And he was pleased with himself. When the story-telling time had come, and the joke-telling time, he had done as well as anyone. What matter that it had been automatic, the work of the other being, out of his own control? The point was that he had not only been accepted, he had managed to take advantage of the acceptance and actively to become one of them.
And this afternoon, with the teacher/policeman, that too had been good. Could there possibly be any doubt at all in the teacher/policeman’s mind that he was precisely what he claimed to be? (Some of the things he’d said had been direct quotes from the dead actor, the one whose place he was taking, just as some of the stories he had told tonight had come from the same source. But the other being — and this was strange — the other being was not entirely patterned on the dead actor. It was, for the first time, an amalgam, a combination of people from his past, with the dead actor only one facet. Maybe that was why the being had taken over tonight so readily; it was a more complex creation than any he had done before.)
Thinking of the afternoon’s interview with Captain Sondgard, and the night’s laughter with the other members of the company, the madman smiled and smiled, nearly bursting out loud into laughter. It was all so good!
He couldn’t contain himself, he couldn’t remain motionless. He got to his feet and paced the room, barefoot and in darkness, rubbing his hands together and nodding his head, mumbling to himself as he did when not quite talking to himself out loud. His body seemed filled with electricity; vitality coursed through him. He was strong, strong, stronger than he’d ever been before.
The room couldn’t hold him. He couldn’t be confined now, feeling as he did, he couldn’t be confined by anything. He prowled around the room, touching the walls in the darkness, brushing his nervous hands over the furniture, his eyes staring into the blackness, his smiling mouth mumbling as he talked to himself.
“They’ll never know, they’ll never suspect. I can’t be held, I can’t be questioned. I’m too clever now, I’ll never have to do anything again like the old man and the old woman. My powers are too strong now, they’re stronger and stronger. Nothing can hold me now, nothing can stop me. I can be free now, I can stay away from Doctor Chax. I can be safe now from the cruelty, I can keep away from all that. I won’t ever be caught again, because I’m too strong now. Those who are hateful and vicious will never have the chance to turn on me, because now I will recognize them. And if I have to kill them, if they force me to kill them the way that girl forced me, I can be clever. I didn’t know anything before, that’s why they caught me. I didn’t try to hide or be subtle, I did what had to be done right out in the open. I didn’t understand the world then, I didn’t understand the way they all band together, the way the evil protect each other. I did what had to be done right out in the open, and the rest of the evil ones took revenge on me, they locked me away and they tried to force their wills on me with the shock treatments, and now that can’t happen any more. If I’m forced to it again, if it has to be done, now I know how, now I can keep them from ever finding out it was me. I can be all over the world, I can go anywhere and do anything and they’ll never even suspect me. I can get a mask if I want, I can go out at night to do what has to be done. They can’t ever find me and they can’t ever stop me and they can’t ever get even with me again. I’m too strong for them now, I’m too clever for them now.”
None of it came out in articulated words. He thought the words, and his lips moved, and he made small sounds in his throat, but it was all mumbling, too low to be heard outside the room.
He prowled for ten minutes or more, touching the walls and the furniture, smiling in the darkness, telling himself the same things over and over again, and recounting for himself the part he had played in tonight’s conversation, and telling himself he hadn’t been suspected, and so never would be suspected. He spent ten minutes roaming and muttering, and then the room was just too small to be lived in any more, he could no longer ignore how close together the walls were.
He got dressed again. His movements were unsure, because of the darkness and his excitement, and also because he was still feeling the effects of the beer he had drunk. It had been more than four years since he had had alcohol, and that was probably another reason why the being had been able to take over so readily. Not that he was drunk; but his high spirits were heightened even more by the exhilaration of alcohol.
He didn’t turn the room light on at all. When he was dressed, he crept from his room and locked the door after himself. A twenty-five-watt bulb in a wall socket gave the hallway wan lighting. The madman crept downstairs, not wanting to be noticed. It would seem strange to anyone else, that he should want to go out again, past two o’clock in the morning, but he did have to go. He had to walk outside for a while, with nothing but the sky over him. He had to be able to run if he wanted, and to laugh aloud.
The front door was locked. He left it unlocked behind him when he went out, because he didn’t have a key. He moved silently down off the porch and across the gravel to the road. Then he turned right, away from the Black Lake Lounge, in the direction of town.
As he walked along, the feeling of delight grew and grew in him. Freedom was wonderful! He waved his arms all around, stretching them out away from his body as far as they would go, and his fingertips touched only air. Nothing hemmed him in, nothing. He jumped up into the air, he trotted a few steps, he capered, he danced across the road. Sheltered by the night, defended by his cleverness, protected by his strength, he had won his freedom and he had earned his freedom and now he was enjoying his freedom.
No walls! No heavy-handed dour-faced “nurses”! No locks and bars! No questions! No “treatments”! No orders, no rules, no restraints.
Freedom!
He laughed aloud, he shouted. He capered down the road, dancing and leaping, filled to overflowing with wild joy, shaking himself like any long-caged creature newly released.
He raised his head and shouted out a song of his own invention:
But all at once he did stop. Two overlapping images had come into his mind, drawing together a parallel he had not noticed before now. Two overlapping images. The office of Doctor Chax. The kitchen where Captain Sondgard had questioned them all. The images overlapped, like a double-exposed photograph, joining and blending into one image only at the particular spot where in both instances there was movement. In the office of Doctor Chax — whether he called himself Doctor Reed or Doctor Peterby or Doctor Samuelson, in all the offices so much alike — and in the kitchen while Captain Sondgard was asking his questions, in both places there had been a stillness, a heavy unmoving, all except in one place. The turning of the reels, the one reel turning faster than the other, the tape feeding through the maw of the little machine that gobbled one’s words. He had recognized the tape recorder when first he’d gone in to see Captain Sondgard — it had given him a bad moment, in fact — but then he’d forgotten it, in the relief of knowing that Captain Sondgard could not see through his disguise.