Pity Him Afterwards

The madman clung to the side of the hill, hidden by darkness and trees. Staring over his left shoulder he could see the lights in pairs crossing the bottom of the night, round whites when coming aslant, red dots when going. Only the circling red light atop the state police car did not move on, across the valley floor and out of sight. The ambulance had gone now, and the traffic jam had been broken up, but the state police car did not move on.

Down below him, past the trees, he could see the headlights going by. He was waiting for the state police car with the circling red light to go on, to go away with the rest of the lights, and then he could move. But the state police car didn’t go away.

And now more red lights came, borne on the stream of headlights. The madman reared up, almost losing his balance and rolling down the hill, and stared in hatred at the revolving red lights. Three more of them, all stopping by the first. Dimly amid the lights he could see men moving, and then a different kind of light appeared. A small nailhole of light in the darkness. Flashlights. Men with flashlights crossed the road down there and started up the hill, spreading out, opening like a fan. He lost sight of them all in the trees, and saw there a flicker of light, and there. And there.

They were coming after him.

The madman put his head down on the ground, his burning forehead against the cool dampness of the turf. Despair washed over him. Just after dinner he’d broken out, and before midnight he was to be caught again. They would make him scream for this, the shock every day, death and rebirth every day, going down and away to spasmodic shrieks and coming back to twitches and deafness and the cold blue eyes of Doctor Chax. (There was no Doctor Chax; all the doctors were Doctor Chax: all the doctors had the cold blue eyes and the warm brown voices, and told him while they tortured him that the torture was for his own good; he had made up the name, Doctor Chax. It was all of them.)

He would not go back to Doctor Chax. He would not.

He got away. He had the surface plausibility of the completely mad and a glittering intelligence. Also, he had no compunction about destroying anybody who stood in his way.

PITY HIM AFTERWARDS is a terrifying tour de force of suspense.