My laughter that follows is entirely faked. Because as I turn and make for the stairs, I feel a burning sensation inside my gut. It tells me that the break-in at Lisa’s house and the murder that followed are just the start of something much worse.
Something none of us will escape.
Chapter 40
Making my way past Alex, who is still conveniently reading his newspaper, I leave by way of the back door. I don’t so much as open my mouth to issue even a faint good-bye and neither does he. But I’m sure I hear him issue a grunt as I open the door and walk out.
The night seems to have grown darker since I first arrived at the Reynoldses’ mansion, and wall-mounted lamps now light my way along the narrow footpath leading to the top of the driveway. I’m caught by surprise when I come to the gate because it’s been left wide open. I’m sure I closed it when I got to the house a half hour or so ago. I wouldn’t think of leaving it open and giving Alex and Vickie a chance to come down on me for my carelessness.
Like I’ve already said, Alex is a security nut. He insists on locking all doors and windows even when he’s home. He also switches on the security system, which he claims is connected directly with the local police department.
I stare at the open gate as if it wants to tell me something.
Turning, I look out over the dark back property beyond the perimeter fence. Nothing seems to be stirring in the thick woods. Not even a church mouse. But something doesn’t feel right. My writer’s gut is speaking to me. My overactive imagination, maybe. My need to create plot and story around nothing at all. My paranoia, perhaps. But as I stand there at the open gate, I feel ice-cold water travel through my veins, and the short hairs on the back of my neck rise up at attention. For a brief instant, I consider turning back for the house and insisting on staying the night. But I know my presence would be looked upon with contempt, if not open hostility.
Lisa wants me to spend the night at my studio all the way in downtown Albany. But it’s simply too far away from my family. If I stay at her house, I can at least take some solace in knowing that we’re no more than one mile apart. So what if the place was the scene of a break-in this morning and a murder by fire this afternoon? Tonight is gearing up to be a sleepless night, anyway.
Back behind the wheel of the Escape, I start the engine. But before I turn around and pull out of the drive, I open the glove box, reach behind the owner’s manual, and take hold of the pistol. I thumb the magazine release and inspect the nine-round load. All rounds present and accounted for. Slapping the mag back home, I rack one into the chamber and thumb on the safety, then I set the pistol barrel into one of the empty center-console cup holders. Easy access. Shifting the vehicle into drive, I pull out of the driveway.
In my mind I see the ransacked house, the drawing of my brains being blown out on the chalkboard, and a note calling me a heretic on my laptop. I see the woman burning to death in Lisa’s backyard and I see the face of David Bourenhem as he looked up at me from the floor of his apartment just a few feet away from a pine coffin, countless unsold manuscripts, and multiple dog-eared copies of my novels.
I’ll say it again. It’s going to be one hell of a long and sleepless night.
BOOK II
Chapter 41
Parking midway up Lisa’s driveway, I kill the engine and cut the lights. Blackness. I never got around to turning the exterior lights back on before I left for the Reynoldses’ house.
Taking hold of the pistol, I exit the Escape, stuffing the key ring into the pocket of my bush jacket, and make my way up the drive and then up the three concrete landing steps to the front door. I slide the pistol barrel into my pant waistband, open the screen door, and unlock the deadbolt. I’m a little surprised because all it usually takes for Frankie to start barking like crazy is the initial sound of the key entering the lock.
Opening the door, I pull the piece back out and thumb the safety off.
“Frankie?” I say into the darkness.
I know I should turn on a light. But I’m not liking this. I sense something. A presence. Like whoever burned Olga is still lurking inside the place. I feel eyes staring at me. Into me. It’s the same sensation I got outside the open gate at Lisa’s parents’ house. Someone or something hidden in the dark shadows, staring me down, waiting.
Maybe I should about-face, head back outside, run. But what about Frankie? I need to know that Frankie is okay. I take another step forward along the corridor, past Lisa’s office and the bathroom.
“Frankie?” I repeat.
I get nothing in response. No barks, no howls, no sobbing. That’s not like the Frankie I know.
The gun gripped tightly, I move on down the corridor until I come to the kitchen. That’s when I decide that I can’t continue making a check on the house in the dark. Feeling along the wall, I find the light switch. I flick it up and, at the same time, raise the pistol fast, aiming it at the head of the man I’m sure will be standing in the middle of the kitchen floor.
A man named David Bourenhem.
But Bourenhem isn’t there.
No one is there.
“Fuck,” I say aloud. “I’m fuck, fuck, fucking losing my mind, and I can’t find my goddamned dog.”
Heading out of the kitchen, I cross over the dining room and step down into the playroom, my eyes focusing in on Frankie’s crate. The door’s been opened. My chest grows tight, and I feel my heart beating in the back of my throat.
“Frankie,” I repeat. “Frankie, how did you get out?”
I go to the sliding glass doors, turn on the exterior lights, and look at the spot where Olga was burned to death. The spot is covered in leaves and looks perfectly undisturbed, like absolutely nothing happened there. Turning, I once more eye Frankie’s crate. Is it possible I never put her in there in the first place? Am I losing my mind? Holy crap, have I really been drinking too much? Was it smart to combine booze and prescription anxiety meds? Did I simply imagine Olga’s body being burned alive? Had I passed out and dreamt that I was inside my own novel? Acting out a chapter of The Damned?
I look down at the palms of my hands. Once more I make out the black ink stains on my fingers.
Maybe I only thought I secured Frankie in her crate before I left the house, but one thing is for sure: Olga most definitely died on the back lawn. I’m just having trouble believing it.
Moving back through the dining room and the kitchen, I head out into the hall, check Anna’s room and Lisa’s office, including the closets. All clear. I do the same in Lisa’s bedroom and bathroom. When I discover that they are also empty, I find myself back in the kitchen staring at the basement door.
You gotta go down there, Son. You know what resides way down there.
“Yeah, Dad. I know what’s down there.”
Shifting the pistol to my left hand, I wipe the cold sweat that now coats my palm onto my pant leg. Then I switch the pistol back to my shooting hand. Opening the door, I flip on the basement lights and start down the stairs.
“Frankie?” I say again, my voice louder but higher pitched. The voice that comes from a man with a dry mouth.
No response.
At the bottom of the stairs, I look to the right into a concrete-floored area that houses some free weights and a weight bench that Lisa has allowed me to set up here. It’s empty. I look to my left onto a carpeted space that serves as Anna’s playroom. Other than the dozens of scattered toys, dolls, clothing, and discarded wrappers from candy bars she’s snuck down into the basement, the space is also empty. Shifting myself to the left, I walk the short, carpeted area on my way to the last Sheetrock-partitioned room in the basement.
The laundry room.
Holding the pistol at the ready, I throw the hollow wood door open.
The laundry room is vacant.
No intruders.
My heart beating inside my throat, I feel like I’v
e been injected with a sedative as a wave of exhaustion washes over me. I press my back against the Sheetrock wall and slide down onto my backside, my knees tucked into my chest. Other than the sting in my injured knee, I feel nothing.
My eyes lock on the white washer and dryer stationed at the opposite end of the room. A red plastic laundry basket that’s filled with dirty clothes is set atop the dryer. My eyes shift to the metal shelving pushed up against the painted cinder-block wall to the right of the dryer. The shelves house the banker’s boxes in which I’ve been given the go-ahead to store the drafts of all my manuscripts.
I focus on the box positioned on the left-hand side of the top shelf. It’s the box that contains all the work-in-progress drafts of The Damned. I shift the pistol into my left hand and shove my right hand into my pocket, fetching my lighter. I thumb a new flame and take a breath, my eyes still locked on that first box. I’m not sure why, but my eyes fill with tears, my chest grows tight. It’s like I’m not looking at a box filled with words on pages, but at the caskets of my mother and brothers. I feel their presence like I felt the searing heat that took their lives on that early damp morning back in 1977.
Two words are written on the side of the box in thick black Sharpie.
THE DAMNED
“I don’t want to look at you right now,” I say, but it’s not my voice speaking. I’m not consciously making the words that are coming out of my mouth. Still I speak them. “I can’t bear the sight of you, of what you’ve done. You’re the heretic. You betrayed us all. And you know what happens to heretics, Reecey Pieces. They burn. They burn up along with all the damned.”
I shake my head, force my eyes away from the box. All I want to do now is head back upstairs, grab another beer from the fridge, and slowly drink it at the dining room table. And when that’s drained I’ll drink another, and another.
It’s exactly what I would do too, if not for the heavy pounding on the floor directly above my head.
Chapter 42
I bound back up onto my two feet, shove the lighter back into my pocket. My breath comes and goes in rapid-fire spurts. So rapid I feel like I’m barely a short hair away from passing out. That is, if I don’t get some kind of a grip. Get it fast. I try to control the heavy breathing by closing my mouth while inhaling and exhaling slowly and deeply through my nose.
“Frankie!” I call out yet again. Louder this time. More forceful. But I’m not sure I’m calling for the dog so much as letting my presence be known to whoever the hell is roaming the place upstairs.
Exiting the laundry room, I cross over the playroom and begin climbing the stairs back up to the kitchen. The door is open, so when I get to the top I make my way into the kitchen swinging the 9mm from left to right. Whatever came down hard on the floor sounded like it came from directly overhead. That means the noise originated in the full bathroom situated between Anna’s bedroom and Lisa’s office.
I go into the hallway, shuffle past Anna’s room until I come to the bathroom. I step inside. To my right are the sink and the toilet, and a black plastic shelf with folded towels stored on it. Directly ahead of me is the slider window, which is presently locked. To my left is the combination bathtub/shower. It’s concealed by a white plastic shower curtain.
As I take hold of the curtain, I feel my heart lodge itself inside my throat. It’s like a stone. My stomach has cramped up tight, and my temples are pounding like timpani.
I swipe the shower curtain open.
It’s then I come face-to-face with the source of the noise.
Chapter 43
He’s sitting in the far corner of the bathtub, his knees pressed up against his chest. He’s got Frankie in his arms.
“How the hell did you get in?” I say, forcing the words from my mouth, the pistol barrel pointed at his face. “Or maybe you never left after murdering that poor woman out in the backyard.”
David stares up at me through slits that look like they’ve been cut into black-and-blue eyes that are nearly swollen shut. His wrists are duct-taped together, as are his ankles. His light blue button-down shirt is torn where the chest pocket should be. Some of the buttons have popped off.
“You brought me here, you bastard,” he says, his lips so swollen and bleeding that he’s slurring his words. “And what’s this about murder? Another fiction, Reece?”
I feel the weight of the pistol in my hand. I’m wondering how he could have grabbed hold of Frankie with his wrists bound like that. But then it dawns on me that maybe Frankie came to him, jumped into his waiting arms.
“Why would I bring you here?”
“Are you that fucked up? You came to my home again. You put that fucking gun to my head. You shoved it in my mouth. You made me walk out to your SUV. When you pushed me inside you started beating the living shit out of me. When you were through and I was barely conscious, you drove me here, dragged me into the house, made me sit in the bathtub so that I don’t bleed on anything. Those were your words.”
“Bleed on anything.”
“Yes, bleed. Sound familiar, Reece? It’s what you do to those teenagers in The Damned. Drew Brennen drives to the college students’ apartment in downtown Albany. He makes them drop to their knees while he shoves a pistol barrel into their mouths, one at a time. Then he leads them out to his car and beats them, ties them up, drags them into his own home, makes them sit in the bathtub so that they don’t fucking bleed on anything.”
I try to remember The Damned. He’s right. Chapter fifteen. Or is it sixteen? The college student chapters. Brennen steals them away, beats them, burns them. While he’s lighting them on fire, he chants a nursery rhyme aloud over the sound of their pleas and cries.
“Fire! Fire!” says the Town Crier. “Burn! Burn!” says Goody Stern. “Burn her! Burn him!”
“Don’t you remember, Reece?” he says, gently petting Frankie with the edges of his bound hands. “You’ve just gotten through collecting the gasoline that’s left over from that poor innocent Russian woman you hit over the head and burned on the back lawn. You have just enough to burn Lisa’s house to the ground along with me inside it. You’re going to finish the job you tried and failed at once before.”
“What gasoline?” I say. “Show me.”
“Take a look out in the hall, Reece. It’s all there. What’s left of it. How the hell can you not remember?”
I take a step back, and while keeping the gun poised on him, peer out into the hall. Sitting on the vestibule floor by the door, two fire engine–red five-gallon gasoline cans. The heavy-duty plastic ones you can easily purchase from Lowe’s or Home Depot. I have no idea how they got there. Why they’re there. The only explanation is that David put them there. But then, how the hell did he manage to tape his wrists and ankles together? Who beat him up like that?
I step back inside the bathroom.
“Let go of Frankie,” I demand.
“Frankie is my dog, Reece,” he insists while stroking her back. “Frankie is my baby. Lisa’s and my baby. We rescued her together.”
“Dude’s got a point, Reece,” Frankie says. “He’s speaking gospel. Lisa and he picked me up at the shelter just minutes before I was gonna take that lethal-injection ride to doggy heaven.”
Then comes the sound of sirens.
“Finally,” David says, a string of bloody drool falling from his lips onto his torn shirt.
“Finally what, you son of bitch?” I say. I’m shouting, my pulse pounding. “Finally what?”
I aim the cocked pistol at his head.
“The police,” he says. “Shooting me is a waste of time. Once the cops find out about the shake-and-bake you did on Olga, you will get the death sentence and then you will be the damned, and you will burn for all eternity. And then I’ll once more have Lisa all to myself.”
“The police. How do they know?”
He somehow manages to work up a smile unde
r all that battered flesh. He struggles to shift his bound hands into his lap beneath Frankie and produces his iPhone, the answer to my question.
“Reece, bro, you are such a good writer. I want to be you. I want to write like you. I want to fuck Lisa like you do. But you are careless when it comes to the psycho killer business. You never thought to check me for my smartphone before kidnapping and beating me. You need to pay better attention.”
The sirens grow louder. The police rounding the corner onto the street. In my head I see the silver-haired head of Detective Nick Miller, and I see his blue-uniformed sidekick cops. I see their service weapons drawn and aimed for my face. I need to do something. I can stay right here, try to explain myself to an APD that already suspects me of crimes. Or I can do something else entirely.
I can flee the premises.
“You’re not going to cremate me alive, are you, Reece?” David asks, tears falling from his swelled eyes. “But that’s how it happens in The Damned.”
I find myself backing out of the bathroom, my eyes never leaving him, the sirens growing louder and louder, until a spray of red, white, and blue police cruiser flashers spills in through the living room picture window. I look away then and make out not one but several cars pulling up into the driveway and onto the lawn. I hear doors opening, men yelling, shotguns being cocked, locked, and loaded.
I look one way and then the other, then fix my gaze once more upon David and Frankie.
Whaddaya gonna do, Reece?
“The only thing I can do, Dad,” I whisper.
I run.
Chapter 44
I sprint through the kitchen and dining room, then down into the family room. Yanking the sliding door open, I don’t bother with pulling back the screen door. I’m so anxious to get the hell out, get away from the police, I barrel right through it.
Out on the deck, I hear the heavy, thick-soled boot steps of the police as they sprint up Lisa’s driveway. In a few seconds they’ll be running alongside the house and entering into the fenced-in backyard by way of its unlocked gate.
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