Richard Matheson - Hunted Past Reason

Bob felt himself going rigid. After you’ve gone?

“It’s just as well you don’t want to hang around and have a party. It would just spoil the game.”

The game? Bob wanted to ask it aloud but couldn’t speak.

Doug rubbed his shoulder, wincing. “Hurts like hell,” he said. “Gives you a slight advantage anyway. Not much of one but—any port in a storm, hanh?” He took out his handkerchief and dabbed at his nostrils. “Nose still hurts too. But that won’t be an advantage. That’ll just make me more intent on catching you.”

“You just don’t see what you’re doing to your soul, do you?” Bob said.

“No, Daddy, tell me. What am I doing to my soul?”

“Blackening it,” Bob told him.

“Ooh.” Doug made a mock face of fear. “And that means?”

“That means payment will come due,” Bob said.

“Payment.” Doug nodded, looking bored. “Oh, you mean, in my next life.” He grimaced melodramatically. “Or my next. Or my next. Or who the hell knows?”

“Or this life,” Bob told him.

“Really.” Doug pretended to look fascinated. “And who’ll do that? Who’ll make me pay?” He leaned forward, an expression of dark glee on his face. “You, Bobby? You’re the one who’ll make my payment come due? I don’t think so!” he finished jeeringly, using the singsong voice again.

Bob knew there was no point in discussing this with Doug. The subject was completely out of Doug’s realm of thinking. He thought it was all bullshit. He’d said so. No matter. He’d said what he had to say. Let the rest go.

“Okay, now,” Doug said cheerfully, acting as though their relationship was perfectly equitable. “As to details. It’s a contest. I give you a two-hour head start, three if you insist, it won’t matter any. You take with you anything you want”—he grinned—“other than the golak and the bow and arrows, of course. Anything else though. Food. Water. Toilet articles if you want them. Your ground pad and your sleeping bag, of course. Although you may not last long enough to need your sleeping bag.”

Bob shuddered, staring wordlessly at Doug.

“But let’s assume the best scenario,” Doug said. He seemed to be reciting the rules of some intriguing game. “You stay ahead of me. The cabin’s about two days from here, moving fast that is—I suggest you move fast, of course. There’s the Wiley place a few miles down the hill from my cabin. Good landmark. I’ll let you have the compass, by the way. You just keep moving southeast and you’ll be all right. You with me so far?”

Bob didn’t speak. I haven’t been with you since the day we met, he thought.

“Okay,” Doug said. He clapped his hands together once. “You reach the cabin first, you win. I catch you first, you lose.” He smiled benignly. “And, of course, you know what that means.”

Bob had to ask. “And if I win, what then? You apologize for raping me? You tell Marian you’re sorry that you raped me? You perform social work to make up for raping me? You get therapy because you raped me?”

“Whoa, whoa,” Doug said, chuckling. “You’re not going to win. You really think you can outrun me? The klutz backpacker of the century? Please. Give me a break. Or, as they used to say when I was a kid, ‘No way, José.’”

They sat in silence for almost a minute, looking intently at each other. I mustn’t blink. For some inane reason, it was all Bob could think.

“So when do you want to leave?” Doug asked. “You want a little more to eat first? A cup or two of coffee to brace you? Name it, Bobby boy, you’ve got it.”

Bob didn’t speak. Doug’s features tightened. “Well?” he said.

Another few moments of silence.

“When do you want to leave?” Doug demanded.

“Never.”

Doug looked honestly taken back. “What?” he asked.

“You seem to forget,” Bob told him. “You’ve picked the wrong guy… Douglas . Your threat to kill me doesn’t mean a thing to me. Remember me? I’m the guy who’s not afraid of death.”

He managed a chuckle. “You look confounded,” he said, almost amused.

Doug was expressionless for several seconds. Then he said, “Let me get this straight—as they say in the beginning of every stupid letter to the editor… if I were to pick up my golak now and make a move toward you, you wouldn’t do a thing about it?”

“I didn’t say that,” Bob responded. “If you make a move toward me, I’d defend myself—and hurt you any way I could. Kill you if I could.”

Doug seemed to brush that possibility aside as not worth consideration. “You mean, if I picked up my bow and put an arrow in it and said I was going to shoot it straight into your heart, you’d let me? You wouldn’t say, okay, I’ll take the head start, just don’t kill me?”

Bob only gazed at him. Odd, he thought, that at this moment of complete vulnerability to Doug, he felt, somehow, superior to him.

“You’ve already done your worst,” he said. “Kill me if it pleases you. My soul will just move on. Yours will enter an eternal night.” He finished almost fiercely.

“Oh, dear,” Doug said. “You know, I think you really mean what you say. You’re not afraid of dying. I could make you hurt, give you lots of pain—but eventually you’d die and I’d lose my game.”

“I’m sorry if I’m ruining your day,” Bob told him with an icy tone.

“Oh, you’re not, you’re not,” Doug said. “Because you’ve overlooked a key part of our little game.”

He smiled at Bob, obviously waiting for him to ask, What part? Bob wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

“Okay, I guess I’ll have to satisfy your unspoken curiosity,” Doug said. Bob felt a coldness on his back that made him shiver.

“The key part of our little game, audience?” Doug said as though he were a game-show host. A pause. His smile was almost merry. “Right!” he said. “The key part of our little game is—Marian!”

Bob seemed to feel every muscle in his body becoming taut. He looked at Doug with hatred. “What are you planning to do?” he asked in a low, trembling voice. “Rape her? Hurt her?”

“Oh, no.” Doug sounded as though the question had hurt his feelings. “No, not at all. I wouldn’t hurt Marian. I like Marian.” His smile grew venomous. “You might say that I love her.”

Despite the golak, Bob could barely restrain himself from lunging forward and grabbing Doug by the throat. Only at the last second, did his mind warn him: You can’t help her if you’re dead.

“You see, I have a much more interesting scenario in mind,” Doug went on. “You might say”—he grinned—“the performance of my life.”

“What do you mean?” He had to know, immediately. Even if he had to ask.

“Well, here’s the plot,” Doug said as though he were making a story pitch to a producer. “I catch you—as I will, of course. I kill you—as I will, of course. I cut you into pieces and bury them far apart from each other. Some parts may be dug up by a bear and eaten. That would only enhance the plot, you see, because, later on, they might find a leg bone or an arm bone or something. I hightail it to the cabin; I can make it in a day if I really rush, get there by late tonight.” He smiled again as though looking for Bob’s approval of the clever plot he’d created.

“Now,” he said, holding up the index finger of his right hand, “comes the good part. The Academy Award part. I show up at the cabin in a state of near hysteria. I cry, I groan, I blame myself for everything. You went out in the dark to go to the bathroom and I never saw you again. I should have gone with you. I searched everywhere but couldn’t find a sign of you. A bear or a mountain lion must have gotten you. We’ll call the forest rangers and initiate a search—I won’t tell them where we were, of course, I’ll take them someplace else. I’ll keep on crying, sobbing, not too much of course, just enough to be convincing. Oscar-caliber, believe me.” He leaned forward, looking fascinated. “They never find your remains, of course. Finally, I drive Marian home. I stay with her to comfort her. I’m always with her. She can lean on me, trust me. I’m a damn good actor, maybe you don’t know that. She’ll buy it; she’ll be totally convinced that I’ve been traumatized. I was supposed to take care of you and I didn’t do my job. I’ll cry some more. I’ll drink, she’ll drink. I’ll be the—what’s the fucking word?—oh, yes, I’ll be the epitome of caring, the fucking quintessence—ooh, I got that right away—the quintessence—love that word—the quintessence of compassion. In time, Marian will come to depend on me, to need me, to—dare I speak the word?—to love me. We’ll get married—” His eyelids lowered halfway, his smile gone sardonic. “And I’ll fuck her asshole legally. Won’t that be a gas?”