Pride’s Prison

by Donald Schneider

part 2

The abductor stretched his legs for a minute or so outside the van and, when finally satisfied that no one was in sight, opened the van’s rear doors and stepped inside. This was the last hairy moment he had anticipated. He couldn’t risk carrying the boy inside his room uncovered. If someone were to see him, then at least let him or her see him carrying what looked to be a lifeless bundle.

Despite the kid’s pronounced claustrophobia, he would have no choice but to wrap him up in the blanket, covering his entire body and head. He assured the boy that it would only be for a few seconds and demanded of his captive that he be calm in the interim. Nevertheless, he saw the boy’s eyes opened wide with horror when he advised Bobby what he was about to do.

He proceeded rapidly and wrapped the terrified child within the blanket. He then stepped back out of the van, picked up the bundle in both hands and walked briskly to his room’s already opened door. The boy made just a few soft groans in the process, before his abductor closed the door behind them with one of his feet and laid the blanket with the child inside gently on one of the room’s twin beds. He had been surprised how easily he had managed to carry the kid. The boy couldn’t have weighed much over ninety pounds, if that much. At that, the man thought, “I should be so lucky,” while patting his stomach bulging over his belt.

He quickly removed the blanket he had wrapped the boy in and tried to situate his now vigorously squirming and gasping captive on the bed as comfortably as possible. He gingerly placed Bobby’s head on the pillow of the made up bed.

“What a weird situation this is,” the man mused as he watched his captive. He wondered what would happen if the police were to suddenly break in before he could use his escape device. Appearances to the contrary, was what he was doing technically a crime? It would certainly make for interesting case law! It probably wouldn’t come to that, though. After puzzling over the fingerprints, they would probably finally conclude it was some previously unheard of once in a billion fluke.

Of course, DNA evidence wouldn’t enter the picture. They wouldn’t know what to make of his device, and he couldn’t show them or give them the necessary codes. They would probably just toss it as the toy of a crank’s vivid imagination. No, he would probably wind up in some sort of mental facility for the criminally insane. He gave a slight chuckle as such thoughts passed through his mind. It wouldn’t really matter anyway. He didn’t have much time left, regardless where he spent it.

Finally, the man asked the boy in an annoyed tone, “Why can’t you lie still even for a moment?” He continued, “That’s one of the reasons we’re here. That and many other matters. I haven’t much time, so listen carefully, please. I told you I wouldn’t hurt you, and I meant it. I also told you that I would have you home by dinner, and I mean that too. I just want to have a talk with you. I’m sorry I had to resort to these measures, but I was afraid that had I just approached you on the street or in the schoolyard, you would have soon run away from me thinking I’m some kind of kook. At least this way, I have your attention. I’m here to help you, Bobby. Please believe that.”

He paused for a moment and asked, “Can you trust me, Bobby?” The boy’s nod of assent carried about as much conviction as Galileo’s capitulation to the Inquisition had. Still, it was a start.

“I know the gag is bothering you terribly. I want to take it off you now. If I do, do you promise me you won’t scream?” Again, the boy nodded unconvincingly. As insurance, the man added, “If you start to scream, you’ll regret it! Understand?” This time the youngster nodded more firmly. The kidnapper hoped that this had done the trick, as he removed the gag. Bobby immediately began to cough and spittle streaked out his mouth.

His abductor removed his handkerchief and wiped the boy’s mouth and chin. The child remained silent for a few seconds and appeared somewhat calmer. His trembling had seemed to subside. The man said, “That’s a good boy. Lie nice and still. Do you want some water?”

The boy answered softly, but pleadingly, “Please let me go! Please don’t hurt me!”

The adult sighed and responded with as much conviction as he could muster. “Bobby, please listen. I am not going to hurt you. I promise. Like I said, I will take you home in a few hours. I know you’re not a rich kid, so I haven’t kidnapped you for ransom. I just want to talk with you for a while.”

He didn’t feel it necessary to also assure the boy that he wasn’t a child molester. The youngster wouldn’t have had the faintest idea what he was talking about. He knew that in this kid’s world, talks about the facts of life were strictly taboo, and that there were no sex education classes in his school. As incredible as it might seem, at age twelve the boy didn’t completely understand why women got pregnant. He would only have a vague idea about babies having something to do with men and women, like his parents.

Bobby looked thoughtful and seemed to consider. Finally, he asked meekly, “Then, untie me?”

The man thought he had detected a nuance of embarrassment in the boy’s voice, as if he had been ashamed to acknowledge his current helpless state in front of another. That would have been right in character for him, the man thought. The youth’s abductor smiled as he picked up on this and tried mildly taunting the child. “I’ll tell you what. If you manage to get loose on your own, then I won’t tie you up again.”

The offer had the effect upon the boy the adult had hoped for. Bobby shot back impulsively, “Houdini couldn’t get out of this!”

The boy made his observation with an air of defensive indignation. Anger was preferable to terror and closer to the state of reason he desperately needed the youth to come to so he could begin. He decided to attempt to transition into humor. “Well, look at it this way. Consider it a learning experience. At least now you know you can safely rule out being an escape artist as a career option.”

Bobby gave a forced, nervous giggle, as if that had been the reaction he thought his abductor had anticipated.

This was somewhat encouraging. The boy’s captor asked again, “Now, how about some water?” After Bobby nodded, the man walked over to the sink and filled a paper cup with cold water. He said to the boy, “Just sip it slowly. It will make you feel better and take away the horrible taste in your mouth from the gag.” He was surprised when he actually managed to get most of the cup of water into the child’s mouth instead of on the bed. He thought that the kid must have been very thirsty to have tolerated such an indignity, being fed as an infant.

After wiping Bobby’s mouth again, the man continued softly, “I will untie you in a little while. I’m a lot older than you are, and I can’t run after you.”

Suddenly, visions from O. Henry’s “The Ransom of Red Chief” sprang into his mind. He could imagine himself hobbling around on one leg after having had his shin kicked. “When I’m convinced you are no longer afraid of me and won’t try to get away, then I’ll untie you. Okay?”

Bobby asked warily, “What are you going to do with me?”

Again the abductor sighed and answered, “For the last time, young man, will you please pay attention? I just want to talk with you. Afterwards, I am going to take you home safe and sound and, I might add, much better off than you have been in many ways.”

The boy frowned and asked, “Talk with me about what?”

At last, the man thought that the time was right to test the waters. “Well, how about Lisa Morgan? I know you like her. You like her a lot.”

He was surprised to see the boy’s face redden and hear the depth of the indignation exhibited in his rebuttal. “I do not!”

The man quickly recalled that Bobby’s reaction shouldn’t have been unexpected. In his environment, no boy his age would acknowledge having a crush on a girl. He had quite forgotten that. He answered, “It’s okay, Bobby. It’s perfectly natural for you to begin to feel that way towards a girl at your age. It doesn’t make you a ‘dork’.”

“A what?” the boy replied with a puzzled tone.

The man immediately realized his mistake. He made a quick recovery, though it wouldn’t really matter much longer. He answered, “Oh, a ‘dork’ is just a word kids around my way use to tease other kids with.” He tried to think of a comparable word that Bobby would understand from his experiences. He continued with the best he could come up with. “It means something like a sissy.”

“Well, I’m not a sissy or a ‘dork!’” the boy said indignantly. “And I don’t like Lisa Morgan, either!” As if by afterthought, Bobby asked, “And how do you even know who she is, anyway?”

“I know a great many things about you, Bobby,” the abductor responded, beginning now to come to the heart of the matter.

“How? Who are you?” the boy asked in a tone indicative of equal measures of curiosity and alarm.

“I told you. I’m Mr. Schultz.”

“Is that really your name?” the boy asked with more than a note of skepticism. “Are we related?”

The man didn’t answer his questions. Instead he asked, “You like to read, don’t you, Bobby? What books do you enjoy most? Do you still read The Hardy Boys?”

“Well, I used to all the time. I haven’t lately as I’m getting too old for them,” the boy responded.

“So now you read mostly science fiction, right? Who’s your favorite author?”

“Isaac Asimov,” the youth replied, for the first time indicating some real interest in the conversation.

“Have you read his The End of Eternity?” the adult asked, already knowing the answer.

“It’s my favorite book,” Bobby responded.

“Why? What do you like about it?”

“It’s all about time travel. I love time travel stories.”

“So do I, Bobby. I have ever since I was your age.”

They discussed aspects of the book for some minutes before Bobby asked, as if suddenly remembering his situation, “Mr. Schultz, what does this have to do with me? Look, I’ll make you a deal. If you take me home right now, I promise I won’t tell anyone about this. Not ever!”

Oddly enough, the man felt almost touched. He actually believed the boy would keep his word if he agreed. The kid had always been a paradox in that respect. His hyperactive nature had made him into a chatterbox. Some kids at his school had even hung the derisive nickname “motor mouth” on him. Nevertheless, when it came to keeping secrets, Bobby was up there with the best. For reasons the man had never understood, he knew people had often gratuitously confided in him.

The kidnapper asked with a slight chuckle, “Scout’s honor?”

The boy’s reaction puzzled him at first. The kid suddenly turned away from him, rolling around to face the opposite direction. It wasn’t until he heard Bobby reply, “Scout’s honor!” that he noticed his captive trying to make the Scout sign with the fingers of one of his bound hands, as if to make it official. For the first time in ages, the man laughed aloud. For the first time in a long while, he momentarily forgot his problems. For the first time in his life, he felt a feeling he had never known: paternal love.

He suddenly recoiled in horror. Paternal love? This was really becoming bizarre. He had to keep his grip on the situation.

Bobby rolled over on his back and looked up at his abductor. He asked hopefully, “Deal?”

Instead of answering, the man sat down on the bed next to Bobby. He asked the boy with a slight grin, “Bobby, did you ever wonder what you are going to look like when you are older? Say, my age?”

For the next hour, Bobby Schultz lay more still and paid closer attention to another person than he had in all his thinking life. His kidnapper told him that after a hitch in the Navy he had gone to college on the G.I. Bill and discovered that he had a genius for electronics. Over the years, he had accumulated sixteen different patents for electronic equipment, which had made him quite wealthy.

But aside from that, his life had been a miserable failure. He had always been socially awkward and had never had a long-term relationship with a woman. In recent years, he had become progressively more reclusive, spending most of his time working on his life’s obsession. He had just recently made the breakthrough that had eluded him so long. As far as Bob Schultz knew, young Bobby Schultz was looking at the world’s first time traveler. He had come back to visit his twelve-year-old self, to help him change his destiny; to help him escape so much of the pain that his older self had experienced in his lifetime.

Schultz had seen the look in the child’s eyes after he first began. He knew it was a look of horror that the boy felt finding himself a prisoner of a madman. But as Schultz continued, he saw the look on Bobby’s face gradually transform to one that indicated he just might be willing to consider the possibility. He had picked age twelve to visit himself because that had been the youngest age he thought that his younger self just might be willing to accept what was happening. Despite the boy’s mediocre performance at school, he knew him to be exceptionally bright. It had only been his myriad emotional problems that had prevented him from shining as brightly as he could have.

He explained to the boy that before he discovered how to time travel, scientists weren’t certain if it could be done. Einstein’s equations indicated that it was possible to travel into the past, but that something called the “grandfather paradox” seemed to be a barrier. To Schultz’s surprise and delight, Bobby already knew what that was from the Asimov book. Since Schultz was here, obviously time travel was possible.

Schultz explained to the boy that what he thought was happening was that by intervening in his past life, he was establishing what scientists referred to as a new “timeline.” This meant that in Schultz’s original timeline, the one he had just left in 2004, events would go on as before, unaffected by his traveling in time. This was why he had no new instant memories of what Bobby was currently experiencing in his abduction.

In Bobby’s timeline in 1967, however, events would change; profoundly for him, and perhaps for some others down the line a bit, and peripherally for many others. Moreover, Bobby’s new timeline would exist separately and independently within another dimension of reality, concurrently with Schultz’s original timeline. In effect, Schultz had created an alternate, parallel universe to his own. The boy seemed for the most part to comprehend. His love of science fiction helped his ability to credit what to most other kids his age would have seemed crazy.

Schultz then got down to personal matters, the reason why he had come so far. He recounted to his younger self in meticulous detail all aspects of his life to age twelve. Not only did he tell the boy details that he might have gained with the help of a private investigator, but aspects of the child’s most private inner life as well. He told him of his secret fears and desires and in such detail that at times the boy would make a feeble effort to interrupt him from embarrassment with weak and unconvincing denials. He told the youth things that no one could know but himself, not even his family.

Proceed to part 3...