Barbara Michaels - The Dark on the Other Side

“Wait a minute,” Michael said. “The cats. We can’t leave them inside.”

“They can get out, through the cellar.”

“Just in case…”

Michael drew the bolts on the back door and threw it open. The rain was falling gently now, as if spent by its effort.

“Come on,” he said, and led the way to the front of the house.

They made it, but with only seconds to spare. As the car skidded onto the paved road and turned, they heard sirens and saw the flashing red lights of fire engines coming the other way.

Linda was driving. Michael had tried to, but the effort of turning the car in the narrow lane, which was now a bog of mud, was too much for him; he blacked out, over the wheel, with the first movement.

“Stupid,” he said hazily, as she took his place. “Too dangerous, on the highway…I hope you can drive. I forgot to ask.”

“I hope so too. It’s funny, though,” she added, nursing the wheel and the brake as the car curtsied coyly into a rut, “how it comes back to you. I drove one of my boyfriends’ jalopies through an entire Cleveland winter. Ice and snow and mud and…woops.”

He didn’t answer, either to commend her skill or to make suggestions; she knew he was fighting to stay conscious, and she did her best to avoid jolting him. When she swung onto the highway, she was conscious of an absurdly warming glow of pride. It was a long time since she had done anything for herself. Some of the dependence was inevitable when you were married to a man as wealthy as Gordon; you didn’t mend your own socks or scrub scorched pans. Even so-hadn’t Gordon overdone the servant bit? He didn’t do anything himself, except for the exercise necessary to preserve his splendid physical condition. He didn’t even drive a car; he hired the best chauffeurs that were to be had. He didn’t build a fire in the fireplace, or plant a bulb, or groom a horse. The moral value of work was a myth, of course; or was it? Surely there was a healthy feeling of satisfaction in doing some small, needed job and doing it well: cleaning a dirty kitchen, mending a piece of broken furniture-getting a car out of a muddy back lane.

She thought Michael had lost consciousness, he was so still; but once they were on the paved road, he spoke.

“You’ve got a good, efficient fire department. There they come now. Maybe they can save the house after all.”

“I hope so. Don’t think I’m sentimental-”

“What’s wrong with being sentimental?”

“Well, this is no time for it,” she admitted. “I don’t know what you want to do now; I didn’t think about anything except getting away from there. But you’ve got to see a doctor, Michael, right away.”

“Sounds good,” Michael said.

“Doctor Gold lives down the next street,” she said, her eyes on the road.

“Isn’t he your little pal? The one I met?”

“Yes.”

“I think we’ll pass him up.”

“But, Michael, he’s the closest.”

“Too close. He’d be on the phone to Gordon before he did anything else.”

“I could stay in the car.”

“Alone? No.”

“I can’t stand knowing how much it hurts you,” she said unsteadily. The car swerved.

“Keep your eyes on the road… Don’t waste your sympathy. I am just about to pass out… Thank God.”

“There must be a doctor in the next town,” Linda said, putting her foot down.

“No, wait…”Michaelroused himself; his voice sounded miles away. “Whatever you do, don’t panic. Keep at the speed limit, we can’t risk…a wreck, or a cop. One thing to do…obvious…”

“Michael…Michael!”

“Don’t wreck the car,” he said; weak as it was, his voice was amused, and Linda was conscious of a strange constriction somewhere in the region of her diaphragm. “Don’t stop…Put a couple of dozen miles between us and the house…”

She heard his sigh of exhaled breath as his head fell back against the seat.

The drive was almost too much of a challenge; it was one of the worst jobs she had ever undertaken. Terror is strong and breath-stopping, but it is usually brief; it passes quickly. Fear, the kind that had haunted her for months, has its own built-in anesthesia. And when despair is deepest there is no need to struggle, only to endure. What made the drive so bad was the need to keep constantly on the alert, to anticipate, not only the normal hazards of the road, but any unexpected, almost unimagined supranormal danger. She realized that the worst kind of fear is fear for someone else. She damned herself for involving Michael in her danger, and speculated wildly as to how she could extricate him-if it wasn’t already too late.

Through it all she drove steadily, surely, never taking her eyes from the road. The torrential rains had flooded out many sections, and she drove through shallow sheets of water at a crawl, her throat tight with fear of flooding the engine. But the worst moment was the roadblock.

A tree was down on the road ahead; but she didn’t know that, not at first, she saw only the barriers and the flashing lights of the police car.

Her foot hit the brake and her hand fumbled for the gear lever. There was a side road, a block or two back… She realized the stupidity of that move, just in time, and brought the car to a sedate stop. She had barely time to reach over and pull Michael’s jacket across his slung arm as the police officer came up to the side of the car.

She rolled down the window.

“What’s the trouble?” she demanded, with the ordinary annoyance of an innocent motorist who is delayed.

“Tree across the road. The crew is working on it, but you’ll be better off going around; it’ll take some time.” The man’s eyes moved past her, to the silent figure sprawled across the other seat. “Something wrong, miss? Need any help?”

He was very young, the policeman; his voice was kind. Momentarily Linda fought the urge to break down and tell him the truth. A doctor, a nice safe hospital for Michael…Then she saw the boy’s nostrils quiver, and she realized that the brandy bottle must be leaking. Either that, or Michael had taken more than she thought.

“That must have been quite a party,” the policeman said. “Your husband, ma’am?”

“What makes you so sure we’re married?” Linda asked, with an attempt at a smile.

He was young, but he wasn’t stupid. Pushing his cap back, he smiled back at her.

“I didn’t see your ring at first,” he explained, indicating her left hand, which was taut on the wheel. “But, you know, it’s a funny thing; we see a lot of drunks, you can imagine. Sometimes a girl’s date passes out, but usually it’s a married guy.”

“That must give you rather a jaundiced view of marriage.”

“No, not really. Oh-oh, I get it. You mean the husbands are driven to drink?” The young man laughed. He had pink cheeks and even, white teeth, and he was obviously bored with his dull post. “Well, maybe. But what I always figured was, I figured the boyfriends were more anxious to look good. It’s not a very nice thing to do, pass out on a date and make her drive you home.”

“I’m sure you’d never do a thing like that, whether you were married to the girl or not,” Linda said. Every nerve in her body was screaming for haste, but she couldn’t show it. If she gave him any cause to ask for her driver’s license, they were finished.

“Well, I’ll tell you, ma’am, you pull a few bodies out of the wrecks and you get to realize it isn’t worth it. Well, I guess you don’t need a lecture; you look like you’d never had a drink in your life.”

“Thank you,” Linda said sweetly. She batted her lashes at him. “I certainly haven’t had one tonight.”

“No, I could tell that. If you had-well, I’d have wanted to stop you from driving. It’s even more dangerous on a bad night like this. You sure you don’t need any help with your husband?”