The Einstein Equation

8 The Face Under the Fedora

Sam’s hand dropped to his side, where he concealed his Beretta. At once, the stranger started shouting madly again, briskly rushing down the stairs toward Sam’s car. Sam started his car and threw the gear into reverse before the man could make it to him. His tires licked heated black marks on the paving as he accelerated backwards, out of reach of the madman with the broken nose.

In his rear view mirror, Sam saw that the stranger wasted no time in jumping into his own vehicle, a dark blue Taurus that looked far more civilized and robust than its owner.

“Are you bloody serious? For Christ’s sake! Are you actually going to chase me?” Sam shrieked in disbelief. He was right, and he dropped foot. It would be a mistake to head into the open road, as his little jalopy could never outrun the Taurus’ six-cylinder torque, so he made straight for the old condemned high school grounds a few blocks form his apartment.

Not a moment later, he saw the swiveling blue car in the side mirror. Sam was concerned about pedestrians. It would be some time before the road would become less populated by people and he feared that someone may walk out in front of his charging car. His adrenaline fueled his heart, a most unpleasant feeling left in his gut, but he had to outrun the maniac stalker at any cost. He knew him from somewhere, even though he could not put his finger on it, and with Sam’s career, it was very likely that his many enemies had become nothing more than slightly familiar faces by now.

Under the fickle play of the clouds, Sam was forced to use the strongest setting of his windshield wipers to make sure he could see the people under umbrellas and those reckless enough to race across the road in the pouring rain. Many people could not see the two bolting cars headed their way, their sight concealed by the hoods of their coats, while others simply thought the vehicles would stop at the crossings. They were mistaken, and it almost cost them dearly.

Two women screamed as Sam’s left front light barely missed them as they crossed the street. As he sped along the gleaming tarmac and concrete road, Sam continuously flashed his headlights and honked. The blue Taurus did nothing of the sort. The stalker was only interested in one thing — Sam Cleave. Around the sharp curve on Stanton Road, Sam jerked up his handbrake and skidded the car into the curve. It was a trick he knew from his familiarity with the neighborhood, something the virgin did not know. With wailing tires, the Taurus swerved, careening wildly from pavement to pavement. In Sam’s peripheral, he could see the bright sparks of collision between cement pavement and aluminum hubcaps, yet the Taurus stayed steady once he took control of the deviation.

“Shit! Shit! Shit!” Sam sneered, sweating profusely under his thick sweater. There was no other way to lose the madman in his wake. Shooting was not an option. Too many pedestrians and other vehicles used the road for bullets to fly, he reckoned.

Finally, the old high school yard came into view on his left. Sam geared back to bolt through what was left of the diamond mesh fence. It would be easy. The rusty, torn fence was hardly attached to the corner post anymore, leaving a weakness many vagrants discovered long before Sam did. “Aye, that is more like it!” he yelled, and accelerated straight for the sidewalk. “That should confuse you something, hey, fucker?”

Laughing in defiance, Sam veered hard left, bracing himself for the impact of the pavement on his poor car’s front bumper. No matter how prepared Sam thought he was, the collision was tenfold worse. His neck snapped forward along with the crunch of the fender. At the same time, his short rib was brutally introduced to his hipbone, or so it felt, before he soldiered on. Sam’s old Ford suffered the awful scratching of the fence’s rusty end, cleaving at the paint like the nails of a tiger.

Head down, eyes peeking through under the top of his steering wheel, Sam aimed his car at the cracked surface of what was once the tennis courts. Now the flat area only held remnants of demarcation and design, leaving only tufts of grass and wild plants protruding through it. The Taurus came at him with a roar, just when Sam ran out of surface to drive on. Ahead of his speeding, bent car, there was only a low cement wall.

“Oh shit!” he hollered, clenching his teeth.

The little broken wall led to a steep drop on the other side. Beyond that, the old S3 classrooms loomed in sharp red brick. An instant stop that would certainly end Sam’s life. There was no choice but to employ his handbrake turn again, even though it was a little late. The Taurus charged at Sam’s car as if there was a mile of runway to play with. With immense force, the Ford whirled, virtually on two wheels.

The rain impaired Sam’s vision. His stunt through the fence disabled his wipers, and he had only the left wiper blade running — useless to a right-hand drive car’s driver. Still, he hoped that his uncontrolled turn would slow his vehicle sufficiently as not to crash into the classroom building. This was his immediate concern, with the intentions of the Taurus occupant as a close second. Centrifugal force was a furious condition to be in. Much as the motion urged Sam to vomit, its influence was just as effective at keeping it all in.

A clank of metal, accompanied with sudden jerk stop, forced Sam out of his seat. Fortunately for him, his body did not propel through the windshield, but slumped onto the gearshift and most of the passenger seat after the twirling motion ceased.

Only the patter of rain and the tin clicks of a cooling engine sounded in Sam’s ears. His ribs and neck ached terribly, but he was okay. A deep exhale escaped Sam as he realized that he was not too badly injured after all. But suddenly he remembered why he was involved in this calamity in the first place. Keeping his head down to play dead for the stalker, Sam felt the warm trickle of blood emanate from his arm. The skin was torn just under his elbow where his arm slammed against the open ashtray lid between the seats.

He could hear the clumsy footsteps tapping in the puddles of the wet cement. He dreaded the mumbling of the stranger, but the man’s hideous cries made his flesh crawl. Luckily he was only mumbling now, since his target was not fleeing from him. Sam deduced that the man’s terrible cry only came when someone ran from him. It was eerie at least, and Sam kept still in order to fool the weird pursuer.

‘Come a little closer, you bastard,’ Sam thought, as his heart pounded in his ears, mimicking the punch of thunder above. His fingers curled around the butt of his gun. Much as he had hoped that his mock-decease would deter the stranger from bothering or hurting him, the man simply jerked open Sam’s door. ‘Just a little more,’ Sam’s inner voice instructed his quarry, ‘so I can blow your fucking brains out. Nobody will even hear it here in the rain.’

“Sham,” the man said at the door, inadvertently denying Sam’s wish to narrow the distance between them. “Sh-sham.”

Either the madman had a speech impediment or he was mentally retarded, which could explain his erratic behavior. Briefly, a recent report on Channel 8 went through Sam’s mind. He recalled hearing about a patient that escaped from the criminally insane facility at Broadmoor and he wondered if this could be the man. However, on the back of that enquiry came the question of his familiarity with Sam’s name.

In the distance, Sam could hear police sirens. One of the local businesses had to have called the authorities when the car chase ensued through their quarter. He was relieved. This would seal the stalker’s fate, no doubt, and he would be rid of the threat once and for all. At first, Sam thought it was only a one-time misunderstanding, as those that often occur in pubs on Saturday nights usually were. However, the creepy man’s persistence made him more than just a coincidence in Sam’s life.

Louder and louder they came, but the man’s presence was still undeniable. To Sam’s surprised disgust, the man darted in under the car roof and seized the static journalist, gathering him up effortlessly. Suddenly, Sam dropped his charade, but he could not reach his gun in time, and he dropped that as well.

“What in God’s name are you doing, you daft bastard?” Sam shouted angrily as he tried to pry the man’s arms away. It was in such close quarters as these that he finally saw the maniac’s face in broad daylight. Under his fedora hid a face demons would recoil from, a similar horror to his disturbing elocution, but he appeared perfectly sane up close. Above all, the stranger’s terrible strength convinced Sam not to put up a fight this time.

He threw Sam into the passenger seat of his car. Naturally Sam tried the door on the other side to escape, but it was missing its entire lock and handle panel. By the time Sam turned back to try exiting by the driver’s seat, his kidnapper was already starting the engine.

“Hold tight,” is what Sam construed as the man’s command. His mouth was but a slit though the charred skin of his face. That was when Sam realized that his abductor was nor insane, neither had he crawled out of a black lagoon somewhere. He was mutilated, which practically robbed him of his ability to speak and forced him to wear a trench coat and fedora.

‘My God, he reminds me of Darkman,’ Sam thought as he watched the man expertly work blue torque machine. It had been years since Sam read graphic novels or the like, but he remembered the character vividly. As they left the scene, Sam lamented the loss of his vehicle, even if it was a piece of crap from the old days. Besides, before Purdue got hold of his cell phone, it was also an antique from Nokia BC and could do little else than send texts and make quick calls.

“Oh shit! Purdue!” he accidentally exclaimed, remembering that he was supposed to collect the footage and meet with the billionaire in the late afternoon. His kidnapper just looked at him in between evasive motions to get out of Edinburgh’s densely populated areas. “Listen, man, if you are going to kill me, do it. Otherwise, let me out. I have a very urgent meeting and I really don’t care what sort of infatuation you have with me.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” the burned man scoffed, driving like a well-trained Hollywood stunt driver. His words were heavily slurred and his s’s mostly came out as a ‘sh’, but Sam found that a little time in his company could get his ear accustomed to the distinct diction.

The Taurus hopped over the raised pavement markers that lined the striped yellow paint of the road, where they exited the off-ramp onto the highway. Thus far, there were no police vehicles on their trail. They had not arrived yet, when the man took Sam away from the site, and did not know where to begin pursuing.

“Where are we going?” Sam asked, his initial panic slowly turning to frustration.

“A place to talk,” the man replied.

“My God, you look so familiar,” Sam muttered.

“How could you possibly tell?” the kidnapper asked sarcastically. It was clear that his handicap did not mar his attitude, and that made him one of those types — the type that did not give a damn about restrictions. An efficient ally. A deadly enemy.