by Rob Heinze
He trudged on, and the fire was almost drained from the sky before he reached the oval entrance to the Queens-Midtown tunnel.
The highway decline gently, and he saw the ghostly, skeletal structures of the toll booths ahead. Rows of cones led up to them. He felt both joy and relief that he’d finally reached his destination, and he found a hidden cache of energy. Practically running, he passed through the toll…and stopped dead.
He stopped dead and stared at the Queens-Midtown Tunnel entrance.
Here was something that had not occurred to him before, and that something was this: there was no electricity.
“There are no lights,” he spoke.
The tunnel was a black hole at the conjoining perspective point of the access road, effectively making it the current center of Charley’s visual atmosphere. The darkness looked cold and uninviting, like an ice-speckled lake in the winter. He remembered reading a Stephen King story called The Raft where these kids went swimming in a Maine lake in October. They ended up getting trapped on this raft because of this odd, oil-slick thing that pretty much ate them slowly and painfully. They had even made an episode of a movie out of that story, he remembered, in Creepshow 2.
He could almost imagine the black opening shimmying and waiting patiently, and when he got to close, it would dart out, engulf him, melt him.
He couldn’t do it…couldn’t walk through that tunnel. There was no question about it. He would have to walk back to a bridge. Maybe he would take that other route across Staten Island. There were no tunnels on that route.
“I can’t do it,” he said.
If I had a light, he thought. Maybe I could.
He looked at the dark maw of the tunnel again.
It would have to be one big fucking light.
He felt defeated and exhausted and slumped to the ground. He stretched his legs out and put his arms back for support. The ground was hard, lumpy, and cold, but it felt good to have the pressure off of his feet. He had built up a strong, steady sweat from his journey that he hadn’t noticed until he’d stopped. Now the cold in the air seemed worse, turning his perspiration to a chill.
I’m going to die, he thought.
He laid back on the roadway, a small man outside the reach of the Queens-Midtown Tunnel, and closed his eyes. Immediately images of Sarah came into his mind. He remembered first seeing her, thinking how beautiful she was, hoping to talk to her yet having no real hope that anything would develop. Her hair always seemed to be in motion, as if strobbing red-brown luminescence cells lined each strand. He remembered their first kiss, how strongly she had blushed and how happy he had felt. There was so much ahead for them, so much joy and happiness.
He thought of her: she was in a bikini on the beach, smiling up at him from a blanket, her round buttock ending in a shadow-darkened crease of her upper thigh.
He thought of her: she was next to him in the car, dancing to some 80’s song in a way that always made him laugh, a way in which she would never allow another person to see.
He thought of her: she was underneath him and they were connected in the most natural way in the world, input and output, her brown eyes pleasure-glazed and looking up at him, showing him her very soul and allowing him access to it—have it, those eyes said, you can have it, I’m yours.
He thought of her: calling him and calling him, terror festering in her gut when he didn’t answer. Each moment that passed with no word made tears brew stronger in her eyes. He had to be okay; he must be okay; what would he, Charley, do if something had happened to Sarah?
He must have fallen asleep because all of the images suddenly congealed into one. He was on the stairs of his parent’s house—on the landing. There was a single light on above him. It was coming from his parent’s room. He started up, hoping that no one would call out to him, but knowing that they would.
“Charles! Come here, Charles!”
That voice—that horribly light voice laced with murder—called out to him. Goosepimples eradicated his flat skin. He went on. To the bedroom door, the light growing brighter, and into the room. A woman was on the bed, back to him. Her hair was wavy. Her body was a wonderful S-shape, one at which he gazed and felt instant desire.
Oh. Oh no.
“Charles, come on up,” the voice cooed.
He sat on the bed.
Please God no.
The figure’s hands moved minutely.
Oh. Sarah. It’s Sarah. She’s mad at me because I left her alone, but I didn’t mean to; I have to tell her that I didn’t mean to do it! I don’t even know where the hell I am!
“It’s okaaaay, Charles.”
Before he could speak, before he could explain, the mirror that she had been holding rose. He caught sight of her face. The red, smoldering eyes sent a bolt of terror through him. He screamed. The figure of Sarah turned and fell upon him and pushed him down into the darkness of the bed, and over and over she screamed you left me! you left me! YOU LEFT ME!!!!
* * * * *
He awoke on the cold ground to the sight of a blue-dark sky. He was shaking and felt afraid. He pulled his knees into a ball, a grown man, and began to sob helplessly. And if this had been a movie, the camera would rotate so that it was above him, and it would slowly zoom away, showing the small nautical shape of man in the gigantic steel and concrete city.
7
It took him a while to regain his wits after that dream. Why had it returned? And why had Sarah been in it? Night was closing down upon him, and the land now seemed more threatening. He was shivering. The blue-dusk was growing darker each moment. He sat up and rubbed his head. His neck creaked and cracked, and his muscles felt as if he had gone to sleep on a bed of spikes.
He gazed around the empty highway. The entrance to the tunnel stood unchanged, holding only darkness within. It was then that Charley Allen sensed that he wasn’t alone; he felt watched. He could not explain it. Perhaps it was his fear, his vulnerability tweaking his imagination. He looked around with wide eyes. Traffic cones stood in a successive line down towards the tunnel. There was the toll booth behind him, and he turned that way to scan it. There was no sight of anyone. The lonely wind droned on around him.
I just imagined—
“You okay down there?”
Charley screamed. The voice cut the quiet and shattered his nerves. He might have fled if his mind hadn’t told him that the voice sounded normal—somehow his mind told him that. He couldn’t help but remember the voice of the monster-Sarah in his dream, that cloyingly dissonant tone. This was far from it. This voice was—
“I was wondering when you were going to get up,” the voice said.
He glanced to his right. A figure, bedecked in shadows, was moving towards him. He could discern nothing about it. He wanted to speak, couldn’t, and was about to start backing away when a light sprang to life. It was a steady light, contained within a make-shift lantern. Its soft yellow brightness poured down onto him and rose to light the face of a man holding the lantern.
Charley’s sympathetic nervous system relaxed. There would be no flight from this man. The man’s head was held five-feet, six-inches from the ground, and on it there rested a pair of glasses. He was nearly bald save for a few stubborn strands near the back and sides. He was thin but his chin had some celluloid deposits underneath it that made him look fat when he was not. He was dressed in a button down shirt and gray-black slacks. He might have once been a business man.
“Who are you?” Charley asked, and heard the slight tremor in his voice.
“I’m Ray,” he said. “Raymond, actually. Raymond Chandler.”
Wasn’t that the name of a famous writer? Charley thought so, but his mind refused to search its records, for there were more important things to deal with.
“Where am I? What’s going on?” Charley asked.
“A lot,” the man named Ray said, answering Charley’s second question.
He said nothing else. He made no motion of standing. He watched the man’s calm face gl
ow in the light.
“You have a name?”
“Charley,” he said.
“Short for Charles?” Ray asked.
“Yeah,” Charley replied, and shivered. The dream…
“Have you had the dream yet?”
Charley looked up at Ray. His heart, recently calmed, began to panic again. Could the man have meant…could the man have known his dream?
“What dream?” Charley asked cautiously.
“Then you haven’t had it. You’ll know when you have it.”
The wind blew down upon them, but the light Ray held didn’t flicker. It must have been enclosed. Ray was looking around, mostly at the mouth of the tunnel.
“We should get off the street,” he said. “It’s not safe to be out at night.”
“Why?”
“I don’t honestly know,” Ray said. “But it feels that way, doesn’t it?”
It did feel that way. Charley still made no motion of standing up, though. He wasn’t sure that he entirely trusted this man. True, the man looked how his father had looked in his younger days—a hard-working business man—but this whole place was too disturbing for him to take things lightly. He had awoken in a cold dark basement (alone) and he had walked across Queens, NY (alone) and now he was standing here and talking and not alone.
“Tell me what’s going on?”
Ray sighed, and Charley watched as the man nodded. “I’ll tell you what I know—suspect, anyway. But let’s go someplace where it’s warm and light.”
Charley still made no motion of moving.
“You can trust me,” Ray said, “We’re in the same situation.”
It took Charley two more minutes before he finally got to his feet, and when he started walking it took time to work the kinks out of his legs.
8
They got off the highway at some point Charley didn’t know, and then they were walking through a pseudo-suburb. There were small houses, all dark, most of them like giant tombs and Charley did not like that thought. The intensity of the settling darkness was unnerving. It was too complete, malevolent, like a killer’s hand slowly covering a light before killing. No street-lights shined. The small lantern that Ray carried was the only source of light, and in a way that made it worse; it was like being the only floating thing in sea of sharks.
Ray led him to a small house surrounded by a high, metal fence. There was a lock on the fence, and Ray fiddled with a key he had produced from his pocket. Charley glanced around as Ray worked the lock. The neighborhood probably hadn’t been a terrible place, just not someplace he would opt to live. The house they were entering looked as if it might have only been one floor, though there was a small up-rise in the roof that might be an attic.
Ray got the gate opened, and then he ushered Charley inside. He locked it behind them. Charley heard the loud click echo out across the still land. Charley did find himself wondering why Ray was locking the gate. But more importantly, he found himself wondering what Ray had meant by the dream? You will know when you have it, he had said.
Ray led him down a small alley to a side-door. There were more locks and Ray went to work unlocking them. Charley gazed up at the house next door. Dark windows stared down on him. He remembered the abandoned house, the way it had looked after he had awoken: as if it knew a secret. It was a house, Charley, it had no thoughts. But he wasn’t sure. And would he ever forget that house? He didn’t think so.
Ray had the side door opened. “Be careful. There’s a step up.”
He shined the light down so that Charley could see. They went onto a landing that fed up to the first floor and down to a basement. It was dark, and there was a chill hovering in the air. Charley noticed a scent that was familiar. It smelled like peach. It wasn’t until they got up to the kitchen that he realized what he smelled; Ray had hung about a dozen peachy-peach tree Car-Fresheners in the kitchen. Ray went around in the dark, motioning for Charley to stay where he was.
What’s with all the air-fresheners? Charley wondered.
“Wouldn’t want you to get hurt,” Charley heard Ray say from another room.
He came back, and Charley saw that he had another lantern.
“Since there’s no power here, I had to do my best to keep the place bright. Nothing’s more frightening than the dark. That’s something I never realized before.”
He gave Charley the second lantern, and in the pale light the man’s face looked like something in a Halloween display. He motioned for Charley to follow him. He led him down a small hallway. There was an open door on their left, and Ray motioned to it. He lifted the lantern so that light fell into the room.
“My bedroom,” he said.
He’s taking pride in it, Charley thought.
The bedroom was small and cramped with a large bed, a dresser, more hanging Car-Fresheners, and a clock on the wall that stood dead at 7:15. There was a poster on the wall of Britney Spears before she had gotten herself pregnant. Charley found that almost comical, that a man of his age should have that poster up. He meant to ask him about it later. Charley had a strong suspicion that this wasn’t Ray’s house. Maybe that poster had been up when he’d come, and old Ray just decided he liked it too much to bring down. Could he blame him?
They were in a small living room that went back to a smaller kitchen. There were couches and dozens and dozens of candles. It looked as if Ray had ransacked every candle store in the tri-state area. The man went about dutifully lightning them while Charley stood watching. When he was done, the whole room seemed imbued with a holy yellow glow.
Ancient vows, Charley thought randomly.
It felt strange to be standing in candlelight. Ray turned to him. “Let me show you where you could stay.”
He assumes I am staying, Charley thought, but then knew that he was. Where the hell else would he go? Besides, Charley felt that this man had knowledge of what had happened to him. He might know how to get out, no?
Charley, hi. How are you? Yeah, do you really think he would be here, if he knew how to get out?
Ray led him down stairs in the kitchen. These stairs, narrow, fed into the basement. The basement’s ceiling was low and the whole place had a cold dampness infused into the atmosphere. There was a tiny bar in the corner, and when the light fell on it Charley envisioned a decaying monstrosity sitting there with a dusty open mouth and a cordial in its hand. Happy hour!!! Drink with the Ghouls!!! But the bar was empty.
I must be going crazy in this place, he thought. I never had an imagination like that.
Ray showed him a back room with a mattress thrown on the floor. There were no windows, no closets, no chairs and no tables.
“It’s not much,” he admitted, perhaps seeing the look on Charley’s face.
The basement was small, and as a result they were close to each other. Ray’s breath smelled as if he had been chewing dry feces. Charley supposed that his couldn’t have been much better.
“We’ll bring some candles down—get the heat working through the room. I’ve got a lot of blankets. They were one of the things I knew I’d need. Those and candles. It gets cold even with all the candles burning. This house, it’s not a very good insulator. I took it because of the gate. Figured it would do a better job at keeping things out than any other place.”
What do you have to keep out, Charley thought, but did not ask. Instead he asked another pertinent question.
“How long have you been here?”
“Let’s go upstairs where it is warm, and we’ll talk.”
Charley nodded and followed the man up.
9
It was almost funny that Charley had been afraid of finding squatters earlier that day. Now he was a squatter. They sat in the living room, both their faces aglow from the candlelight. The wind blew down around the house and made evil noises as it slithered down the alley. Ray was sipping bottled water. Charley had opted for a Coke. Ray had a whole room downstairs just filled with supplies, and Coke was certainly one of those supplies.
&
nbsp; Charley was waiting for the man to start talking. He didn’t want to prompt him, but he thought that he might have to.
“Were you around for that blackout we had in…what was it? 2002? When most of the northeastern U.S. lost power?” He said.
Ray looked at him and nodded. “It wasn’t long after 9/11. I remember it.”
“Yeah,” Charley said. “This reminds me of that. All day we had no AC and it was really hot. Then we had to light candles, which made it hotter.”
“I was working and had to walk down fifteen flights of stairs—dark stairs—to get out of the building.”
Ray stared off into the living room’s corner where shadows danced seductively. Charley wondered what the man was seeing.
“Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever get out,” he said weakly. “Of this.”
He stopped and looked at Charley; there were suddently tears in his eyes. The glasses, the tears, and the candle-light made his eyes seem huge. Charley shivered.
“I know you want to know what’s going on, but I really don’t know. If I did, then I might know what to do. I guess I’ll tell you what happened to me, then I’ll hear what happened to you. Sound good?”
Charley nodded.
“One day at work, I went to use the bathroom. The bathroom was actually on our floor. My company…the one I worked for—I didn’t own it—had the whole floor and the bathroom was part of that floor. I used the stall, just like always. I had been having some pretty bad headaches, but work had been getting stressful, and I just put the pain off as stress. Plus, they usually got worse towards the end of the week.
“I went to wash up when one of these really intense headaches struck. I closed my eyes and put my head down. The last thing I saw was my haggard face, forehead creases and all, in the cold blue glow of the fluorescent lights. I remembering thinking how much my face looked like blue-cheese. Then I awoke, and was alone. I don’t remember anything else. I came out of the bathroom to the darkness of the office. I can’t tell you what it’s like to awake in a dark place and not have any idea where you are or what happened to you.”
