Long After Dark

by Greg F. Gifune

  I’m sorry, sir, that suite isn’t answering.

  “Where is she?” he asked the moon.

  It gave no answer, so he returned to the recliner. His temples throbbed and the pressure behind his eyes felt like something was trying to push its way out through his sinuses. Each time he swallowed more postnasal drip slithered down his throat and his airway constricted and clogged. A fat dollop of mucus lodged near the back of his tongue and cried out for him to clear his throat, but he didn’t for fear it might lead to more coughing.

  If only he could sleep. Exhausted, he opened the recliner and put his feet up, but the moment he was prone the coughing returned with a vengeance. He spit up into a tissue, moaned at the pain in his chest, then blew his nose.

  Outside, the storm raged on.

  * * *

  The next time Harry looked at his watch it was a little after four-thirty in the morning. Rain continued to assault the house, and though he made several attempts to stretch out on the couch and get some sleep, each time his back hit the cushions the cough returned. After a while he tried sleeping sitting up, but just as he’d begin to drift off he’d suddenly snap back to consciousness like he’d been hit with a cattle prod. And then another round of coughing would take hold and throttle him until his throat was raw, his eyes were blurred with tears and his lungs felt like they were exploding through his chest.

  A few minutes later his head began to pound, and before long the pain had spread from his temples to the back of his skull. Fearing another wave of coughing, Harry crept carefully down the hallway and into the bathroom, moving as if traversing a minefield. Once there he popped two Excedrin Extra Strength tablets without bothering to turn on the bathroom light.

  He shuffled through the kitchen, wiped his nose with the sleeve of his robe and had just started back for the den when a vague hint of something along the outskirts of his peripheral vision caught his attention.

  He hesitated at the French doors. They were spotted with rain.

  Sunrise was still a few hours away, but the moon had vanished, leaving everything beyond the doors draped in pitch black. Harry pawed at his tired eyes to make certain he was seeing what his mind had suggested. He took a step closer, leaned forward toward the glass panes and squinted through the rain.

  There, just beyond the edge of the patio, in the middle of the backyard, a small pair of red eyes glowed through the downpour.

  It wasn’t that unusual for an animal—foxes, skunks, possum, raccoons, even the occasional deer or coyote—to wander from the forest behind the house into or through the yard at night, particularly of late. With all the building going on their natural habitat was being increasingly compromised and the boundaries separating Man from wild animal were becoming smaller and smaller. But there was something about these eyes, something unsettling, perhaps because they were fixed and seemed to be looking directly at him.

  Harry reached for the switch along the wall next to the French doors, and with a quick flick, a powerful flood lit up the backyard like a baseball stadium.

  The eyes remained.

  Drenched but unmoved by the rain, a lone coyote sat staring at the house.

  Although he’d heard the distant ungodly howls from these animals now and then late at night, and occasionally found tracks in the yard, he’d never actually seen a coyote on the property. Their impact had been felt in town however, as much of the smaller wildlife, like rabbits for example, had all but vanished in recent years, the victims of these devastating predators. Few people let their cats outside anymore, particularly at night, because so many had been snatched away, and roughly a year before the local Animal Control Department had found an abandoned den about a mile back in these very woods, littered with bloody collars. The more Man squeezed them out and devoured the woodlands, the more brazen the coyotes became, motivated by hunger and the instinctual drive to survive. In one small town about ten minutes away and closer to Cape Cod, a toddler playing in his yard had been attacked in broad daylight by a coyote that attempted to drag the tot away. The attack was only stopped when the child’s mother assaulted the animal with a broom. Even then, she had to beat the animal mercilessly before it finally released the baby and escaped into the nearby forest.

  Many locals wanted to form posses to hunt the animals down and exterminate them, but Harry had always found this preposterous. The coyotes were simply being coyotes, doing what they were designed to do. They had to eat, they had to feed their young, what did people expect? Certainly dragging small children away couldn’t be tolerated, and animals that attempted such things needed to be stopped and if necessary even killed, but those were rare occurrences. Normally coyotes stayed hidden and fed off other wild animals in forests that were their homes, not Man’s.

  The closest Harry had come to actually seeing a coyote was one night when he’d brought a bag of garbage out to the barrels along the back of the house and startled something that had been sniffing around the trash. Whatever it was darted off into the woods, and he’d only managed a quick glimpse of its hindquarters. He suspected it was a coyote but it could’ve been a dog, he’d never been entirely certain.

  This time there was no question. It was staring right at him.

  Despite the coyote’s unusual behavior, there was something surreal and wonderfully mystical about seeing such a magnificent creature in plain view and no more than twenty feet away.

  There were no lights on in the house, and suddenly Harry wished there were. He watched the animal awhile from the shadows, his hand still poised on the outside light switch. For some odd reason having the ability to return the yard to darkness at any moment made him feel safer, as if doing so would cause the animal to disappear at his command. It reminded him of when Garret was a toddler, and how he’d cover his eyes with his little hands and assume that because he could no longer see his parents they could also no longer see him. But Harry didn’t feel particularly threatened by the animal. There wasn’t anything remotely aggressive about its stance or demeanor.

  And maybe that was just it. It was too still. Unnaturally still.

  Mesmerized by the coyote’s stare, Harry held its gaze. Eventually he began to realize what he was seeing in those feral eyes. They were imploring, as if for help, as if hoping for refuge, sanctuary. Here, with him.

  Let me in, the eyes seemed to say, please.

  He’d always heard coyotes traveled in packs, why was this one alone? Harry scanned the yard but could see nothing that indicated there were more of them anywhere nearby.

  In a deliberately slow move, the coyote turned and looked back at the dark woods. The wind picked up just then, spraying rain against the French doors with a dull drumming sound. As the moisture trickled down and ran off, the coyote came back into focus. It had moved closer and was now standing on the patio, its head bowed but eyes raised and locked on Harry once again. A soft high-pitched whine escaped the animal.

  It was terrified.

  Harry was far from an expert on coyotes but was relatively certain nothing in these parts hunted them. Although coyotes were not originally indigenous to the area, from the moment they’d been introduced some years before they’d become the top predators and sat pretty much at the summit of the wildlife food chain. Just the same, something was spooking the hell out of this animal, and whatever it was, it obviously wasn’t that far away. But what in God’s name could frighten a coyote to the point where it abandoned its natural instincts and sought refuge inside the nearest house?

  Please, its eyes begged, I won’t hurt you, just let me in.

  In that strange moment they didn’t seem so different, Harry thought. There was an inexplicable connection, a sudden harmony between two beings caught in a storm beyond their control, bonding out of necessity against something else, some…other…a foreign darkness that threatened them both and that neither could hope to survive alone.

  As if in a trance, Harry felt his hand drop away from the light switch and move slowly toward the lock on the French doo
rs.

  Hurry, the coyote’s eyes screamed.

  A scratching in his throat broke his concentration, and suddenly Harry was attacked by another coughing fit. Bracing himself against the wall with one hand, he doubled over and hacked for what seemed an eternity.

  Heart racing and his flesh now covered in clammy perspiration, he was finally able to draw a breath without coughing. But his nose had filled up again and his headache was worse than ever, slamming his temples in time with the rapid beat of his heart. A series of images fired through his mind, bringing him back to the nightmares he’d had the last time he slept, this time revealing odd flashes of what appeared to be a small, disfigured and heavily bandaged person at the far end of a dark corridor, thrashing about in the throes of seizure.

  “What the hell,” he mumbled, fear rising. He massaged his temples and concentrated on driving the visions from his head.

  The pain and images slowly dissipated, but a residue of indistinct and puzzling dread remained.

  Harry looked to the French doors, to the patio.

  The coyote was gone.

  2

  By morning the rain had turned to a slow but steady drizzle. Dull light pushed through and eventually overtook the darkness, but the sun was nowhere to be found, leaving the sky an uninspired and dreary gray. The constant sounds of trickling rainwater and runoff echoed through the house like a bevy of faucets, and it felt markedly colder throughout the downstairs. Unsure if it had truly gotten colder in the house or if he was simply experiencing heightened chills due to a fever, Harry rummaged through the bathroom medicine cabinet until he found a thermometer, rinsed it off, shook it down, then took his temperature. It logged in at just under 102. He checked the thermostat in the den. It was set at sixty-five and the temperature read sixty-eight. He cranked it up to seventy.

  Harry had now gone two nights without sleep and his nerves were frayed. Coupled with the flu symptoms, he found himself on the verge of physical collapse, and emotionally he wasn’t faring much better. Of course the episode with the coyote hadn’t helped either. He’d searched the yard for several minutes, moving from window to window in the hopes of locating it, but hadn’t seen the animal again. The whole thing, combined with the disturbing and confusing images from his nightmare, had rattled him. And though the memories of his dream were at best disjointed and indistinct, he still couldn’t get the image of that terrified coyote out of his head.

  And still no word from Kelly.

  Well, since today’s Saturday at least I don’t have to call in sick, he thought. Of course that also meant getting hold of his doctor might prove more difficult as well. He hesitated, found himself in the kitchen. Apparently he’d been wandering aimlessly about the house. Wait…it was Saturday, right? His mind moved in slow-motion, as if in a dream state where nothing was quite certain. Stop and think a minute. He squinted at his watch, focusing on the tiny square on the face that revealed the day and date. SAT | 6. Right, Saturday, November 6th. He nodded, tapping the watch as if to confirm it once and for all. Harry compared the time with the kitchen wall clock to be certain he’d seen it correctly. Eight-thirty? Already? Didn’t seem possible. Last time he’d checked it was about four in the morning. Or was it five? When did the incident with the coyote happen? He sighed, his mind a blurred and jumbled mess.

  Having not had a coughing spell in a while, he was confident he could string a few sentences together without hacking his brains out, so he decided to put a call in to his doctor. After searching the downstairs for several minutes Harry finally remembered the cordless phone was exactly where he’d left it: in his robe pocket. He angrily punched the numbers to his doctor’s office, and as expected, got the answering service. A woman on the line promised to forward his message but couldn’t guarantee the call would be returned before Monday.

  “This is urgent,” he explained. “I need some antibiotics or something.”

  “I’ll give Doctor Poole the message,” the woman assured him.

  “Tell him I’m running a fever and I’ve got a horrible cough that’s keeping me up all night. I haven’t slept in two days and I need a call back today, I—”

  “I’ll let the doctor know you called, Mr. Fremont.” The woman’s tone shifted from sympathy to irritation. “But I can’t force him to call you back.”

  “I wasn’t suggesting you could.” Stay calm. If you blow up you’ll start coughing. “I just want him to understand it’s serious, OK?”

  “If you don’t get a call within an hour or so I suggest you seek treatment at your local emergency room.”

  Yeah, great idea, I can barely stand. Driving a car should be interesting. “Sure,” he said. “Thanks.”

  He disconnected, made a pot of coffee, then retrieved the number from the pad on the fridge, begrudgingly put his glasses on so he could see it, then called Kelly’s hotel. Despite his exhaustion, he could feel his body making subtle adjustments to function as best it could without sleep. Though he remained shaky, something akin to a second wind kicked in just as it had the day before.

  “Good morning, Great Night Suites.”

  That same patronizing voice—did this guy work twenty-four hours a day?

  “Suite 136.”

  The phone rang. And rang.

  “I’m sorry, sir, that suite’s not answering. Would you like voicemail?”

  “Please.”

  “The party you’re trying to reach is not available at this time,” an electronic voice explained, “please leave a message after the tone. When you’re finished, hit pound for more options, or simply hang up.”

  An unusually long dead space was finally interrupted by a beep.

  “Kel, it’s me. Where the hell are you? I’ve been trying to reach you since last night. Haven’t been able to catch you in your room and I can’t seem to get through to your cell.” Harry hesitated as a tickle in his throat threatened to awaken his cough. He closed his eyes and concentrated until it passed. When he reopened them he saw something resembling the dark silhouette of a person moving along the edge of his peripheral vision. He turned quickly, but it was gone. “I’m starting to get worried and I’m sick as a dog here,” he said through a sigh, “I haven’t slept since you left. I put a call in to the doctor this morning. Anyway, call me back when you get this so I know you’re all right.” Harry hit the pound key and listened to the various options offered. He chose to replay and listen to the message he’d just left and was shocked to hear how strange his voice sounded. Much deeper than normal and very scratchy, his breathing pronounced but short.

  He delivered the message, hung up, and then just for the hell of it tried her cell again. The same message about the provider being unavailable answered. He disconnected and dropped the cordless back into his robe pocket. Maybe she’s in the shower. Or she could’ve gone out for breakfast or even had an early morning meeting. But why wasn’t her cell working? Could the provider really be down this long? He could never remember that happening before.

  Harry knew a reasonable explanation for all this was probable, but he didn’t feel good about any of it. Nothing seemed quite right. Everything was just slightly out of kilter, and it was getting worse.

  Maybe I’m just being paranoid.

  He poured himself a mug of coffee and stared at the rising steam as if it were an exotic magic trick.

  Sleep. I’ve got to get some sleep so I can think clearly.

  Leaving the mug and his eyeglasses behind, Harry returned to the den.

  * * *

  Silence, in and of itself, had never frightened Harry, but there was a certain kind of silence he’d always found particularly unsettling. A heavy silence different than its brethren, he’d experienced it only a handful of times in his life, but the moment it descended upon him there was no mistaking it. Otherworldly somehow, it hung in the air as a tangible thing, jarring as the echo of whispers in an otherwise empty room. Because unlike other silences, there was something within this silence, something hidden, calculated and
purposeful.

  Draped in such silence, one was not alone.

  It was precisely that brand of silence from which Harry emerged. Until then he’d been absorbed by the stillness of it all, and as the stupor of uncertainty lifted there came a realization that he’d been void of conscious thought for some time. The question was: How long? Was I asleep? He turned his wrist, held his watch up before his eyes. Barely five minutes had elapsed.

  Again, his mind was littered with fleeting glimpses from an old nightmare. Dark hallways…the feeling of being pursued…agonizing pain…a small and horrifyingly disfigured and bandaged figure flailing about—a child, or perhaps a dwarf—he couldn’t be sure…the moon in the night sky...

  Dejected, he clicked the TV remote, but all he got was a blue screen with a series of yellow lines scrawling across the bottom and the words: SEARCHING FOR SIGNAL. Satellite’s down. Perfect. Harry shut the television off, tossed the remote aside and reached for a tissue from the box on the coffee table. Sitting on the edge of the recliner, he braced himself for the cough that was sure to follow, and blew his nose. To his surprise and delight, his cough remained dormant, so he carefully sat back, got comfortable in the recliner and took in the view through the large bay window on the wall to his right. If I concentrate on something long enough, he told himself, my eyes are bound to get heavy and I’ll have to sleep.

  Through the drizzling rain a slight breeze rustled leaves in the front yard, skipping them across the pavement before they tumbled out of sight, beyond the scope of the window. The remaining cluster were swept up and swirled to form a small funnel, whirling about and suspended above the street like a mini tornado. Something almost magical about that, he thought. Yet there was nothing whimsical about watching these yellow and brown leaves that still littered the area, remnants of the preceding October that would in a matter of days cease to exist entirely. Instead there seemed something menacing about it, because it went deeper than dead leaves provoked to dance by a chilly November wind. The whole world out there struck him as abnormally ominous. Out there, he thought, as if these walls and windows separating out there from in here might protect him if someone or something really wanted in. It was all little more than an illusion, wasn’t it? A deceit people told themselves so they’d believe they were safe and sound in their own homes when they were really anything but.