indistinct accelerant. The first whiff screamed gasoline, the second, a benzine -based lighter fluid.
He almost shot up in surprise, launching himself out of bed, the sensation was so powerful. His first instinct was to somehow raise the alarm, organize the men, get them out, before the inevitable fire burst forth. In his mind's eye, he suddenly saw streaks of red and yellow flame searching the bedding, the walls, the floor beneath their feet, for fuel. He could sense the deep desperate choking that would inevitably follow, as thick curtains of smoke fell across the stage of the room. The door was locked, as it was every night, and he could hear the panicked men, screaming, calling for help, pounding on the walls. Every muscle in his body tensed, and then, just as rapidly, relaxed, as he breathed in, and he realized the smell flitting through his nose was as much a hallucination as any of those that plagued Francis or Nappy or even the particularly dire ones that had afflicted Lanky.
He sometimes thought that his entire life had been defined by odors. Beer and whiskey smells that followed his father, mingling freely with the odors of dried sweat and dirt from hard work at some construction site or another. Sometimes, too, his father wore thick diesel smells from fixing the heavy equipment. And burying his head into the large man's chest was to come away with a nose filled with the stale scent of too many of the cigarettes that eventually would kill him. His mother, in contrast, always had a chamomile scent to her, because she battled hard against the harshness of the detergents that she used in the laundry she took in. Sometimes, beneath the heavy smell of the soaps she liked, he could just catch a whiff of the sharp odor of bleach. She wore a far better scent on Sundays, when she was scrubbed, but had spent some time in the kitchen early, baking, so that in her churchgoing finery she combined an earthy, bread-smell, with an insistent cleanliness, as if that was what God would want. Church was stiff clothes beneath the white and gold robes of the altar boy and incense that sometimes made him sneeze. He remembered all those scents, as if they were in the hospital alongside him.
The war had given him a whole new world of odors to remember. Thick jungle smells of vegetation and heat, cordite and white phosphorous from fire-fights. Clammy smells of smoke and napalm in the distance, that mingled with the claustrophobic smells of the bush that entwined him. He grew accustomed to the smells of blood, vomit, and fecal matter that mixed so often with death. There were exotic cooking smells, in the villages they passed through, and dangerous smells of swamps and flooded fields that they maneuvered past.
There was the acrid, familiar smell of marijuana back in the base camps, as well, and the harsh, eye-stinging smell of cleaning fluids used on weapons. It was a place of unfamiliar and unsettling scents.
He had learned, when he returned, that fire had dozens of different smells at all its different stages and in all its different incarnations. Wood fires were distinct from chemical fires, which had little similarity to fires that gutted concrete. The first licking, tentative burst was different from the moment where it rose up and took flower, and. different again from the crackling smell of a fire in control of its own voracious future. And it was all distinct from the heavy odors of charred timbers and twisted metals that followed, when it had been beaten back and defeated. He had known, then, too, the unique odor of exhaustion, as if bone-weary fatigue had a scent all its own. When he had signed up for arson investigator's school, one of the first things they taught him was how to use his nose, because gasoline that was used to start a fire smelled different from kerosene and that smelled different from all the other ways that people created destruction. Some were subtle, with distant, elusive bouquets. Others were obvious and amateurish, demanding attention from the first moment he stepped onto the rubble of whatever remained.
When it had come time to set his own fire, he'd used regular gasoline purchased at a filling station barely a mile away from the church. Purchased with a credit card in his own name. He didn't want anyone to have any doubts as to who authored that particular blaze.
In the semidarkness of the madhouse dormitory, Peter the Fireman shook his head, although in denial of precisely what, he was uncertain. That night he'd controlled his murderous rage, and simply taken everything he'd learned about how to conceal the origin of a fire, everything that was about caution and subtlety, and ignored it. He'd left a trail so obvious that even the most callow investigator would have had no trouble finding him. He had set the fire, then walked through the nave to the vestry, voice raised in warning, but believing that he was alone. He had stopped, as he heard the fire start to move eagerly behind him, and stared up at a stained glass window, that suddenly seemed to glow with life, as it caught the reflection of the fire. He'd crossed himself, just as he'd done a thousand times, then stepped outside, to the front lawn, where he'd waited to see it explode in full flower, and then he'd walked home to wait in the darkness on the front steps of his mother's house for the police to arrive. He knew he had done a good job, and he'd known that even the most dedicated ladder company wouldn't succeed at extinguishing the blaze until it was too late.
What he hadn't known was that the priest whom he had come to hate was inside. On a fold-out cot in the main office, and not, at home in his bed, where he, by all rights and usual behavior, should have been. Sleeping in the arms of a heavy narcotic, no doubt prescribed to him by a physician-parishioner, concerned that the good father looked pale and drawn and that his sermons seemed marred by anxiety. As well they should have been, for he well knew that Peter the Fireman knew what he had done to his little nephew, and knew, as well, that of all the members of the parish, Peter, alone, was likely to do something about it. This had always bothered Peter: There were so many others that the priest could have easily preyed upon, who weren't related to someone who might rise up. Peter wondered, too, if the same drug that had left the priest asleep in his bed while death crackled all around him, was what Gulp-a-pill liked to give the patients in the hospital. He guessed that they were, a symmetry that he thought pleasantly and almost laughably ironic.
Peter whispered out loud, 'What's done is done.'
Then he glanced around, to see if the noise of his words had awakened anyone.
He tried to close his eyes. He knew he needed to sleep, and yet, held no hope that it would bring him any rest.
He blew out in frustration, and swung his feet over the side of the bunk. Peter told himself to head into the bathroom, get a drink of water. He rubbed his hands across his face, as if he could wipe away some of his memories.
And, as he did this, he had the sudden sensation that he was being watched.
He straightened up abruptly, instantly alert, his eyes immediately darting about the bunk room.
Most of the men were shrouded in shadow. A little light crept into one corner from the bank of windows. He searched back and forth across the rows of unsettled men, but he could see no one awake, and certainly no one staring in his direction. He tried to dismiss the sensation, but could not. It filled his stomach with a nervous energy, as if all the senses he had of sight, and hearing and smell and taste and touch were suddenly screaming warnings to him. He tried to tell himself to calm down, because he was beginning to think that he might just be turning as paranoid as all the men who surrounded him, but as he reassured himself, he just caught a bit of motion out of the corner of his eye.
He pivoted in that direction and for a single second, he saw a face staring in through the small observation window in the entranceway door. Their eyes met, and then, just as abruptly, the face disappeared, dropping from view.
Peter jumped up, and moving fast through the wan darkness, he dodged his way between the sleeping men to the doorway. He thrust his own face up to the thick glass, and peered out into the corridor. He could only see a few feet in either direction, and all he saw was dark emptiness.
He placed his hand on the doorknob and pulled. It was locked.
A great surge of anger and frustration swept over him. He gritted his teeth and believed somewhere deep within himself that he was always destined to find that which he wanted was unreachable, beyond a locked door.
The weak light, the shadowy darkness, the thick glass, all had conspired to prevent Peter from noting even the smallest of details in the face. All he could take away was the ferocity in the eyes that had settled on him. The look had been uncompromising and evil, and, perhaps for the first time, he thought that maybe Lanky was strangely correct in all his protests and entreaties. Something evil had crept unbidden into the hospital, and Peter knew that this evil knew all about him. He tried to tell himself that his understanding this indicated strength. But he suspected that this was perhaps a lie.
