Scott Wittenburg: See Tom Run

In essence, she was telling him that he would be off the hook.

Tom could hardly believe what he was hearing-he was absolutely elated. For not only would he get out of having to testify in a court case, he wouldn’t have to worry about his little secret ever being found out. All would be good again!

Or so he thought.

His conscience was gnawing away at him. The girl obviously loved him and her feelings were hurt. Although that certainly wasn’t his fault-he’d made it clear to her all along that he loved his wife and would never leave her-it nevertheless wasn’t making him feel any better about this.

But the clincher was that Tracy still hadn’t gone to the police in all of this time. Her threat of reporting the incident had just been a bluff-a last ditch effort to heap the maximum amount of guilt on him in hope that he would relent. She wasn’t going to go to the police unless he accompanied her-that much he was certain of now.

So in essence, the burden of dealing with this whole mess fell on his shoulders.

Damn! he thought. If only he had never accepted the girl’s offer to go out for “an innocent beer” that day. None of this would have ever happened. But he had let her incessant flirting win him over and make him forsake the first cardinal rule of teaching: never get personally involved with a student. And now he was paying the price for allowing the ill-fated May-December romance to go on as long as it had Tom’s thoughts were suddenly interrupted by the absolute fury of the raging storm that was now obscuring virtually all visibility outside the Jeep. Knowing that Peg and the others would be concerned, he threw the gearshift lever into drive and carefully pulled out of the supermarket parking lot.

He kept his speed at around 20 miles per hour as he deftly navigated the Jeep over the snow-covered roads through the blinding frenzy. Ten minutes later, he pulled into his driveway and parked. Clutching the grocery bag, he got out and headed for the side door.

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.