Strange Highways

him."
     "But don't I have a responsibility to-"
     "Ignore him."
     "I can't."
     "You must," Fauvel said.
     "What if he's serious?"
     "He's not."
     "What if he's really going to kill me?"
     "He won't."
     "How can you be sure?" Chase was perspiring heavily. Great dark circles stained the underarms of his shirt and plastered the cotton to his back.
     Fauvel smiled at the blue terrier and shifted his gaze to a glass greyhound blown in amber. The smug, self-assured look was back. "I can be so sure of that, because Judge does not exist."
     Chase did not immediately understand the reply. When he grasped the import of it, he didn't like it. "You're saying what - that this Judge isn't real?"
     "Is that what you're saying, Chase?"
     "No."
     "You're the one who said it."
     "I didn't hallucinate him. None of this. The part about the murder and the girl are in the papers."
     "Oh, that was real enough," Fauvel said. "But these phone calls ... I don't know. What do you think, Chase?"
     Chase was silent.
     "Were they real phone calls?"
     "Yes. "
     "Or imagination?"
     "No."
     "Delusions of-"
     "No."
     Fauvel said, "I've noticed for some time that you have begun to shake off this unnatural desire for privacy and that you're gradually facing the world more squarely, week by week."
     "I haven't noticed that."
     "Oh, yes. Subtly, perhaps, but you've grown curious about the rest of the world. You're beginning to be restless about getting on with life."
     Chase didn't feel restless.
     He felt cornered.
     "Perhaps you're even beginning to experience a reawakening of your sex drive, though not much yet. Guilt overwhelmed you, because you hadn't been punished for the things that happened in that tunnel, and you didn't want to lead a normal life until you felt that you'd suffered enough."
     Chase disliked the doctor's smug self-assurance. Right now all he wanted was to get out of there, to get home and close the door and open the bottle.
     Fauvel said, "You couldn't accept the fact that you wanted to taste the good things of life again, and you invented Judge because he represented the remaining possibility of punishment. You had to make some excuses for being forced into life again, and Judge worked well in this respect too. You would, sooner or later, have to take the initiative to stop him. You could pretend that you still wanted seclusion in which to mourn but were no longer being permitted that indulgence."
     "All wrong," Chase said. "Judge is real."
     "Oh, I think not." Fauvel smiled at the amber greyhound. "If you really and truly thought this man was real, that these calls to you were real - then why wouldn't you go to the police rather than to your psychiatrist?"
     Chase had no answer. "You're twisting things."
     "No. Just showing you the straight truth."
     "He's real."
     Fauvel stood and stretched. "I recommend you go home and forget Judge. You don't need an excuse to live like a normal human being. You have suffered enough, Ben, more than enough. You made a terrible mistake. All right. But in that tunnel, you were in an incredibly stressful situation, under unendurable pressures. It was a mistake , not a calculated savagery. For the lives you took, you saved others. Remember that."
     Chase stood, bewildered, no longer perfectly sure that he did know what was real and what was not.
     Fauvel put his arm around Chase's shoulders and walked him to the door. "Friday at three," the doctor said. "Let's see how far out of your hole you've come by then. I think you're going to make it, Ben. Don't despair."
     Miss Pringle escorted him to the outer door of the waiting room and closed it after him, leaving him alone in the hallway.
     "Judge is real," Chase said to no one at all. "Isn't he?"

    5

AT SIX O'CLOCK, CHASE WAS SITTING ON THE EDGE OF HIS BED BY THE nightstand and telephone, sipping Jack Daniel's. He put the drink down, wiped his sweaty hands on his slacks, cleared his throat so that his voice wouldn't catch when he tried to speak.
     At five minutes past six he began to feel uneasy. He thought of going downstairs to ask Mrs. Fielding what time her clocks showed, in the event that his own was not functioning