Firestarter(86)

At first there had been a live-in "companion," a woman of about forty-five. She was supposed to be "motherly," but the "motherly companion" had hard green eyes with small flecks in them. The flecks were like ice. These were the people who had killed her real mother; now they wanted her to live here with the "motherly companion." Charlie told them she didn't want the "motherly companion." They smiled. Then Charlie stopped talking, and she didn't say another word until the "motherly companion" left, taking her green ice-chip eyes with her. She had made a deal with that man Hockstetter: she would, answer his questions, and his alone, if he would get that "motherly companion" out. The only companion she wanted was her father, and if she couldn't have him, she would be alone.

In many ways she felt that the last five months (they told her it was five months; it didn't feel like anything) had been a dream. There was no way to mark time, faces came and went with no memories attached to them, disembodied as balloons, and food had no particular taste. She felt like a balloon herself sometimes. She felt as if she were floating. But in a way, her mind told her with perfect certitude, it was fair. She was a murderer.

She had broken the worst of the Ten Commandments and was surely damned to hell.

She thought about this at night, with the lights turned down low so that the apartment itself seemed like a dream. She saw it all. The men on the porch wearing their crowns of flame. The cars exploding. The chickens catching fire. The smell of burning that was always the smell of smoldering stuffing, the smell of her teddy bear.

(and she had liked it)

That was it; that was the trouble. The more she had done it the more she had liked it; the more she had done it the more she had been able to feel the power, a living thing, getting stronger and stronger. It was like a pyramid standing upside down, standing on its tip, and the more you did it the harder it got to stop it. It hurt to stop it.

(and it was fun)

and so she was never going to do it again. She would die in here before she did it again. Maybe she even wanted to die in here. The idea of dying in a dream wasn't scary at all.

The only two faces that weren't totally dissociated were Hockstetter's and that of the orderly who came to clean her apartment every day. Charlie had asked him once why he had to come every day, since she wasn't messy.

John-that was his name-had taken a scrungy old pad from his back pocket and a cheap ballpoint pen from his breast pocket. He said "That's just my job, kid." And on the paper he wrote Because they're full of shit, why else?

She had almost giggled but had stopped herself in time by thinking of men with crowns of fire, men who smelled like smoldering teddy bears. Giggling would have been dangerous. So she simply pretended that she hadn't seen the note or didn't understand it. The orderly's face was a mess. He wore an eyepatch. She felt sorry for him and once she had almost asked him what happened-if he had been in a car accident or something-but that would have been even more dangerous than giggling at his note. She didn't know why, but she felt that in every fiber.

His face was very horrible to look at, but he seemed pleasant enough, and his face was no worse than the face of little Chuckie Eberhardt back in Harrison. Chuckie's mother had been frying potatoes when Chuckie was three and Chuckie had pulled the pan of hot fat off the stove all over himself and had almost died. Afterward the other kids sometimes called him Chuckie Hamburger and Chuckie Frankenstein, and Chuckie would cry. It was mean. The other kids didn't seem to understand that a thing like that could happen to any kid. When you were three you didn't have much in the smarts department.

John's face was all ripped up, but that didn't scare her. It was Hockstetter's face that scared her, and his face-except for the eyes-was as ordinary as anyone else's. His eyes were even worse than the eyes of the "motherly companion." He was always using them to pry at you. Hockstetter wanted her to make fires. He asked her again and again. He took her to a room, and sometimes there would be crumpled-up pieces of newspaper and sometimes there would be little glass dishes filled with oil and sometimes there would be other things. But for all the questions, and all the fake sympathy, it always came down to the same thing: Charlie, set this on fire.

Hockstetter scared her. She sensed that he had all sorts of... of

(things)

that he could use on her to make her light fires. But she wouldn't. Except she was scared that she would. Hockstetter would use anything. He didn't play fair, and one night she had had a dream, and in this dream she had set Hockstetter on fire and she had awakened with her hands stuffed into her mouth to keep back a scream.

One day, in order to postpone the inevitable request, she had asked when she could see her father. It had been much on her mind, but she hadn't asked, because she knew what the answer would be. But on this day she was feeling specially tired and low-spirited, and it had just slipped out.

"Charlie, I think you know the answer to that," Hockstetter had said. He pointed to the table in the little room. There was a steel tray on the table and it was filled with heaps of curly woodshavings. "If you'll light that, I'll take you to your father right away. You can be with him in two minutes." Beneath his cold, watching eyes, Hockstetter's mouth spread wide in a just-pals sort of grin. "Now, what say?"

"Give me a match," Charlie had answered, feeling the tears threaten. "I'll light it."