Michael Prescott: Blind Pursuit

She remembered that nightmarish summer evening when Albert, drunk, wild with rage, had railed at his wife, rejected his children, and finally, in a fit of bellowing fury, had promised they would burn, burn, burn.

“In hell, he meant.” Her voice was a whisper, the words spoken half to herself. “In hell.”

The gasoline gurgled to a stop, the can empty. Oliver threw it aside.

“I let him suffer awhile,” he said. “Maureen, too. They might have assumed I’d done my worst. Then on the night of August eighteenth…”

“You broke into the house.”

“Yes. Found Albert asleep in the den. Clubbed him unconscious. Soaked the ground floor first, then carried Albert upstairs and finished the job.”

“In the master bedroom. That’s when Maureen woke up.”

“She saw me, screamed. I gave her a good hard slap, just like I’d done in the barn. She was pleading with me when I tossed the match.”

The floorboards shivered under his slow, heavy tread. He moved to the stove and stood before her, staring down.

“You two got out that night.” Cold words. “But not this time.”

Erin gazed up at him, his face as round and pale as a full moon, his gaze still blank, void of compassion, empty of self.

“You’re lying,” she whispered.

Puzzlement flickered briefly in his eyes. “What?”

“Revenge wasn’t your motive. You had another purpose. A purpose you’ve never been willing to consciously acknowledge.”

“Too late, Doc. Therapy’s over.” He began to turn away.

“That wasn’t a fatherly kiss you gave me, Oliver.”

The words stopped him.

“In Sierra Springs,” she said, “you did more than visit Albert in his office. You spied on Maureen. Found out where she lived and observed her from hiding.”

He blinked. “How did you know that?”

“It’s what you always do. When Maureen visited the ranch, you spied on her from the arroyo. And when you came to Tucson, you must have followed me to learn where I live. I’ve got an unlisted address.”

“All right. I watched her. With binoculars.”

“And while you were observing Maureen’s house, you saw her two little girls- your girls. You saw us, didn’t you?”

“I… saw you.”

“And you wanted us.”

A muscle twitched in his cheek. He said nothing.

“Even though we were little, only seven years old, you wanted us, just as your father had wanted you, just as you’d wanted your mother’s sister. Love and incest-you’ve never been able to separate the two. You wanted us.”

“If I did… so what? So what? ”

“That’s why you set the fire. Not for revenge. You meant to wipe out all three of us-Annie and me and Maureen-so we wouldn’t be there to tempt you anymore.”

“It would have worked. If you’d died-”

“Nothing would have changed. You still would have had the same needs, and you would have responded the same way-by burning other women. Women who reminded you of us, because they were Catholic or they were young or they had the same color hair. The details wouldn’t matter. You would have gone on killing no matter what.”

“I wouldn’t. Dammit, it wouldn’t have been like that.”

“It would. It would have to be. It always will. You think that by killing the object of your desire, you can kill the desire itself. You’re wrong. What you’re trying to destroy is within you, not outside you. It’s part of you. It is you.”

“It’s not.” He shook his head blindly in a last, desperate effort at denial. “You’re the problem, not me. You and Annie. Filth. Whores. I’ll get rid of you, and then I’ll be free, God damn you, I’ll be free. ”

“You can never be free that way-”

But he wasn’t listening anymore. A ripple of spasms in his shoulders, and he pivoted away from her, moving fast toward the front door. Helplessly she called after him. “Oliver? Oliver? ”

At the door he turned. Something trembled in his hand.

A matchbook.

“I’ll be free,” he said once more, his voice muted and faraway.

He took a backward step, removing himself from the flash zone. A wisp of orange light flared between his fingers.

Flick of his wrist, and the match traced a slow arc through the darkness.

The gasoline vapors ignited even before the match hit the floor, triggering a split-second chain reaction that engulfed the lower portion of all four walls in a flexible sheet of flame.

“ Oliver!”

Her scream didn’t reach him. Nothing could reach him now.

Cymbal crashes of shattering glass. Every window in the room disintegrated simultaneously, blown out by the rapid expansion of superheated air.

“ Oliver!”

Still no response, though he must have heard her. He had not moved from the doorway.

Erin had spent her life studying fire and fire starters. She understood what happened next only too well.

The upward rush of intense heat kindled the walls, boiling off the wood’s most volatile contents. In a heartbeat the mist of outgassed turpentine, resin, and oil achieved its flash point, feeding the flames even as the gasoline vapors were consumed.

Convective updrafts teased the fire relentlessly toward the ceiling. Indrafting air from the front door and the broken windows flung exploratory firebrands across the floor.

“Goddammit, Oliver, talk to me! ”

The fire cast a ruddy, wavering glow on his face. He stood motionless, gazing transfixed at what he had done, what he had finally brought himself to do after so many years.

His eyes were wide and glassy. The sparse hairs of his head rustled in the fire’s hot wind.

Flames reached the first of the rafters, caught hold, then hopped from beam to beam. Churning fumes collected along the ceiling, forming a noxious mushroom cloud.

The smoke was what would kill her and Annie. That, or the stinging heat, or the collapse of the roof.

“ Oliver!” She had to make him hear her. “Oh, Jesus, Oliver, don’t leave us here, please don’t, for God’s sake, don’t!” Each breathless shout seemed to jerk the chain tighter around her midsection, the wicked links chewing hungrily at her stomach, her lower ribs. “Don’t let us burn, it’s not the way to solve anything, it’s not the way! ”

The noise around her was thunderous, the Niagara roar of the flames competing with the moans of tortured wood, the pops of metal fixtures springing free of bolts and screws, the sizzle of sparking wires, the whoosh and howl of eddying air currents that spun pinwheels of soot and embers across the room.

Oliver shambled backward, still watching spellbound.

“ Oliver!” she called for the last time.

Abruptly he turned, and then he was running, running into the night.

Gone.

Erin struggled with the chain, knowing she could not free herself, knowing she would be dead very soon, as the lethal heat pulsed around her and the roof beams began to groan.

“I did it.”

Gund spoke the words between gulps of air as he sprinted to the barn.

He threw the double doors wide, climbed into the Astro, started the engine.

As he backed out into the open, as he swung the van toward the open gate, as he pulled out onto the side road, he felt strange tics and twitches in his face, peculiar muscular contractions at the corners of his mouth-and in his eyes, beads of dampness, blurring his world.

In the sideview mirror, the receding ranch house glowed with a red, feverish light.

Another ripple of his facial muscles, and the shape of his mouth changed. It took him a moment to understand that he was smiling, really smiling-the first smile he had worn in years, decades-almost the first he could remember.

This, then, was happiness. That word he so often had heard and never comprehended.