Victor Methos
Arsonist
The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.
CHAPTER 1
Clover Middle School, San Diego, California. Eleven years ago.
The corpse swung lazily back and forth from the rope that was fastened around its neck.
Thirteen-year-old Michael Haley stepped out of his classroom and was the first to see it. He didn’t recognize it for what it was at first and thought that maybe some balloons were loose in the hallway of Clover Middle School. Then the general shape came through.
The cat had been gutted and its entrails spilt over the linoleum of the hallway. As the classrooms emptied into the corridor, a girl slipped on some of the organs and fell, blood dripping down over her from the corpse. Michael heard laughter down the hall.
It was from a boy that stood near the exit. He was doubled over in laughter so hysterical that he looked like he might fall over and not be able to get back up.
“Dude,” Jesse said as he came up behind him. “What the hell?”
“It’s that freak,” Michael said, not taking his eyes off the laughing figure at the end of the hall.
“I know that guy. His name’s Nehor.”
Michael looked at the young girl. Morgan Hollander. Blond and always wearing the most expensive clothes in school. Michael considered himself her boyfriend. He walked over and helped her up. She was crying.
“Look at my clothes.”
“The blood will come out.”
“Blood?”
Michael realized she hadn’t seen the cat hanging above her, dangling from a rope that had broken its neck. He quickly tried to take her into a room but Morgan saw everyone else looking up and she did too.
She screamed so loud it hurt Michael’s ears. He looked down the hall and saw Nehor on the ground, his legs curled up to his chest, laughing so much he was choking.
“Fuck that kid!”
Michael sprinted for him. Jesse went after him, grabbing a few more boys in the hall. Nehor sat up in time to see them and got to his feet and out the double doors leading outside.
It was gray and overcast as Michael sprinted out of the building and jumped down the ramp into the school parking lot. He saw Nehor running across the soccer field and he followed. The field was enclosed with thick shrubbery and right behind that was a small forest that led to Atlas Peak Road and the mansions people had up there. Nehor ran for the hole in the fence that had been carved out long before he ever came to the school.
Michael got to the hole and looked behind him. There were at least six or seven other boys with him. That freak had gotten away with too much for too long. Michael had kicked his ass so many times the past two years that it had gotten boring and he stopped doing it. Now, though, he was going to really show him something.
The others were too slow and Michael leapt through the hole and began running through the forest. The trees were tall and the leaves were falling off, covering the ground. Crunching under his feet as he ran. He thought about what he was going to do to the freak when he got ahold of him. Nehor once came to school naked and when the teacher pulled him out he started peeing all over the floor and desks and people’s backpacks. He was suspended for a month and when he got back Michael beat him so badly he passed out.
A small ditch was coming up and Michael slowed down to make sure he didn’t trip on anything. Suddenly, he felt an explosion on the back of his head and saw a white flash as he fell headfirst into the ditch. Nehor was behind him, his ankle twisted almost all the way around. Michael realized he had jumped out of the tree and landed on him. But he wasn’t crying. He was still laughing.
Nehor was holding a thick branch. Michael got to his knees when Nehor swung and slammed the wood into his jaw, knocking him back. He wasn’t laughing now but every once in a while a chuckle would come through.
Michael bent down and tried to catch his breath. He was dizzy and his face hurt. He sat up.
“You freak! I’m gonna fucking kill you.”
Nehor took off the backpack he was wearing and took something out. Michael didn’t recognize it until he got closer. The bottle said Lighter Fluid.
Nehor squirted it in his face and when Michael yelled he started spraying it in his mouth, making him choke. Michael began to cough but the fluid didn’t stop. It just went down his back, over his pants and shoes. It soaked his neck and chest. Anger turned to fear as he couldn’t suck in any air and felt his lungs tightening. He looked up and saw Nehor standing over him with something in his hands. It was a matchbook.
He lit the match, calmly letting the flame come down to his fingers and burn them. Michael began to cry. He couldn’t feel the tears because the lighter fluid had him slick and numb but he saw that Nehor began to laugh again. He lit another match, held it high, and danced around in a circle. He came up behind him and shouted, “Boo!” Michael jumped and Nehor keeled over with laughter again.
After a few moments, Michael could hear the voices of the other boys as they ran up to them. It was the most relief he had ever felt. They came into view, just at the edge of the ditch, and stood there looking down.
Nehor lit another match. “Do you guys like Christmas lights?”
Michael screamed as the match hit him, and his world turned to pain.
McKay State Hospital, San Diego, California. Present Day.
Dr. Nathan Reynolds sat quietly and sipped his water. He and two other forensic psychiatrists and a social worker sat at a long table in the little room. It was sterile, almost like a morgue, and had the permanent scent of Lysol. He took out two aspirin from a small bottle in his pocket and washed them down with more water.
“Denied,” he said.
The other three on the commitment review board agreed. The file was stamped and passed to an orderly who was stacking them on a table. They would then go to the hospital administrator who would input them into the computer. Then the head nurse would delegate the task of letting the patients and their families know whether they could leave or not to the staff. In this job, Nathan knew, shit definitely rolled downhill.
“Who’s next?” he said.
The woman next to him, Dr. Cynthia Ami, handed him the file. But not before staring at the name for a moment. Nathan finally cleared his throat and she handed it over. He read the name that was stamped in large red lettering: NEHOR BELL STARK.
“What’s his background?” he said, flipping through the file.
“Anti-social and mild schizoaffective disorder, we think.”
“What’d you mean ‘we think?’ You either know it or not.”
“He’s complex. His MMPI is all over the place. He can take it one day and show extreme anti-social behavior and psychopathy, and take it the next day and have the results come back within normal range.”
“Hm,” Reynolds said, impressed. “Rare to learn the test that well. What’s his IQ?”
“One seventy one.”
“That can’t be right.”
“He’s been tested multiple times. That’s the mean.”
“What’s this note about pyromania?”
“We thought he had pyromanic ideations when he first came in, but since then we haven’t seen anything. Most pyromaniacs make drawings or some sort of representations of fires when they can’t get the actual thing. He hasn’t done that at all. In fact, we conducted a test and left an empty lighter out, pretending that one of the orderlies forgot it, to see what he would do. He picked it up and turned it in to the nurse.”
Reynolds read a part of the file for a long time and said, “I don’t see any violence or citations.”
“No, he’s actually quite calm. He hasn’t had a single incident while he’s been here. There was one thing that happened,” she said, opening the duplicate file she had and flipping through some pages, “ah…yeah, in oh one. A boy cornered him in the hall and started punching him. But Nehor didn’t do anything in response. He didn’t even lift his hands to defend himself.”