Chapter One: Let the Fire Burn Them.
It was a cold day outside. Much colder than the season should allow, after all it was mid July. It was so cold that people were actually wearing heavy winter coats. Just the day before all the weathermen were predicting record high temperatures for the state, but the next day it was significantly below freezing. None of the weathermen, or really anyone, could explain how this had happen. The heat wave that was supposed to hit the Northeast simply dissipated. People attributed it to global warming which in a normal situation would be completely logical and most likely accurate. This was not normal though, not in the slightest. Everyone was cold. Lakes and ponds had frozen early in the morning, and it only kept getting colder.
Eric did not need a coat when he woke up in the morning. He rarely had blankets on him while he slept at night even in midwinter, and midwinter's in Vermont could get very cold. Eric Shellvitts was in most ways a normal and happy seventeen year old. He was tall, lean, handsome, with short blonde hair, and was athletically built. He was self conscious about himself though, due to a large gruesome scar on the left of his lower back that extended up to his spine. Still, just a minor problem. He was looking forward to being a senior in high school next year. His grades were good and it seemed like he would be the first person in his family to go to college when he completed his next year of school. However there was one major problem in his life, that problem being his father.
When Eric, his little sister Elizabeth, his mother (his mother’s name was Cindy Hurly but she had reverted back to her maiden name, Shellvitts, after the scandal. So she was Cindy Hurly but was now, once again, Cindy Shellvitts.), and his father had lived in the L.A. area there were a series of fires that the police and fire department were baffled by. The fires had been started by an outside force, there was no doubt about that, yet none of the people who investigated the fire understood how the fires had been started. There were no traces of incendiary fluids, electrical devices, or even a discernible location of where the fires had started. It seemed like the fires somehow started in multiple places all at once both inside and outside the buildings that burnt down. They would never have found out who was committing the fires if it hadn’t been for the fact that when the firemen had arrived at last of the fires Charlie was standing by the building, mesmerized and on fire. When one of the firemen went to save him the flames around him jumped to the fireman burning him alive. At least that was the story they told officials who seemed to think they were suffering from shock at the loss of their friend. Later the firemen recounted their story and decided that it must have been a trick of the fire light and that Charlie must have had a bonfire next to him which he somehow directed at the poor fireman.
So, Eric’s father’s was a serial arsonist. There had been four buildings burned down in total. The first was a hotel, though the fact that it was a hotel wasn’t the whole story about that building. It was a brothel. Everyone knew this but no one attempted to bring it down. Word was that the brothel had tapes of some political figures as well as some of Los Angeles’s finest on tape partaking in some of the more exotic options on the hotel’s room service menu. All the staff on hand at the brothel that night had burned alive in the fire, plus five clients. The woman who ran the brothel had not been in that night and was a clever person. Her name (or so she claimed) was Genevieve De`lue, and she kept very thorough records. She was more than happy to help the police given her business had been destroyed as well as many of her friends. The police had many suspects yet no leads, and then an unfortunate break did come for the case. Another fire.
The second building to be burned down was an apartment complex. The top penthouse suit was owned by Tomas Faraday, an infamous crime lord. During the time of the fire the sinister crime lord was having a meeting with his top lieutenants about how they were going to distribute their new drug on the street. Unlike with Genevieve De`lue the police had been working hard to bring this criminal down, and the leader of this rather large criminal enterprise had been planning on ways to elude the cops from discovering his new drug. Most of the apartment occupants on the floor below the top penthouse where the meeting was taking place were used for packaging and diluting the drugs so the drugs wouldn’t kill the person on the first use, after all repeat customers are what are needed in this business. As Tomas Faraday and his lieutenants lifted their glasses to toast their new plan… fire and smoke erupted all around the building.
It is true the police would have shed no tears over the fiery eradication of Tomas Faraday and his top men, as well as the crippling blow to their drug operation the fire caused. However, I have not mentioned the other five floors all occupied by citizens. Granted not all the people in the building were exactly law abiding, but death by either suffocation from smoke inhalation or the flesh melting heat is a death none deserve.
They figured it was a serial arsonist that believed he was killing people who deserved to die (they assumed correctly I might add). So to make a long story short, the third building was a warehouse used as a meth lab, and the forth was a Catholic school whose Bishop was accused of molesting several children.
It is at the church where Charlie Hurly was caught. When he was brought in he was quiet at first, they had him in the interrogation room for two hours without getting a word out of him. They showed him the pictures of all the burnt corpses, both civilians and criminals, no reaction. They yelled, they offered him deals but no reaction. They needed a confession for the fires. They could put him at the scene of the church fire but that was it, as explained earlier there was no evidence of any incendiary fluids or devices. His silence did offer them a small blessing though. He didn’t ask for a lawyer. Finally as they were walking out to take a break he said on word. God.
“What?” asked the lead detective named Aaron Smith.
“God.” Replied Charlie.
Aaron glanced at his partner James Harrison. “God?” asked detective Smith again.
“Yes, God.” Urged Charlie
“Exactly what about God?” asked detective Harrison.
“He told me to do this”
“Okay, God told you to do this.” Said detective Smith, drawing out the O sound of okay out clearly confused. Then it dawned on Smith, ‘he’s trying to get off on the insanity plea’, he thought. He sighed and sat down across from Charlie once more, indicating to Harrison that he should do so too. “So, God tells you to do something and you do it? Makes sense, after all if God tells me to do something I’m going to do it. I mean, I’m a Christian too. Detective Harrison, what about you? You would do something God told you to do, right?”
“Of course.” Harrison replied. They were trying to make Charlie feel foolish so he would let something slip. It worked.
“God wouldn’t speak the two of you!” Charlie said annoyed.
Harrison raised an eyebrow, “Oh? And why wouldn’t he?”
“Because you do not control the holy fire! I was chosen because I can bring down the fiery wraith of the Lord.”
“Hey, anyone with a book of matches can start a fire and claim it to be Gods wrath. I remember another case where-”
“I didn’t use matches” said Charlie, cutting off Smith mid sentence with a look of pride on his face.
Smith smiled. Now we’re getting somewhere he thought, he believed Charlie was about to reveal exactly how he had caused those fires. “Yes, we know that. How exactly did you start those fires? Gotta admit, you have us stumped there.”
“I told you, holy fire.” Charlie said this like it was obvious.
“Why don’t you explain to us exactly what this ‘holy fire’ is if you don’t mind.” Harrison asked.
“It’s a fire everyone has. It comes from the soul. But only God can allow you to use it. He must speak to you, and give you his divine plan. You need a purpose from the almighty lord to use it,” Charlie explained.
Harrison made a noise of interest. “Alright. Let’s say I believe you. How do you use it? What I mean is, how can you control it”
“I’m not the one to tell. It is a secret of the lord only to be given to his disciples.” Charlie wasn’t looking just prideful now, he was looking smug as well.
“Okay. Can’t explain it.” Smith responded clearly annoyed. How about you show us.”
Charlie frowned. “I… I can’t”
“Why not?” asked Smith, “I mean I’m sure detective Harrison would like to see it, hell, I know I would.”
Charlie frowned again with his brow furrowed. “It… It left me, I can’t hear the Lords voice in my head any more either,” he began to speak rapidly and more panicked, “I don’t understand. I did his work, I burnt the sinners!I destroyed them with the holy fire of the lord! I sent their evil souls to hell. I did his work, why did he abandon me? I let the fire burn them!”
Smith and Harrison looked at one another. They were both thinking the same thing, he really is crazy.
“Okay,” said Smith rubbing his left temple. He had lost a lot of sleep on this case, the autopsy reports of all the victims alone would keep him up since they numbered over two hundred, and the case was almost over… though it was not the ending he had hoped for. “We’re going to need you to sign a written confession.” He said exhausted, feeling little closure or relief.
Now, back to Eric, who woke up on this unusually cold summer day in Vermont. He was aware of his family’s dark secret, yet it was completely out of his mind at this moment. However, in a few short hours during the early morning when he wakes up for his job as a lifeguard at a small local lake the memories of his fathers’ sins would come into his mind in a very uncomfortable and very revealing way.
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