list of seven

It suddenly occurred to him: Why not complete the fugitive act and make for the Continent? As a seafaring man, Doyle knew there were a thousand distant exotic ports of call into which a man could vanish and re-create himself, places his nameless, faceless persecutors would never hope to find. As he considered this possibility, it occurred to him how remarkably little bound him to his current life - family, friends, a few patients - but no wife, no child, no onerous financial obligations. Remove the sentiment of love and discover how dangerously fragile are rendered one's ties to the familiar world. How seductive the possibility of utter change. It was all Doyle could do to resist ruddering hard to port and setting course for the unknown. Perhaps that was the genuine siren's song of legend, the temptation to jettison ballast of the past and rush weightless and unencumbered down a dark tunnel of rebirth. Perhaps that was the soul's destiny regardless.

But as he stood at the brink of that decision, into the vacuum created by that shimmering lure of escape returned his primal conviction that when confronted by authentic evil - and he felt certain this is what pursued him - to move off one's ground without a fight was an equal if not greater evil. An evil of failure and cowardice. One might pass a lifetime, or an endless string of lifetimes, without ever facing such and unequivocal assault as this against the covenant of what a man holds true about himself. Better to lose your life in defense of its sanctity than to turn tail and live out what remained of one's allotted days as a beaten dog. It was a hollow refuge that gave no shelter from self-loathing.

- Mark Frost, The List of Seven