea regardless.”
He looked once more at the crumpled letter. “How long have you been carrying that around with you?”
“He gave it to me,” she said. “A long time ago. It’s all I have left of him and of my mother.”
“Your mother obviously wasn’t much of a mother,” he said. “No mother lets their child be tortured.”
“Oh, she tortured me too,” she said. “And she did it with great joy.”
Rowan shook his head sadly, the pain obvious in his eyes.
“All I can ever remember was that vacant blissful smile on her face when he told her to do something. Whether that was getting on her knees and servicing his sexual wants, cooking dinner, doing laundry for all the other women. She didn’t seem to have any sense of reality anymore.”
“Drug use?”
“Lots and freely,” Phoenix replied with a nod. “But alcohol was considered a poison so wasn’t allowed. Like I said, it was a very twisted lifestyle.”
“And yet, you seem moderately sane.”
“Moderately,” she said cheerfully. “Foster homes were pretty rough for a while. I finally ended up in a good one, and my foster parents were both professors. When they realized how lacking my education was, they stepped up and helped.”
“Didn’t you go to school growing up?” he asked in surprise.
“Homeschooled, of course,” she said. “Which meant I knew how to cook. I knew how to clean, and I knew how to service our father.”
His body stiffened at that.
She slid him a sidew
ays glance. “Don’t ask.”
“The fact that you’re a normal-sounding human being is amazing,” he said. “That was why you said you had family of a sort?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “A lot of other kids were in that cult. I don’t know how many of the mothers survived, but the children, if they are alive, were all his.”
“Your file said no one else survived, just you. How many women?”
“In my mind, dozens,” she replied, “But it was seven, maybe eight. And I wonder if the cops are correct? It was such a crazy time. I was told no one else survived, but I’m not sure I believed them.”
“Did all the women have children?”
“All of them. Most of them had five or six apiece.”
“And your mother?”
She shook her head. “Just me. Something went wrong during my birth, and I think she couldn’t have any more.” Phoenix frowned at that. “Or he did something to her. I don’t know.”
“Sounds like she didn’t have an easy life either. And maybe drugs were the escape she used in order to survive.”
*
If Rowan had ever heard anything this disgusting, this immoral and this horrifying, he couldn’t remember it. Just thinking of what she’d gone through blew him away. It was one thing to read some of this in the file in black-and-white format, but to hear her retell it in such a dispassionate voice? … And yet here she was, standing in front of him as normal as anyone else. But was she really?
Scars like that had to go deep. They would last a lifetime. No way she could possibly be this normal, this well-adjusted.
“How far behind in your education were you?” he asked.
“Almost an entire lifetime,” she replied quietly. “The first couple foster homes had tutors for me and special classes, but it wasn’t enough. I had a voracious need to learn, a voracious hunger to get out of the history of my life. I honestly don’t know what happened to the other kids, and I can’t say I care. I know that makes me mean, selfish, but I remember how they all hurt me. How they all jeered and made my life hell. Maybe they had no choice. Maybe they were forced to do so. I don’t know, and I’m doing my best to put that all behind me.”