John Saul - Black Lightning

There was a plaintive ring to his voice that made the last of Anne’s polite objections to his working overtime die on her lips. If he wanted to do it for her, why not? “I’d offer to give you a hand, but with Glen in the hospital—”

“It’s okay,” Blakemoor assured her. “In fact, why don’t I get started right now?”

For the rest of the hour the two of them searched through boxes, Mark Blakemoor hunting for the telephone logs, Anne scanning the file folders for a name, a notation — whatever might catch her eye.

When he finally emerged from the storage area at one-thirty, covered with dust and sneezing more than he had since he’d left the Midwest twenty-two years before, Mark realized he’d enjoyed his sandwich in the basement with Anne Jeffers more than any other lunch he’d had in recent memory.

Anne, on the other hand, didn’t give the lunch another thought. She hadn’t noticed that all the time they were together, going through the boxes, the detective had kept glancing at her out of the corner of his eye, just like some high school kid with a crush on the prom queen.

The long spring day was finally fading into night, and as dusk settled over the city beyond the hospital’s windows, Glen Jeffers grew more anxious. All day he’d drifted between a fitful sleep that gave him no real rest, and a drowsy kind of wakefulness that never left his mind unfogged. As he gazed out the window, watching people move up and down the sidewalk two stories below, and lights come on in the apartment buildings across the street, he had the strange sensation that time had somehow twisted around: as the rest of the world drifted toward the end of the day, he was only now coming fully awake. Unless he could convince the nurse to give him something to send him back to sleep, he was certain he would lie awake all night.

Anne had come to visit him; so had the kids.

For some reason — a reason he couldn’t quite figure out — he felt disconnected from them. It was the drugs, of course; once he was finished with them, he’d be back to himself. But today when the kids had come in after school, he found it hard to concentrate on what they were saying, hard to pretend interest in the fight Kevin had had with Justin Reynolds, or the new CD Heather had bought that afternoon. What was the name of the group? Crippled Chicken? Something like that.

While he was pondering the possible hidden meanings of the names of rock bands and poking at the tray of food they’d brought in at exactly six o’clock, Anne arrived. He’d had to concentrate to follow her conversation, as his mind kept veering off to other places.

Or, more specifically, one other place.

The nightmare he’d had early this morning, when Anne had come in on her way to work.

The dream was still vivid in his memory, and had never been far from his consciousness all day. It kept reaching out to him whenever he drifted into the fringes of sleep, threatening to draw him once more into its dark terrors.

When Gordy Farber had come in an hour ago, Glen told him about the dream, and it hadn’t taken the heart specialist long to come up with an explanation: “Well, I’m not a psychiatrist, but I’ve had a lot of experience with people in your situation. You’ve had a heart attack, which makes you feel helpless. And what could be a better symbol of helplessness than a little boy hiding in the dark from a threatening father?”

“But my father wasn’t threatening,” Glen objected. “In fact, my dad was so modern he never even spanked me! Said spanking was child abuse way back when everyone else was still using the belt every day!”

Farber’s brows arched into an expression of exaggerated envy. “Wish my dad had thought that way — he was a big one for the ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’ routine, except his bark always turned out to be far worse than his bite.” The doctor’s features assumed a more serious mien. “But what your dad was like doesn’t really make much difference, because we’re not talking about reality here. We’re talking about dreams and symbols.” His gaze shifted to the array of tubes and wires attached to his patient. “As for the electrodes your father was hooking up to you, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you’re sprouting more wires and tubes than a high school science fair project.” He’d grinned as another thought came to him. “Hey, maybe I’m the father figure in the dream. After all, who could be more fatherly to you than your doctor right now?”

Glen knew the explanation made a lot of sense. The nightmare’s fear made sense, for what could be more terrifying than a heart attack? Even now he could remember the panic he’d felt as that band tightened around his chest, the pain shot up his arm, and the blackness closed around him. But although the explanation fit perfectly, Glen had a nagging feeling there was something else — that the terror he’d felt from the dream went beyond the fear he experienced when the “incident”—as Gordy Farber insisted on calling it — had occurred.

The incident. He kept going back over the whole experience. It wasn’t a complete blackout, for he remembered being awake for a while in the ambulance. After all, if he wasn’t awake at least part of the time, how had he been able to hear the paramedics talking? And he had heard them; even now he could clearly remember their voices.

“Put it up to three hundred joules and hit him again.”

“That’s the way.”

“Try again at three-sixty.”

“Joules.” That was an electrical term. Someone had said to “put it at three hundred joules and hit him again.”

When it struck, the truth crashed into Glen’s consciousness like surf hurling against a rocky cliff. He hadn’t been awake at all.

He’d been dead. He’d been dead, and the paramedics had been fighting to make his heart begin beating again, to make him start breathing again.

Glen felt an icy sweat break out on his skin, and for a moment he was afraid he might have a second heart attack. He reached for the buzzer to summon the nurse, but the wave of terror eased, and he let his hand drop back onto the thin blanket that covered him.

He hadn’t died, and he wasn’t going to.

But it had been close. A lot closer than he’d realized until just that moment.

Was that why he’d felt different today? Disconnected? Was that why he’d had a hard time concentrating on what Anne and his children had been saying?

He lay back on the pillows and turned to gaze out the window as he thought about it. Of course he felt different now — how could he not? When you come that close to dying—

His thought broke off as he spotted someone on the street below, the shadowy figure of a man moving along the rain-slicked sidewalk across the street, and for a moment had the feeling he knew him. But then, when the man looked up — almost as if he’d felt Glen watching him — his face was briefly illuminated by the yellow glow of a streetlight and Glen realized he’d been wrong.

The man was a stranger, someone he was certain he’d never seen before.

A moment later the man looked away again and quickly disappeared into the shadows of the street.

All day long the fantasy had been growing inside the man, and all day long the pressure to act on the fantasy had been building. When it got to the point where he was starting to feel like he might explode, the man decided to go for a walk. At least he could breathe some fresh air, and in the dark he’d be by himself.

No one would recognize him.

No one would ask him questions.

But even going outside didn’t work, for he wasn’t on the sidewalk more than thirty seconds before he felt someone watching him.