Pity Him Afterwards

He raised his head, and stared at the gate. It was high and wide, and made of iron, with thick vertical bars and rococo iron scrollwork between. A great heavy lock bound the two sides together at the middle, and at either end they were hinged to foot-square brick pillars with concrete caps.

He stared at this gate, and frowned, and gazed this way and that along the road.

He was fenced in.

He hadn’t noted it till now, had paid no attention to it. But the road, all along on the left-hand side, was fenced. Tall wire fencing, thousands of metal diamonds linked together to keep him in. And here, at a break in the fence, brick and concrete and iron, and a great heavy lock.

This couldn’t be. He growled deep in his throat; his shoulders hunched, and his hands bunched up into fists. He was free now, this couldn’t be! Damn their eyes, damn their black souls, they never let him alone!

All right. All right. He would take the challenge. They would find out now what manner of man they were dealing with. They would find out now what he thought of their petty harassment.

He went over to the gate, and grasped the iron bars. They were cold and rough to the touch, and night-damp. Beyond them, in deeper gloom, a narrow road curved away into trees. All was darkness.

He started to climb. The scrollwork on the gate helped him, and at the top he was very careful because the vertical bars ended in spikes. He raised himself carefully over these, found footing on the highest scrollwork on the other side, and climbed down again to the ground.

So much for their challenge. Did they think an iron gate would stop him? He was free now, and powerful in the knowledge of his freedom. Never would he allow them to limit him again.

He turned away from the gate and started down the road. He had gone barely six steps from the gate when a sudden light flashed in his eyes, and a harsh voice cried, “Stay right where you are, you.”

The shock, the surprise, the blinding light in his eyes, the sudden fear, all combined, and in automatic response he shrank away. The being took over, all at once, and the tiny spark of Robert Ellington crouched low in its dark corner. Let the being take care of this.

But it was not the one he’d expected. It was not the composite character who had taken over earlier tonight, in the Lounge. It was some other being, some darker creation he remembered only vaguely, from long long ago, from the forgotten time before he was ever in the asylum. Beaten down and subdued by the ministrations of Doctor Chax, it had lain undetected all this time at the very core of him. With freedom, it had slowly begun to emerge. The killings he had been forced to commit had strengthened it, and this sudden surprise and shock and blindness had given it the opening it needed.

Only one small spark of self-awareness was left, and that mite struggled to get back into control. This being, this thing, it couldn’t be a part of Robert Ellington! Mindless, brutal, fetid with its own horrible memories, steaming and stinking, it was nothing that could ever be a part of him, nothing that he could have carried all this time within himself.

Recoiling, unbelieving, not wanting to believe or know or remember, the last crouching bit of self-awareness went down to black.

The flashlight was ahead and to the right. The madman turned that way, and shuffled forward.

The voice behind the flashlight, on a rising inflection, cried out, “Stay where you are! Keep back! I warn you, I’ve got a gun!”

The madman leaped. The only shot went high over his back, and then gun and flashlight clattered away to the blacktop, the flashlight going out as it hit.

The blackness was complete now, but the madman didn’t have to see. His hands gripped, found cloth, found a naked wrist. A flailing fist was striking at his shoulder, at the side of his head. His hands moved, closed on wrist and arm, moved again, pressed and levered. There was a dry and muffled snapping sound, and the guard screamed. The madman’s clawing hand found the screaming face, closed down on it, snuffing out the scream.

The guard was dead long before he was finished. He broke, he tore, he pounded. In the silence of the night, the sounds were small and moist and heavy.

The madman rose at last to his feet. His hands and forearms were sticky. His face was smeared with stickiness. A strong odor was in his nostrils.

He moved on down the road.

He came at last to a house, broad and sprawling, built at the very edge of the lake. Smooth lawns surrounded it, darkness enclosed it.

The madman moved around the house, hesitating to enter. No real thoughts were moving in his mind now, only impressions. The impression of danger. The impression that the guard had tried to keep him from coming here, so there must be something of value here for him. But strongest of all, the impression of danger.