Everything Burns

by Vincent Zandri

  Something miraculous happens then. A hard tubular spray of water shoots against the staircase, temporarily dousing some of the flames, but not all of them. Looking down onto the vestibule floor I see an oxygen-masked fireman manning the hose and another holding a fireman’s axe.

  “Go!” I shout. “Go now, Lisa! While you have the chance!”

  Clutching her mother with both her arms, Lisa manages to guide Victoria down the stairs. As soon as they hit the landing, I see the fireman with the axe pull the two women out of the burning mansion and to safety.

  From where I’m standing at the top of the landing, I feel the heat from the hallway fire growing more intense as the entire space fills with flame. I see the two-story interior wall behind the remaining fireman become entirely engulfed, the fire spreading up onto the ceiling.

  Despite the spray of the water against the staircase, the fire is still growing. Still getting hotter. Still spreading. I know precisely what the immediate future holds.

  “Get out!” I shout out to the fireman below. “It’s going to flash!”

  Before I can get the words out of my mouth, the entire vestibule explodes in a blaze of white-hot heat, blowing the fireman out through the shattered wall onto his back, and then I see nothing at all.

  Chapter 75

  I see myself driving. I’m driving the highway south to New York City for NoirExpo 2006, when suddenly the sensation hits me over the head like the fat end of a baseball bat. A cold wind blows through my body.

  “Lisa,” I whisper aloud. “You’re not alone.”

  Up ahead is an exit. I take it, then sweep over the overpass and accelerate back onto the highway going the opposite direction. I make the fifty miles back home in less than an hour, all the time my head filled with visions of Lisa and her new friend, David, together. I push the Jeep and I smoke cigarette after cigarette and I trigger a tall flame on my lighter until the fuel is gone.

  When I arrive in the driveway of the house, his Honda 4x4 is there, just like I knew it would be. Before getting out of the Jeep, I grab my 9mm from the glove box, and I carry it with me to the back door off the kitchen. I ease open the door, step into the kitchen, and hear the noise coming from all the way upstairs in the bedroom. Moans and groans of pleasure. I hear voices. Passionate voices. Quietly racking a round into the chamber, I take the stairs slowly, one at a time, until I reach the landing. Then, I walk the length of the empty hall until I come to the master bedroom. The bedroom I share with my wife.

  I throw open the door, aim the weapon dead center at the man and woman locked in an embrace on my bed . . .

  When I come to, I see that Anna and I are down on the floor of the landing. Anna’s big brown eyes are wide, glazed with shock. I must have been knocked out for only a few short seconds. Precious seconds. The fire rages all around us in a white-hot, red glow. For a brief moment, I’m convinced we are about to suffer the same death as my mother and brothers. But I can’t let that happen to us. Can’t allow it to happen to Anna. I have to at least try to save her, even if it means burning my entire body while doing it.

  Getting myself back up onto my knees, I once more pick her up and toss her over my shoulder. Her blouse has caught fire, and I pat it out with my free hand. Looking down, I can see that the staircase is aflame, but the very center of the treads is free of fire. It’s our only hope.

  “Anna, close your eyes! Close your mouth! Do not breathe! You hear me? Do not breathe!”

  The roar of the fire might be deafening, but her sobs are louder. She’s squirming now, as though trying to free herself from my hold. But where the hell would she go? There’s nowhere to go. We’re trapped inside this house ablaze. We have no choice but to make a run through the fire. It’s either that, or stand here and die.

  “Please, baby, please!” I shout. “Close your eyes and do not breathe!”

  With Anna over my shoulder, I begin to descend the stairs, on our way down through the fire. Through hell on earth.

  Chapter 76

  At the bottom of the stairs, I sprint outside and hand off Anna to a fireman who immediately slaps an oxygen mask on her face and wraps a fire-resistant blanket around her torso. A second fireman puts a mask on my face, strapping it to my head while wrapping a blanket around my shoulders.

  “You damned fool,” he barks through his own mask. “You’re lucky you didn’t light up like a matchstick. You should have waited for us to come get you.”

  “We would have burned alive,” I want to say, if only I can work up the words through my tar- and smoke-clogged throat. I might be in pain, but I feel a wave of relief wash over me knowing that Anna hasn’t suffered any serious burns and neither have I. I have known fire all my life and now, I no longer want anything to do with it.

  Sucking in a deep breath of the fresh oxygen, I cough the smoke from my lungs like a rescued drowning man purges water. Eyes tearing, lungs feeling scraped and fried, it takes me a few minutes to get my breath back. But when I do, I pull off the mask and wipe the smoke-induced tears from my eyes with the backs of my soot-covered gloves and I make out the many police cruisers, EMS vans, and fire trucks that occupy the front lawn. In the near distance I can see an EMT crew bathed in bright white spotlight working on Lisa, Victoria, and Anna. There’s also a crowd of reporters who have set up a perimeter just in front of the tall trees at the far edge of the property’s north end.

  A hand comes down on my right shoulder. Detective Miller.

  “You okay?” he says.

  “It’s all right. I . . . my family . . . I think we’re okay now.”

  The lean, trench-coated detective purses his lips, nods. “Listen, I know this is a hell of a time to ask,” he says. “But I need to have a word with you. Alone.”

  “I understand. Alone.”

  “My car is up there,” he says, walking on toward the top of the estate’s private drive.

  Following him, I see Lisa, Anna, and Victoria drenched in the light pouring out of the many portable lamps that have been set up all along the property. Lisa is clutching Anna in her arms, the two of them sitting on the back bumper of an EMS van. Anna might be crying, but she appears to be unharmed. I see Victoria seated beside them on the same bumper. She’s cradling her head in her hands, sobbing over the loss of her husband. I never did get along very well with Alex, but right now I feel her pain like I feel the pounding of my heart inside my chest. If it weren’t for Miller wanting to see me up close and personal right now, I would go to my wife and daughter, wrap my arms around them, and never let go.

  Set beside a second EMS van are two gurneys, each of them supporting a single body. I can only assume that the gurney furthest from me contains Alex’s body. The black rubber sheet that hides the body glistens in both the stark artificial lamplight and the warm, almost pleasant orange glow of the house fire. The second gurney, closer to me, holds Rachael’s body. I know this for certain because her right foot is exposed under the rubber sheet. She’s wearing the brown leather boots I bought her in New York during a beautiful fall weekend we spent there together not all that long ago. Back when I loved her and she loved me and I was trying to put my love for Lisa behind me, but not succeeding.

  My love for Lisa would kill my relationship with Rachael, and it would die a very ugly death. A death so ugly it somehow drove her to partner up with David Bourenhem, and together they would have killed my family by fire if only I hadn’t brought the fire to them first. Yet somehow, I look at the booted foot and, for some reason unexplained, I feel my eyes well up with tears. The sad fact of the matter is this: Rachael chose the wrong man. And I chose the wrong woman. But then, any woman I could have chosen after Lisa and I broke up would have been wrong. You can’t give your love over entirely when you are still in love with another.

  Pulling my eyes away from Rachael, I close in on Miller’s car, then sense something happening behind me. Turning around, I see yet anoth
er gurney being wheeled out of the still-burning house. This one no doubt contains Bourenhem’s body. Unlike my reaction with Rachael, I feel no remorse over his death.

  Only profound relief.

  Miller holds the car’s rear passenger-side door open for me, and as I sit myself down inside, I realize for the first time that night how exhausted I am. He comes around the back of the vehicle, opens the other rear door, and settles down across from me with a profound exhale. Aside from his gray trench coat, he’s wearing a blue blazer and, as usual, the knot on his necktie is perfect. He doesn’t look at me, but straight ahead, over the front seat and out through the windshield at the organized chaos that is presently orbiting the hopelessly burning mansion.

  “This might sound strange,” he says after a time, “but fire can really be a beautiful thing.”

  “Beauty and the killer beast,” I say.

  “I apologize for suspecting you all along.”

  “I was set up. Or better yet, caught in a trap. You see the truth now, don’t you, Detective Miller? See it in the fire?”

  “Yes,” he says. “Your prints were all over everything at Lisa’s house. There was no sign of forced entry, Reece. Later on, when that woman showed up in the river, most of her body burned beyond recognition, her home address just a few doors down from your ex-wife’s and a nice little burn spot on the back lawn, well . . .” He lets the thought trail off, then turns to face me. “Well, I assumed wrong, and you paid the price. Your family has paid the price.”

  “The woman laid out on that gurney,” I say, after a beat. “It’s Rachael. My ex-girlfriend. You remember I told you about her? Our breakup? That’s her. She was working with Bourenhem all along, it turns out, and together they nearly succeeded in destroying me, my art, and my girls.”

  Miller nods, taking this in.

  “This might sound strange,” Miller says a bit under his breath. “But in a small way, I can’t blame her for being so upset with you. If you loved Lisa so much, then why hang on to Rachael for so long? Why not just let her go before you caused her too much pain?”

  The tears once more press themselves against the backs of my eyeballs. Miller is right, and he knows it. There might be no forgiving Rachael for what she did to my family today and tonight, but the entirety of the blame does not rest upon her soul.

  “Why didn’t I leave her before I caused her too much pain?” I say. “Maybe I just didn’t want to be alone.”

  “Maybe after you and Lisa got back together you should have left town, picked up somewhere else.”

  We sit and watch the fire for a minute like we’re Boy Scouts gathered ’round the campfire. But we’re not Boy Scouts. We’re not that good. But there was a time when watching fire, any fire, would have had the effect of calming me down. Now, I’m watching the last remnants of the Reynoldses’ house burn to the ground and I don’t feel the least bit good about it or myself. I don’t feel good inside. I feel only sadness. Maybe what I had inside me for so many years, the burning desire for fire, has finally been doused. Maybe in facing down Bourenhem and Rachael, I’ve somehow come to terms with the deaths of my mother and my two older brothers. Maybe I will be able to finally erase the sadness that I automatically feel for my dad whenever I recall his desolate face on the morning he lost his family to fire.

  “Bourenhem would have gotten to me . . . to us . . . one way or another,” I say. “So would have Rachael.”

  In my head, I once more see the shadowy figure of a woman standing before Bourenhem’s First Street apartment window in Troy, the two of them arguing. Arguing about precisely how they were going to exact their ultimate revenge on me, the heretic.

  “Did either of them show any signs of violence before today? Tonight?” Miller poses.

  “I can’t speak for Bourenhem. As for Rachael, she had her bouts of jealousy. If I even looked at another woman, she’d get upset. Like you said, I was causing her pain. More pain than I realized.”

  “She ever hit you? Threaten you with a weapon?”

  I shake my head. “Not at all.”

  “In the end, did you break up with her?”

  “No, she broke up with me.”

  “Doesn’t make sense. If she broke up with you, why all this?”

  “Like I told you, she broke up with me because I was still in love with Lisa. Not because she didn’t love me anymore.”

  He nods. “She couldn’t compete with your love for your ex, so she ditched you, thinking that would solve everything.” He cocks his head at me. “Bad breakup?”

  “Thought she’d kill me. Tear my eyeballs out.”

  There’s a beat, and then both of us laugh. But nothing’s funny.

  “Well, there you go,” Miller says. “That only made her angrier, and her frustrations festered.”

  Both of us look off at the inferno, the flashing fire department and EMS vehicle lights lighting up the smoke. “So this was all because of a bad breakup,” I say.

  “Bad breakups. Plural. I’ll say it again. You, Lisa, and Anna should have left town.”

  “Right,” I say. “Too late now.”

  “But Bourenhem was angry with you for something else. He called you a heretic.”

  I clear my throat of some lingering smoke and look at him. “He claims, or claimed, that I stole his manuscript, The Damned.”

  “My favorite Reece Johnston novel,” he says with a grin.

  “I’ve written four others that have seen print.”

  “None of them as good as that one, Reece. My humble opinion, of course.”

  My stomach tightens. He’s right, and everyone knows it. And I still can’t picture myself actually sitting down and writing that first book.

  “The Damned is crazy and violent as all hell,” he says. “Stays with you, whether you want it to or not, like a bad dream. Totally different animal from your other books.” He’s eyeing me. “If books had fingerprints . . .” He trails off.

  “You’re not suggesting . . .” I never finish the sentence because he knows full well what I’m getting at. I breathe in, smell the stale, smoky odor of the car. Exhale.

  Reaching out, Miller pats my leg, shoots me a wink. It’s like he’s trying to tell me he believes I’m not capable of plagiarism. But on the other hand, he’s not entirely convinced.

  “Listen,” he says, “it’s been a day we’d all rather forget. Your family needs you and in the end, you’re lucky to have them back. Go to them.”

  In my brain I see Bourenhem on fire in Lisa’s bedroom, and I see Rachael falling off the side of the destroyed house into the fire and the rubble. Still, I’m having trouble believing they are both dead.

  I open the door, get out.

  “Reece,” Miller calls out, leaning over the seat toward the open door. “Remember, don’t go anywhere. We’ll need you and Lisa for statements.”

  “Sure thing,” I say, closing the door behind me. I lean down and say through the open window, “I have nowhere to go now other than home.”

  “Where’s your home?”

  “With Lisa and Anna.”

  “Couldn’t have written it better myself.”

  I walk on toward my family as the fire within me and the fire that consumes Lisa’s childhood home finally begin to burn out.

  Chapter 77

  Victoria is sedated and taken away in an ambulance to the Albany Medical Center, where she will remain for observation until cleared to return home by her doctor. Problem is, she won’t have a home to come to when she’s cleared.

  I find Lisa seated in the back of an EMS van, where a medical tech is placing a gauze bandage on a small burn on her left forearm. Anna occupies a piece of empty lawn just ten or so feet away from us. She’s wearing a fireman’s helmet that one of the firefighters has let her borrow, and now she’s running around with it on, running in and out of the white spotlight.
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br />   “Now you see me,” she sings, while jumping in front of the light, “and now you don’t.” Then she jumps out and away from the light, into the darkness.

  Just moments ago, Anna was facing down a death by fire, and now she’s playing, like her immediate past occurred a century or more ago. The power of little kids’ minds. The power of innocence, youth, and the ability to forget. If only I could have forgotten about the fire. If only I could have let it go.

  “Does it hurt, Leese?” I say to my ex-wife while standing outside the EMS van.

  She turns slowly, purses her lips. “Only when I laugh,” she says.

  “Well, after today, I’m sure it won’t hurt a bit. For a little while, anyway.”

  Lisa thanks the EMT and climbs out of the vehicle. Without saying a single word, she approaches me, wraps her arms around me. She holds me tightly.

  “I’m so sorry,” she says.

  “For what? You’re the one who lost her father.”

  She lets loose with a sob and holds me tight. I hold her just as tight and let her cry it out. Finally, she pulls back just a little, says into my ear, “I’m sorry for everything. I never should have allowed David back into my life like that. I thought we could be friends. And yes, before you ask me, I gave him a key to the place in a moment of weakness. I trust him, or trusted him. I saw no reason not to go on trusting him as a friend and as someone who was very, very close to Anna. But I was wrong. I never realized just how sick he was and what a threat he had become. I just never saw it coming. Will you ever forgive me?”

  I feel her tears. They’re running down her cheek and my cheek where they are joined together. It’s not hard to see that she is truly sorry for what’s happened. But something dawns on me at the same time.

  Gently I break away from her so I can look her directly in the eyes.