Time Thieves

not going mad. If there were other people involved, if there were some point to all this, if it was not just his imagination, perhaps the world was still solidly beneath his feet.
        
        “Get the picnic cooler,” he said.
        
        “What?”
        
        “I'll start the car; we're getting out of here.”
        
        For the first time, she noticed his scratched and bleeding chest, the red welts along his arms where thorns had done their work. “Good lord! What happned to you?” She touched the blemishes tenderly. Her long, tan fingers were cool.
        
        “Later,” he snapped. He was gruff with her, but he could not help it. He couldn't deny the urgency which had possessed him. “Hurry!”
        
        Outside, the trees had taken on a sinister, malevolent appearance. The upward regions of the mountain housed demons, the lower regions warlocks, things in the cover of the greenery which amused themselves with tricks played on mere mortals.
        
        By the time she hurried outside with the hamper, he had already started the car and had come around to open her door. He took the lunch from her and shoved the styrofoam container onto the back seat. He helped her in, closed her door and ran around to the driver's seat.
        
        “What are you so frightened of?” she asked, not fully comprehending even the little bit she had seen.
        
        “I was watched while I was in the woods. Maybe the same man who was in the restaurant last night-and who watched our house from the lawn.”
        
        “Watched our house?”
        
        “In a minute,” he said, turning his full attention to the car.
        
        They left the cabin and Old Cannon more swiftly than was prudent, considering the winding roads and the precipice always at hand on their right. He did not even take time to go back and recover his shirt where he had taken it off and dropped it while cutting brush. He had the feeling that, if he went back there, he might leave Della waiting in the car with the picnic hamper for ever and ever and ever…
        

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    IV
        
        
        The following afternoon, Pete got gas and oil in the car and ended up in an argument with the attendant over the change from a twenty dollar bill. He was certain he had been short-changed and was embarrassed and further angered to find that he had not been. Feeling like an ass, he screeched out of the station lot and almost struck a northbound Chevrolet.
        
        That night, he sat by the bedroom window, in the dark, while Della tossed and turned and slept and pretended to sleep.
        
        But there was no strange man watching the house. At times, he was all but certain that he had seen a flicker of movement by the hedge or down along the curb where scattered oak trees offered some degree of shelter. But a closer look never revealed anything out of place.
        
        Once, having fallen asleep with his head on his arms and his arms on the window sill, he came awake, snuffling with some undefined fright. He snapped his head up and looked onto the lawn. He would have sworn that, in that first instant, there had been a face pressed against the glass, looking in at him. But there was nothing out there except the night, the wind and the occasional pulse of fireflies. No one could have moved so quickly, in just a fraction of a second. It had to be part of a dream.
        
        Eventually the morning came.
        
        Wednesday was uneventful. He wanted to return to the cabin and prowl around it some more, but he could not build up his courage for that. Instead, they passed the day together and spent the evening at the movies. There, Pete bought three bags of popcorn when they were only two of them to eat it. They laughed about his absent-mindedness, but the incident put him on edge.
        
        He only watched the lawn for a short while that night Again, the stranger did not appear.
        
        On Thursday, he was the stranger. At breakfast, he drank Della's orange juice as well as his own, but he could not remember drinking more than a single glass. As they day progressed, this confusion of numerical perception continued until, eventually, he became so confused with the minutest bits of day-to-day living that he doubted his sanity.
        
        At Porter-Mullion's building downtown, on his way to check in at the office for a few