Richard Matheson - Hunted Past Reason

Despite his exhaustion, he couldn’t stay asleep; he woke up, his brain churning out dreads, apprehensions, dark imaginings. His mind seemed alive with thoughts, like maddened ants racing across it; it seemed as though he could almost feel them moving there.

Where was Doug now? Was he stalking through the darkness, using his flashlight? Had he climbed the same cliff? Was he sleeping at all? Or subsisting on those ten-and twenty-minute naps he’d mentioned? He had to rest sometime; he really wasn’t Superman. What was Marian doing? What were Randy and Lise doing? How would they react if they found out about what was happening to their father?

He began to think about Randy and Lise, what it was like when they were born, what it was like raising them. What lovely children they were, how well they did in school despite occasional, expected slips. How he and Marian had enjoyed them both, how satisfying—yet, somehow saddening—to see them growing into teenagers, then college students, both of them at U.C.L.A., Lise planning to act (for her sake, he disliked the idea, knowing from personal experience what a draining lifestyle it could be), Randy drawn to writing. (Another possibly draining lifestyle but he couldn’t very well try to talk him out of it, any more than he could try to discourage Lise. Especially when Marian was so supportive of them.)

He grimaced, trying not to think about Marian and the kids. In some unnerving way, it was as though he was mentally saying good-bye to them.

He tried to shake himself out of thinking at all. He had to sleep. God only knew what kind of day tomorrow was going to be. He thought again of giving up—or, with probably hopeless reasoning—waiting for Doug and trying to talk him out of this madness.

His thoughts were broken off by the sound of something moving in the darkness.

Had Doug caught up to him already?

Then he heard the huffing cough of a bear and stiffened, face a mask of dread. Should he have tried to hang up his food? he wondered, then realized that he had no way of hanging it up. Anyway, all he had in his pockets was dry food. Surely, the bear couldn’t smell that .

He lay motionless except for his uncontrollable spasms of shivering, waiting for the bear to go away. Fighting off the perverse image of the bear climbing into the ring of boulders and tearing him to pieces.

He didn’t know how long it took for the bear to go away. At last, it did though and with startling suddenness Bob felt a cloud of sleep enveloping him.

It was a difficult set of steps to ascend; they seemed to go on endlessly. He felt his breathing get more and more strained. “I have to warn him,” he kept muttering to himself. The man had to leave right now or he was doomed.

Finally, he reached the door—it was made of thick, heavy wood. He pounded on it with the side of his right fist, wincing at the tenderness in his palm.

There was no response and he pounded on the door again. “Come on ,” he shouted. “For God’s sake, answer the door!”

No response. He looked around. Was there a window he could break, maybe kick in? No; the outside wall of the cabin was solid. “Goddamn it, what’s the matter with you?!” he cried.

He had just raised his fist to hit the door again when the door was yanked open by an irritated-looking man. “What the hell is it?” he demanded.

“What the hell is it?” Bob raged. “Don’t you know what’s going on, for Christ’s sake?”

“No, tell me,” the man said mockingly.

“Goddamn it, man, the mountain is getting ready to blow!” He looked across his shoulder at the mountain and saw the dome on its side swelling quickly.

“You have to get out of here,” he told the man. “Can’t you see that?”

“Listen,” said the man. “I have a job to do. You want to take a powder, do it. I’m busy.”

“For God’s sake, man, the mountain is going to explode any second now! Either you—!”

At that moment, he saw the man look across his shoulder, an expression of shock on his face. Jerking around, he saw that the dome had exploded, sending a dark cloud of smoke high into the sky. “Oh, Jesus,” he muttered. He couldn’t understand why there was no sound to the explosion.

He looked back at the man but he was no longer in the doorway, running to a radio transmitter. Picking up a microphone, he shouted into it, “Vancouver, Vancouver, this is it!”

Bob whirled to see a cloud of gas rushing at him, a torrent of mud and rocks hurtling toward the cabin. Too late! he thought. Dear God, he’d never escape now. He was finished.

He felt his body twitch so sharply that it woke him up. He sucked in at the chilly morning air. Dear God, he thought. It had been so real. But why such a dream now? Because it was a way for his subconscious to express itself because he was afraid he’d never escape from Doug?

He shuddered and swallowed. His throat was dry. Feeling around for his water bottle, he found it, picked it up, unscrewed its cap, and took a swallow of the cold water, then managed to swallow two multivitamins.

Putting the cap back on the water bottle, he slumped inside the sleeping bag. He still felt tired, bone tired. And yet he had to get going; he had no choice.

He recalled the time he and Marian had driven up to the Mount St. Helens display building and seen the film there, the one that began with the last words of the observer in the area—“Vancouver, Vancouver, this is it!”

The film had been horrifying. No sound of explosion because it traveled straight up—but a river of mud and rocks and magma hurtling down the valley at a hundred eighty miles an hour, the observer dying almost instantly, a man living miles away telephoning Vancouver to report that he had just seen the observer’s car and cabin engulfed by the rushing wall and that it was headed for him. “And now it’s going to get me,” the man said in a dreadfully calm voice. Then he was gone as well.

Bob shuddered convulsively, then checked his watch. Not quite quarter after seven. He had to move on right away. His clothes still felt damp but there would be no opportunity to dry them any further. He decided that he’d leave the sleeping bag behind, trusting the assumption that he’d reach the cabin today; anything to help him move faster.

He winced as he realized that his face felt hot. He pressed a palm against his forehead. It felt warm but not as hot as it would if he had a fever. He realized then how badly he’d become sunburned. He gritted his teeth in a scowl. Sure, why not? he thought. Add it to the list.

When he sat up, he saw the headless rabbit. It was impaled on an upright piece of branch the other end of which was pushed into the ground between two of the boulders.

At first, his mind could not react. He stared at the rabbit blankly, then a rush of ice water flooded his chest and stomach.

Doug.

He gaped at the rabbit in sick, mindless terror. It had been skinned, its hide split open from tail to throat and peeled off carefully, its genitals and musk glands removed, internal organs lifted out, its bladder carefully cut away. Blood and transparent liquid dripped from its flesh.

Thought suddenly returned to him, searing his mind. Why was he still alive? If Doug had caught up to him, why hadn’t he hacked him to death with the golak? It didn’t make sense and, in a way, was more frightening than the idea of him being killed as soon as Doug overtook him.

Then he saw the note. It was impaled on a standing twig, written on a piece of cardboard torn from a box. One that he had or one that he found? he wondered pointlessly.