DARK DILEMMA

Her mother was talking on the hallway phone when she left the house, automatically restricting their goodbye’s to a mutual waving of hands. She closed the door behind her and began to walk down the garden path, only then becoming aware of the man stood motionless on the opposite pavement, staring fixedly in her direction.

Even though he was at least thirty yards away she registered a clear image of unblinking eyes, sunk deep in an unhealthily pale face and now rigidly focussed on her and her movements. Discomfited, she quickly averted her own gaze, glancing up and down the street. Other people had just passed the house, near-neighbours that she often chatted with at the bus stop. Relieved by their proximity and still keeping her eyes averted, she reached the pavement and headed briskly away from him towards the main road.

Odd, she thought. Pretty creepy, really, although not enough to rouse real alarm, not in broad daylight and with other people nearby. There’d been nothing threatening about his pose, anyway, simply the suggestion of a protracted vigil; as though he’d been standing there for a while, waiting for her to emerge.

The raincoat he was wearing was unseasonable, but its seemingly inappropriate usage could have been linked to the matter of his health, she reflected. Perhaps he was someone she’d encountered at the hospital, his bad colour evidence of an on-going condition; some mildly unstable ex-patient who’d developed a fixation on her while he’d been in her care. Without being overtly vain she knew she was attractive, and that kind of thing had happened before, but if this was another case of it she hadn’t recognised him. People looked different in street clothes, though, she reminded herself, so it was perfectly possible that he’d passed through her hands at some forgotten point, subsequently fantasising—

She heard footsteps behind her, rapidly approaching. Then he was beside her. “Excuse me.” His breathing was wheezily laboured. “I’m sorry to trouble you, but I wonder if you could help me.”

Despite the disquiet she’d experienced at the time of her first sighting of him, the fact that he appeared to be ailing in some way had tempered her unease with a modicum of sympathy. Now, reluctantly dragging her eyes away from the retreating backs of the street’s other inhabitants, she turned her head in his direction, what she saw reinforcing this aspect of her initial reaction.

His paleness contained a greyish shadow, and his eyes were dark-ringed with the fatigue of illness. He was around fifty or so, she judged, although he could easily have been several years younger, possibly by as much as a decade. His face still prompted no actual recognition, although there was something—

Whatever it was, she couldn’t place him. She slowed, but kept moving, anxious not to be separated too far from the people up ahead. He paced her, slowly gathering his breath before speaking again with obvious discomfort.

“I’m trying to find a David Simmons. I don’t know his address, but I was told he lives somewhere around here. Do you—?” As they reached the corner, a fit of coughing took him, bringing him to a halt.

She paused, feeling secure now in the presence of passing traffic and approaching pedestrians, waiting until his coughing subsided.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know anyone of that name.”

His response took her completely by surprise. She’d anticipated disappointment, even if only feigned, but instead it was as though she’d delivered a shot of some instant-acting miracle potion that simultaneously stimulated and pacified. His eyes were suddenly alive and steady on her face, their previous nervous flickering stilled. He continued to stare at her intently, but smiling now, a clear expression of intense relief, and something else that could have been—

Surely not—genuine tenderness? She’d been half-prepared for some indication of infatuation, but what she saw implied a depth of feeling that startled and disorientated her. Strangely, though, despite her embarrassment she still felt no alarm, her own initial mild disquiet suddenly replaced by a sensation that she didn’t immediately identify but that somehow echoed what she saw on his face.

She began to inch away from him.

“I’m sorry I can’t help you.” She forced a smile and moved on, reaching the nearby bus stop as a bus drifted to a halt there and people began to climb aboard. She followed them, glancing back to where he stood, his face still illuminated by the transforming smile.

She found a vacant seat and sat down, staring out of the window, oblivious of the passing scenery. What on Earth had all that been about, she wondered. Apart from the mystery of his obvious interest in her she was totally bemused by the abrupt change that had come over both of them at the time of her denial of knowledge, her seeming inability to help him that had contradictorily transformed his anxiety into relief and simultaneously allayed her own, replacing it with the sensation that she now acknowledged.

Although she was childless and had yet to form a strong romantic attachment, she was fully aware that normal maternal instincts were a strong part of her nature. Back there, though, she’d briefly experienced them to a startling degree, an acute feeling of protectiveness towards a complete stranger who at the very least was twenty years her senior, a surge of empathy that had made no sense at the time and now felt like nothing more than an embarrassing absurdity.

Get a grip, girl, she told herself. Save it for when the time comes, if it ever does. She was still trying to make sense of it all when she finished her journey and crossed the road towards the staff-entrance of the hospital.

* * * *

The minute-hand of the clock above the magazine rack had almost reached the number eleven as he pulled the phone towards him and rested his hand on top of it, following what by now had become a sardonic daily ritual.

Seconds later, it rang. He picked it up and reported on the day’s takings, and by the time he’d listened disinterestedly to the owner’s customary litany of complaints about the state of his various other business interests and replaced it in its cradle it was a minute to eight.

That’ll be the day, he thought sourly, when he doesn’t make sure he’s getting his money’s worth. And why does he have to tell me about his problems? He’d already emptied the till and bagged its contents, and was emerging from behind the counter preparatory to taking them down to the basement safe when he glanced outside and saw the car slide into the pool of light illuminating the forecourt.

He swore, disgustedly. Given another ten seconds or so and he’d have locked the door and reversed the card to ‘CLOSED,’ but doing that now could provoke an argument with somebody who might be prepared to engage in a lengthy exchange that would only delay him further.

He reluctantly moved back behind the counter, depositing the takings bag beneath it and watching as the driver climbed slowly out of the car, walked around it to the nearest pump, unhooked the hose, and stuck the nozzle into the jerry can he’d been carrying. A couple of bucks’ worth. Well, at least it should be a quick sale. He switched on the pump and waited, drumming his fingers impatiently on the counter top.

A minute or so later, the man entered, carrying the can, bringing with it the reek of gasoline. Jesus, he thought, irritably. If he had to bring it with him, at least he could have put the cap back on first. He switched off the pump, and turned. “That’ll be a dollar eighty-five.”

The man made no move to produce any money. He placed the can on the floor, then slowly straightened, his right hand wedged in the pocket of his raincoat, staring at him with feverish eyes set deep in a leaden face. He coughed several times, a lightly hoarse sound.

Jesus, he thought, this is one sick-looking guy; more like a walking corpse than living being. And why was he staring at him like that? He felt a twinge of unease. He said again, “That’ll be a dollar eighty-five.”

The man cleared his throat. “You’re David Simmons.”

It was a statement, delivered flatly, with no hint of query. So that was it, he thought. He knew him from someplace, although there was no recognition as far as he was concerned. Maybe he was the father of someone he knew, some background figure that had registered him without it being reciprocal on his own part.

He manufactured a smile. “That’s right. I guess we must’ve met sometime.”

The man nodded, slowly. Equally slowly, he pulled his right hand from his raincoat pocket.

The gun he was holding glinted threateningly in the fluorescent glare of the room. Speaking in the same tired rasp as before, he said, “Keep your hands where I can see them, and come out here and lock the door. When you’ve done that, go to the office and turn on the light, then come back and switch off everything out here; this room, the forecourt lights. If you try to run for it or make any kind of move towards me, I’ll shoot. Do you understand?”

In the space of a second his simulated affability had stiffened into frozen alarm. Oh, God, he thought, sickly. It was what he’d always feared, stuck out here in the middle of nowhere. If the owner wasn’t so remorselessly punctual with his daily check-ups he’d have been out of there at least five minutes before, encouraged to leave early by the absence of traffic; on his way back to town and his date for that evening, safe from—

His mind wavered, a shocking realisation penetrating the panicky fog that filled it. The guy knew his name, recognised him from somewhere! The fact that he hadn’t been able to identify him in return might be seen as a purely temporary lapse of memory on his part that might correct itself at any time, automatically making him a particularly dangerous witness to the crime.

“Now, wait a minute,” He raised his hands, swallowing hard. “I don’t know how you know my name, mister, but I swear I never saw you before.”

He stared the man in the eye, willing him to believe him, at the same time fractionally increasing the pressure on his abdomen where it already rested against the counter, praying that this minute movement would be seen as nothing more than emphasising the urgency of his claim. Braced against it, he fished carefully with his right foot. There! He felt the shallow rubber mound of the alarm-button, and pressed down on it with the toe of his shoe. “Honest to God, I don’t know who you are. You must—”

“Don’t talk,” the man said. He was suddenly energised, naked hatred clear in his voice, startling in its impact. He raised the gun a little, the knuckle of his trigger-finger gleaming whitely. “Be quiet, and do what I told you. If you don’t, I’ll shoot you right now.”

He means it, he thought dazedly. Mother of mercy, he really means it. He inched his way from behind the counter on legs that barely supported him and began to carry out the man’s instructions, desperately trying to ensure that none of his movements provided an excuse for this threat to be carried out.

Had that really been hatred that he’d heard? What could he possibly have done to have invoked such abhorrence? Was he the father of some girl who’d achieved an unwanted pregnancy and named him as the person responsible? Unless he’d used a faulty condom during one of his sexual adventures he was certain of his lack of guilt as far as such a possibility was concerned. But whatever transgression, imagined or otherwise, might have been responsible for this encounter, there was no doubting that this was no straightforward hold-up. Everything that was happening clearly indicated that a personal element was dictating the situation, that the man with the gun was an inexplicably dangerous adversary whose resentment meant that he was fully prepared to end his life at any time.

He tried to focus his thinking, seek out some solution to this appalling predicament. Had the alarm-bell worked, the signal got through? Even if it had they were eight miles from Laxton, the nearest town, and the gas station was isolated, nowhere near any other source of law enforcement that he knew of.

His only real hope of early help from the police was if a patrol car wasn’t too far away and the message had been relayed. He couldn’t count on anything like that, though. Perhaps his only real chance of survival would be to jump the guy if the opportunity presented itself. His throat, already restricted with fear, almost closed at the prospect. The office was cramped, though, so they’d be bound to be close to one another once they were inside. Besides, he was young and strong, and the man was plainly unwell and most likely weakened by his condition. If he could just get a grip on his gun-arm—

As he carefully entered the office, a sudden blow took him on the back of the neck. Retching and half-conscious, he dropped to his knees. Then the second blow came, this time pitching him into smothering darkness.

* * * *

He came to gradually, his head thudding, dully aware of the pain that filled it and of the rancid moistness of his lap and thighs. He was seated on a chair, his legs free, but his arms were looped behind it and fastened to its frame. He tugged, weakly, and felt the edge of the tape that bound them dig into his wrists.

The man was facing him, seated on the swivel-chair that was normally behind the desk. There was no sign of the gun now, but the open can of petrol rested by his right foot, somehow a significant threat that terrifyingly penetrated his still-sluggish consciousness.

He tugged feebly at the tape again, feeling sick and dreadfully afraid.

He said, quaveringly, “Why are you doing this? Have I done something that’s offended you real bad? If I have, I swear to God I don’t know what it was. Why don’t you—” He stopped, confused by the man’s response, the slow side to side shaking of his head.

“Not yet.”

Not yet? What could that possibly mean?

“If you live,” the man said, “you’ll go on to do great harm. To me, but particularly to someone else. I have to try to prevent that from happening.”

It took several seconds for what had been said to fully penetrate his consciousness, but when it did, his insides, already taut with panic, contracted to a nausea-inducing ball.

He was at the mercy of a lunatic, someone who believed that he could forecast the future, one in which he would commit some unspecified act of cruelty that could only be avoided if he was to die before it could take place! He almost fainted, in this state of near-fugue witnessing a macabre image of himself crouched motionless on a sheet of glass that was barely thick enough to support him, the only thing saving him from falling irrecoverably into the blackly bottomless abyss that yawned beneath it. A single movement, one ill-judged redistribution of his weight would shatter the glass and pitch him headlong into this passage to inescapable death, he knew it with chilling certainty.

Shuddering uncontrollably, he re-surfaced to equally chilling reality, the fume-filled confines of the office and the grey-faced man slumped in the other chair, his mind surely deformed by his deadly fantasy.

Numb with panic, he tried to think. Stall him that was all he could do. Pray that the alarm signal had got through and that help was on its way. Would reason have any effect or would it provoke him to impatient anger, actually precipitate what he intended to do? Perhaps it was the only way to stretch the moments, give himself any chance at all of survival.

He’d have to risk it. He swallowed again, desperately trying to lubricate the arid tunnel that his throat had become. “How do you know what’s going to happen in the future? Nobody does, not really. How do you know I’m going to do what you say I am?

The man stared at him silently for several seconds before speaking. “Because it’s already happened.”

There it was, confirmation of his insanity! His mind groped frantically, trying to find the right words, any argument at all that might pacify this madman.

“But how can it have? You mean you were actually there when I did this thing?”

The man’s mouth turned down, grimly. “Not to witness it directly. But, yes, I was there.”

He ploughed on, doggedly committed now. “But you’d have to be able to travel through time to know anything like that! Is that what you’re saying, that you’re from the future, and that you’ve come back to try and put right whatever it is you say I’ve done?”

The man nodded, a single duck of the head. “Yes, that is what I’m saying.”

He means it, he thought sickly. He really believes it. Perhaps attempting to make contact with any possible remaining shreds of reason would be pointless, but for now it was his only hope. He introduced a wheedling note into his voice.

“Look, why not tell me what it is you say I’m going to do? If I know what it is I won’t do it, honest to God I won’t. Wouldn’t that make more sense than killing me?” This spoken acknowledgement of the man’s intentions was almost a relief. Cards on the table, he thought light-headedly. Why not? In that sense at least, what have I got to lose?

There was another pause, longer this time. He allowed himself the first faint flicker of hope. At least he’d got him thinking, pointed out an option that seemed to have created at least some uncertainty. How could he reinforce that? If he could only—

The man said, “Do you suffer from nightmares?”

The question took him completely by surprise, segueing almost at once into a surge of relief that was overwhelming.

Of course! That must be what this was, a nightmare brought about by his constant fear that the isolation of the gas station would one day invite criminal intrusion, with this demented scenario its manifestation! None of it was real; the man with his gun and his mad tale, the can of gasoline and its implied threat1

He took a deep breath. His dreams occasionally reached a point where he identified them as such, sometimes even enabling him to force himself awake, free himself from their warped settings and events. Now that he’d recognised this torment for what it really was he should be able to exert at least a degree of control.

He began to tug at the restricting tape again, gradually dismayed by the continuing resistance he encountered. Even at their most threatening, actual physical discomfort was never part of his dreams. He blinked repeatedly, willing himself to wake, suddenly intensely conscious again of his surroundings and what they contained; the grey-faced man confronting him, staring at him with feverish eyes, the overpowering reek of gasoline that filled the small room.

No dream. He sagged in his chair, his heart accelerating again to its previous thudding gallop, an onslaught that this time felt as though it might tear itself free of its arterial moorings.

Keep talking, he told himself dully. It’s all you can do. Talk and pray.

He stonewalled. “Why do you want to know that? What have nightmares got to do with any of this?”

The man shifted slightly in his chair, a movement that somehow implied more than simply physical discomfort. He said, slowly, “This is an unprecedented situation. It contains factors that make accurate prediction—difficult.” He fell silent, his face pensive.

Again, hesitation. He snatched at this straw.

“Are you saying you’re not sure you’ve got this right? That there’s a chance that killing me won’t prevent this thing you say I’m going to do from happening?”

The man moistened his lips. “A degree of uncertainty’s involved. Whether or not it can be resolved—”

“So you’re not sure? If you’re not, how can you justify doing it?”

The deep-sunk eyes stared at him, broodingly. “If I don’t, the guarantee of what you’ll do remains.”

He took a deep breath. “But you don’t know for sure that it’ll work, you’ve just admitted that. That means you could be committing murder totally unnecessarily! Do you really want to take that kind of—”

He faltered to a halt, abruptly gripped by a fresh onrush of terror as he saw the change in the man’s expression and demeanour. It was as though a sudden draught of icy air had entered the room, dispersing the fog of doubt that he’d desperately been trying to nurture and simultaneously leaving the flicker of hope guttering perilously close to extinguishment.

Oh, God, what had he done? He shuddered, feeling the cold envelop him like a freezing shroud.

“That’ll be the culmination of what you’ll do, commit unnecessary murder.” There was no trace of hesitation on the leaden face now. The man’s eyes were coldly certain again, and unadulterated hatred was clear in his voice. “You’re destined to kill someone who’s done everything in their power to help you. If the uncertainty can be resolved, it won’t only mean that that person will survive, you’ll no longer be guilty of committing this outrage, I realise, of course, that this is no consolation; to you now, but it’ll also mean that you’ll be spared a bitter self-inflicted end.” A twisted grimace flickered briefly across his face. “By killing you now, I may even be saving your soul.”

His soul? The existence of such an abstract thing was something that he’d never seriously considered, and even if it did exist it was of little concern to him at that moment. His life and the sensual pleasures that it offered were what he wanted, not to be meaninglessly despatched into some unknowable limbo where it might well transpire that redemption was a myth and the harsh reality was that all things ended.

How long had it been since the commencement of this purgatory? There was a clock on the wall behind him, out positioned as he was there was no chance of his seeing it. Ten minutes, fifteen, more? He had no idea how long he’d been unconscious, so it could have been considerably longer, surely long enough for help to have arrived by now.

At the time of his fumbling use of the alarm-button it had felt as though he’d managed to depress it fully, but what if it had developed a fault? He felt a fresh wave of despair. Maybe help wasn’t coming at all, his fate sealed by a bad wiring connection or some such. He stifled a sob. You have to keep him talking for as long as possible, he told himself, try to reason some sanity into his disordered brain. It’s probably jour only chance now.

Through parched lips, he said, “I don’t understand any of this. You say I’m going to murder someone, but you haven’t told me who or why. Who are you, anyway, and what makes you so sure it’s me who’s going to do it? You didn’t actually see it happen, you’ve admitted that, so how can you be certain that it’ll be me and not somebody else?”

There was no instant reply. The man coughed frequently now, his already laboured breathing clearly aggravated by the fumes emanating from the open can by his feet. At last, he said, “You’d derive no comfort from knowing any of those things.”

He persisted. “It’s only fair that I know. Right now I haven’t harmed this person, and that means I’m innocent! I’ve committed no crime, and I wouldn’t harm anybody, I just wouldn’t!” He repeated his earlier plea. “Tell me who it is I’m supposed to kill, and I won’t do it, I swear on my mother’s grave I won’t:”

A grotesque smile formed on the grey face. The man emitted a cough-punctuated travesty of a laugh that continued for a while before he spoke again.

“A singularly empty promise, since your mother’s alive and well and will outlive you by many years.” His contempt was manifest. “In any event, that kind of assurance is meaningless, because if you live circumstances will eventually guarantee that you commit this atrocity. Simply the fact that killing you now may prevent it means that I have no other acceptable choice.” He studied him thoughtfully, then shrugged. “I suppose it’s only reasonable that you should be told. Death can often be seen as pointless, and at least it’ll make you understand why yours will have meaning. Mine, too; a matter of secondary importance, but I find it consoling.”

He lowered his gaze, staring blankly at the floor as he talked, his narrative punctuated with regular pauses to enable him to gather his breath. “My parents had a troubled marriage. My father was frequently unfaithful, but most damage was done by his seemingly uncontrollable rages. He was unemployed for much of the time, and his frustration often led to his using violence towards my mother and I. He would often beat me for no good reason, and he struck her many times, usually for defending me. She once told me that this aspect of his behaviour was brought on by his dreams, nightmares that he couldn’t articulate clearly because they contained terrors that he couldn’t identify, and that we had to sympathise and not condemn him.”

At least he’d achieved his initial aim, to keep him talking. He said, carefully, “It sounds like he was sick. Did your mother ever try to persuade him to get help? Psychiatry, that kind of thing?”

“He refused to consider treatment. I imagine it was because he was terrified of having to face the things that were concealed in his dreams. Perhaps he was afraid that exposure to them would be the road to insanity, and as long as they remained hidden he was safe from that.”

“Why didn’t your mother leave him, get the two of you away someplace where he wasn’t likely to find you?”

Again the grey features twisted into a smile, this time a bitter one.

“Compassion was a strong part of her nature, and it was also clear that at the very least she’d deluded herself into believing that she still loved him, despite his infidelity and violent outbursts. He possessed the usual qualities that encourage us to make fools of ourselves in that respect; good looks and charm, which in his case was an earthy and purely superficial attribute that he turned on and off like a tap whenever it suited him. It was a relationship that I never understood and never could, but love’s frequently an irrational emotion, of course, incomprehensible to the onlooker.” The man shrugged, wearily. “Perhaps I’m underestimating the depth of her feelings for him, but whatever they were she still recognised that he posed a risk as far as I was concerned and lived in constant fear for my safety. Despite that, she felt it was her duty to stay with him in the hope that eventually she’d be able to persuade him to accept the need for the kind of outside help that could exorcise his demons. After I was born she gave up her job to be with me until I reached school age. When I was old enough to be safely out of his way during the day, she did part-time work whenever it was available.”

He did his best to introduce a sympathetic note into his voice. “That must’ve been tough, raising you with money only coming in sometimes.”

“She’d inherited some from an uncle who’d died shortly before she met my father. Whenever it became necessary, she dipped into that. Just before I reached my teens, it had all gone. When it had, he looked for more elsewhere, which came as no surprise to me.” Cynicism coloured the rasping voice. “At a very young age I’d realised that he saw her principally as an accommodating meal-ticket who was illogically prepared to put up with his womanising and ill-treatment.

“At the time he had a temporary delivery job that took him to other towns in the county. When he was in Gallerton he met a woman customer who ran her own successful small business and had also received a substantial settlement at the time of her divorce. He had, as you’ll have already gathered, a way with women, and he courted her, convincing her that he was unattached. Although her money was the initial attraction, after a while he found himself in a more serious relationship than he’d anticipated.

“He decided to leave us, but on the day that he was packing his belongings my mother returned home earlier than expected. He was furious at being caught in this way, and there was an argument that escalated to the point where in order to hurt and humiliate her even further he told her why he was going. My mother was stung into responding by telling him that she’d find this woman and tell her the facts of his marital status and of the way he treated us. Faced with the possibility of losing both his new amour and the improvement to his personal circumstances her money would bring, he panicked.”

The cynicism had gone now. Raw emotion had replaced it, thickening his voice into a relentlessly harsh sound, unsteady with deep feeling.

“He beat my mother unconscious and set fire to the apartment, seeing this as a means of both ridding himself of her and destroying the evidence of his brutality, hoping to convince the authorities that she died accidentally after somehow causing it herself, but the rescue team managed to recover her body before it could be burned. The coroner’s report concluded that she’d been alive when he started the fire, and that her death had been caused by smoke-inhalation.”

He talked on, temporarily lost in his memories; about his father’s arrest and subsequent confession when confronted with the testimony of a neighbour who’d detected smoke before seeing him leave the apartment, the court’s condemnation of his utter callousness towards her and his total lack of regard for the building’s other occupants, his imprisonment for first-degree murder and his suicide several months after his incarceration.

He slowly shrank in his chair as the man’s story unfolded. Dear Christ, he thought, appalled. Surely he can’t be thinking that I’m—? No, that can’t be right! He hastily slammed a shutter closed in his mind, and plunged in again.

“I don’t understand how anybody could do something like that. I guess he got what was coming to him, all right. So what happened to you afterwards?”

“I was taken in by my mother’s parents. Shortly before her marriage to my father, something that they’d strongly advised against, they moved several hundred miles away, and after that underlined their disapproval by rarely contacting her. Her misguided loyalty to my father meant that they’d never known the truth about his treatment of her and me. After her death they attempted to assuage their consciences for ignoring her by treating me as the son they never had.

“They were fundamentally decent people, and deeply regretted what they saw as their sin of omission. From that point on my life vas stable, and I buried myself in my school studies, principally as a means of trying to blot out the horrors that I’d gone through before. I had a natural bent for the sciences, and eventually became a researcher in the quantum physics field, finally working on a programme that’s made it possible for us to step back in time. That’s how I’m here, of course, against all the rules governing use of the process, I should add.”

Clearly animated by this ostensible reference to his work, the grey-faced man continued talking, about the existing limitations of what had been achieved so far and how they hoped it would develop in the future, temporarily engrossed in his fanciful exposition.

His relief at this unexpected diversion was short-lived. Insistently now the thought that had intruded so jarringly moments before returned, brusquely sweeping aside his initial rejection, demanding acceptance. He tried desperately to dismiss it again, but this time it refused to retreat, its glaring obviousness peremptorily swamping his resistance and rapidly forming an impenetrable barrier against any possibility of denial.

It’s true, he thought, dazedly. Dear Christ, the crazy bastard thinks he’s talking about me! For some insane reason he’s selected me as the target for his delusion, identified me as the monster he’s been describing!

My name! Of course, that’s it! He’s confused me with somebody else called David Simmons! He sobbed at the deadly irony of this coincidence. It left unexplained how the man’s tortured memories had deformed themselves into his belief that he’d travelled back in time to wreak vengeance on his parent, but perhaps his sickness was responsible.

Whatever the nature or cause of his obvious illness his condition could have affected his mind as well as his body, drawn him into this feverish fantasy. Maybe he really was involved in some scientific programme that was investigating the possibility of time- travel, and if he was it was perfectly logical to assume that his afflicted state had resulted in his conviction that they’d succeeded, and that his dream of revenge would become a reality.

Yes, that made its own twisted kind of sense. But even though he’d reasoned out the most probable explanation for this lunatic belief, he still had to face up to the obdurate fact that words were still his only weapon, an acceptance of the meagreness of his memory that left him feeling hollow, teetering on the very edge of despair.

He dragged himself away from it with every ounce of mental effort that he could muster. Use them, then, he urged himself, exhaustedly. Use them, and keep on using them as long as possible. Maybe help’s still coming after all, but either way you have to keep him talking. Whatever you do, though, don’t push, try to force the issue. Challenging him was a waste of breath, so simply denying that you’re his future father won’t get you any place. What you’ve got to do is coax him, gently lead him to the realisation that there’s no way you could possibly be the murderous bully he thinks you are; convince him that you genuinely are appalled by what he’s told you, and that the whole thing’s a terrible mistake.

Barely conscious of what was being said during the man’s discourse, he suddenly realised that it had ended. Caught off-guard, he swallowed hastily, and blurted: “You’ve had a real tough time, mister, that’s for sure.” What to say, what to say? Quick, quick, you mustn’t hesitate! He seized on the first thought that came to him.

“Do you know what he was going to do about you if he’d gotten away with it? You say he’d fooled this woman into believing that he didn’t have any kind of ties, so he couldn’t have taken you along with him. I guess that’d have been the last thing he’d have wanted to do, anyway.”

Was that anger he saw again beginning to cloud the leaden face? Oh, God, he thought, sickly, am I doing this all wrong?

Panic froze his imagination. Helplessly locked on the course that his inattention had hurried him into taking, he babbled on. “I mean, was he just going to disappear after a while, simply dump you, or was he planning to kill you too before he took off? Either way that’d have brought the police—” He faltered to a halt, shocked into horrified silence by the now unmistakable effect of his words.

The grey features were dark with fury, a reaction that brushed aside his clumsy edifice of interest like so much matchwood. He quailed before the basilisk glare, despairingly recognising that instead of easing; the man towards acknowledgement of his error his attempt at ingratiation had in all probability just confirmed his own certain death.

The man said, “Trying to change my mind by undermining my determination with a show of interest and mock-sympathy is quite pointless, believe me.” His voice was harshly implacable, with a vicious edge to it that cut into his consciousness like a razor-edged knife, “Even so, I’m going to answer your questions, so that before you die you appreciate the lengths that he was prepared to go to, to achieve what he thought of as his freedom.”

His hands, which had been moving restlessly on the arms of his chair, now gripped them tightly. “Before taking his own life he wrote me a note, but in view of ray age and its contents it was withheld from me. It was only when I reached my late teens and asked my grandparents if he’d mentioned me before doing away with himself that they reluctantly told me of its existence. They’d kept it, and since by then I’d matured beyond my years they decided that I was capable of facing the truth, and gave it to me.”

The rasping voice was gradually thickening again.

“I’d naively assumed that it would contain at least some hint of remorse, perhaps even a request for forgiveness for the things he’d done. Instead, I found myself reading the self-pitying ranting of someone who clearly only considered his own wants and appetites. In it, he admitted that in the panic of the moment he’d overlooked the problem that I’d pose afterwards, and told me that if he hadn’t allowed himself to be rushed into doing what he did he’d have waited until I returned home from school and then subjected me to the same treatment that he’d meted out to my mother before starting the fire. With both of us dead he could have gone to this woman unencumbered; able, in his own words, to make a clean, fresh start, even if he hadn’t been unlucky enough to be caught, he said, he couldn’t have killed or deserted me soon after my mother’s death without arousing suspicion.

“This meant that my continuing existence would have robbed him of what he wanted, and he damned me for it, saving that he wished I’d never been born.”

Rage and contempt clotted the grating voice.

“These twisted regrets for what might have been were the last outpourings of a sick and sadistic mind before he ended his own wretched life with a knotted shirt-sleeve around his neck, a suitably shabby finish to a life that should have ended many years earlier, before he could inflict his brutality on someone who wasted her own life by convincing herself that he deserved her love and tolerance and pity.”

Provoked by the vehemence of these final words, a paroxysm of coughing wracked the man for a full minute. When it eventually subsided, he sat slumped in his chair, breathing deep, shuddering breaths, his eyes closed and his grey features now drawn to the point of emaciation.

He wrenched desperately at his bonds, shaking his head wildly in repeated denial. “No, no, you’ve got this all wrong!” He was gabbling, almost incoherent, all thought of gradual persuasion abandoned. “I’m not him, I’m not! There are Simmons’s all over, don’t you see? It’s a common name, like Smith, and Jones, and Brown, and Green! In any case, I couldn’t do any of those things! I couldn’t hurt people like that, especially if they were my own family!” He writhed helplessly, sweat and tears intermingling as they streamed down his face. “I couldn’t do things like that, I just know I couldn’t!”

The man slowly roused himself again. Apart from the visible tremor of his hands, now resting claw-like on the arms of his chair, he was suddenly calm, exhibiting no sign of the passion that had possessed him a short while before.

“The seeds of extreme cruelty are in all of us. Circumstances dictate whether or not they ever influence our behaviour.” The sunken eyes watched his contortions detachedly. “History’s shown us that subjected to the right stimulus they can turn perfectly rational and humane beings into savages, capable of atrocities that would normally be beyond their imagining. The desire for retribution can become that kind of cancer, something that I can personally vouch for. As to your identity, do you think I’d forget my father’s face, his voice? Believe me, they’re like festering sores in my memory.” He shrugged. “You may well be telling the truth about yourself as you are now, but unless you die before these things can happen that’s the unspeakable creature that you’ll become, for whatever reason. Remember, I’ve seen and suffered the abominable things that you’d do, and I’m going to change them if I can. The only chance of that is by killing you, which is why I must do it.”

The words struck him like a barrage of heavy stones, remorseless and unforgiving, stunning him once more to near-insensibility. He sagged beneath their onslaught, again conjuring up the earlier image of himself crouched in petrified stillness on the flimsy transparency suspended over bottomless darkness, only now this wafer of protection was inexorably tilting as though on some unseen axis. He felt himself slipping and opened his mouth to scream when something halted his slide, a mental handhold that he clung to with one final surge of hope.

“That can’t be true, it can’t!” He was shouting now, his voice hoarse and ragged with desperation. “But even if it was, don’t you see what killing me would mean? You won’t exist, because you couldn’t. If I die now there’s no way that this woman and I could become your parents, don’t you see that?”

Through the water filming his eyes he again saw the travesty of a smile distort the leaden face.

The man said. “The classic paradox. If I kill my father, what happens to me?” He laughed, a wheezing ululation that almost instantly degenerated into another fit of coughing during which he leaned forward, his elbows on his knees and his head lowered until it petered into near-silence. When he looked up again his face was streaked with perspiration, and the fever in his eyes was brighter than before.

“I’m sick, as you can see. If this experiment succeeds, in the improbable event of my surviving its outcome it can only be for a short while, but whatever happens the continuation of my life’s a matter of no real concern. I have no dependents, which in these circumstances is a blessing, and in any case the fact that it was necessary for me to bypass what would normally be essential parts of the transfer procedures that have enabled me to be here now means that there’s no possibility of returning to my own time. This leaves me with few options, but the truth is that my own death will be a merciful release from an existence that for some time now I’ve found barely tolerable and which eventually convinced me that before it was too late I had to try and right the dreadful wrong that you’ll do if left alive. If I should somehow survive, shortly afterwards I’ll follow you, although a bullet will spare me the agony that in the future you’d be prepared to inflict on my mother and myself and which you’re about to experience.” He broke off again, breathing heavily, his tongue flicking repeatedly across his lips and his eyes once more closed.

The by-now deafening thunder of his heart had smothered much of this spelling out of intent, but enough of it had still penetrated his understanding for him to have recognised the note of finality it contained. His bowel, long in turmoil, surrendered its contents, the stench of this shame invading his nostrils as he rocked and swayed, pleading, his voice a shrill whimper. “No, no, you can’t—dear Christ, I’m begging you—” He broke down, choking on the words. His head sank onto his chest, and he wept uncontrollably for the existence that he was about to lose.

The man’s eyes opened again, and when he spoke it was slowly and quietly.

“Whether or not you believe what I’ve told you about our relationship, you’ve clearly decided that I’m insane. Perhaps I am a little, although not in the way that I imagine you’re thinking. I’ve lived with this hatred and desire for revenge for so long now that it may well have poisoned my mind to that extent, but it doesn’t alter the truth of what you’ve just learned. I did, of course, give you fair warning that knowing the facts wouldn’t comfort you in any way, but your insistence persuaded me that you had a right to be told them.” He took a deep, rasping breath, and raised a hand in what was clearly a gesture signalling completion.

“Now that you have, and despite the uncertainty involved, I see no point in waiting any longer to attempt to fulfil what I consider to be my justifiable obligation.”

He reached into his coat pocket. When his hand re-emerged, it was holding a small white tube with a rounded metal end. He depressed a button in its side, and the domed tip began to glow redly. Closing his eyes again, he said, “May God have mercy on both our souls.” He leaned down and grasped the handle of the can with his free hand, tilting it and directing its contents across the floor.

Apart from his failed attempts to tear himself free of the tape binding his wrists, until that moment more or less accepted the futility of attempting any kind of physical response. Now, confronted with these things; the white tube and its glowing end, the tilted can and the steady release of what it contained, something snapped inside his head, abruptly wrenching him out of this paralysis.

He shrieked a wordless emanation of terror, sheer animal instinct dictating his movements as the gasoline flooded beneath and around him. Spreading his feet beyond the width of the chair and dragging them parallel with its front legs, he threw all his weight forward, somehow achieving enough momentum to enable him to lurch upwards into crouching stance. As he did so, startlingly, muffled sounds from beyond the closed door impinged faintly on his wavering consciousness; the crash of shattering glass, shouts, the hurried thud of approaching footsteps, intrusions that provoked the grey-faced man into rising unsteadily to his feet, his head turned towards them and his jaw agape.

Doubled over, the chair angled above him like the skeleton of some bizarre carapace, he shuffled frantically towards the door, colliding with the grey-faced man and knocking the can from his hand as he passed him. Just before reaching the door, his feet slithered from under him. As he twisted and fell, he caught a fleeting glimpse of it miraculously swinging open to reveal the uniformed figure of a patrolman staring into the room.

Hands grasped him and dragged him through the opening, away from the creeping carpet of searing flame that licked at his feet and legs. Before retreating into blessed unconsciousness, his last sight was of the inferno of light and heat that now filled the office and the last sounds he heard the agonised screams that rose from its depths.

* * * *

The two doctors were standing just inside the doors when she entered the ward. As he passed them she overheard a fragment of their conversation, meaningless at the time but which she recalled later.

“—difficult to say. He may come out of it eventually, of course, but if he does think we can anticipate a very long haul. One way and another, the best thing—”

It was the first time that she’d been seconded to the burns unit, currently understaffed due to a virus that had laid low two of its regular staff, and the sister-in-charge talked her through procedures and practices before taking her with her on her own normal morning round.

The curtains had been pulled around the fourth bed they visited. The sister peered inside, then closed them again.

“He’s asleep. There’d be no point in disturbing him now. He’s been through a lot, poor boy. Somebody tied him up at the gas station where he worked and then started a fire, the police don’t know why. They found a body afterwards, or what was left of one. It might even have been the person responsible, I suppose. Hoist with his own petard if it was.” She grimaced. “Anyway, this lad’s got second-degree burns to his lower legs, but his big problem’s post-traumatic stress disorder. He remembers everything up to the afternoon of the day it happened, but nothing at all about the actual incident. Mr. Crossley says it’s possible that he’ll never remember any of it, which would be a blessing in some ways, I suppose.”

They moved on to the next bed.

“How are you this morning, John? You’re looking chirpy enough. This is nurse Parker.” She exchanged smiles with the man in the bed. “She’ll be changing your dressings later. She’s got the gentle touch, I’m told, so there shouldn’t be any need to fuss like you usually do.”

It wasn’t until late morning that she saw him for the first time. The curtains were still drawn when she finished re-bandaging the man in the next bed and then checked to see if he wanted anything.

He was still asleep, his head turned sideways on the pillow. Her pulse quickened a little, a reaction that brought a slight flush to her cheeks. Don’t be ridiculous, she scolded herself. Even so, he undeniably possessed the kind of looks that had always appealed to her; darkly attractive, with long-lashed eyes and gently wavy hair, rumpled now. It certainly would have been a crime in more ways than one to have killed him, she thought protectively. What possible reason could there have been for such a brutal act? She recalled the sister’s account of his terrifying ordeal that had earlier aroused her own deep sympathy despite his concealed anonymity at the time and which had now become magnified at the sight of him.

She closed the curtains again and went to the foot of the bed, unhooking the chart here, the name she saw on it instantly flicking at her memory.

David Simmons? Hadn’t that been the name of the person the sick-looking stranger who’d accosted her a few days before claimed to have been looking for? What a weird coincidence, she thought. The encounter itself had been odd enough, especially the startling reversal that had resulted from her denial of knowledge, almost as though her inability to help him had relieved him of some distressing burden.

Well, now she did know a David Simmons, or would do very shortly. Smiling at the thought, she replaced the chart and was beginning to move on when she heard moaning from behind the closed curtains. She pulled them open again, finding him stirring agitatedly in his sleep, sweat beginning to bead his brow.

As abruptly as it had started the sound stopped and the movement stilled. A nightmare, she thought. Perhaps the doctors were wrong after all, and he was beginning to remember his ordeal. Poor boy. He clearly needed special care, the ministrations of someone who was truly concerned for his welfare in what was bound to be a difficult future for him.

She wondered if he already had someone like that; a mother, perhaps a wife?

She gently removed the sweat with a tissue as she studied his handsome face, again resting peacefully on the pillow.