With as much speed as I could muster, I began to clamber up the sheer face, pushing my weakened arms and legs to the limit. It was with some surprise that I remembered my former path of ascent — the holds came quickly and naturally, and my progress was speedy. Under normal conditions, I am certain, I would have been unable to find the strength to climb that cliff, but extreme circumstances draw out hidden powers in men, and my aching body proved more capable than I could possibly have hoped.
I paused on a ledge to catch my breath and give my fingers a break. The wind, which had died down to nothing some minutes before, now somehow seemed deader still, as if time itself had stopped, and not merely the motion of the air. I had reached the roof level of the forest canopy, and the treetops stretched out in all directions like a stubblefield. If I didn’t know better, I might have thought it would be possible to walk across it, this landscape of gentle silver swells, or to sail it, navigating around those few signs of human habitation below: radio antennas, church steeples, office buildings. It was a heartening, restful sight.
But for now, my rest was over. The motionless air pressed in. Every sound was magnified — my shoes on the rock, my shallow breaths. I turned back to the wall, found my handholds, and climbed.
As I came closer to the summit, I slowed, and concentrated on keeping quiet. I hoped for a breeze, to cover the noise of my ascent, but there was nothing. Soon I could detect the cliff’s edge just above me, and I knew that Doctor Avery Stiles was there — possibly at the northern lip of the “ankle,” standing with his back to me, and possibly just above, waiting for my face to appear, waiting to send me to my death with a single kick.
For one brief moment, I wondered if it was all really worth it, if I should simply turn back and leave all this behind — the woods, the castle, the rock, the Doctor. I doubted the very reasoning behind my entire mission: was it absolutely necessary to have come out here in pursuit of the old man? If Doctor Stiles wanted to kill me, then why didn’t he come into my house while I slept, and do away with me there? There had been ample opportunity for him to take me by surprise, to attack when my guard was down. Indeed, his capture of me was entirely attributable to my encroachment into his territory. If anything, it was I who was the aggressor.
And what would I do once I’d gained the upper hand? Would I attempt to extract some promise from him, that he would never bother me again? An admission that he was no longer my master — that I had absorbed, then exceeded, his tutelage? Or would I merely kill him?
Moreover, was this the reason I had come to Gerrysburg? To find an old man and murder him? Clinging there on the rock face, I cast my mind back to the day I decided to return to my home town. Obviously, I believed I had unfinished business here — I thought that, by revisiting the site of my tutelage, I might somehow clarify my memories of those strange years, and soothe the humiliations of the recent past. But specifically how this would work, I didn’t know. In fact, I didn’t believe that I’d ever known; and the details of my decision to begin this adventure seemed hazier in memory by the minute. I shifted my position incrementally, seeking a more comfortable hold, and wondered about my motives and desires. In my life, I had dedicated myself to understanding the motives of others, through careful study of their words and actions, as had Doctor Stiles before me. But could it be that neither of us had ever really known himself — indeed, that such understanding was impossible? That this mad adventure in the forest was the product of little more than blind instinct, a pathetic expression of formless paranoia and masculine pride?
I felt rather dejected at this moment, and once again considered turning back. But I shook off my doubts and began to build my resolve once more. To succumb to confusion would be to fall directly into Doctor Stiles’s hands. The danger he represented, after all, had always been subtle, insidious, and difficult to pin down. He controlled others by the threat of action, not by action itself. His very existence was the threat — indeed, he was most dangerous when he was doing nothing, allowing his victims’ imagination to run wild with the terrifying possibilities. My job, as I saw it, was to neutralize this danger, and to shirk that duty would represent a grave cowardice.
With these thoughts still ringing in my head, I drew a deep breath, reached up to the final handholds, and swung myself onto the roof of the rock.
He was there, right where I had imagined him, facing north and peering down at the clearing he mistakenly thought I might, at any moment, re-cross. The sound of my shoes scraping the rock surface spun him around. At last, I faced my nemesis.
The moonlight revealed a wry smile on that ageless face; the Doctor relaxed his stance and took two casual steps forward before he stopped suddenly and raised his hands into the air.
“Eric!” he called out. “What are you doing up here?”
“I’ve come to kill you, Professor.”
It wasn’t until I’d said it aloud that I realized it was true — the Doctor’s death was indeed the real objective of my mission. I felt a long-missing piece of my life’s puzzle falling at last into place. The words hung between us, awaiting a response.
He gave his head a rueful nod, still smiling, as though, in disappointing him, I had nevertheless confirmed some idea he had long harbored about me. He said, “I haven’t been a professor for years, Eric — they took that away from me soon after they took you.” His voice, undiminished by time, carried flawlessly through the motionless air. It was as though he were standing beside me. He took another step closer.
“Don’t move,” I said, reaching for my quiver. “I don’t intend to listen to your explanations. The time for those is over.”
But Doctor Stiles merely shook his head. “You were an excellent pupil, Eric. I had high hopes for you.”
“You should not have made me your enemy, then,” I replied, and I drew forth my bow and nocked an arrow — the arrow that had murdered the white deer.
The Doctor’s grin widened. “Ah! I see you have a bit of my handiwork, there,” he said.
“So it was you.”
“Of course it was,” he replied. And then, after a moment’s pause, he relaxed his smile, his eyes narrowed, and he went on. “Eric, I can see your mind is made up about me, and about what you’re doing here. But I want to tell you that destroying me is not the answer. In fact, you don’t even know what the question is, do you?”
I drew back the arrow. My fingers ached from the climb, and my right arm trembled.
“You think that by taking my life, your own will be restored.” He lowered his hands, and slipped them into the pockets of his pants. Indeed, he appeared relaxed, as if I were no danger at all. “The fact is, Eric, that you cannot restore your own life by killing me.
“Furthermore, your life doesn’t need to be restored,” he went on, edging away now, toward the northern lip of the rock. My aim tracked his slow movement. “It merely needs to be seized. And my life — my life was never here to be taken.”