The Burning Man

by Christa Faust

  He went back into the house.

  In the living room, he quickly wrapped the dead woman in an ugly crocheted blanket and carried her into the garage. She barely weighed a hundred pounds and felt like a bundle of sticks in his arms. When he got into the garage, he put her body in the kid’s trunk and closed the lid.

  Getting in and keying the engine, he knew this would be another risky moment. But he felt more exhilarated than anxious. He felt closer to Olivia than ever.

  He opened the garage door and drove the kid’s car several blocks to a small park he’d previously chosen. He’d originally thought it would be good to leave the car in the parking lot of a supermarket or big box store, but the two closest lots had surveillance cameras. This sad little park was perfect. It was nearly empty, thanks to the chilly weather, the rickety old swing sets and rusted jungle gym long abandoned in favor of a new, more modern playground just a few blocks to the west.

  Tony parked in the last slot, farthest away from the park entrance. There was only one other car in the lot—a battered white station wagon that was filled to bursting with bundles of newspapers and magazines. The wagon’s owner was nowhere in sight.

  Giving one last glance around the lot, he got out of the car and swiftly walked away.

  * * *

  Back at the dead woman’s house, Tony headed into the garage to check on Rachel. She was still curled up in the trunk like a good girl, so true to his word, he carried her into the house and threw her into the shower stall, turning the water on full blast.

  She let out a muffled yelp, twisting her face away from the spray, but then started to relax as the water warmed up. Tony left her there for a minute and went to locate some clean clothes, a plastic garbage bag, and a pair of scissors.

  When he returned, he was pleased to find that she hadn’t moved an inch. She just lay there, right where he left her, compliant and still. He turned the water off, and then used the scissors to cut her free.

  “Take off those clothes,” he said, “And put them in this trash bag.”

  “Do you have to watch?” she asked, frowning and clutching her wet jacket up under her chin.

  “Yes,” he said, “I do. But don’t worry. I couldn’t care less about your body.”

  She reluctantly peeled off her sodden layers, trying to keep one arm across her chest, even though she hardly had anything to cover. The duct tape had really done a number on her wrists, leaving behind thick bracelets of irritated red skin. Once she’d shoved all her old clothes into the trash bag, he handed her a towel.

  “Thanks,” she said reflexively, taking the towel and using it to dry her hair.

  It was kind of absurdly cute that she had such good manners, given the circumstances. Tony figured that growing up with a fearsome demoness for an older sister meant she’d learned at young age to be polite, and not sass back. Still, he didn’t want her to get too comfortable with him, so he kicked her as hard as he could in the naked stomach.

  She let out a breathless gasp and doubled over, clutching the towel to her belly, tears filling her eyes.

  “I’m not your friend,” he said. “Remember that.”

  He threw the clothes he’d chosen into her face, and waited silently for her to dress.

  28

  Olivia had to switch buses for the third time in Raleigh, North Carolina. She’d been on the road for nearly twenty-four hours now, at times stuck waiting in interchangeable bus terminals. She slept in spurts, but her gnawing anxiety kept her from getting any real rest.

  She had a few extra minutes, so she ducked into a low-rent burger joint to grab a quick bite. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten, and was starting to feel a little woozy.

  The food was unsurprisingly lousy, but she wolfed it down quickly and efficiently, washing it down with bottled water. On her way to board her new bus, she spotted a bank of pay phones, and was hit with a desperate need to call Kieran, to make sure that he was okay. She knew it wasn’t a good idea, because someone might have a trace on his dorm phone, but that didn’t stop her from wanting to hear his voice.

  She paused for a moment beside the last phone in the row. Even allowed herself to reach out and rest her hand on the receiver. But she knew she was just being silly. Weak. She had to stay strong and not let herself get distracted.

  Looking up at the digital clock above the bus schedule, she noticed that she had allowed far too much time to slip away while she was having her little moment of uncertainty. She only had a minute left to make her connection.

  She sprinted toward the gate, but pulled up short right before the swinging glass door that led out to the spot where the bus was parked and waiting.

  Standing by the open door and talking to the bus driver was the handsome black guy with the distinctive scar on his face. The private security guy she’d seen with Mrs. Gilbert at the train station.

  Who was that guy? And how had he tracked her down?

  What the hell was going on?

  She backed slowly away from the door, brain working overtime to come up with some clever plan of action. Something better than run like hell and hope for the best.

  Nothing came to mind, so she ran like hell.

  She had a vague idea that maybe she’d try to hitch a ride outside the station or something, but when she reached the main entrance, she found it jammed with kids her age. They were pouring into the station through all four doors, herded by several hassled and distracted adults wearing T-shirts that read SAWBRIDGE HIGH SCHOOL on the front and CHAPERONE on the back.

  Behind her, the handsome security guy had come back into the station and was looking around for her. He hadn’t spotted her yet, but he would any second now. She was sure of it.

  Olivia looked over the heads of the incoming students at the cars idling out front. Weighing her chances of scoring a lift, and not liking her odds. But the giggling, rough-housing students gave her a much better idea. She had to act fast.

  She slipped into the crowd of students, slouching down and falling in step beside a tall, fat kid in a black T-shirt decorated with the image of a masked wrestler on the front. He had thick, dark frizzy hair that stuck out every which way, close-set hazel eyes, and an aggressive outbreak of virulent acne. She could have kissed him.

  “Are you excited about the trip?” she asked, trying to act nonchalant while keeping his massive body in between her and the spot where she’d last seen her pursuer.

  “I guess,” he said, shrugging. “I don’t know. I mean, Disney World. Whatever. I’ve already been, like, a billion times when I was a kid.”

  Olivia cheered silently.

  Perfect.

  “Still,” she said. “It beats school, right?”

  “Are you in Mrs. Himmel’s homeroom?” he asked.

  “Um... yeah,” she said. “How about you?”

  “Mr. Ulster,” he said. “What’s your name?”

  “Rachel,” she said. “You?”

  “Andy Metzger,” he said. “Mindy is my sister.”

  He said that like it was supposed to mean something, like everybody knew Mindy Metzger.

  “Oh, right,” Olivia said, nodding. “Sure.”

  She risked a peek around Andy’s bulky shoulder and saw that the security guy was less than ten feet away, scanning the crowd of kids.

  Her heart skittered against her ribs and she ducked down like she needed to tie her shoe, waiting for his gaze to pass over them like a searchlight.

  When she popped her head back up, she saw that the security guy was headed for the door. She swiftly duck-walked to catch up with her new pal Andy, keeping her head low.

  “This way,” a male chaperone said, gesturing toward one of two waiting buses.

  Olivia impulsively turned toward the one indicated by the male chaperone, figuring he obviously wasn’t Mrs. Himmel and so it would be less awkward if he didn’t recognize her.

  “Come on,” she said to Andy, hooking her arm through his and leading him toward the bus she had chosen
. “We can sit together.”

  He looked at her with naked incredulity.

  “Hurry,” she said. “We don’t want to get stuck sitting next to the toilet!”

  She boarded the bus, waving casually at the chaperone and the driver.

  She nearly had a heart attack when the chaperone called after her.

  “Hey,” he said. “Who are you with?”

  But to her amazement, her new pal in the wrestling T-shirt came to her rescue.

  “She’s with Mrs. Himmel,” he said. “But she can ride with us, right?”

  The chaperone eyed Olivia with suspicion for a moment, but then seemed to relent and waved her on.

  “Here,” she said to Andy, choosing a window seat about halfway back. “You’re pretty tall, I bet you want the aisle seat.”

  “Thanks for saying ‘tall’ and not ‘fat,’” he said with a self-deprecating grin. “But yeah, the aisle is better.”

  As the bus pulled out of the station, she saw the security guy standing on a street corner, talking into a cellular phone. She tucked her chin down and turned away from the window, covering her face with her hand.

  “Paparazzi?” Andy asked with an arched eyebrow.

  Olivia smiled and shrugged.

  “You aren’t in Mrs. Himmel’s class are you?” he asked. When she didn’t answer right away, he said, “Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me.”

  “Busted,” Olivia said, hands up in surrender. “I’m just broke, and trying to score a free ride to Jacksonville. My little sister’s gotten herself into some trouble, and needs my help.”

  “What kind of trouble?” Andy asked.

  Olivia shrugged and looked away, out the window.

  “I’d rather not talk about it.”

  He nodded, looking thoughtful.

  “That’s okay,” he said.

  They were both silent for a few minutes as the bus got onto the highway and headed out of town.

  “I knew you weren’t from Sawbridge,” Andy said eventually, half to himself. “No girl from Sawbridge would be caught dead sitting next to me.”

  29

  “Eat something,” Tony said, nudging the bag of Butchie Burgers along the bench seat of the ’65 Olds they were currently driving. It was an ugly ride, and drank up gas like it was happy hour, but the damn thing was solid as a tank and had plenty of room to stretch out. The late owner had probably bought it new the year it came out.

  Tony had left the old fart to bleed out in a rest stop toilet off Interstate 95.

  Rachel cringed away from the food like it was a bag of snakes, turning her face toward the dark window.

  “You gotta eat, or your sister’s gonna be all pissed off,” he said. “She’ll think I’m mistreating you.”

  “You are mistreating me,” she said without turning to face him. Her voice was a dull monotone, emotionless and shut down.

  “Honey,” he said, “when I start mistreating you, you’ll know it.”

  She didn’t respond. He shrugged and turned on the radio. He twisted the dial until he found a bubbly pop song with a female singer.

  “There,” he said. “I bet you like this, huh?”

  Still no response.

  “So what kind of music do you like then?” he asked. “New wave? Heavy metal?”

  “No!” she said, her teenage contempt finally overruling her sullen silence. “God, wake up and smell the ’90s.”

  “I knew that would get you talking,” he said with a grin. “Tell you what, why don’t you pick a radio station for us to listen to?”

  “Forget it,” she said, wrapping her arms around her body.

  He lashed out at her with his prosthetic arm, cracking it across her mouth and splitting her lip. She squealed and covered her face with both hands, tears welling up in her eyes as she jammed herself against the passenger door in an attempt to get as far away from him as possible.

  “I said pick a radio station,” he said.

  She reached a shaking, bloody hand toward the radio dial. She turned it to the very next station, a fire and brimstone religious station, and then pressed herself back against the door.

  “This is what you want to listen to?” he asked, smirking and shaking his head.

  She nodded.

  “’Cause I’m not gonna change it until we get to Jacksonville.”

  She didn’t respond.

  He shrugged and turned the volume up.

  “Okay,” he said. “Your wish is my command.”

  In a weird way, her choice was perfect. The preacher on the radio was female, with the warm, honeyed voice of a phone sex operator, and all this talk about hell and the devil just reinforced his commitment to destiny. He could feel Olivia’s heat echoing inside him, knowing she was out there on the road somewhere, moving toward the place where they met, just like he was.

  They were like two celestial bodies about to cross orbits and achieve an auspicious, once in a lifetime conjunction. If he failed, the demon Olivia would mature into an unstoppable monster and the world would be destroyed in a fiery Armageddon not unlike the one being lovingly described by the sexy preacher on the radio.

  Tony felt better than he had in months, calm and centered and ready. He felt righteous.

  * * *

  When the bus made a stop in Jacksonville to refuel, and let the kids stretch their legs and load up on junk food, Olivia bid farewell to Andy. He looked sorry to see her go, but seemed happy to have had an unexpected adventure, however vicarious.

  After a quick visit to the ladies’ room, she found it easy to lose herself in the crowd of tourists and families—those chaperones weren’t very good at their jobs, she noted.

  She kept her eyes open for the security guy she’d seen in Raleigh while letting the tide of people carry her away from the school kids and out through the main doors.

  There was a line for taxis, and she didn’t want to wait so she hopped a city bus that she knew would drop her off close enough to the old house that she could walk the rest of the way.

  Sitting there in the back right window seat of the grungy bus, she thought about what she was walking into, and the full weight of it started to hit her. She wished for the thousandth time that she had some ace up her sleeve, some brilliant plan that would guarantee Rachel’s safety and bring her abductor to justice. All she had, however, was this mounting sense of desperation.

  She scanned the faces of her fellow riders, wondering if any of them could sense her fear, but they all seemed preoccupied with their own troubles.

  That’s when she had a sudden strange flash, a vivid vision like a double exposure over her view of the bus. She saw a grubby, bearded man—homeless, judging by the look of his stained clothes and questionable grooming habits. His skin was a muddy, grayish brown that could have been due to genetics, exposure to the sun, layers of dirt, or all of the above.

  He had a mostly bald head, with a fringe of wispy white hair around the edge and a woman’s cheap clip-on earring on one ear, like a pirate. His toothless mouth was open in a silent scream as blood poured from a deep slit in his throat.

  She must have let out a not-so-silent scream herself, because everyone on the bus turned back to look at her. Just as quickly, they lost interest—as if screaming nut cases were a regular occurrence on the Jacksonville public transit system.

  Olivia shuddered and sank back into the seat, wondering what had gotten into her. It was bad enough that she was having murderous nightmares in her sleep. But having them while she was awake—that was a whole other thing. Something infinitely more troubling.

  But she pushed the thoughts to the back of her mind. She got off the bus a stop earlier than she had intended, just to give herself time to walk off the ugly vision and clear her spinning head.

  She had to keep it together. She had Rachel to think of.

  * * *

  Tony stood over the body of the homeless man he’d found squatting in Olivia’s house. He was still reeling from the demon girl’s sudden ac
tive intrusion into his brain. She’d been there in the background, of course, the way she always was, smoldering like a nest of banked coals. Then, out of nowhere, she’d flared up and eclipsed his perception with her own, making him doubt his own identity for a vertiginous moment.

  If the blade hadn’t been bolted to his prosthetic arm, he would have dropped it.

  He pressed his good hand to his temple and took a crooked, stagger-step back from the body. When he turned back to Rachel, she was gone, and the front door was swinging shut.

  He swore and took off after the little bitch. How could he have let this happen? Clearly, he’d allowed himself to become complacent with her whipped puppy routine, thinking that she was too scared to try anything.

  When he got out to the street, he spotted her desperately banging her little fists on the door of the house next door. A young black woman with lots of long, thin braids twisted together into a fat one was opening the door just as Tony came barreling up the porch steps.

  He grabbed Rachel by the hair and shoved her in, knocking the frightened woman backward and stepping into the house, slamming the door behind him.

  The woman was crawling away from Tony, and Rachel was cowering off to the right beside a playpen that held a silent, owl-eyed toddler in a pink T-shirt and a diaper.

  Tony leapt on top of the woman, covered her mouth with his good hand and stabbed her repeatedly in the chest and neck until she stopped moving.

  When he was done dealing with her, he sucked in a long, deep breath to center himself, taking in the surroundings and situation that Rachel had put him in.

  The interior of the house was laid out very much like Olivia’s. The front door opened into a large living room, and the kitchen was visible through an archway to the left.

  The living room was cheaply but thoughtfully furnished and decorated with family photographs and a few unframed abstract oil paintings that showed some potential, but were still a little bit rough and immature. It was clean and tidy with a warm Christmassy smell of scented candles.