See Tom Run

by Scott Wittenburg

  The first thing he noticed when he entered the house was that the laundry room light was not on. Glancing over at the light switch, he saw that it was in the ‘on’ position, yet the fluorescent ceiling light was out cold. Odd.

  Then he noticed the deadly silence.

  The kids had been noisy all afternoon while at play in the living room. Perhaps they were back in the family room with the adults.

  He entered the kitchen. The lights were out. The light switch was on.

  The storm must have killed the power, he thought. He removed the liter of Seven Up from the bag and took Julie’s cigarettes with him into the dark living room. As he neared the family room, he could feel his heart beating faster as the overwhelming silence began to register full tilt.

  When he entered the family room, he was utterly shocked at what he discovered Not a soul was in sight. The card table was just as it had been before he left-the playing cards strewn around in random stacks, the half empty bowl of chips sitting near the center and everyone’s drinks, including Peg’s half finished daiquiri, sitting there among the rings on the tablecloth. Three of the chairs were pulled away from the table about the distance they would be if they were occupied. When he noticed this, Tom felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck.

  It was as if they had all vaporized.

  Then he chuckled to himself nervously. Surely this was some kind of gag. A little pre-New Year’s prank dreamed up no doubt by Frank, the perennial jokester. That had to be it!

  Tom decided to play along.

  “Here are your coffin nails, Julie,” he announced to the empty room. “Oh, imagine that! The damn things must have already killed you and your cancer-ravaged body has been carted off to the morgue. Oh well, I guess I better find out where everyone else is and let them know that we need to start making your funeral arrangements.”

  Half expecting someone to suddenly run out from behind the furniture and reveal their cover, Tom quickly turned around. Nothing. Then he headed through the living room to the stairs leading to the second floor. Most likely they would all be hiding up there somewhere, he thought. He took the stairs at a leisurely pace, giving everyone adequate opportunity to hide themselves. He could almost see the kids, Kelli in the lead, jumping out from behind her parents’ king size bed and screaming bloody murder to scare the mortal shit out of him.

  He tiptoed to the master bedroom door and opened it slowly.

  “Anybody in here?” he said.

  He walked past the dresser over to the bed and sat down in it. He fell onto his back and peeked over the edge on the far side. Not a soul.

  “Hmm. I wonder if there’s anyone in the closet.”

  He got up, went over to the walk-in closet and opened the door.

  “Gotcha!” he cried, his arms outstretched like a ghoul.

  But there was nothing but clothes and dark, muffled silence inside.

  Tom closed the door and felt his senses sharpen as he left the bedroom and headed down the hall to the kids’ rooms. He now realized that his theory was ludicrous – the notion that Peg, Frank, Julie and the three kids had all gotten together while he was gone and decided to play hide and seek just didn’t float. It simply didn’t seem realistic, especially given the fact that the power was off, which the snowstorm had apparently prompted.

  Unless they had decided to trip the circuit breaker themselves, which would be less likely and even more ridiculous. Peg, in her typical level-headed way of running the house, would never have allowed that to happen for such a cheap thrill.

  He went to Kelli’s bedroom and peeked in. The room was shrouded in semi-darkness but it was clear that nobody was there. He went over to Tyler’s bedroom and discovered the same.

  The basement was his last shot. Annoyed and put off now by this whole farce, Tom went back downstairs and headed for the basement door located near the entrance to the kitchen. When he opened it, all he saw was absolute darkness. He went to one of the kitchen counter drawers and found a mini Mag-Lite, switched it on and trained the beam on the stairs as he made his descent.

  The basement was little more than a large storage room and a place for the rarely used Brunswick pool table. There was also a half-bath and a small area that Tom used as a darkroom for his photography. It took only thirty seconds to determine that the basement was unoccupied.

  The silence was intense as Tom went over to the circuit box panel and opened it. He shined the light on the breaker switches and saw that all of them, including the main switch, were on.

  So there had indeed been a power failure.

  So where the hell is everybody?

  Tom closed the panel and went back upstairs, taking two steps at a time. He could now feel his pulse pounding like a drum in his neck as he realized that he was experiencing a keen sense of dread. His wife, kids and close friends were gone-seemingly evaporated from the house!

  Coats! He thought. If they had left the house, they surely would have worn their coats.

  He ran over to the hallway closet and gazed inside. He saw Frank’s gray wool coat and Julie’s blue parka along with their kids’ winter coats.

  Tom’s sense of dread now became absolute fear.

  In a panic, he ran over to a window and peered out at the street. As expected, he saw Frank and Julie’s gray Chevy Tahoe still parked along the curb out front-he recalled seeing it there when he’d returned from the supermarket. He ran over to the front door and stepped out onto the porch. He looked up and down the street as far as could see and noticed that all of the lights in the houses were out, as were the streetlights.

  The phone! He thought. He would call the power company and find out what the deal was with this power outage.

  But first he would call the police.

  He ran back inside and picked up the phone. There was no dial tone. Recalling that the cordless phones didn’t work when the power was off, he ran into his study and picked up the old analog office phone on his desk. It was dead as a doornail.

  He located his cell phone in his briefcase and booted it up. The sound of the welcoming chime was music to his ears. Now he could finally get to the bottom of all of this.

  He stared at the LCD and awaited the welcome screen to come on. When it did, he noted that there were no signal bars showing up as he keyed in 911 and brought the phone to his ear. Nothing but pure silence. He tried again. Nothing.

  “Shit!”

  Now he was absolutely mystified. There was no power, no phone service and no sign of his family or friends. He stared at the phone a few seconds then flipped it shut and shoved it into his back pocket.

  Unsure of what to do next, Tom finally decided to run next door and see if the Chandlers were home. Maybe Bill or Marge would have an idea of what the hell was going on. Maybe they even knew where Peg and everyone had gone.

  He fled the house and trudged across the driveway to the Chandlers’ front door and rang the doorbell. Realizing that their power was most likely out as well, he knocked on the door and peered through a window to see if he could see anyone. He waited a few seconds then started beating on the door when he noticed their only car parked in the driveway.

  “Bill, Marge – are you guys in there?” he shouted.

  When nothing happened, he walked around to the rear of the house and peered through the dining room window. There were no signs of life anywhere. Certainly odd, seeing as the elderly couple rarely went out with anyone and their car was here.

  Tom decided to try Gary Morris, who lived directly across the street. He knew for a fact that Gary was home because he’d seen him pull into his garage just as he left for the supermarket.

  He ran through the driving snow across the street to Gary’s and beat on the door.

  “Gary, it’s Tom!” he cried, wanting nothing more right now than to simply see another human being. He knew that Gary Morris had a penchant for keeping an eye on the neighbors and their goings on. If anyone knew what the hell was happening around here it would be good old Gary.


  After another minute of pounding and shouting, Tom ran around to the side of the house and peered into the garage window. Inside he saw Gary’s blue ‘99 Buick. He continued around the side to the backyard gate and lifted the latch. He strode over to the back door that led out from the kitchen and began beating on it. A moment later he went over to a window and peered inside. Tom saw nothing but a darkened room.

  Gary lived in a single story ranch that had no basement, only a crawl space. In this tiny house, he most certainly would have heard all of the beating and shouting by now.

  Tom went back over to the kitchen door and tried it. It was locked, just as the front door had been. He made a quick decision: he would bust out a window and go inside. Gary was either dead somewhere in there or had vanished mysteriously like the others. He had to find out.

  He spotted a snow shovel leaning against the siding and picked it up. He went over to the kitchen window and poked the handle through a single pane of glass near the middle of the frame. The muffled tinkling sound of the shattered glass was all but lost in the raging snowstorm. Tom reached in and turned the latch, hoisted up the window and stuck his head inside.

  “Gary-it’s me, Tom! You in there?”

  When no reply came, Tom slipped fairly easily though the window and onto the linoleum floor. It was dusk now and he could barely see his way around in the kitchen. He rummaged through the drawers until he located a flashlight and switched it on. The first thing he did when he spotted the wall phone was try it. The line was dead. He replaced the phone and went into the dining room.

  Tom knew the house well. The living room was straight ahead and the two bedrooms and bath would be to the right. He felt his heart race in his chest as he moved cautiously into the living room.

  He flashed the light around the entire perimeter. Gary’s easy chair was in its usual position in front of the television. A neatly folded newspaper sat on the coffee table and the remote control rested on a small table beside the chair. Tom went over to the television and touched the screen. It was still warm, just as he had expected it would be.

  But where was Gary?

  Tom felt like a nervous cat burglar as he crept slowly toward the hallway where the bedrooms were located. He knew that the first room on his left would be the spare bedroom. He peered inside and saw nothing but a single bed, nightstand and a dresser. He walked past the bathroom to the only remaining room in the house. The door to Gary’s bedroom was closed. Tom took a deep breath and turned the doorknob slowly, dreading what he might find on the other side.

  “Gary?” he called softly, startled at the sound of his own voice in the eerie silence of the house.

  He swung the door open gently.

  He aimed the flashlight first on the queen sized bed then all around the room.

  Nothing. No body. No Gary.

  He was gone, just like the rest.

  Tom felt his heart sink like a lead weight.

  Where in the holy hell is everybody?

  At that moment, something inside Tom snapped.

  Like a raging lunatic, he tore out of Gary Morris’s house across the yard to the Williams house and beat on the door furiously with both fists.

  “Mike, Carol-open the door! It’s Tom Grayson! Please come to the door and talk to me!”

  He only waited a moment before turning the doorknob to see if it was locked, which it was. He ran over to their driveway and saw the Williams’ teenage son’s Mustang parked behind Carol’s Sonata. Mike’s Explorer was parked out front on the street.

  Tom sprinted back to the front door.

  “I know you guys are in there-answer the damn door!” he cried.

  In a fit, Tom ran around to the side of the house and looked through a window for any signs of life. Then he ran around to the backyard and tried the sliding patio door. Miraculously, it slid open.

  Not really expecting to find anyone there, Tom entered the Williams house as though he lived there.

  “Just dropping in to see if anyone in this fricking neighborhood is still around – hope you don’t mind!” he hollered as he sashayed across the family room into the kitchen. He picked up the phone, which was of course dead, then made his way throughout the house. There were signs that someone had been home recently-the television in the den was still warm as was Jason’s iMac in his bedroom. But, just like everybody else, the entire Williams family had apparently vanished from the face of the earth.

  Tom entered the living room and plopped down on the soft leather sofa. His mind was awhirl, trying to put all of this into some sort of reasonable perspective.

  It wasn’t possible to do.

  He considered the facts thus far. It was a fact that every person he had tried to locate since returning from the supermarket was gone. Where they had gone, he did not know. And, they all appeared to have been in their homes before their sudden disappearance. Everyone involved also shared the following circumstances: the power to their homes was off and their phones didn’t work.

  Theories, Mr. Grayson?

  He had none.

  Deductions?

  He hadn’t an inkling.

  What to do now? What would be the most logical thing to do?

  Tom pondered this for a moment. He only came up with one obvious answer: he had to find out if anybody, anywhere was still around, period.

  And he needed to do it pronto, before it got any later.

  Because the last thing he wanted to do tonight was go to bed in utter darkness and total isolation, knowing that when he woke up nothing will have changed.

  Tom exited the Williams home and returned to his home. It was pitch dark inside so he gathered up several candles and placed them throughout the house. Afterwards, when he tried the phone again only to find it was still dead, a thought suddenly came to mind: his iBook! It ran on battery power-maybe he could get on the internet!

  Smiling to himself at the prospect, he went over to where his laptop computer was plugged into the wall near his fax machine and clicked opened the lid. He recalled that it had been a bit low on power that morning so he had attached it to the charger. It should be fully juiced up by now.

  He pressed the power button and held his breath as the computer booted up. Once he saw the desktop, he clicked on Safari in the dock and watched the application appear on the screen. When the window opened, he clicked on the Yahoo bookmark tab and waited.

  Two seconds later, a new window appeared.

  You are not connected to the internet. Check your…

  Tom leered at the screen. Oh, but yes I fricking am connected, you sonofabitch!

  Then Tom laughed out loud lamely as he realized his folly.

  But of course you aren’t connected to the internet, you idiot! Because although your ethernet cable is connected to your computer, it is connected on the other end to a dsl modem which in order to work requires not only ac power, which you ain’t got, but a working telephone line as well, which you also ain’t got Tom shut down the computer with an agonizing groan. He now realized that in spite of his impending dilemma, he was totally exhausted. He could feel the wind in his sails starting to wane.

  He sat the laptop down and went into the kitchen, poured himself a glass of water and chugged it down. He knew what he had to do next. And he was going to have to do it now, in spite of his fatigue and in spite of the fact that the blizzard outside showed no signs of letting up.

  He retrieved the flashlight and went around the house blowing out all of the candles. Then he left by the side door and began scraping the freshly fallen snow off of his Jeep. The snowstorm was really raging now.

  CHAPTER 2

  Visibility was very poor as he drove along Hartford toward the police station. Having driven no less than ten blocks, Tom made a frightening discovery: he hadn’t seen a single soul nor a single moving vehicle since he’d left his house. Nor had he seen any lights on or any indication that there was power anywhere – not even the traffic lights were working. It was as if he were driving through a gh
ost town.

  The cold kept him alert as he negotiated the hills and dales of Colonial Hills. The sheer darkness and lack of any movement, vehicular or otherwise, was absolutely cryptic. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he was fairly certain that he wasn’t going to find anyone no matter where he went tonight. He was and always had been an optimist, but he was also a realist. The fact that he had not seen so much as a single shred of life in Worthington thus far indicated a reality that was, as impossible as it was to conceive, likely.

  He nonetheless kept his hopes up as he passed by the supermarket he had been at earlier. There were still several cars parked outside in spite of the pitch-dark. Tom pulled up beside the entrance and threw the Jeep into park. He got out and approached the automatic doors, which failed to open. Inside, he saw nothing but darkness-not even the glow of emergency lighting.

  He hopped back in and continued his drive to the Worthington Police department. There was something reassuring about the concept of a police force, he suddenly realized. For if anyone would still be carrying out their duties no matter how horrific or chaotic a situation might be, it would be the local police.

  And he hoped and prayed that that would be the case tonight.

  There was nearly six inches of fresh snow on the road as Tom swung a right into the police headquarters parking lot. Although he certainly hadn’t expected to see the place lit up like a Christmas tree, he was dismayed to find that the station looked as dark and foreboding as all of the other structures he’d passed along the way.

  He pulled up beside one of the cruisers and got out. Training his flashlight along the walkway, he reached the door and was surprised to find that he was able to pull it open. But what he discovered inside made his skin crawl.

  There was a single red EXIT sign glowing weakly on a far wall beyond the reception area. In the dimly lit foreground, he saw no less than a half dozen desks silhouetted by the eerie red glow, each one equipped with a standard office telephone, a computer tower with an unlit monitor screen, a file cabinet off to the side and an office chair pulled up to it. Complementing the spooky scene was a neat row of walkie-talkies lined up on the desk sergeant’s counter beside the police radio array.