Firestarter

daughter with the dart sticking out of her neck. There was no more rage left in him. He had shot his wad.

That was Andy McGee’s mental state as he sat watching TV that August 19 while the storm walked the hills outside. The PTL host made a donations pitch and then introduced a gospel trio. The trio began to sing, and suddenly the lights went out.

The TV also went, the picture dwindling down to a bright speck. Andy sat in his chair, unmoving, not sure just what had happened. His mind had just enough time to register the scary totality of the dark, and then the lights went on again. The gospel trio reappeard, singing “I Got a Telephone Call from Heaven and Jesus Was on the Line.” Andy heaved a sigh of relief, and then the lights went out again.

He sat there, gripping the arms of the chair as if he would fly away if he let go. He kept his eyes desperately fixed on the bright speck of light from the TV even after he knew it was gone and he was only seeing a lingering after-image… or wishful thinking.

It’ll be back on in a second or two, he told himself. Secondary generators somewhere. You don’t trust to house current to run a place like this.

Still, he was scared. He suddenly found himself recalling the boys”-adventure stories of his childhood. In more than one of them, there had been an incident in some cave with the lights or candles blown out. And it seemed that the author would always go to great lengths to describe the dark as “palpable” or “utter” or “total.” There was even that tried-and-true old standby “the living dark,” as in “The living dark engulfed Tom and his friends.” If all of this had been meant to impress the nine year-old Andy McGee, it hadn’t done. As far as he was concerned, if he wanted to be “engulfed by the living dark,” all he had to do was go into his closet and put a blanket along the crack at the bottom of the door. Dark was, after all, dark.

Now he realized that he had been wrong about that; it wasn’t the only thing he’d been wrong about as a kid, but it was maybe the last one to be discovered. He would just as soon have forgone the discovery, because dark wasn’t dark. He had never been in a dark like this one in his life. Except for the sensation of the chair beneath his butt and under his hands, he could have been floating in some lightless Lovecraftian gulf between the stars. He raised one hand and floated it in front of his eyes. Arid although he could feel the palm lightly touching his nose, he couldn’t see it.

He took the hand away from his face and gripped the arm of the chair with it again. His heart had taken on a rapid and thready beat in his chest. Outside, someone called out hoarsely, “Richie! Where the fuck are ya?” and Andy cringed back in his chair as if he had been threatened. He licked his lips.

It’ll be back on in just a second or two now, he thought, but a scared part of his mind that refused to be comforted by mere rationalities asked: How long is a second or two, or a minute or two, in total darkness? How do you measure time in total darkness?

Outside, beyond his “apartment,” something fell over and someone screamed in pain and surprise. Andy cringed back again and moaned shakily. He didn’t like this. This was no good.

Well, if it takes them longer than a few minutes to fix it-to reset the breakers or whatever-they’ll come and let me out. They’ll have to.

Even the scared part of his mind-the part that was only a short distance away from gibbering-recognized the logic of this, and he relaxed a little. After all, it was just the dark; that’s all it was-just the absence of light. It wasn’t as if there were monsters in the dark, or anything like that.

He was very thirsty. He wondered if he dared get up and go get a bottle of ginger ale out of the fridge. He decided he could do it if he was careful. He got up, took two shuffling steps forward, and promptly barked his shin on the edge of the coffee table. He bent and rubbed it, eyes watering with pain.

This was like childhood, too. They had played a game called “blind man'; he supposed all kids did. You had to try to get from one end of the house to the other with a bandanna or something over your eyes. And everyone else thought it was simply the height of humor when you fell over a hassock or tripped over the riser between the dining room and the kitchen. The game could teach you a painful lesson about how little you actually remembered about the layout of your supposedly familiar house and how much more you relied upon your eyes than your memory. And the game could make you wonder how the hell you’d live if you went blind.

But I’ll be all right, Andy thought. I’ll be all right if I just take it slow and easy.

He moved around the coffee table and then began to shuffle his way slowly across the open space of the living room with his hands out in front of him. It was funny how threatening open space could feel in the dark. Probably the lights’ll come on right now and I can have a good laugh at myself. Just have a good l-

“Ow!”

His outstretched fingers struck the wall and bent back painfully. Something fellthe picture of the barn and hayfield after the style of Wyeth that hung near the kitchen door, he guessed. It swished by him, sounding ominously like a whickering sword blade in the dark, and clattered to the floor. The sound was shockingly loud.

He stood still, holding his aching fingers, feeling the throb of his barked shin. He was cottonmouthed with fear.

“Hey!” he shouted. “Hey, don’t forget about me, you guys!”

He waited and listened. There was no answer.

There were still sounds and voices, but they were farther away now. If they got much farther away, he would be in total silence. Forgotten all about me, he thought, and his fright deepened.

His heart was racing. He could feel cold sweat on his arms and brow, and he found himself remembering the time at Tashmore Pond when he had gone out too deep, got tired and begun to thrash and scream, sure he was going to die… but when he put his feet down the bottom was there, the water only nipple high. Where was the bottom now? He licked at his dry lips, but his tongue was dry, too.

“HEY.” he shouted at the top of his lungs, and the sound of terror in his voice terrified him even more. He had to get hold of himself. He was within arm’s length of total panic now, just bulling around mindlessly in here and screaming at the top of his lungs. All because someone had blown a fuse.

Oh goddammit all anyway, why’d it have to happen when it was time for my pill? If I had my pill I’d be all right. I’d be okay then. Christ it feels like my head’s full of broken glass-

He stood there, breathing heavily. He had aimed for the kitchen door, had gone off course and run into the wall. Now he felt totally disoriented and couldn’t even remember if that stupid barn picture had been hung to the right or left of the doorway. He wished miserably that he had stayed in his chair.

“Get hold,” he muttered aloud. “Get hold.” It was not just panic, he recognized that. It was the pill that was now overdue, the pill on which he had come to depend. It just wasn’t fair that this had happened when his pill was due.

“Get hold,” he muttered again.

Ginger ale. He had got up to get ginger ale and he was going to by-God get it. He had to fix on something. That’s all it came down to, and ginger ale would do as well as anything else.

He began to move again, toward the left, and promptly fell over the picture that had come off the wall. Andy screamed and went down, pinwheeling his arms wildly and fruitlessly for balance. He struck his head hard and screamed again. Now he was very frightened. Help me, he thought. Somebody help me, bring me a candle, for Christ’s sake, something, I’m scared-He began to cry. His fumbling fingers felt thick wetness on the side of his head-blood-and he wondered with numb terror how bad it was.

“Where are you people?” he screamed. There was no answer. He heard-or thought he heard-a single faraway shout, and then there was silence. His fingers found the picture he had tripped over and he threw it across the room, furious at it for hurting him. It struck the end table beside the couch, and the now-useless lamp that stood there fell over. The lightbulb exploded with a hollow sound, and Andy cried out again. He felt the side of his head. More blood there now. It was crawling over his cheek in little rivulets.

Panting, he began to crawl, one hand out to feel the wall. When its solidity abruptly ended in blankness, he drew in both his breath and his hand, as if he expected something nasty to snake out of the blackness and grab him. A little whhh! sound sucked in past his lips. For just one second the totality of childhood came back and he could hear the whisper of trolls as they crowded eagerly toward him.

“Just the kitchen door, for fuck’s sake,” he muttered raggedly. “That’s all.”

He crawled through it. The fridge was to the right and he began to bear that way, crawling slowly and breathing fast, his hands cold on the tile.

Somewhere overhead, on the next level, something fell over with a tremendous clang. Andy jerked up on his knees. His nerve broke and he lost himself. He began to scream. “Help! Help! Help!” over and over until he was hoarse. He had no idea how long he might have screamed there, on his hands and knees in the black kitchen.

At last he stopped and tried to get hold of himself. His hands and arms were shaking helplessly. His head ached from the thump he had given it, but the flow of blood seemed to have stopped. That was a little reassuring. His throat felt hot and flayed from all his screaming, and that made him think of the ginger ale again.

He began to crawl once more, and he found the refrigerator with no further incident. He opened it (ridiculously expecting the interior light to come on with its familiar frosty-white glow) and fumbled around in the cool dark box until he found a can with a ringtab on top. Andy shut the fridge door and leaned against it. He opened the can and swilled half the ginger ale at a draft. His throat blessed him for it.

Then a thought came and his throat froze.

The place is on fire, his mind told him with spurious calmness. That’s why no one’s come to get you out. They’re evacuating. You, now… you’re expendable.

This thought brought on an extremity of claustrophobic terror that was beyond panic. He simply cringed back against the refrigerator, his lips pulled back from his teeth in a grimace. The strength went out of his legs. For a moment, he even imagined he could smell smoke, and heat seemed to rush over him. The soda can slipped from his fingers and gurgled its contents out onto the floor, wetting his pants.

Andy sat in the wetness, moaning.

6

John Rainbird thought later that things could not have worked better if they had planned it… and if those fancy psychologists had been worth a tin whistle in a high wind, they would have planned it. But as it happened, it was only the lucky happen stance of the blackout’s occurring when it did that allowed him to finally get his chisel under one corner of the psychological steel that armored Charlie McGee. Luck and his own inspired intuition.

He let himself into Charlie’s quarters at three thirty, just as the storm was beginning to break outside. He pushed a cart before him that was no different from the ones most hotel and motel maids push as they go from room to room. It contained clean sheets and pillow slips, furniture polish, a rug-shampoo preparation for spot stains. There was a floor bucket and a mop. A vacuum cleaner was clipped to one end of the cart.

Charlie was sitting on the floor in front of the couch, wearing a bright blue Danskin leotard and nothing else. Her long legs were crossed in a lotuslike position. She sat that way a great deal. An outsider might have thought she was stoned, but Rainbird knew better. She was still being lightly medicated, but now the dosage was little more than a placebo. All of the psychologists were in disappointed agreement that she meant what she said about never lighting fires again. The drugs had originally been meant to keep her from burning her way out, but now it seemed sure that she wasn’t going to do that… or anything else.

“Hi, kid,” Rainbird said. He unclipped the vacuum cleaner. She glanced over at him but didn’t respond. He plugged the vacuum in, and when he started it, she got up