Firestarter (14 page)

“Sit down, old friend,” Cap said. As always when he talked to Rainbird, his mouth was dry and he had to restrain his hands, which wanted to twine and knot together on the polished surface of his desk. All of that, and he believed that Rainbird
liked
him—if Rainbird could be said to like anyone.

Rainbird sat down. He was wearing old bluejeans and a faded chambray shirt.

“How was Venice?” Cap asked.

“Sinking,” Rainbird said.

“I have a job for you, if you want it. It is a small one, but
it may lead to an assignment you'll find considerably more interesting.”

“Tell me.”

“Strictly volunteer,” Cap persisted. “You're still on R and R.”

“Tell me,” Rainbird repeated gently, and Cap told him. He was with Rainbird for only fifteen minutes, but it seemed an hour. When the big Indian left, Cap breathed a long sigh. Both Wanless and Rainbird in one morning—that would take the snap out of anyone's day. But the morning was over now, a lot had been accomplished, and who knew what might lie ahead this afternoon? He buzzed Rachel.

“Yes, Cap?”

“I'll be eating in, darling. Would you get me something from the cafeteria? It doesn't matter what. Anything. Thank you, Rachel.”

Alone at last. The scrambler phone lay silent on its thick base, filled with microcircuits and memory chips and God alone knew what else. When it buzzed again, it would probably be Albert or Norville to tell him that it was over in New York—the girl taken, her father dead. That would be good news.

Cap closed his eyes again. Thoughts and phrases floated through his mind like large, lazy kites. Mental domination. Their think-tank boys said the possibilities were enormous. Imagine someone like McGee close to Castro, or the Ayatollah Khomeini. Imagine him getting close enough to that pinko Ted Kennedy to suggest in the low voice of utter conviction that suicide was the best answer. Imagine a man like that sicced on the leaders of the various communist guerrilla groups. It was a shame they had to lose him. But … what could be made to happen once could be made to happen again.

The little girl. Wanless saying
The power to someday crack the very planet in two like a china plate in a shooting gallery
… ridiculous, of course. Wanless had gone as crazy as the little boy in the D. H. Lawrence story, the one who could pick the winners at the racetrack. Lot Six had turned into battery acid for Wanless; it had eaten a number of large, gaping holes in the man's good sense. She was a little girl, not a doomsday weapon. And they had to hang on to her at least long enough to document what she was and to chart what she could be. That alone would be enough to reactivate the Lot
Six testing program. If she could be persuaded to use her powers for the good of the country, so much the better.

So much the better,
Cap thought.

The scrambler phone suddenly uttered its long, hoarse cry.

His pulse suddenly leaping, Cap grabbed it.

While Cap discussed her future with Al Steinowitz in Longmont, Charlie McGee was sitting on the edge of the motel bed in Unit Sixteen of the Slumberland, yawning and stretching. Bright morning sunlight fell aslant through the window, out of a sky that was a deep and blameless autumn blue. Things seemed so much better in the good daylight.

She looked at her daddy, who was nothing but a motionless hump under the blankets. A fluff of black hair stuck out—that was all. She smiled. He always did his best. If he was hungry and she was hungry and there was only an apple, he would take one bite and make her eat the rest. When he was awake, he always did his best.

But when he was sleeping, he stole all the blankets.

She went into the bathroom, shucked off her underpants, and turned on the shower. She used the toilet while the water got warm and then stepped into the shower stall. The hot water hit her and she closed her eyes, smiling. Nothing in the world was any nicer than the first minute or two in a hot shower.

(you were bad last night)

A frown creased her brow.

(No. Daddy said not.)

(lit that man's shoes on fire, bad girl, very bad, do you like teddy all black?)

The frown deepened. Unease was now tinctured with fear and shame. The idea of her teddy bear never even fully surfaced; it was an underthought, and as so often happened, her guilt seemed to be summed up in a smell—a burned, charred smell. Smoldering cloth and stuffing. And this smell
summoned hazy pictures of her mother and father leaning over her, and they were
big
people, giants; and they were scared; they were angry, their voices were big and crackling, like boulders jumping and thudding down a mountainside in a movie.

(“bad girl! very bad! you mustn't, Charlie! never! never! never!”)

How old had she been then? Three? Two? How far back could a person remember? She had asked Daddy that once and Daddy said he didn't know. He said he remembered getting a bee sting and his mother had told him that happened when he was only fifteen months old.

This was her earliest memory: the giant faces leaning over her; the big voices like boulders rolling downhill; and a smell like a burned waffle. That smell had been her hair. She had lit her own hair on fire and had burned nearly all of it off. It was after that that Daddy mentioned “help,” and Mommy got all funny, first laughing, then crying, then laughing again so high and strange that Daddy had slapped her face. She remembered that because it was the only time that she knew of that her daddy had done something like that to her mommy. Maybe we ought to think about getting “help” for her, Daddy had said. They were in the bathroom and her head was wet because Daddy had put her in the shower. Oh, yes, her mommy had said, let's go see Dr. Wanless, he'll give us plenty of “help,” just like he did before … then the laughing, the crying, more laughter, and the slap.

(you were so BAD last night)

“No,” she murmured in the drumming shower. “Daddy said not. Daddy said it could have … been … his … face.”

(YOU WERE VERY BAD LAST NIGHT)

But they had needed the change from the telephones. Daddy had said so.

(VERY BAD!)

And then she began to think about Mommy again, about the time when she had been five, going on six. She didn't like to think about this but the memory was here now and she couldn't put it aside. It had happened just before the bad men had come and hurt Mommy

(killed her, you mean, they killed her)

yes, all right, before they
killed
her, and took Charlie away. Daddy had taken her on his lap for storytime, only he hadn't had the usual storybooks about Pooh and Tigger and
Mr. Toad and Willy Wonka's Great Glass Elevator. Instead he had a number of thick books with no pictures. She had wrinkled her nose in distaste and asked for Pooh instead.

“No, Charlie,” he had said. “I want to read you some other stories, and I need you to listen. You're old enough now, I think, and your mother thinks so, too. The stories may scare you a little bit, but they're important. They're true stories.”

She remembered the names of the books Daddy had read the stories from, because the stories
had
scared her. There was a book called
Lo!
by a man named Charles Fort. A book called
Stranger Than Science
by a man named Frank Edwards. A book called
Night's Truth.
And there had been another book called
Pyrokinesis: A Case Book,
but Mommy would not let Daddy read anything from that one. “Later,” Mommy had said, “when she's much older, Andy.” And then that book had gone away. Charlie had been glad.

The stories were scary, all right. One was about a man who had burned to death in a park. One was about a lady who had burned up in the living room of her trailer home, and nothing in the whole room had been burned but the lady and a little bit of the chair she had been sitting in while she watched TV. Parts of it had been too complicated for her to understand, but she remembered one thing: a policeman saying: “We have no explanation for this fatality. There was nothing left of the victim but teeth and a few charred pieces of bone. It would have taken a blowtorch to do that to a person, and nothing around her was even charred. We can't explain why the whole place didn't go up like a rocket.”

The third story had been about a big boy—he was eleven or twelve—who had burned up while he was at the beach. His daddy had put him in the water, burning himself badly in the process, but the boy had still gone on burning until he was all burned up. And a story about a teenage girl who had burned up while explaining all her sins to the priest in the confession room. Charlie knew all about the Catholic confession room because her friend Deenie had told her. Deenie said you had to tell the priest all the bad stuff you had done all week long. Deenie didn't go yet because she hadn't had first holy communion, but her brother Carl did. Carl was in the fourth grade, and he had to tell everything, even the time he sneaked into his mother's room and took some of her birthday chocolates. Because if you didn't tell the priest, you couldn't be washed in THE BLOOD OF CHRIST and you would go to THE HOT PLACE.

The point of all these stories had not been lost on Charlie. She had been so frightened after the one about the girl in the confession room that she burst into tears. “Am I going to burn myself up?” She wept. “Like when I was little and caught my hair on fire? Am I going to burn to pieces?”

And Daddy and Mommy had looked upset. Mommy was pale and kept chewing at her lips, but Daddy had put an arm around her and said, “No, honey. Not if you always remember to be careful and not think about that … thing. That thing you do sometimes when you're upset and scared.”

“What is it?” Charlie had cried. “What is it, tell me what it is, I don't even know, I'll never do it, I
promise!
”

Mommy had said, “As far we can tell, honey, it's called pyrokinesis. It means being able to light fires sometimes just by thinking about fires. It usually happens when people are upset. Some people apparently have that … that power all their lives and never even know it. And some people … well, the power gets hold of them for a minute and they …” She couldn't finish.

“They burn themselves up,” Daddy had said. “Like when you were little and you caught your hair on fire, yes. But you can get control of that, Charlie. You
have
to. And God knows it isn't your fault.” His eyes and Mommy's had met for a moment when he said that, and something had seemed to pass between them.

Hugging her around the shoulders, he had said, “Sometimes you can't help it, I know. It's an accident, like when you were smaller and you forgot to go to the bathroom because you were playing and you wet your pants. We used to call that having an accident—do you remember?”

“I never do that anymore.”

“No, of course you don't. And in a little while, you'll have control of this other thing in just the same way. But for now, Charlie, you've got to promise us that you'll
never never never
get upset that way if you can help it. In that way that makes you start fires. And if you do, if you can't help it, push it
away
from yourself. At a wastebasket or an ashtray. Try to get outside. Try to push it at water, if there's any around.”

“But never at a person,” Mommy had said, and her face was still and pale and grave. “That would be very dangerous, Charlie. That would be a very bad girl. Because you could”—she struggled, forced the words up and out—“you could kill a person.”

And then Charlie had wept hysterically, tears of terror and remorse, because both of Mommy's hands were bandaged, and she knew why Daddy had read her all the scary stories. Because the day before, when Mommy told her she couldn't go over to Deenie's house because she hadn't picked up her room, Charlie had got
very
angry, and suddenly the firething had been there, popping out of nowhere as it always did, like some evil jack-in-the-box, nodding and grinning, and she had been so angry she had shoved it out of herself and at her mommy and then Mommy's hands had been on fire. And it hadn't been
too
bad

(could have been worse could have been her face)

because the sink had been full of soapy water for the dishes, it hadn't been
too
bad, but it had been
VERY BAD,
and she had promised them both that she would
never never never
—

The warm water drummed on her face, her chest, her shoulders, encasing her in a warm envelope, a cocoon, easing away memories and care. Daddy had
told
her it was all right. And if Daddy said a thing was so, it was. He was the smartest man in the world.

Her mind turned from the past to the present, and she thought about the men who were chasing them. They were from the government, Daddy said, but not a good part of the government. They worked for a part of the government called the Shop. The men chased them and chased them. Everywhere they went, after a little while, those Shop men showed up.

I wonder how they'd like it if I set them on fire?
a part of her asked coolly, and she squeezed her eyes shut in guilty horror. It was nasty to think that way. It was bad.

Charlie reached out, grasped the hot shower faucet, and shut it off with a sudden hard twist of her wrist. For the next two minutes she stood shivering and clutching her slight body under the ice-cold, needling spray, wanting to get out, not allowing herself to.

When you had bad thoughts, you had to pay for them.

Deenie had told her so.

Andy woke up a little at a time, vaguely aware of the drumming sound of the shower. At first it had been part of a dream: he was on Tashmore Pond with his grandfather and he was eight years old again, trying to get a squirming night-crawler onto his hook without sticking the hook into his thumb. The dream had been incredibly vivid. He could see the splintery wicker creel in the bow of the boat, he could see the red tire patches on Granther McGee's old green boots, he could see his own old and wrinkled first baseman's mitt, and looking at it made him remember that he had Little League practice tomorrow at Roosevelt Field. But this was tonight, the last light and the drawing dark balanced perfectly on the cusp of twilight, the pond so still that you could see the small clouds of midges and noseeums skimming over its surface, which was the color of chrome. Heat lightning flashed intermittently … or maybe it was real lightning, because it was raining. The first drops darkened the wood of Granther's dory, weatherbeaten white, in penny-sized drops. Then you could hear it on the lake, a low and mysterious hissing sound, like—