Barbara Michaels - The Dark on the Other Side

“If she should show up, I’ll call you at once. Where?”

Randolph shook his head.

“I’ll be on the move. And she’s wary and suspicious. If she overheard you speaking to me, she’d run. You couldn’t detain her unless you-”

“Uh-huh.” He didn’t have to be specific; Michael could see the picture-the struggle, the screams, the neighbors, the cops…“Anice mess that would be,” he muttered. “Then what the hell do you want me to do?”

“The ideal thing, of course, would be to get her to see a doctor.”

The prompt reply dispelled any lingering doubts Michael may have had. Though why he should have had any, he didn’t know.

“Ideal but difficult, if she’s as suspicious as you say.”

“She’s suspicious of me,” Gordon said. “That’s why she rejects every doctor I suggest. From you she might accept it.”

“Well, I could try,” Michael said dubiously. “Be sure to let me know, will you, when you find her.”

“Of course.”

He seemed to have nothing more to say; yet, despite his concern, he was in no hurry to leave. He stood, holding the glass he had not even sipped, his head cocked as if he were listening for something. My God, Michael thought incredulously; he does expect her. At any second. Does he walk through life that way, listening for her footsteps?

“Well,” he said again, “I’ll do as you suggest-if she does show up, which I don’t believe she will. And if I do get a chance to telephone, you’ll be…?”

“I’ve an apartment in town,” Randolph said vaguely. “Maybe you could leave a message.”

He put his glass down on the desk; and then, with the suddenness of a thunderclap, without even the usual preliminary flicker of warning, every light in the apartment went out.

The effect was frightening, disorienting. There was a faint glow from the window-so the blackout was not city-wide-but in the first moment of shock Michael didn’t see that, and neither, obviously, did Randolph. Michael heard his voice, but he recognized it only because it was not his own. The sound was something between a scream and a sob, and it raised the hairs on the back of Michael’s neck. Before he could move or speak, Randolph had blundered toward the door. Michael heard the sound of the door being flung open, and the rush of a body out onto the landing and down the stairs. He moved then, trying to shout a warning; the old, worn steps were treacherous enough in the light, he could visualize Gordon sprawled at the bottom with a broken neck. The anticipated slither and crash never came. The sounds of frantic movement diminished, and ended in the slam of the front door.

Then, in the ringing silence that followed, Michael saw the glow of the street lights through the window. He let out his breath with an explosive sigh. Once Randolph got outside, he would realize that his worst fear was unfounded. The man’s nerves were in a shocking state. Not surprising; it was bad enough to worry about what might be happening to your wife, adrift in every sense in a blacked-out city; worse to worry about what she might be doing to others.

The lights chose that moment to restore themselves, and Michael blinked and cursed them absentmindedly. He had just had another thought, no more reassuring than the others he had been thinking. Linda had tried once to commit murder. Gordon spoke of a pattern. She had run away before; and what, Michael wondered, had she done on those other occasions? Michael had no illusions about one thing. Gordon might be the most altruistic of men, but on one subject he was beyond ethics. He would protect his wife at any cost-even if the cost were another life.

It was not a cheerful thought, especially if he accepted Gordon’s assumption that he himself was Linda’s next quarry. Michael shivered. There was a chill draft from the door, which Gordon had left open. He turned; and saw Linda staring at him from the doorway.

Her face was alarmingly like the one he had pictured in his latest fantasy-white and drawn, with eyes dilated to blackness. The only thing missing was the knife he had placed in the imaginary woman’s hand.

For a moment they stood frozen, staring at one another. Then Michael got a grip on himself.

“You sure are wet,” he said conversationally. “You’d better come in and dry off before you catch pneumonia.”

One small, soaked shoe slid slyly back a few inches, as if bracing itself for a sudden movement. Michael didn’t stir.

“He was here,” she said. “Looking for me.”

“Yes.”

How long had she been standing out there in the hall? She must have come up after Gordon arrived, but before he left; that blind rush of his would have knocked her flat if she had been on the stairs, and there hadn’t been time for her to climb them afterward. So she had been outside the door when Gordon fled, concealed by his agitation and the coincidental darkness.

“You didn’t tell him I was here?” she persisted.

“How could I? You weren’t here.”

She nodded.

“Are you going to call him now?”

“Not if you don’t want me to.”

“I don’t want you to.”

“Then I won’t.”

The conversation was unreal. Michael couldn’t remember what it reminded him of-Lewis Carroll, something existentialist? No. It was of a conversation he had had with the four-year-old son of a friend, some weeks earlier. The directness, the repetition of the obvious…Carefully he took a step, not toward the pitiable, shivering figure in the doorway, but back, away from her.

“You might as well come in and dry off,” he said. “I’ll make some coffee. Something hot.”

“If I ran you could chase me,” she said.

“Through all this rain?” He smiled. “I’m too lazy.”

Her foot moved uncertainly. It took a step; then another and another. Michael let his breath out slowly. She was in. Safe. Now why did that word come into his mind?

Linda knew she wasn’t safe, not even there, where she had wanted to come. But there was nowhere else to go.

She stood and sat and moved like an obedient child, while Michael helped her off with her coat and took off her wet shoes and dried her feet on something that looked suspiciously like a shirt. He made coffee; his movements in the dark kitchen were interspersed with bumps and crashes and repressed exclamations. She could hear every move he made. In a place this small, he wouldn’t have a telephone extension in the kitchen, surely. The phone in the living room was on the table that served as his desk. She could see it from where she was sitting, and she watched it as if it were alive, a black, coiled shape that might spring into sudden, serpentine threat.

When he came back, carrying two cups, he was limping slightly.

“I keep stubbing my toe,” he said with an apologetic grin, as she looked at his stockinged feet.

“Why don’t you turn on the light? Or wear shoes?”

Michael looked surprised. It was an endearing expression; Linda wished she could simply enjoy it, instead of wondering what lay behind it. Probably he was surprised that she could frame a sensible question.

“I’m sort of a slob,” Michael admitted, handing her one of the cups. “See, no saucers. No shoes. They’re around here somewhere… The place is a mess. I should be ashamed, entertaining guests in a hole like this.”

“You weren’t expecting company,” she said drily. The heat of the cup, between her hands, began to seep through her whole body. Even her mind felt clearer.

“No,” he said; and then, as if anxious to change the subject, “How long has it been since you’ve eaten? What about a sandwich? Or some soup? That’s about the extent of my talents as a cook.”

“It sounds good.”