Venturi
RICHARD CHRISTIAN MATHESON IS a film and television writer/producer/director. He has worked with Bryan Singer, Steven Spielberg and Roger Corman, among others, and has written/produced three mini-series, eight feature films, thirty pilots and hundreds of comedic/dramatic television series episodes for HBO, TNT, NBC, CBS, ABC, Showtime Networks, Fox Network and Syfy. He has also published two short-story collections and a novel.
Matheson is a studio musician who studied with Ginger Baker of Cream and has played drums with The Smithereens and Rock Bottom Remainders. He has worked as a paranormal investigator for UCLA, and is considered an expert in parapsychology. He runs his own production company in Los Angeles and the Matheson Company with his father.
“Nineteenth-century physicist G.B. Venturi discovered a compressive phenomenon which effects fire, moving through a canyon, causing the flames to be intensified, feeding upon themselves,” Matheson explains. “This acceleration, called the ‘Venturi Effect’, is as apt a metaphor for paranoia as I have encountered.
“When my own house in Malibu burned down, some years back, my senses altered. As fires ate hillsides and smoke drowned sun, I was forced to evacuate in twenty minutes and ultimately lost everything. I even watched my house go up in flames, on the TV news – a surreal pain.
“The loss awakened me to signs of oncoming fire – rising wind, distant scents of smoke, angry glows on mountains that rim the bay. To this day, even a burning cigarette, anywhere nearby, triggers a vigilant circuit within me.
“I still live in Malibu, aside its dreamy spell, but am never as completely at ease here as I once was. When winds convulse and fire engines wail, my heart races and I know everything could change.”
3:34 P.M.
“When did you first notice this?”
“Week ago,” said David. “Three days after the fire.”
“Any pain?”
“No.”
The doctor’s gloved fingers probed shoulder blade. It was soft, egg-sized; under skin.
“. . . saw the fire on TV. Did you have to evacuate?”
David watched smoke swarm the medical building, tall flames lash, wanting in.
He looked at the doctor.
“You still up in that canyon in Malibu? I hear they don’t give you much time to get out.”
Banshee winds hammered the glass, black plumes muting sun. The room darkened, the doctor’s face a feral shadow.
“I had fifteen minutes. You take what you can.” His mouth was dry. Body numb. “My house didn’t burn. But the neighbourhood’s gone.” He felt ill. “Thirty-eight houses.”
The doctor stopped. Tried to picture it. “My God.”
Dense smoke suddenly filled the examination room; gushing through vents; seeping under doors. Grimy ash swirled; sick snow.
“Fire creates its own wind,’’ said David, “. . . it’s called the Venturi Effect.”
The doctor’s breathing deepened.
“The flames feed on themselves. Like a frightened animal.”
“Venturi . . .” the doctor repeated.
David could see his next door neighbour’s house clawed by apricot blades, cooked black. “Got to ninety-six miles an hour on my hill.”
The doctor fell silent. “Awful. Gotta be exhausted. Getting any sleep?”
“Not really.”
He nodded, re-washed hands. Voice apothecary calm. “Far as I can tell, this thing feels like a muscle spasm. Tension.”
Smoke snaked around the doctor, luscious pleats of it fingering his neck, sliding between lips and teeth.
“I want you to take hot showers. I’ll give you some muscle relaxant. It’ll ease up.”
David heard winds outside moan louder.
“Let’s just watch it. Call me if anything changes.”
“Like what?”
The doctor scrawled on prescription pad. “You look exhausted, David. You gotta get some sleep. These’ll help.”
“I can’t sleep. It’s fire season.” His eyes were red with exhaustion. ”Anything could happen.”
The doctor looked outside. Smiled, told David it was a nice day. “Weather guy says it may even rain.”
David heard axes smashing through doors and quietly left the office.
4:47 P.M.
The freeway couldn’t breathe.
Drivers hunched. Eyes eating; devouring. Watching mirrors; lips sewn in disgust. Exhaust pipes fuming; vile, chrome mouths.
David felt his shoulder blade. Wanted whatever was in there to die.
2:17 A.M.
The folded chair was in a carpet of soot.
David sat on his deck, surrounded by charred mountains that smelled like wet, dead cigarettes. Their burnt flesh rose from shore; soft, black cameos, looming and silent.
He sipped coffee. Scanned his dead neighbourhood; grey casket streets. It had been days since he’d slept and his bones felt wrong; aching, drilled with holes. He yawned, eyes bloodshot. Watched insomniac sea. Surf broke far below; pale blades on ink.
“. . . the meridian where conscious and unconscious meet,” the Swedish widow up the street had told him, days before she died in the ’97 firestorm, trapped in her house, chased by red infuriations.
He stopped, mid-swallow. Smelled smoke.
Somewhere; maybe close; the first sign death neared. It was everywhere; the warm, charcoal breath. Those who hadn’t survived fires didn’t notice the hateful, uninvited scent of it. Billowing, citric welts, rushing closer, making birds shriek in terror, trees bend.
He heard groaning red trucks curving up his narrow road, tires crunching, blinded by smoke. Seventy-foot flames swaying in the ravine like burning kelp.
Then, nothing.
He searched with binoculars, found distant Los Angeles skyline, scanned surrounding hills. Nothing unusual. He breathed in, deeply, as leaves began to rattle in his sycamore. Closed fatigued eyes. He’d taken the shower and muscle relaxant but no sleeping pill; closing eyes would be a fatal mistake.
He breathed in, again. Maybe he’d imagined the smoke. He needed to be careful; after a fire, everything smelled of it. He tried to distinguish, isolating nuance, turning his head to find it.
Smoke.
The world was filling up with it; choking, flesh sweating, slick with fear. Flames crawling horizon, gobbling. Raving gusts of it, moving in for the kill. To sleep was to die. Awaken to sirens, evacuations. Screams in the night.
There was no stopping it.
It just got worse.
Boxes filled with personal belongings thrown into frantically idling cars. Children panicked, crying. He could see his collie, Jack. Ears flat, as the crackle of burning hillsides drew him, and he ran, whining, scared, into fevered skirts of smoke. David had heard his cries, pleading for a way out.
Then, nothing. Just houses and creatures and trees burning as flames took them like fast cancer.
He felt sick to his stomach. Remembered when he’d first seen the house, nestled atop mountain, overlooking a trance of water and land. Despite its helpless perfection, perched calmly in the middle of a fire path, he’d bought it. It had nearly burned in a ’94 firestorm that took 200 hillside homes; a hot, windy afternoon, when the sky bloodied to third-degree burn. The owner had decided to stay, as her world went red and black; listening to flames getting closer; starved for helpless things. She’d slit both wrists and, as they slowly drained, applied make-up and taken a cool bath.
At this elevation, the death winds found everyone.
He stared into the night.
Listening for sirens; desperate calls for help. Santa Ana winds began moving across the hills like rabid gangs and he saw himself on fire; insides blazing, smoke filling his throat like a chimney; drifting from his dying mouth. Ash silently fell and he thought he saw smoke spiralling just over one hill; furious crows of it moving closer.
He could hear ghouls in cars, racing up his narrow road, hungry to see the decimation. Cigarettes in idiot mouths. Teenagers on the beach, burning driftwood, paying no attention as embers twinkled fatally away. Hikers making campfires.
Arsonists. All of them.
He grabbed for his binoculars, again, and gasped as the rise on his shoulder blade moved. He instantly shed jacket and T-shirt to check and, to his shock, found more rises, on upper arm, forearm and chest; sheeted by flesh.
He rushed into the dark house, turned on the light and stood before bedroom mirror.
There were more.
He hesitated, afraid of what they might be and, after a moment, carefully poked at one on his chest. The rise responded, pushing outward, slowly straining against skin until finally splitting it open; a wound in reverse. David gasped at sharp pain as, one after another, the rises pushed, tearing through his flesh, each now visible in its own raw, puckered socket, slowly orbiting.
Lids lifted and the eyes stared intensely at him; brown like his own, unblinking, whites shining. They seemed neither trapped nor accusatory and each began to stare, alertly, in different directions, searching for something.
He felt them covering his back, blood trickling where they’d erupted, and frantically sifted through his hair to find more. When he touched them, the lids tightly shut, gradually re-opened; watching, pupils dilating. The ones on his forearms and palms studied the room, taking everything in with a detailed scan.
It was exhaustion; the trick of a traumatized mind. He knew it; thought about calling his doctor.
But it was pointless.
He’d recommend sleep, a hospital. There was no leaving the house now; death was everywhere. Hot winds howling, fire galloping closer.
Coming for him.
He moved out onto the deck, stared at pewter sky, heard sirens in the distance; bleak arias. Tree branches shuddered and he was sure he saw vicious orange coming over the hill, mowing towards sea.
He stripped off the rest of his clothes, saw more eyes covered him; vigilant, unblinking stares that swept the hills and ravines for danger. His arms slowly outstretched at his sides to allow them unimpeded view and, as they surveyed horizon with restless detection, he began to calm.
He stood, naked in warm, ominous winds, fears gradually easing, as the scores of eyes kept watch and his own slowly closed.