'No.'
'She could have lost her mind. Unbalanced her permanently.'
'Possibly. But unlikely. She was a strong-willed woman.'
'But you broke her.'
'Yes. It was a journey she was ready to take. We'd talked of going to face her fear. So here was I, arranging for Cheryl to do just that. Nothing much really.'
'You forced her to do it. She wouldn't have gone otherwise.'
'True. It was an education for her.'
'So now you're a teacher?'
Steve wished he'd been able to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. But it was there. Sarcasm; anger; and a little fear.
'Yes, I'm a teacher,' Quaid replied, looking at Steve obliquely, his eyes not focused. 'I'm teaching people dread.'
Steve stared at the floor. 'Are you satisfied with what you've taught?'
'And learned, Steve. I've learned too. It's a very exciting prospect: a world of fears to investigate. Especially with intelligent subjects. Even in the face of rationalization —'
Steve stood up. 'I don't want to hear any more.'
'Oh? OK.'
'I've got classes early tomorrow.'
'No.'
'What?'
A beat, faltering.
'No. Don't go yet.'
'Why?' His heart was racing. He feared Quaid, he'd never realized how profoundly.
'I've got some more books to give you.'
Steve felt his face flush. Slightly. What had he thought in that moment? That Quaid was going to bring him down with a rugby tackle and start experimenting on his fears?
No. Idiot thoughts.
'I've got a book on Kierkegaard you'll like. Upstairs. I'll be two minutes.'
Smiling, Quaid left the room.
Steve squatted on his haunches and began to sheaf through the photographs again. It was the moment when Cheryl first picked up the rotting meat that fascinated him most. Her face wore an expression completely uncharacteristic of the woman he had known. Doubt was written there, and confusion, and deep —Dread.
It was Quaid's word. A dirty word. An obscene word, associated from this night on with Quaid's torture of an innocent girl.
For a moment Steve thought of the expression on his own face, as he stared down at the photograph. Was there not some of the same confusion on his face? And perhaps some of the dread too, waiting for release.
He heard a sound behind him, too soft to be Quaid.
Unless he was creeping.
Oh, God, unless he was —A pad of chloroformed cloth was clamped over Steve's mouth and his nostrils. Involuntarily, he inhaled and the vapours stung his sinuses, made his eyes water.
A blob of blackness appeared at the corner of the world, just out of sight, and it started to grow, this stain, pulsing to the rhythm of his quickening heart.
In the centre of Steve's head he could see Quaid's voice as a veil. It said his name.
'Stephen.'
Again.
'— ephen.'
'— phen.'
'— hen.'
'en.'
The stain was the world. The world was dark, gone away. Out of sight, out of mind.
Steve fell clumsily amongst the photographs.
When he woke up he was unaware of his consciousness. There was darkness everywhere, on all sides. He lay awake for an hour with his eyes wide before he realized they were open.
Experimentally, he moved first, his arms and his legs, then his head. He wasn't bound as he'd expected, except by his ankle. There was definitely a chain or something similar around his left ankle. It chafed his skin when he tried to move too far.
The floor beneath him was very uncomfortable, and when he investigated it more closely with the palm of his hand he realized he was lying on a huge grille or grid of some kind. It was metal, and its regular surface spread in every direction as far as his arms would reach. When he poked his arm down through the holes in this lattice he touched nothing. Just empty air falling away beneath him.
The first infra-red photographs Quaid took of Stephen's confinement pictured his exploration. As Quaid had expected the subject was being quite rational about his situation. No hysterics. No curses. No tears. That was the challenge of this particular subject. He knew precisely what was going on; and he would respond logically to his fears. That would surely make a more difficult mind to break than Cheryl's.
But how much more rewarding the results would be when he did crack. Would his soul not open up then, for Quaid to see and touch? There was so much there, in the man's interior, he wanted to study.
Gradually Steve's eyes became accustomed to the darkness.
He was imprisoned in what appeared to be some kind of shaft. It was, he estimated, about twenty feet wide, and completely round. Was it some kind of air-shaft, for a tunnel, or an underground factory? Steve's mind mapped the area around Pilgrim Street, trying to pinpoint the most likely place for Quaid to have taken him. He could think of nowhere.
Nowhere.
He was lost in a place he couldn't fix or recognize. The shaft had no corners to focus his eyes on; and the walls offered no crack or hole to hide his consciousness in.
Worse, he was lying spread-eagled on a grid that hung over this shaft. His eyes could make no impression on the darkness beneath him: it seemed that the shaft might be bottomless. And there was only the thin network of the grill, and the fragile chain that shackled his ankle to it, between him and falling.
He pictured himself poised under an empty black sky, and over an infinite darkness. The air was warm and stale. It dried up the tears that had suddenly sprung to his eyes, leaving them gummy. When he began to shout for help, which he did after the tears had passed, the darkness ate his words easily.
Having yelled himself hoarse, he lay back on the lattice. He couldn't help but imagine that beyond his frail bed, the darkness went on forever. It was absurd, of course. Nothing goes on forever, he said aloud.
Nothing goes on forever.
And yet, he'd never know. If he fell in the absolute blackness beneath him, he'd fall and fall and fall and not see the bottom of the shaft coming. Though he tried to think of brighter, more positive, images, his mind conjured his body cascading down this horrible shaft, with the bottom a foot from his hurtling body and his eyes not seeing it, his brain not predicting it.
Until he hit.
Would he see light as his head was dashed open on impact? Would he understand, in the moment that his body became offal, why he'd lived and died?
Then he thought: Quaid wouldn't dare. 'Wouldn't dare!' he screeched. 'Wouldn't dare!'
The dark was a glutton for words. As soon as he'd yelled into it, it was as though he'd never made a sound.
And then another thought: a real baddie. Suppose Quaid had found this circular hell to put him in because it would never be found, never be investigated? Maybe he wanted to take his experiment to the limits.
To the limits. Death was at the limits. And wouldn't that be the ultimate experiment for Quaid? Watching a man die: watching the fear of death, the mother lode of dread, approach. Sartre had written that no man could
