Chase Shustack

The log itself was, contrary to the noise and activity, almost completely ordinary.

The only difference separating it from any other piece of lumber was the writing emblazoned on its smooth surface.

It was as if someone, a person with an uncanny talent for whittling, had chiseled a statement into the pulpy interior, a clipped sentence that was nonsensical in its current context, a vague blurb condensed into eight simple words.

Whatever it meant, it must have been important enough for someone to write it, even in the astronomical chance that anyone would visit the location to read it.

And, had the events of the following morning not taken place, that would have been a foregone conclusion.

It started when the people of Siskin opened their newspapers.

The Siskin Gazette, a well-established newspaper in town, was almost as old as the mill itself.

It prided itself on bringing the good people of Siskin the most factual and honest stories, though its content never strayed into the realm of the scandalous or the deliciously obscene.

A very conservative newspaper at heart, the most thrilling headline might have been a dry piece on a chairman of the local little league skimming change from the fund to buy a new car or a car accident out on Gumtree Road where there's no guardrails.

But this morning, the readers of the Siskin Gazette were surprised to find an unusual leading article on the front page.

Nestled between a follow-up on roadwork by the county sewage plant and a summer fundraiser in McGovern Park, there was an eight-word headline.

Fireman Torches Seven Homes and Violent Westford Spree.

The story, no doubt something that might spoil morning coffee and toast for gentler types, detailed the exploits of a serial arsonist somewhere in Westford, Ohio.

The report described in rather colorful and gruesome detail accounts such as an elderly woman trapped in her burning apartment,

who chose suffocation over being burned alive, or the department store scene of a man caught in a flashover, his skin melting off his face like wax as he threw himself down an escalator.

The sensational focus on the gory details, however, might have been an attempt to mask the unusual lack of citations, as the article neglected to mention any witnesses.

It detailed a secondhand account, as if the journalist had made up the story by focusing solely on the most shocking content.

The people of Siskin, however, didn't seem to care too much.

They read the story with a horrified, yet admittedly morbidly curious fascination.

In diners, an old man would read aloud to his companions, narrating the vivid descriptions of charred corpses piling up near fire exits.