Before the rain ...

This story was written in an attempt to make the villain of the movie The Hitcher a bit more sympathetic. It was started as a bet, to see if it could be done. It's not necessary to watch the movie before reading the story, but it helps. The only thing you need to know is that the murderer in the movie calls himself John Ryder, but it's a name he took from someone else.

Before the rain …

“Can I have a word with you?”

Steve looked up at the physician who had just come in accompanied by a nurse.  At first it didn’t quite register what the doctor had said.  Steve saw his mouth move, he saw the ugly black mole near the corner of his mouth, but he wasn’t able to understand what he was saying.  He ran his hand through his short, greying hair and looked back at the body of his wife still attached to the machines that were keeping her alive.  The bruises on her face stood out in a livid dark blue against her pale skin and her blonde hair was plastered against her forehead.  A single tear was drying on her right cheek.

He held her hand in his.  It felt dry, already lifeless, but he couldn’t bring himself to let go.  As long as he held on she couldn’t leave him, could she?

“Mr Moore,” the doctor insisted, “I really think we need to speak.”

Steve slowly turned his head round to the doctor again and shook his head.

“I can’t leave her,” he said. “Not now, she might come round.”

The doctor shook his head.  “She is stable for the moment.  Nurse Walker will stay with her.  It is very important I speak with you.”

Steve again looked at his wife.  “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” he said softly.  He laid down her hand carefully on the covers and kissed her cheek, then he got up and walked out of the door, while the nurse took his place.

He followed the doctor into the long drab-green painted corridor and through another door behind which there was a tiny office.  Apart from a desk and two chairs it was empty.  The doctor offered him one of the chairs and asked if he wanted coffee.  Steve shook his head.  He had been drinking coffee since he had come into the hospital hours ago and the mere thought of any more made his stomach churn.

“This is very hard for me to say,” the doctor started.  Steve watched his face and knew what was coming.  He had known from the moment he had set foot in that hospital room where they had taken Ruth.

“One of the blows to her head crushed the skull and caused internal bleeding, which we can do nothing about,” the doctor continued.  “I’m afraid she is never going to regain consciousness.  Her brain is damaged too badly. The machines are the only things that are keeping her alive at the moment.”

Steve looked at him.  He knew that what the doctor said should make him sad, should make him feel something, anything at all, but there was nothing but this big empty black hole inside him into which all his feeling seemed to have disappeared for good.

“The only thing we can do at the moment is keep on monitoring her and see to it that she isn’t suffering any pain,” the doctor went on.

Steve swallowed hard and his breathing became difficult. “How long …,” he started, but his voice sounded strange to his ears and he couldn’t continue.

The doctor shrugged.  “A few hours, a few weeks, months even.  It’s very hard to tell in these sorts of cases.”

Cases! The word made the anger rise up in his throat like bile. Ruth was not just a case; she was his wife and she was lying there, kept alive by those machines, just because she had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

***

“You’re dinner is in the oven,” Ruth called out to him from the kitchen.  Steve mumbled something from behind his newspaper.  It was Ruth’s yoga night and he didn’t like her going out alone, but tonight he was really tired and he didn’t want to go out again and take her to her classes as he usually did and wait for her in the bar on the other side of the road until she had finished.

Ruth came through the doorway from the kitchen, taking off her apron and pulling the elastic band from her blond hair so it fell in soft waves down her face.

“I said your dinner is in the oven,” she repeated.  “Didn’t you hear me?”

“Yes, I did,” he said, putting away his paper.  “Can’t you stay home tonight?”

She threw her apron on a chair and sat down in his lap, wrapping her arms around his neck.  She laughed and her grey eyes flashed teasingly.  “You can do without me for a few hours.”

“Not really,” he murmured and he pulled her close, kissing her long and hard.  When he finally released her, her cheeks were flushed and her eyes gleamed mischievously.  “Oh, no,” she laughed, “I know what you are trying to do and it’s not going to work, mister!”

He grinned and pulled her closer, breathing in the scent of her hair.  She rested her head upon his shoulder.

“Don’t go,” he said.  “I’m tired. We could watch a movie, have a glass of wine …”

She chuckled.  “I think you are after something completely different.”

He smiled the crooked smile which totally transformed his face and which had been the first thing Ruth had been attracted to when they met.

***

Steve was amazed that Ruth had even wanted to look at him twice.  He had been forty-four when they met and his first wife had left him some years before for a neighbour in a flashy business suit and the latest Blueberry.  After that he had drifted from girlfriend to girlfriend without finding anyone he could really relate to and he had understood in retrospect that his marriage had been dwindling for a long time.

He hadn’t wanted to go to the birthday party.  Colleagues were people you worked with and although he got on well with most of them, he had no particular desire to see them in his spare time as well.  He always ended up talking about work anyway, and after a long day he just wanted to relax with a beer and talk about football or something.

After the divorce he had stopped seeing most of his friends as well, because he couldn’t bear the way they talked to him about his ex-wife and the look of pity some of them had in their eyes.  He hadn’t felt particularly bad about the whole thing; in a way it had been a relief when the marriage ended, but when he tried to explain, he knew they found it hard to believe him.  He was becoming a bit of a recluse, but he didn’t mind that, really. It was easier than trying to keep up with the things other people seemed to be involved in.  He had considered getting out of the birthday party en pretending he had the flu or something, but in the end he had decided against that, because it would have been very difficult to go to work the next day looking fine.  Moreover, he really hated making up things like that.  In his experience such things always backfired in one way or another.

It was raining.  A gentle, persistent rain that drenched him even on the short walk from the car park to the restaurant where the party was being held. The weather was mild and the smell of freshly mown grass was in the air.  He wished he could just go on walking, that he could leave the life he lived, his tedious job, his boring colleagues and most of all the loneliness he was probably going to have to live with for the rest of his life.  But instead he walked up the steps to the entrance, wide glass double doors with gold lettering. The carpet in the hall was dark blue and felt soft under his feet. There was a young woman behind a desk on the right and a cloakroom on the left.  He never felt particularly at home in surroundings like this and although the woman was very good-looking, she seemed cold and aloof, looking at him as if he were something nasty under her shoe.

He told her who he was and what he came for and she told him where to go.  He felt awkward and out of place and wished there were someone with him so he didn’t have to go in alone.

The bar stood in shrill contrast to the entrance hall.  The lighting was subdued and the carpets were a deep burgundy red.  A chrome bar, chrome barstools and chrome tables showed that someone had hired an interior decorator, who had wanted to show off his knowledge, but who had actually just left school and had been very cheap.  Steve knew he shouldn’t be so cynical.  The person who had been doing the decorating had probably done his best and was most likely going to be one of the leading people in his field.  He greeted some people he worked with and congratulated the guy whose birthday it was.  He then found a corner at the farthest end of the bar and talked for a while with one of the IT-guys but by the time he was on his third beer he started getting really bored. It was too early to leave.  It was all just the same old gossip, but he didn’t want to be impolite so he nursed his beer and listened to the conversation droning on around him.  Just after ten he looked at his watch again and decided to call it a day.  If he hurried he might be able to catch a late night movie on the telly.

He walked towards the back of the bar to where the restrooms were and was pleased to see there was a narrow corridor leading to the main entrance hall.  It meant he would be able to slip away unnoticed without having to go back in.

While he was washing his hands he looked at himself in the mirror over the basin.  His short, dark-blond hair started greying and the three-day stubble he had was grey too, but he was still in pretty good shape for his age.  His hooded green eyes were a bit watery from being in the smoky atmosphere of the bar too long, but to someone else they were still striking and when he smiled his whole face could light up and he looked ten years younger.  But when he looked at himself in the mirror that was not what he saw.  He was looking at an aging man, bored with his life, and who wasn’t looking forward to the rest of it with any form of pleasant anticipation.  The string of short-term girlfriends and one-night stands didn’t excite him very much any more and he could suddenly understand why people lost the will to carry on.

He realised he was depressed and wondered vaguely if it would be any use trying to get help, but then decided against it.  Whatever therapy he was going to choose wasn’t going to change a thing about his life, was it?

He dried his hands, walked through the corridor and into the entrance hall where he paused for a moment to get his coat.  He fished his cigarettes from his pocket, took one out and put it in his mouth while he walked to the door.  The chilly blonde behind the desk shot him a warning glance, but he knew it was a non-smoking area and he gave her a fat wink that made her blush with indignation.

Still grinning he pushed through the glass door while lighting his cigarette, but because he wasn’t looking where he was going, he collided with someone who was standing under the awning at the top of the steps.

Red wine spilled down the front of his raincoat, dripping like blood on the tips of his shoes.  He heard someone draw in a sharp breath.

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” a woman’s voice exclaimed.

“You bloody should be …!” he started, looking up straight into a pair of concerned grey eyes.  The eyes belonged to a slender woman with blond hair that fell in soft waves along her face.  She had high cheekbones and a wide, generous mouth.  She was wearing a silky green dress that shimmered when she moved.  She was still holding a glass in her hand but it was totally empty now.

“I’m truly sorry,” she said again, not knowing his anger had evaporated, lost like clouds in a summer sun.

“No,” he told her, “it is I who should apologise.”

Her eyes widened in amazement.  “Whatever for?” she asked.  “I ruined your coat and probably your shoes as well.  Red wine doesn’t come out, you know.”

Her voice was lower than you would expect.  He looked down at his coat and shoes and a slow smile suddenly lit up his face.

“I wasn’t really looking where I was going and besides, it was high time I bought something new anyway.”

Until that moment she had only seen a rather grumpy middle-aged man, but the smile took years off him.  She suddenly saw the boy he once must have been.

“But you must let me pay for it,” she said.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he answered.  “As I said, it was high time I got something new anyway.  But there is one thing you CAN do for me.”

She looked doubtfully at him, expecting some kind of pass.

“Will you join me for a cup of coffee?” he asked.  “I have just been at a bloody boring party and I could definitely use some good company for a change. I think there is a nice coffee shop just across the road.”

He saw relief in her eyes.  “Who says I’m not a very boring person?” she asked, but he could already see she was not going to refuse.  He smiled again.

“Somehow I doubt that,”  he said.  “Besides, if I go home now I have only a plant to talk to, and believe me, there is nothing more boring than that.”

She grinned.  “Give me a moment to get my coat.”

When she had left he wondered if she was going to come back.  He didn’t know why he had asked her like that, it could have scared the hell out of her.  Well, of course he did know, but she was way out of his league.  A classy lady, at least fifteen years his junior and judging from the expensive silk dress she was wearing, probably someone with a very rich daddy.  He sighed, flicked his cigarette butt over the railing and listened to the rain on the awning.

***

“Did you hear what I said?”

Steve watched the mole move again.  He knew the doctor was talking to him but he still couldn’t seem to focus on his words.  They simply would not register.  He heard the blood pumping in his ears.  He saw a fly crawling down the wall behind the doctor’s head, but everything he saw or heard or sensed, seemed to be remote from him.  He felt like he was looking at the world from behind a window and it wouldn’t matter if he would talk or scream, because nobody was going to hear him anyway.

The doctor loomed over him, a concerned look in his eyes.

“Mr Moore, are you all right?”

He was holding a cup of water and Steve looked up.  He saw the water rippling whenever the doctor made a small movement, he saw the tiny black hairs on the back of his hand and he thought that if the man wasn’t going to shut his mouth very soon, he was going to do it for him.  The anger was still there, like a boiling furnace in the pit of his stomach.  His brain knew the doctor was not to blame but the anger wasn’t something he could control anymore.  Slowly he got up.  He felt like he was drunk but he managed to steady himself.

“I’m going back to my wife.”  He wondered vaguely why his voice was sounding so normal.  The doctor wanted to say something else, but he waved him off. His wife was dying. What else was there to say?

***

She told him her name was Ruth and she wasn’t as young as he had thought initially.  She was thirty-one and she was just starting to make a name for herself as an artist.  Her paintings were selling very well and she was having her first exhibition in a small but long-established gallery. 

Steve sat opposite her at the table in a dark corner of the coffee shop and just listened to her talking.  He had always preferred listening to talking himself and after the second cup of coffee he was cursing himself for having asked her to go with him.  After the third he wondered how he would ever be able to let her walk out of his life again.  He didn’t believe in love at first sight.  He didn’t even know if he believed in love.  Lust at first sight, now that was something he understood and since his wife had left him he’d had no problems bedding the women he liked.  He never made a secret of the fact that he didn’t want a long-term relationship.  The women he associated with didn’t seem to mind and he always stayed on good terms with them.

Somehow Ruth was different.  She managed to tear down the walls he had so carefully built around himself, without even knowing what she was doing to him.  Yes, she was beautiful but not more so than most of the women he had known.  He couldn’t explain what it was.  He didn’t want to explain.  He just knew he didn’t want her to go.

“Are you listening?” she asked.  A solemn look had appeared on her face.  “I’m sorry if I have been rambling on, but that happens sometimes when I’m a bit nervous.”

He smiled because her honesty was disarming.

“Why would you be nervous?” he asked.

She smiled too.

“It’s been a while since I was out with a handsome man like you.”

Was she really flirting with him?  He could hardly believe it.  “Flattery will get you nowhere,” he grunted, stirring sugar into his coffee.

She grinned.  “Why not?”

He had not expected that question and he had to think carefully before he answered.  He decided to be honest.

“Because I don’t like it.”  He paused and then went on.  “I’d like it better if you told me the truth instead of trying to flatter me.”

Her smile disappeared and she looked at him earnestly.

“You don’t think I was telling the truth?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“Then why do you think I am sitting here with you?” she asked.

“Because you poured wine all over me and decided it was easier having a coffee with me than having to deal with the hassle of someone who is pissed off.”

He expected her to get up and leave.  He wanted her to get up and leave.  That would make things a lot easier, but she didn’t.  She leaned back in her chair and looked at him.

“Why do you have such a low opinion of yourself?” she asked.

Again it was a question he had not expected and it took him a few seconds to answer.

“It’s not that I have a low opinion of myself as such,” he finally said.  “It’s more my low opinion of people in general, myself included.”

She looked at him pensively, taking her time.  “So what is it you expect from me?”

Her grey eyes looked searchingly into his, unwaveringly, and somehow also very trusting although he couldn’t think of a reason why that should be so.  He had done nothing to deserve it.

“Nothing,” he said quickly, too quickly.

She sighed.

“Okay, then you can call me a taxi,” she said, but she didn’t get up and still looked in his eyes.

“I want you to stay,” he finally said.

She smiled again.

“Now that’s an honest answer at last.  Why?”

He suddenly had to laugh too.

“Bloody hell, woman! You certainly know how to confuse a man.  Well, if it’s honesty you want,  I think you’re gorgeous and I haven’t felt like this in a long time.  To be totally honest while I’m at it, I really don’t want to feel like this.  Too much of a hassle. Besides, you will now probably think I’m a dirty old man!”

She grinned.  “You’re not exactly my idea of a dirty old man.”

He wetted his lips with the tip of his tongue, a habit he didn’t even know he possessed.

“I need a cigarette,” he said.

***

Nothing had changed since he had left the hospital room.  Ruth hadn’t moved and the machines were still bleeping their endless monotonous countdown to the inevitable end.  The nurse only had to glance once at Steve’s  face before she quickly disappeared without having said a word.  He sat down next to the bed again, the anger still raging through him.  He couldn’t afford to let go of that anger; he knew that his anger was the only thing that was keeping him going.

He took a tissue from the bed stand and very carefully wiped Ruth’s face clean. She had been here for hours and nobody had thought of doing that. There was still mud in here hair as well, but there was not much he could do about it.  Why had she gone to the parking lot on her own?  She always went there with the others, but this time apparently everyone had left before she started heading home.  She wasn’t even carrying any money and the police had said that was probably why the youths had beaten her up.  They just got angry and there had been no one to help her. 

He should have been there, of course. Hell, he was there most of the time to pick her up after her lessons.  If he had been there …

Anger surged through him again.

***

He was watching her as the sunlight slid through a chink in the curtain, making her hair look like spun gold.  He was certain this was not going to last.  There had been one night stands and girlfriends that lasted a bit longer, but he had never felt anything like this before, not even with his first wife.  He should not have taken her home, not after the few hours they had known each other.  Not even when it had been clear she wanted to go with him as much as he had wanted her to come.  For the first time in his life he wondered why she had come with him, an ageing, jaded guy.  She could have anyone she wanted, couldn’t she?

Sunlight hit her eyes and she made a soft noise as she turned around.  He kept as quiet as he could, but she opened her eyes anyway and the moment she did, she smiled at him.  She slowly, languorously stretched like a cat in the sunlight.

“Are you sorry?” she asked.

“Sorry?” he had no idea what she was talking about.

“Sorry that you asked me to come with you?”

He blinked his eyelids.  That was a question he had not expected.

“Of course not!” he said.  “Why would you think I was?”

She smiled, a bit sadly he thought.

“You looked as if you were.”

He sat up and pulled her in his arms.  It was easier talking like that, when he couldn’t see her face.

“I have to be honest with you,” he said.  “I don’t know how you knew, but I was indeed thinking I shouldn’t have taken you here.”

She wanted to get up, but he wasn’t about to let her go just yet.  He pulled her a bit closer and felt her give in.

“I’m a bit older than you are, and I had quite a few girlfriends before I met you.  I don’t want you to think you are just one of them.  I don’t regret anything that has happened, but I shouldn’t have asked you to come home with me,” he said.

She wriggled out from under his arm and sat up, looking straight at him.  Her grey eyes were dark with emotion, and he had never seen anyone look so beautiful before.  She deserved so much more than him.  He wanted to stop talking and he wanted to take her in his arms again but he realised she probably wouldn’t want to be there anymore.

“Do you mean I’m just a one night stand?  A ‘thank you, it was very nice, ma’am’ sort of thing?”

She wanted to get up, but he managed to grab her wrist just before she could do so.  He shook his head.

“Of course not,” he said.  “What I was trying to say was, that you are so much more than a one night stand and it was a mistake having taken you with me after having known you for only a few hours.  You deserve so much more.  Not an old guy like me.  I am truly sorry.”

He had expected anything, anger, tears, and a tantrum, but not what happened.  Ruth suddenly burst out laughing.

“Is that all?” she asked.

He had no idea what she meant.  “Isn’t it enough?” he asked.  “I have not behaved very well, and I shouldn’t have done that.  If anything, I should have given us time to get to know one another, not drag you into my bed like this.”

She started laughing even harder.  “I’m not a girl anymore, if you hadn’t noticed,” she said.  “I wanted to come with you, remember?”

“You’re not mad?” he asked, wondering what was happening here.

“Mad?” she shook her head.  “But I will be if you say it was just a one night stand!  I want you to make love to me.  I have never met anyone like you before.  I don’t care what age you are, I don’t care how many girlfriends you had, I just want to see you smile and shag me senseless.  You think you can do that?”

He swallowed hard.  “Are you really sure?” he asked.

She shook her head.  “Of course I’m not really sure.  But sure enough to know that the only one I want is you.  And I don’t care how old you are or how long I’ve known you.  Ten minutes, ten years, does it really make a difference?  I know that it just feels good.”

His green eyes sparkled and his face crinkled into a grin when he pulled her back into his arms. 

A few months later they were married.

***

He was woken by a hand on his shoulder.  For a moment he didn’t know where he was and then the full realization of what had happened dawned on him again.  The hand on his shoulder belonged to the nurse who had been in the room before.  He looked at her face and knew even before his brain registered it, that there was no sound coming from the machines anymore.  He couldn’t remember falling asleep; he had wanted to stay awake.  He looked at Ruth, her face so very pale in the harsh electric light.

He shook off the nurse’s hand and scrambled up from his chair.  His voice croaked when he spoke Ruth’s name, but she was not going to answer.  She was never going to answer anymore.

“Mr Moore, it may be better …,” the nurse started behind him.

“Nothing is better!” he snarled at her and he heard her sharp intake of breath and then her footsteps quickly going out of the room.  He bent over the bed and tenderly stroked Ruth’s hair.

“I am so sorry,” he whispered, and he softly kissed her cold lips for the last time.

He got up and walked into the drab corridor.  It was very quiet and the lights were low, so it must still be night.  Steve had lost all track of time but it wasn’t important anymore.  When he got into the elevator he heard somebody call his name, but the door hissed shut before anyone got a chance to get in with him.  That wasn’t important anymore either.  Nothing really was, except maybe revenge.  Revenge against the inhuman society that had permitted this senseless murder to happen.  And by creating this society, everyone was to blame, even he himself.  He didn’t want to go on living in a society that created monsters like the ones that had killed Ruth but he was going to make damn sure he was going to take a few with him, and if he couldn’t find the ones who had done it, he would find someone else because it was not important anymore either who it was, when everybody was to blame, was it?

He went through the glass doors and into a grey dawn.  Clouds were building in the west and he could already smell the rain on the wind.  He had no idea where he was going, but he just started walking.  The concrete sidewalk was rough under his shoes, but it felt as if his feet didn’t really belong to him.  The wind was chilly and he buttoned up the raincoat he had grabbed from the back of the chair without thinking.  It should be getting lighter by now, but the rain clouds were still getting thicker.  By the time he reached the approach road to the Interstate, the thunder started rumbling in the distance, but he hardly noticed.

When the first fat drops of rain began to fall, a dark blue sedan pulled up next to him and the window was wound down.

“Hey, dude!” A man’s voice shouted above the next thunderclap. “You can’t stay out in the open in weather like this.  Get in!”

Steve looked at the man’s big red face and balding head.  The pale blue eyes looking rather anxious and he understood the man must be scared of the thunder, but what the hell… It didn’t matter where he was going, did it?

He opened the door of the car and slid on the passenger seat.  It was as if the weather had waited for just this moment, because suddenly the floodgates opened and rain came streaming down the windshield.  The man held out a meaty hand.

“Glad of the company, dude,” he said. “I always hate travelling alone.  Scared of falling asleep.  I can take you as far as the state border, if that’s what you want.  The name is Ryder.  John Ryder.”

Steve shook the proffered hand.  The palm was hot and sweaty and the car smelt of stale cigarette smoke.  A smile that didn’t reach his eyes slowly spread over his face, while the thunder still rumbled and lightning rent the sky …