CHILD OF HELL

But some, even in the act of dying, extended their benison to the spreading branches of the Christmas tree. He
watched, fascinated, as the new flames rippled like running snakes along the stiff prickles of the fir; fell back,
recoiling as the flames doubled, redoubled, multiplied, became, in less time than he could register the enormity of it,
a huge hell in that small room. And when the realization hit him, it was a wonder that robbed him of all feeling save
exultation.
It was... greatl
The power of it! And all done with a little bitty piece of burning paper! And now the tree was all afire, and the
window drapes too!
Fascinated beyond all belief, he was lost to his danger. Not till the smoke began to eddy about him, causing him
to choke and retch, did he make a dash for the door. A rushing tongue of flame, fed by the air bursting in through the
open door, nearly beat him to it.
And now the flames were spreading around the hallway, licking away the tawdry Christmas decorations that
festooned the walls, gaining momentum from this exiguous nourishment, and racing across the woodwork of the
stairs. The staircase, funneling the force of the heat, carried a thick column of acrid smoke (itself fed by burning
plastic of various kinds) to the upper floor, where a man and a wife, torpid with drink and a little fumbling sex, were
fast asleep, and where a teenage girl was dreaming of her current pop-star rave.
He watched the flames and smoke mount, and he safe by the front door of the house with the latch in his hand.
The thought to call upstairs and warn the others, or maybe even to brave that ascending column of death, never for
once occurred to him.
He merely stood there watching, wondering, and exulting at the power and majesty that he had unleashed so
unwittingly, so ... easily.
When he heard their screams—and they screamed till they died, and they died neither soon nor easily— he only
grinned.
"Fixed me up with a goddamned cheapo jigsaw puzzle," he said as he opened the door and let himself out to
safety, to life—and incidentally to the hideous deaths of very many more people who still slept, peacefully and
unknowing, that Christmas night.
His name—the killer who had just undergone his initiation in a mode of slaughtering that is available to anyone
with a box of matches—was Dave Fosset.
He was seven years old.

The neighbors, alerted by the screams at the upper windows of the house in Bleecker Street and also by litde
Davie Fossefs plaintive wails, did what they could; that's to say they gathered on the lawn outside the blazing house
and witnessed the burning to death of Mr. and Mrs. Fosset, Davie's parents, while in the act of trying to open the
window and jump out. The couple caught in a sudden fireball that turned them into blackened, writhing forms, the
one indistinguishable from the other, within instants. Their daughter, Davie's thirteen-year-old sister, had already
choked to death in the acrid fumes of burned plastic.
The first fire truck was on the scene within seven minutes of receiving the call, for Midchester City prides itself
on a good fire department, and is one of the planks upon which successive city dignitaries stand for office.
The backup appliances were maybe a little late by Midchester standards. But it was Christmas Eve—and the off-
duty crews were having a ball. Literally.
exulting at the power and majesty that he had unleashed so unwittingly, so ... easily.
When he heard their screams—and they screamed till they died, and they died neither soon nor easily— he only
grinned.
"Fixed me up with a goddamned cheapo jigsaw puzzle," he said as he opened the door and let himself out to
safety, to life—and incidentally to the hideous deaths of very many more people who still slept, peacefully and
unknowing, that Christmas night
His name—the killer who had just undergone his initiation in a mode of slaughtering that is available to anyone
with a box of matches—was Dave Fosset.
 He was seven years old.

The neighbors, alerted by the screams at the upper windows of the house in Bleecker Street and also by little
Davie Posset's plaintive wails, did what they could; that's to say they gathered on the lawn outside the blazing house
and witnessed the burning to death of Mr. and Mrs. Fosset, Davie's parents, while in the act of trying to open the
window and jump out. The couple caught in a sudden fireball that turned them into blackened, writhing forms, the
one indistinguishable from the other, within instants. Their daughter, Davie's thirteen-year-old sister, had already
choked to death in the acrid fumes of burned plastic.
The first fire truck was on the scene within seven minutes of receiving the call, for Midchester City prides itself
on a good fire department, and is one of the planks upon which successive city dignitaries stand for office.
The backup appliances were maybe a little late by Midchester standards. But it was Christmas Eve—and the off-
duty crews were having a ball. Literally.

reasonable cause could be ascertained, suggested one thing to the computer, and it came up with the same answer
every time. Arson.
To Chief Josephs, who had been a fire-truck driver in the days of the notorious Mad Arsonist, the pattern had the
same ominous ring: the incidents included old folks' homes, hotels, two theaters, three schools, a church But among
the unexplained incidents were not included factories, warehouses, locked stores— which paralleled the pattern of
the Mad Arsonist's campaign: in every case the target was one of high population density. The new arsonist—or
arsonists-went in not only for property destruction but also for killing. The computer in the state capital had notched
up sixteen deaths to the putative arsonist or arsonists—a record that put the notorious Mad Arsonist (who had,
incidentally, been stabbed to death by a cabal of his fellow inmates in the state penitentiary, and no one had asked
too many questions) back in the minor leagues, statistically.
Officer Jeff Angel who had attended many of the unexplained conflagrations, had his own abrasive views
regarding the culprit or culprits, views that had been hardened and intensified when he had to go right in to a fire at a
blind children's home in downtown Aukville, which is a suburb of Midchester. Angel never made the upper floor,
where he could hear the screams of the blind lads as they roasted. His wife, Marie, may have had views of her own
that did not entirely coincide with his, but she kept them to herself.
And, anyhow, she was pregnant with their firstborn, and was absorbed in her state and with the child under her
heart.

Fine night.
Not too much moon. Always a good thing. Past midnight, when all the bars, movie houses, and theaters were
closed. Time when respectable folks were moving for home fast and only vagrants lingered.
Vagrants were the target for tonight. He despised and detested the quite considerable colony of winos, hobos,
layabouts, and drug addicts who infested the city parks and squares by daylight, with their constant: "Got a quarter
for a cup o' coffee, bud?"; shifting out down to the riverside after dark, when the cops moved them from the park
benches, the warm spots on the sidewalk above the extractor fans of restaurant kitchens, and other favored places.
The target for tonight was a disused grain warehouse on Maxwell Street, close to the railway bridge which spans
the river, a part of the city which had fallen on hard times during the I96(fs, when Midchester had made a smart shift
in gears from mainly wheat products to microtechnology. The warehouse was built almost entirely of wood, had
been a fire hazard since the day it was put up, and actually had a. state demolition order attached to it—only it was
in no one's interest to enforce the order. And it was here, as at many similar abandoned and forgotten haunts, that the
abandoned and forgotten vagrants of the city congregated after dark.
He had the "makings" with him. The makings consisted of a simple package of combustibles, the composition of
which he constantly amended and extemporized upon, depending upon the target. Tonight, it was a kerosene-soaked
rag contained in a plastic bottle which had once contained dish washing detergent—an innocent-enough role for an
item which was to dispense death in its most hideous form. Attached to the cap at the business end was a simple
device that scarcely merited the name of a fuse, since reasonable cause could be ascertained, suggested one thing to
the computer, and it came up with the same answer every time. Arson.
To Chief Josephs, who had been a fire-truck driver in the days of the notorious Mad Arsonist, the pattern had the
same ominous ring: the incidents included old folks' homes, hotels, two theaters, three schools, a church. But among
the unexplained incidents were not included factories, warehouses, locked stores— which paralleled the pattern of
the Mad Arsonist's campaign: in every case the target was one of high population density. The new arsonist—or
arsonists-went in not only for property destruction but also for killing. The computer in the state capital had notched
up sixteen deaths to the putative arsonist or arsonists—a record that put the notorious Mad Arsonist (who had,
incidentally, been stabbed to death by a cabal of his fellow inmates in the state penitentiary, and no one had asked
too many questions) back in the minor leagues, statistically.
Officer Jeff Angel, who had attended many of the unexplained conflagrations, had his own abrasive views
regarding the culprit or culprits, views that had been hardened and intensified when he had to go right in to a fire at a
blind children's home in downtown Aukville, which is a suburb of Midchester. Angel never made the upper floor,
where he could hear the screams of the blind lads as they roasted. His wife, Marie, may have had views of her own
that did not entirely coincide with his, but she kept them to herself.
And, anyhow, she was pregnant with their firstborn, and was absorbed in her state and with the child under her
heart.

Fine night.
Not too much moon. Always a good thing. Past midnight, when all the bars, movie houses, and theaters were
closed. Time when respectable folks were moving for home fast and only vagrants lingered.
Vagrants were the target for tonight. He despised and detested the quite considerable colony of winos, hobos,
layabouts, and drug addicts who infested the city parks and squares by daylight, with their constant: "Got a quarter
for a cup o' coffee, bud?"; shifting out down to the riverside after dark, when the cops moved them from the park
benches, the warm spots on the sidewalk above the extractor fans of restaurant kitchens, and other favored places.
The target for tonight was a disused grain warehouse on Maxwell Street, close to the railway bridge which spans
the river, a part of the city which had fallen on hard times during the 196ffs, when Midchester had made a smart
shift in gears from mainly wheat products to microtechnology. The warehouse was built almost entirely of wood,
had been a fire hazard since the day it was put up, and actually had a, state demolition order attached to it—only it
was in no one's interest to enforce the order. And it was here, as at many similar abandoned and forgotten haunts,
that the abandoned and forgotten vagrants of the city congregated after dark.
He had the "makings" with him. The makings consisted of a simple package of combustibles, the composition of
which he constantly amended and extemporized upon, depending upon the target. Tonight, it was a kerosene-soaked
rag contained in a plastic bottle which had once contained dish washing detergent—an innocent-enough role for an
item which was to dispense death in its most hideous form. Attached to the cap at the business end was a simple
device that scarcely merited the name of a fuse, since it was merely the end of the rag sticking out. With its like, or
something similar, he had killed nineteen people. The computer in the state capital was short by three.
The ground floor of the warehouse was littered with ancient filth and given over to rats; not even the vagrants,
immune to the most deplorable conditions, fancied lying among its mucky slime, but frequented the upper floors,
where they congregated in heaps for the sake of warmth, passing around bottles of rot gut, puffing joints, taking
fixes, copulating openly. Most of them were young, and the group was getting younger, though there were still some
oldsters about, dropouts who even predated the crazy sixties.
They did not take their various pleasures without a considerable amount of noise; from where he stood on the dark
ground floor, among the piles of abandoned filth, with the rats scarcely troubling to look up from their nibbling at
the sight of him, he could hear the sound of the carousing above: drunken voices raised in song and cursing, eldritch
laughter of toothless crones, the chirivari of the homeless and the unwanted.
With luck, he would get the whole goddamned bunch!
There was only one stair to the upper floors, and that a rickety rig of wood and rusty iron. His killer instinct,
sharpened by experience, determined him to set the makings right there, at the only place of egress. Accordingly, he
gathered together some dry kindling from the piles of abandoned waste and set it around the base of the stairs. Next,
after some careful thought, he placed the plastic bottle and its fatal contents in the middle of it.
The moment came. As always, there was a tingling of his fingers, an itching at the tips, a quickening of die breath,
and a strange feeling in the pit of the stomach. He took three slow deliberate breaths. And lit a match.
The soaked rag took fire at once. Likewise the plastic bottle disintegrated instantly in the rush of flame that
consumed it from within. The released fire, flaring upward and outward, and fed by the night air from the open
doors of the warehouse, devoured the dry kindling in a rushing surge that set light to the stairway. As he fell back,
breathless and exultant, the stairway became a flaming torch. And there was still scarcely any smoke.
The elemental force of the fire at first so absorbed him, in its twisting, growing, ever-expanding progress, and in
the hugeness of its destruction (the staircase was by now, in less than half a minute, a twisted skeleton of red-hot
iron), that he almost forgot his victims on the upper floors. It was not till the eldritch laughter and the carousing
turned to screams of panic that he went outside into the night to view his handiwork.
The fire had by then reached the third floor of the wooden frame building, and was gaining by the instant. Darting
sparks of flame burst out of the broken windows like incandescent fireflies. The rushing of the fire in its upward
progress was like the sound of a train coming toward one through a tunnel. Nothing on earth could have saved the
building from total destruction—and all within it
The vagrants had ascended to the upper floors and were screaming at the eyeless, empty windows. A few—the
younger, those with drug-induced bravado, even one or two girls—attempted to climb down the rusty drainpipes that
reached from roof to ground. The less agile fell first At one point, the pipe broke away, casting three screaming
creatures to their death it was merely the end of the rag sticking out. With its like, or something similar, he had
killed nineteen people. The computer in the state capital was short by three.
The ground floor of the warehouse was littered with ancient filth and given over to rats; not even the vagrants,
immune to the most deplorable conditions, fancied lying among its mucky slime, but frequented the upper floors,
where they congregated in heaps for the sake of warmth, passing around bottles of rot gut, puffing joints, taking
fixes, copulating openly. Most of them were young, and the group was getting younger, though there were still some
oldsters about, dropouts who even predated the crazy sixties.
They did not take their various pleasures without a considerable amount of noise; from where he stood on the dark
ground floor, among the piles of abandoned filth, with the rats scarcely troubling to look up from their nibbling at
the sight of him, he could hear the sound of the carousing above: drunken voices raised in song and cursing, eldritch
laughter of toothless crones, the chirivari of the homeless and the unwanted.
With luck, he would get the whole goddamned bunch!
There was only one stair to the upper floors, and that a rickety rig of wood and rusty iron. His killer instinct,
sharpened by experience, determined him to set the makings right there, at the only place of egress. Accordingly, he
gathered together some dry kindling from the piles of abandoned waste and set it around the base of the stairs. Next,
after some careful thought, he placed the plastic bottle and its fatal contents in the middle of it.
The moment came. As always, there was a tingling of his fingers, an itching at the tips, a quickening of the breath,
and a strange feeling in the pit of the stomach. He took three slow deliberate breaths. And lit a match.
The soaked rag took fire at once. Likewise the plastic bottle disintegrated instantly in the rush of flame that
consumed it from within. The released fire, flaring upward and outward, and fed by the night air from the open
doors of the warehouse, devoured the dry kindling in a rushing surge that set light to the stairway. As he fell back,
breathless and exultant, the stairway became a flaming torch. And there was still scarcely any smoke.
The elemental force of the fire at first so absorbed him, in its twisting, growing, ever-expanding progress, and in
the hugeness of its destruction (the staircase was by now, in less than half a minute, a twisted skeleton of red-hot
iron), that he almost forgot his victims on the upper floors. It was not till the eldritch laughter and the carousing
turned to screams of panic that he went outside into the night to view his handiwork.
The fire had by then reached the third floor of the wooden frame building, and was gaining by the instant. Darting
sparks of flame burst out of the broken windows like incandescent fireflies. The rushing of the fire in its upward
progress was like the sound of a train coming toward one through a tunnel. Nothing on earth could have saved the
building from total destruction—and all within it.
The vagrants had ascended to the upper floors and were screaming at the eyeless, empty windows. A few—the
younger, those with drug-induced bravado, even one or two girls—attempted to climb down the rusty drainpipes that
reached from roof to ground. The less agile fell first At one point, the pipe broke away, casting three screaming
creatures to their death

in the littered yard below. Those who progressed farthest fared no better; when they reached the floor where the fire
raged most fiercely, the iron pipes, by now red-hot, seared their hands. Two of them still clung there, screeching
with agony, till they fell to join their companions.
 He watched it all from the shadows beyond the inferno, and gloried in what he was doing, had done; and not with
any unholy mirth, but with an awe and wonder at the power that lay in his hands.
As he saw the old building's roof cave in, and watched the last of the faces vanish from the upper windows, he
breathed aloud to himself, "It's like . . . it's like being God.1"
Dave Fosset was already quite an important blip in the state computer center.
And he was still only eleven.

The splutter of blossoming flame at the head of the little stick of wood.
The slight flaring of the little flame as it described a gentle arc through the air—no more than a couple of feet or
so—to land on the soaked T-shirt that served to cover the gently rising and falling breast of a living and breathing
man.

He watched from his hideout in the rhododendrons to relish the effect his handiwork would have on the first
passersby. The smoke and flames had long since subsided and had surprisingly attracted no attention. But, then, it
was late summer and the park workmen had been burning dead cuttings all week.
She came—his second victim of the day: a stout woman of middle years carrying a shopping bag, one of the
indigenous poor housewives from the slums on the wrong side of the park; overweight and short of breath, near-
senile at fifty from a heavily carbohydrate diet, booze, and childbearing.
She was just the right type! He was obliged to press his knuckles against his mouth to smother a snigger.
Anytime now, she'd see ... it.
The woman was slightly myopic, but did not wear glasses for reasons of vanity (underneath the flab and the jowls
could be discerned a good bone structure that must have supported a comely face in the irretrievable past), so she did
not immediately perceive anything wrong with the figure lying on the park bench as she drew nearer. The first
intimation that anything was wrong came with the rancid stink of burned flesh, wood, and gasoline that permeated
the quite pleasant glade bounded by rhododendrons and border plants. Next, she observed the thin spiraling of
smoke that rose from the all-but-consumed bench and from the blackened figure stretched upon the iron framework;
but still she did not see that anything was amiss, could not conceive that anything was amiss.
"Are you ... are you all right?" She felt constrained to stop and inquire, for he looked so . . . well, sick. There
being no answer, she walked two paces nearer. And saw.
The blackened twig of a body lay in an attitude of supplication, arms extended as if to make the last grab at life.
Only the rictus grin of the half-consumed head, the white flash of bared teeth, told of the thing's connection with
humanity. The woman choked, screamed. Ran. Still running, shedding her handbag, shopping bag, one shoe, she
collapsed with a cerebral hemorrhage at the end of the rhododendron walk and instantly died.
Smiling, the killer gathered up his parcel of school-books and went on home for his supper, pausing only to dump
the empty plastic gallon container into the disused railway siding on Grant Street, where everyone dumped
everything anyhow. And there it lay: a mute witness among the moldering garbage and rusting ironware.
that last day of the year, with the snow drifting down from the bare trees and the preacher from the Church of the
Lonely Wanderers mouthing his prayers for the dead. Julie, who had invited him into her bed when he was a kid of
six, on a raw, cold night when he'd woken up to see her standing there in the moonlight.
"You cold, Davie? Vm as cold as all hell. Why don't you come in with me and let's get •warm together?"
The warmth, the mutual warmth, they had shared. And as they lay between the tumbled blankets, he within the
compass of her arms, he learned secrets of her softness and roundness that had passed him entirely unsuspected, and
in the doing of it, in the kissing and caressing, had achieved his first arousal. Nor was that the only time he had
shared her bed at her invitation: it soon had become a nightly ritual in which she, a nubile girl and freshly aware,
was astonished by the reactions she was able to conjure from the sturdy body of her small sibling.
In the end, of course, she grew scared of the force she had so carelessly unleashed. Fearful, also, of discovery, she
had reneged on him.
"Can't come in tonight, Davie. Tm not feeling too good, and anyhow, the folks might hear us."
"Bitch! Bitch! Bitch!"
He drove his fist into the palm of his other hand. Once. Twice. Three times. It was the old story. The old payoff.
The old letdown.
 Only, it was different now. Nearly a year had passed before goddamned Julie had had her comeuppance, but now
he had the means of instant retribution. He was God, and knew it.
Not till the Mickey Mouse clock pointed to nine did he swill down the dregs of his coffee and stalk out of the
drugstore. The kids at the counter, with some exceptions, watched him go without interest. The main exception was
Mandy Toller, of the contraceptive pills and the jouncing, ungirded breasts that surely set back the advancement of
education among the young studs of P.S. 12 by a measurable distance.
"I think that Davie Fosset's quite cute," she observed to her friend Mary Lou Hennessy.
"Then why don't you go out with him sometime?" asked the other.
"He kind of scares me," confessed Mandy. "Other boys, I'd, you know, flash it around, but that Davie . . . well, I
get all scared that he'd fix me with those big, beautiful brown eyes and look right through me."

Midnight And that old feeling.

He relaxed in the bushes at the perimeter of the school building. The makings were in a plastic bag that he carried.
Tonight he was going to use a gallon of kerosene and a wad of cotton, setting it close to the main stairwell, where
they stacked the chairs that were used in morning assembly. Eight hundred chairs, rack on rack, would go up like a
forest fire. The up-draft would carry the smoke and fumes to the top-floor apartment. With any luck, that bitch and
her family would be overcome in their sleep and roast before they had time to make the fire escape. Oh, and he'd
switch off the lighting at the main fuse box before he fit up. That always helped to confuse the bastards.
Time to go.
He took three deep, thrilling breaths and tiptoed forward, in and out of moonlight and shadow, till he reached the
main door of the building, for which he had a key. He had a key for almost every public building in which he had
access to the original. The little guy in Frith Street who doubled as shoerepairman and key cutter was always
amused by the boy who was forever having keys copied; come to think of it, it might be an idea to burn him out one
day, in case he started to put two and two together.
Inside the building, and the hall smelling of wax polish and antiseptic. Not a sound, save the gurgling of the
antiquated heating system and the rattle of a loose windowpane in the night breeze. He put the makings under the
first raft of stacked chairs and laid the cotton about it, spilling the kerosene generously on and around it Simplicity
itself. The joint was a fire trap whichever way you looked at it. In daytime, of course, the building could be cleared,
via the outside fire-escape steps, in minutes. But it was not daytime. By five or at most ten minutes, the upper floor
would be sealed off by an inpenetrable barrier of flame, smoke, heat fumes.
The ritual of the lighting he protracted after his fashion: the striking of the match, the moment of pause extended,
the tossing of the scrap of flame onto the potent fluid.
He stepped back, amazed and exultant as ever, at the scale and power of his work. The chip-dry chairs ignited
almost at once and tore a tall column of flame sky-high up the stairwell. From where he stood, back against the far
wall, the rushing air stirred his hair as if he were in the path of a windstorm; and after the flame, the smoke: a
billowing, twirling jet of choking gas that spiraled upward, gaining momentum from the new heat of burning—
woodwork, rubberized carpeting, drapes—all about it
He remained there till the heat was too intense to bear, then, as always, went outside to relish the mise-en-scene
that he had accomplished. The appearance, from over by the perimeter wall of the school, was spectacular to a
degree: first, the appearance of the column of ruddy flame that mounted with deadly swiftness from floor to floor up
the stairwell; next the emergence of smoke from even the top stories, showing that the people trapped up there must
already be overcome—or nearly overcome—by the toxic fumes. But... No!
A light appeared in one of the upper windows. He had forgotten to cut off at the main switch! The window was
thrown open, and a head and shoulders appeared there. The advent of new air sucked into the room beyond caused a
fresh blossoming of the flames inside. The girl—it could have been either Marylyn or her sister, but he fantasized
strongly that it was the former, his prime victim—was screaming. She screamed, still, when her hair ignited and her
night attire with it. For one breathless instant she appeared to him nude and bald. The next, she was gone. The
mounting spasm of his passion overflowed and burst into an ejaculation. He reeled back against the wall and sank
there on his haunches, gasping, panting, satiated.

"Jeff, Jeff, are you awake? I think it's corning . .. the baby's on its way."
Marie was bent over him as he opened his eyes and flinched against the sudden glare of the bedside lamp. Marie,
pinch-mouthed and pasty-faced, was already half out of her nightdress and reaching for the tentlike maternity
garment that she had worn constantly since her fourth month—and worn like a penitent's garb of sackcloth and
ashes; Marie had not enjoyed her time of waiting, and was terrified at the prospect of her delivery.
"Do hurry up. Do you want me to have it in the car halfway to the hospital?" man and key cutter was always
amused by the boy who was forever having keys copied; come to think of it, it might be an idea to burn him out one
day, in case he started to put two and two together.
Inside the building, and the hall smelling of wax polish and antiseptic. Not a sound, save the gurgling of the
antiquated heating system and the rattle of a loose windowpane in the night breeze. He put the makings under the
first raft of stacked chairs and laid the cotton about it, spilling the kerosene generously on and around it Simplicity
itself. The joint was a fire trap whichever way you looked at it. In daytime, of course, the building could be cleared,
via the outside fire-escape steps, in minutes. But it was not daytime. By five or at most ten minutes, the upper floor
would be sealed off by an inpenetrable barrier of flame, smoke, heat fumes.
The ritual of the lighting he protracted after his fashion: the striking of the match, the moment of pause extended,
the tossing of the scrap of flame onto the potent fluid.
He stepped back, amazed and exultant as ever, at the scale and power of his work. The chip-dry chairs ignited
almost at once and tore a tall column of flame sky-high up the stairwell. From where he stood, back against the far
wall, the rushing air stirred his hair as if he were in the path of a windstorm; and after the flame, the smoke: a
billowing, twirling jet of choking gas that spiraled upward, gaining momentum from the new heat of burning—
woodwork, rubberized carpeting, drapes—all about it
He remained there till the heat was too intense to bear, then, as always, went outside to relish the mise-en-scene
that he had accomplished. The appearance, from over by the perimeter wall of the school, was spectacular to a
degree: first, the appearance of the column of ruddy flame that mounted with deadly swiftness from floor to floor up
the stairwell; next the emergence of smoke from even the top stories, showing that the people trapped up there must
already be overcome—or nearly overcome—by the toxic fumes. But... No!
A light appeared in one of the upper windows. He had forgotten to cut off at the main switch! The window was
thrown open, and a head and shoulders appeared there. The advent of new air sucked into the room beyond caused a
fresh blossoming of the flames inside. The girl—it could have been either Marylyn or her sister, but he fantasized
strongly that it was the former, his prime victim—was screaming. She screamed, still, when her hair ignited and her
night attire with it For one breathless instant she appeared to him nude and bald. The next, she was gone. The
mounting spasm of his passion overflowed and burst into an ejaculation. He reeled back against the wall and sank
there on his haunches, gasping, panting, satiated.

"Jeff, Jeff, are you awake? I think it's coming . .. the baby's on its way."
Marie was bent over him as he opened his eyes and flinched against the sudden glare of the bedside lamp. Marie,
pinch-mouthed and pasty-faced, was already half out of her nightdress and reaching for the tentlike maternity
garment that she had worn constantly since her fourth month—and worn like a penitent's garb of sackcloth and
ashes; Marie had not enjoyed her time of waiting, and was terrified at the prospect of her delivery.
"Do hurry up. Do you want me to have it in the car halfway to the hospital?" ing himself free of the heavy form,
Fosset ducked down into the cab. All was still. It was dark, save for the dashboard lights, the clock of which told the
hour of eleven. He let himself out of the cab, dropped down onto a sandy-covered surface. The truck was parked in a
narrow lane whose discreet quiet and remoteness had no doubt commended themselves to his intended seducer as a
suitable spot for the act. Perhaps he had used it many times before.
Well, thought Davie, he won't use it again!
There were makings aplenty. One turn of the huge wheel at the rear of the tanker produced a veritable deluge of
gasoline that poured into the sand, filled the gullies, and overran the fields beyond.
Thrilled and exulted beyond belief, Davie backed away from the torrent till he was a good fifty yards from the
tanker down the lane, and still the tide of gasoline continued to creep toward him. With trembling fingers he Sought
in his valise till he found the box of matches which, though no smoker, he was never without.
He struck a match, paused for a moment of ecstasy, and tossed it into the gasoline-soaked grass at the edge of the
lane.
The result was... monstrous.
A wall of roaring flame ripped back toward the doomed tanker and its (dead? unconscious?) occupant. Moving
with the speed of a rushing wind, it reached the source of the gasoline torrent before the watcher had ceased to draw
in a gasp of awestruck breath.
 For a moment there was an anticlimax, all the spilled fuel in the lane having been consumed; there remained only
a tongue of flame at the tail of the truck, where the stuff was still pouring out.
And then... it happened!
The igniting of the thousands of gallons inside the steel-enclosed shell of the truck lifted the massive ve-xle twenty
feet into the air, to land on its back, wheels skyward. The width of the lane and the fringe of the fields on either side
were now a lake of flame, with the bulk of the tanker a black smudge in the -enter, and the apex of the inferno raised
sky-high. It was because of the latter—the prospect that, no matter how remote the surroundings, the vastness of the
conflagration might attract someone—that the arsonist decided to deny himself any further delights by making
himself scarce. With a longing backward glance, he set off down the lane, following the rutted lines the tanker had
made on its last and final trip.
Two miles farther on, he hit the highway, and quite soon flagged down a vegetable truck heading for Norberry. The
driver, an oldster who smoked a pipe of villainous reek, noticed the ruddy glow in the sky to the west. "Sure is a late
sunset tonight," he said. Dave Fosset made no reply, looking at the mark of his handiwork on the western horizon.
"Dirty pig," he whispered under his breath. "Roast
; Pig!"

The belle of the Armadillo Country Club in Norberry, Alice County, was undoubtedly Deborah Shearer. Debby,
whose old man owned a thousand acres of prime arable land in the county, as well as being chairman and principal
stockholder of the Alice County Agricultural Bank, together with sundry other prestigious directorships, had gone to
an Eastern private boarding school and a finishing school in Lausanne. Switzerland. She was nearing nineteen,
green-eyed, blond, soft-lipped, with a figure that, according to the sex and proclivities of the beholder,

out his hand and she came—"are going to be married. What do you think of that?"
"The ring—just look at this ring!" cried Debby, holding it out for all to regard.
There were a dozen, maybe more, males in the room who had scored in some degree or other with Debby Shearer;
there were as many more who had aspirations. There were just about as many women and girls who, despite his
brashness, his gaucheries, would have crawled on their hands and knees from the Yukon to Tierra del Fuego to walk
up the aisle with a good catch like Sid Jaffe. The latter group sighed themselves to resignation at the news; the
former put away their desires—well, for the time being, at least.
One, of all that company, neither resigned himself nor put away his desires.
Behind the bar, Dave Fosset, pouring wine, had let the bottle overflow into the tray of glasses and out onto the
bar. He had suffered such a physical shock, upon seeing Debby and Sid join hands and her show her diamond
solitaire with eye-flashing pride, that he had urinated in his trousers. No one noticed this. No one had eyes for him,
not even Grant Beemish, the regular barman, who was pouring at the other end of the counter.
Rube Saker began another sequence with his incomprehensible mumbling and zoomed in a spine-jerking beat
number that had everyone out on the floor, the newly engaged couple included. Fosset's haunted eyes followed the
girl in the gold-lame jumpsuit. It had all been arranged between them: tonight, she had said, she would come to his
cabana and stay till dawn or beyond. But not now. A few moments ago, she had stood so close to him that they
could have touched hands across the bar, but not by so much as a glance had she acknowledged him. No secret sign
that was |based on their erotic love play. Nothing. | Bitch! Two-timing bitch! They were all alike, ^weren't they? Just
like that Marylyn, like Julie—dead, Both of them, killed by fire. I His fire!
i At the sparking of the image, a great release fell Hipon him, a freeing of the spirit, the godlike feeling ■hat had
informed all his summoning up of the elements of fire. And he knew what he must do.
They, with all their wealth and arrogance, would [bow before his power. She also, who had given and pvas now
taking away. With so much in hand, she had so much to lose. Then let her lose it!
The decision taken, his ice-cold killer's brain set pabout the practicalities. When next Beemish ordered liim out onto
the floor with a fresh tray of drinks, he (circulated widely, taking in the far end of the enor-Snous room where the
two emergency fire exits were. In both cases, on the pretext of picking up a fallen glass, he fumbled closed the bolts
that secured the doors on the inside. It was so dark, the noise and confusion were so all-pervading, he could have
done it quite openly and never have been noticed.
 There then remained the main door—a glass door, quite narrow, that led out to the swimming-pool area—and the
kitchen exit door that lay behind the bar. There was not a lot he could do about the glass door, but he did what he
could by sliding a table a couple of feet toward the center of the room so that it lay exactly in line with this avenue
of escape. As for the kitchen exit, that was strictly for him.
Debby Shearer had drunk a lot and was in a euphoric state. Not dancing with her newly acquired fiance, but with
an athletic lout named Bud Spurges, whom she had been teasing for several years, she was happier than she would
have been with Sid Jaffe, who

8
2
William Dobson
killing and destroying by fire told him more or less what was going on in there. It was simply a matter of how long it
would take to burst out and through.
And the longer it took, the worse the firestorm.
"How're we fixed for wine?" came Beemish's voice at his elbow.
And then came the firestorm.
The intervening wall, which in the past few minutes had been growing too hot for the bare hand to endure, yet, on
account of the body-generated heat in the dance hall, scarcely adding to the temperature therein, burst open wide,
door and all, as a tongue of flame fifteen feet long tore across the crowded room, enveloping and consuming
everyone and everything that stood in its path.

Once having broken out, and fed with a fresh dose of oxygen (though there was precious little left that had not
already been consumed by the frenetic dancers), the firestorm's fury instantly escalated a hundredfold. The flimsy,
friable party hangings of paper and tinsel were taken in a single breath, and the highly dangerous—and legally
irregular—plastic tiles that decoratively embellished the low ceiling instantly melted into a rain of searing droplets
that fell upon the screaming young men and women beneath.
And not a few of them, by this time, had ceased to scream
Burly, football-playing Bud Sturges led the rush for the glass door, and he—and his ponderous weight—collided
with the table that had been set there as a hazard. Sturges went over, table and all. Those behind followed after, till a
writhing, cursing, fighting mass of people effectively blocked the path to the door. A few had had the presence of
mind to dive to the floor and crawl around the seething bodies by the table;
CHILD OF HELL 83
lindeed a few of them managed to reach the night air |unscathed save for torn trouser knees, ripped nylons, land the
recollection of a living nightmare; others I came out with hair and clothing alight. One of these fwas the belle of the
ball, the party girl Debby "Shearer.
■ She was the last to come out the glass door, pro-Ipelled by a shove from her fiance of two hours, just a (moment
before he fell back into the flames. She came put as a living torch, with the gold-lame jumpsuit iflame and searing
her face, her lustrous blond hair rorned to a black stubble. She ran blindly, and, by a perverse chance of fate,
plunged into the deep end of he swimming pool.
People were already running, horrified, to the conflagration, to give help. One of them pulled her out of e pool,
alive, agonized and moaning. He, a passing otorist, turned over the writhing form and saw the ace by the pool fights.
And instantly threw up. The fire had torched off the lovely face of Debby [Shearer. It was now the face of a hairless
crone of unimaginable age.
I Like a mummy of old Egypt.
As was reported in the media in the overnight news ashes, and more completely—and accurately—early e
following morning, the reason for the appallingly gh casualty figure rested on the fact that the two ~ ergency fire
exits at the rear end of the building ad somehow been left locked during the party, using the buildup of bodies later
discovered by fire-en (veterans, all, but aged beyond their years by the 'ghts they had to endure within the burned-
out Ar-dillo Country Club): an amorphous mass, first sed each to the other by the mingling of melted dy fats,
afterward roasted into solid chunks of
156

William Dobson

"Let's go," he said. "Aye, aye, sir," said she.

For those with an architecturally appreciative bent, Midchester City Hall is of some considerable antiquarian
interest. It was first built around the mid-1880's from a pattern book brought over from France by one Gustave
Masur, a jobbing builder late of Caen, Normandy, whose prescience and excellent workmanship still graces a
considerable part of the old part of Midchester that immediately surrounds the city's central square and the four
broad streets leading from it. Added to Masur's original four-square, no-nonsense Doric portico, there now rise two
stories embellished in the same idiom; that is to say, the entablature was enriched, around the turn of the century, by
the composite of the Ionic and Corinthian orders, in that order ascending, an arrangement of which the city fathers
were justifiably proud.
The state governor did not come that night.
It was a political move. Following upon his appointment of Police Chief Henderson, the governor had made
several other gnat-biting attacks upon the structure of the city ordinances, largely directed against the power of the
Church of the Lonely Wanderers, whose officers dominated the levers of power in Midchester. His nonappearance
at the investiture was just such another gnat bite.
The city fathers, the mayor, the sheriff, the Rotari-ans, the Lions, and the city brass band, were there at Josiah
Mallett Airport to greet him. When the plane door opened and the band struck up Midchester Football Club's fight
song, which is called "All Hail Queen of the Midwest," not the leonine form and features of he whom many
regarded as a future president of the United States stepped forth upon the ramp, but his