Читать книгу The Wildfire Season - Andrew Pyper - Страница 10

All of Ross River has gone to bed, though many, tonight, cannot sleep.

Some wonder about the woman and girl who had come all the way here only to walk with the fire chief around town like tourists with a guide. One sees an animal’s eyes peering out from the closet. One wishes the self-pitying child’s wish to never have been born.

Another cannot believe it was only this morning. Both his waking mind and dreams confirm it. Only this morning he was thinking the firestarter’s thoughts. Whether he lies with eyes open or closed, he lives through the same hours. When he comes to the end he can only return to the beginning to live them over again.

He lies awake through the night, certain he can smell it. A lick of heat. Barbecued pine. Sulphur curling his nosehairs. A memory of fire in place of fire itself. He knows this even as he sits up all at once and fights to reshape his gasp into a yawn.

He assumed that creating the firestarter would be a convenience. A temporary alter ego that would allow him to return wholly to himself after he was finished with it, cut free like a booster rocket once gravity has been defeated. Instead, the firestarter clings to him. In fact, he can feel the beginnings of a struggle, another’s hand on the wheel. It is still weaker than he. Thoughtless and mute. But it has a desperate tenacity he hadn’t expected, an unmanageable weight. It threatens to take him down with it like a drowning dog.

He thinks of what he would give in dollar terms to sleep without dreams until morning. Starts at two-fifty and soon approaches everything he has.

It’s not guilt. Not exactly. It’s not yet worry, either. Tonight, what denies his rest is what the firestarter would say to him if it ever learned to speak.