Something in the Dark

by P. J. Cowan

  By the end of the evening she had decided it would be easy to fall in love with him. She didn’t realize how late it had become until she heard a waiter clear his throat and looked up to notice they were the last customers in the restaurant. Embarrassed, she reached for her purse and her credit card. Blake’s hand closed around hers.

  “Please, let me get this. I asked you to come for selfish reasons, to ask you about the valley. You’ve more than earned your supper.”

  “Don’t be silly. If you pay it will feel like a date.”

  “Great. Then I’m definitely paying.”

  There was little argument she could make to that. She let him hand the waiter his money with no further protest.

  Afterwards he walked her to her pickup in the parking lot. Their two vehicles, and a line of employee’s cars at the back of the lot, were the only ones there. Again Austin was aware of how much time had passed, and how easily.

  When they reached her truck Austin unlocked the door and Blake reached around her, his arm just brushing hers, and opened it for her. She climbed inside, then turned slightly to say goodnight. For a moment she thought he was going to reach into the truck and put his arm around her. For a moment she considered whether she should lean forward and let him kiss her. Then the moment passed. He closed the door and she rolled down the window.

  “Can we do this again, soon?” he asked.

  “I think that would be fine,” she replied. “Call me.”

  “Oh I will. You can count on that.”

  Austin smiled.

  “Now you better get home. You look sleepy and I don’t want you falling asleep on that windy road.”

  “Oh, that’s not a problem,” she joked, “I can drive it in my sleep. I’ve done it plenty of times.”

  “I’m sure you can. But just to humor me, how about you stay awake just until you reach your driveway?”

  Austin agreed and he stepped back and waved as she rolled up her window.

  Cold was settling in, a wispy mist curling around the tires of the pickup and a fine film of ice beginning to coat the windshield. Austin turned the truck on and cranked up the heat. Her knees felt half frozen but at least, in a few moments, she’d be able to see the road.

  She made it home safely, though her frequent yawning reminded that she was, by nature, a morning person. This staying up all hours of the night was not something she was used to. She wasn’t a kid anymore, she reminded herself. She had responsibilities, a business to run, a house to manage.

  Despite all that, she hoped Blake would call and they could do it all again soon, just as he’d asked. Too tired to do more than brush her teeth, and get undressed, she crawled into bed and was asleep in moments.

  Chapter 9

  In the early hours of morning she woke, as dazed and disoriented as if she had been drugged. She fought through the lassitude with difficulty, trying to understand what could have pulled her from such a deep and lovely sleep.

  She lay quietly for awhile, listening, straining for some sound, but all she heard was the intermittent ticking of the furnace as it cooled down between cycles. She stretched and thought about what it would be like to be waking up with Blake beside her.

  Then she opened her eyes–to darkness.

  The darkness was absolute, the kind that makes you wonder if your eyes are open. She reached up and touched her eyes and a feeling of déjà vu swept through her.

  “No,” she said out loud. She would not let this happen. But despite her wishes, fear, a pulsing wave, drew around her, constricting her chest until she was gasping for air, her heart racing, the sound hammering in her ears. She fought with the fear, tried to reason with it. Electrical outage, that’s all. The lights are out because of a power failure. Nothing strange there. Happens all the time. Wind in the wires. She took a deep breath and rolled out of bed and to her feet.

  Flashlight. In the table beside the bed. She fumbled for the drawer pull, felt for the cold weight of the flashlight, for a moment just knowing the flashlight was there, heavy in her hand, seemed to make the darkness recede. She put her thumb on the switch, slid it forward.

  Nothing happened. She shook the flashlight thinking, maybe a loose bulb, a bad connection. She always checked the damn thing. Had she forgotten. She slid the switch back and forth several times, shook it again. Nothing.

  She let the flashlight fall back into the drawer with a thump. The dark was deeper now, like some malignant force. She could almost sense it laughing at her idiotic stumbling, at her forgetfulness. Then she remembered.

  Matches–candles in the living room. She took a step toward where the door should be. Her legs felt weak and wobbly but then sheer terror strengthened them and she lunged for the doorway–the way out. Misjudging the distance in the dark and in her haste, she slammed face first into the edge of the door. She rebounded backward, her foot coming down on one of the high heeled boots she’d dropped on the floor before falling into bed. Losing her balance, arms pinwheeling she fell backward. The back of her head slammed into the hard, brass footboard of her bed. She slid sideways to the floor, coming to rest on her side, her left arm twisted behind her.

  When she regained consciousness she opened her eyes. Darkness. She tried to get to her feet. Her arm was numb, but as she rolled to her knees her hand began to tingle and she realized it had only fallen asleep. She had been laying on it. She didn’t know for how long. The back of her head hurt and her eye throbbed and ached. None of that mattered as much as the darkness.

  Cursing her weakness, she got to her feet and stepped carefully forward, feeling ahead until she found the bedroom door. It was closed. She opened it. Candles. Matches. If she could get to them quickly, before the panic overcame her sense of reason. As she stepped through the doorway, into the hallway, the hallway light inexplicably came on.

  She always kept that light on and her bedroom door open enough so that the light kept the shadows back in the corners where they belonged. In every other room of her house a night-light winked on and from down the hallway she heard a low thump as the furnace started up.

  “Son of a bitch,” she cursed. She hurried straight into the living room anyway, took a book of matches from a basket of them on the mantle and slipped them in the shirt pocket of her pajamas, before stumbling to the bathroom to view the damage.

  Her right eye ached and the skin around it felt hot. She squinted at the mirror. The eye itself seemed fine but there was a dark red line running vertically above and below it through her eyebrow and across her cheek. The skin around the line was puffy and mottled, but the skin was not broken.

  Muttering to herself, she went into the kitchen and pulled a bag of frozen peas out of the freezer. Turning from the freezer she looked through the kitchen window and saw that the sun would be rising soon. Already there was a line of light gray mist on the horizon, the line highlighting the crest of the mountains, the shadows of pine trees, as jagged as a serrated knife.

  She sat at the kitchen table and gingerly placed the cold bag of peas against her eye, and then, for no reason she could explain, she began to laugh. She didn’t know why she found it so funny, sitting at the kitchen table at four in the morning with a cold bag of peas pressed against her face. She did know that every time she laughed her eye throbbed, but that only made her laugh harder.

  Chapter 10

  On Monday morning Austin was reaching for the phone to call Janice when it rang. She wasn’t at all surprised to find Janice on the other end. That sort of coincidence was normal for them. From the first day they’d met, as juniors in college, the two had clicked. Sometimes it was as if they shared the same mind. It wasn’t only that they agreed on most of the big issues, ethics, politics, religion, but that they processed information and dealt with emotions in very similar ways.

  Although alike in many of the ways that mattered they didn’t look at all alike. Austin was tall, dark, with an obviously Northern European ancestry while petite Janice, with her green eyes, and curly light red hair, was
so stereotypically Irish she could have done travel brochures for the Emerald Isle.

  “Hey, I was about to call you.”

  “Of course you were. I don’t have classes today.” Janice taught first grade at Alice Hall elementary. “Want to meet at the Dolphin for lunch, say noon?”

  “You’re on.”

  Austin arrived first and slid into a red vinyl covered booth in the corner. A few minutes later, Janice showed up. The first thing she said was. “My God, Austin, what happened to you?”

  “I know, I know. I feel really stupid. I don’t even want to talk about it.”

  “Well, you’re going to.”

  “It was nothing, really. The lights went out last night and I woke up and well, you know I have these little anxiety attacks. I sort of stumbled around and ran into a doorway. Yes, I know it’s sort of a cliché, and maybe hard to believe but that’s really the way it happened.”

  “Are you kidding? I totally believe you. I know what a klutz you are. Remember graduation day, when we decided to put dye in the fountain and you fell in?”

  “How could I forget. I was the only Smurf to receive a bachelors degree that year.”

  “It wasn’t that bad; just your hands. And I thought you looked very Grace Kelly with the white gloves.”

  Austin groaned at the memory.

  “Anyway back to the real issue here. This panic attack.”

  “It wasn’t a panic attack.”

  “Anxiety attack then. Is that better?”

  Austin began to fuss with the small arrangement of blue silk flowers in the cheap plastic vase on the table. “Well more like a mild anxiety attack, but ok so I was thinking,” maybe you’re right, maybe it is time I talk to someone. I was wondering. Do you still have the number of that shrink you told me about?

  “Licensed Professional Counselor”, Janice corrected her friend. “Sure, I’ve got it. His name is Mark Harworth,” she said, reaching for her purse. “Half the women teachers at school are seeing him. I think they’re making up mental health conditions.”

  “You think he’s still taking patients?”

  “Probably. His office is pretty new. I haven’t talked to him in awhile though. A few months ago he helped me find some resources for a family, but I haven’t needed him since.” She found his card and handed it to Austin, who slipped it into the back pocket of her jeans.

  Just then the waitress appeared to take their order.

  They had their usual, soup and salad with ice water for Janice, cheeseburger, fries and 7-Up for Austin, who always felt a little guilty that her metabolism ran in high gear, while it seemed like Janice couldn’t even look at a cookie without gaining a pound.

  “So, Janice asked, “You going to tell me about Blake or do I have to drag it out of you crumb by tasty crumb?”

  Austin smiled.

  “Hmmm, that good?”

  “Pretty good.” Austin agreed and she told Janice how easy it had been to talk to Blake. “It was almost weird how well we got along. I mean, he seems to want exactly what I want. He even wants the same number of kids, the same kind of lifestyle.”

  “You find a guy you really like and you call it weird?”

  “Well, weird isn’t right, I guess. It’s just I’ve never met anyone who seemed so perfect. You know how it is. If they look good they probably have a wife.”

  “Or a boyfriend.” Janice agreed.

  “Yeah, or a boyfriend. Or they tell you they want the same things you want but then they don’t bother asking what that is.”

  “Or they mimic what you say and six months down the road you find out they just played mirror so they could get in your pants.”

  Austin nodded, “It was different with Blake, though. He told me what he was looking for first and it was like I was the mirror, or sort of like his echo.”

  “That sounds awesome.”

  “And scary.”

  “So, is he the real reason you wanted Mark’s number?”

  “Maybe. I guess. Who wants to go out with someone who’s afraid of the dark?”

  Janice nodded her understanding and asked, “So now what? When do you see him again?”

  “I don’t know. I guess it’s up to him. “

  “Well that’s a lame answer. Since when did you become shy and demure?”

  Austin refused to take the bait and said, “I don’t want to chase him. I guess I don’t want him to think I’m easy.”

  “But you are easy,” her friend joked.

  “Oh–that’s right. It’s been so long I’d forgotten.”

  Their lunch arrived. The waitress put their plates and drinks in front of them and asked if they had everything they needed. Austin told her they were fine. As she walked away Austin asked Janice, “Is today the day?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Janet. “You ask.”

  “No way.”

  “So what you’re saying is; we will never know.”

  “Probably not,” Janice agreed.

  The Blue Dolphin was a converted silver stream trailer. To the left of the entrance stood a towering, thirty-foot tall, blue neon dolphin, that would have looked more at home tacked to the front of a multi-storied, Vegas casino.

  Austin’s theory was that the cranky owner had made a good deal on it. Janice held the more romantic notion that the owner was once involved with a man, whose memory was tied to dolphins. Maybe the man had a dolphin tattoo, maybe he died deep sea fishing. Her theories were many, and varied from improbable to impossible. Austin had so much fun hearing them she didn’t really want to know the truth. It was a small town pastime, but Spruce was a small town.

  As soon as Austin left the restaurant she swung by the nursery to see if a delivery she’d been expecting had arrived. It hadn’t. She decided she might as well make some phone calls.

  First she called Bunny to see how she was feeling and to learn if she planned to work the next morning. An answering machine picked up. Three separate voices, including Bunny’s, identified themselves and then all together they chanted, “Sorry we’re not in right now, we hate to make you wait, but if you’d called at the right time, that wouldn’t be your fate.” This was followed by a chorus of giggles. Austin rolled her eyes and waited for the tone so she could leave a message, instead there was a click and a woman’s voice said,

  “Hello?”

  “Hello. Bunny?”

  “No. This is her room mate, Zoe.”

  “Oh, sorry. Do you know when Bunny will be in?” Austin asked.

  “No. She didn’t come home last night, but she does that a lot. She’ll probably show up today sometime. Or not.”

  “I see. Well, if you see her will you tell her to call Grace Gardens?”

  “Oh sure. No problem. She’ll probably be home real soon.”

  “Ok. Thank you.”

  Trying to decide at what level of annoyed she wanted to be, Austin fished the counselor’s business card Janice had given her, out of her pocket.

  She was surprised when Mark Harworth himself answered the phone, even more surprised when he said, “I’ve had a cancellation this afternoon, so if you can get here in an hour I’d be happy to see you today.”

  Caught without an excuse, Austin took the appointment. When she hung up she realized she would have very little time to spend on worrying about seeing this therapist. Maybe that was for the best. Spilling her life story to a stranger always seemed like such an invasion of her privacy and so potentially embarrassing, like walking down Main Street in your underwear, by choice.

  She spent a few moments rearranging shelves that were perfectly fine. Then she used the mirror in the tiny bathroom to brush her hair and reapply her eyeliner. Looking at her watch she realized it was already time to go. Gathering her jacket, gloves and courage she locked the store and climbed into her truck.

  As she drove she tried to imagine how the appointment would go. From his voice on the phone, and her past experience with therapists, she thought she could construct a pretty clear picture of
him. He would be in his late-forties with gray hair and a neatly clipped beard. He’d wear a nice suit, a tie, and polished shoes, probably black or dark brown. He’d have a bit of a paunch, and effeminate hands.

  She imagined his office would be lined with dark paneling and hold a big leather couch, some oversized chairs and a mahogany desk, which he would sit behind authoritatively. And of course there would be a tall bookcase full of books with titles like Behavior Modification: Methods Of, or Sexual Deviance: Pros and Cons. She smiled at her twisted imagination.

  Eventually, she’d tell him about her phobias and he’d tell her she needed the latest anti-anxiety medication. She’d fill the prescription, come home, flush the pills down the toilet and get on with it. She didn’t have time for this. It was going to cost a small fortune, too. She should turn around and get back to work. Of course, he’d probably make her pay for the appointment anyway. She sighed, might as well get her money’s worth.

  She pulled into the parking lot of the old downtown Medical Center, a three-story stucco building that had been the areas only hospital, until the new one was built three years ago. Townspeople still called it the Medical Center, though it now housed offices for dentists, a chiropractor, a private investigator, two different insurance companies, and as she discovered by scanning a directory attached to the wall beside the elevator, a therapist on the third floor–suite 301.

  She ignored the elevator and took the carpeted stairs. The stairwell smelled of paint and carpet glue, with an undercurrent of mold, as if the building were communicating that–no matter how much sky blue paint you splash around, or how much beige carpeting you install, I am still undeniably old.