David Morrell - Black Evening

"Please, you have to humor me," I said. "All right? Suspect I've gone crazy, but for God's sake, humor me. I can't prove what I'm thinking, but I know you're in danger. I am, too. You have to get the children and leave town. You have to hide somewhere. Tonight at three a.m., she'll reach the house."

Jean studied me with pity.

"Promise me!" I said.

Jean saw the anguish on my face and nodded.

"Maybe she won't try the house," I said. "She seems to know everything. She might know I'm in the hospital. She might come here. I have to get away. I'm not sure how, but later, when you're gone, I'll find a way to get out of these restraints."

Jean peered at me, distressed. Her voice sounded totally discouraged. "Chuck."

"I'll check the house. If you're still there, you'll make me more upset."

"I promise. I'll take Susan and Rebecca. We'll drive somewhere."

"I love you."

Jean began to cry. "I won't know where you are."

"If I survive this, I'll get word to you."

"But how?"

"The English department. I'll leave a message with the secretary."

Jean leaned down to kiss me, crying, certain I'd lost my mind.

I reached the house shortly after dark. As Jean had promised, she'd left with the children. I got in my sports car and raced to the Interstate.

A Chicago hotel where at three a.m. Sam phoned from Iowa City. She'd heard my voice. She said I'd told her where I was. She was hurt and angry. "Tell me why you're running."

I fled from Chicago in the middle of the night, driving until I absolutely had to rest. I checked in here at one a.m. In Johnstown, Pennsylvania. I can't sleep. I've got an awful feeling. Last night Sam repeated, "Soon you'll join me." In the desk, I found this stationery.

God, it's three a.m. I pray that I'll see the sun come up.

It's almost four. She didn't phone. I can't believe I escaped. I keep staring at the phone.

It's four. Dear Christ, I hear the ringing.

Finally I've realized. Sam killed herself at one. In Iowa, the time zone difference made it three. But I'm in Pennsylvania. In the east. A different time zone. One o'clock in California would be four o'clock, not three, in Pennsylvania.

Now.

The ringing persists. But I've realized something else. This hotel's unusual, designed to seem like a home.

The ringing?

God help me, it isn't the phone. It's the doorbell.

As I mentioned in my note for "But at My Back I Always Hear," there is something about the flat, wide, open spaces of the Midwest that can cause fright as much as awe. When I lived in Pennsylvania, I thought I knew how bad a thunderstorm could be. But no weather there prepared me for the terror of an Iowa thunderstorm. As a character in this story points out, some Iowa storms can be seven miles high. When the weather forecasters announce a thunderstorm warning, you pay attention. Green skies. Eighty-mile-an-hour winds. Look out. One summer, lightning struck my house three times. In the middle of the night, while I lay in bed awake, feeling thunder shake the windows, I decided to write a story about it. "The Storm" was included in The Year's Best Fantasy Stories for 1984.

Gail saw it first. She came from the Howard Johnsons toward the heat haze in the parking lot where our son, Jeff, and I were hefting luggage into our station wagon. Actually, Jeff supervised. He gave me his excited ten-year-old advice about the best place for this suitcase and that knapsack. Grinning at his sun-bleached hair and nut-brown freckled face, I told him I could never have done the job without him.

It was eight a.m., Tuesday, August second, but even that early, the thermometer outside our motel unit had risen to eighty-five. The humidity was thick and smothering. Just from my slight exertion with the luggage, I'd sweated through my shirt and jeans, wishing I'd thought to put on shorts. To the east, the sun blazed, white and swollen, the sky an oppressive chalky blue. This would be one day when the station wagon's air conditioning wouldn't be just a comfort but a necessity.

My hands were sweat-slick as I shut the hatch. Jeff nodded, satisfied with my work, then grinned beyond me. Turning, I saw Gail coming toward us. When she left the brown parched grass, her brow creased as her sandals touched the heat-softened asphalt parking lot.

"All set?" she asked.

Her smooth white shorts and cool blue top emphasized her tan. She looked trim and lithe and wonderful. I'm not sure how she did it, but she seemed completely unaffected by the heat. Her hair was soft and golden. Her subtle trace of makeup made the day seem somehow cooler.

"Ready. Thanks to Jeff," I told her.

Jeff grinned up proudly.

"Well, I paid the bill. I gave them back the key," Gail said. "Let's go." She paused. "Except…"

"What's wrong?"

"Those clouds." She pointed past my shoulder.

I turned and frowned. In contrast to the blinding eastern sky, thick black clouds seethed on the western horizon. They roiled and churned. In the distance, lightning flickered like a string of flashbulbs, thunder rumbling hollowly.

"Now where the hell did that come from?" I said. "It wasn't there before I packed the car."

Gail squinted toward the thunderheads. "You think we should wait till it passes?"

"It isn't close." I shrugged.

"But it's coming fast." Gail bit her lip. "And it looks bad."

Jeff grabbed my hand. I glanced at his worried face.

"It's just a storm, son."

Jeff surprised me, though. I'd misjudged what worried him.

"I want to go back home," he said. "I don't want to wait. I miss my friends. Please, can't we leave?"

I nodded. "I'm on your side. Two votes out of three, Gail. If you're really scared, though…"

"No. I…" Gail drew a breath and shook her head. "I'm being silly. It's just the thunder. You know how storms bother me." She ruffled Jeff's hair. "But I won't make us wait. I'm homesick, too."

We'd spent the past two weeks in Colorado, fishing, camping, touring ghost towns. The vacation had been perfect. But as eagerly as we'd gone, we were just as eager to be heading back. Last night, we'd stopped here in North Platte, a small quiet town off Interstate 80, halfway through Nebraska. Now, today, we hoped we could reach home in Iowa City by nightfall.

"Let's get moving then," I said. "It's probably a local storm. We'll drive ahead of it. We'll never see a drop of rain."

Gail tried to smile. "I hope."

Jeff hummed as we got in the station wagon. I steered toward the Interstate, went up the eastbound ramp, and set the cruise control for the speed limit of fifty-five. Ahead, the morning sun glared through the windshield. After I tugged down the visors, I turned on the air conditioner, then the radio. The local weatherman said hot and hazy.

"Hear that?" I said. "He didn't mention a storm. No need to worry. Those are only heat clouds."

I was wrong. From time to time, I checked the rearview mirror, and the clouds loomed thicker, blacker, closer, seething toward us down the Interstate. Ahead, the sun kept blazing fiercely. Jeff wiped his sweaty face. I set the air conditioner for DESERT, but it didn't seem to help.

"Jeff, reach in the ice chest. Grab us each a Coke."

He grinned. But I suddenly felt uneasy, realizing too late that he'd have to turn to open the chest in the rear compartment.

"Gosh," he murmured, staring back, awestruck.

"What's the matter?" Gail swung around before I could stop her. "Oh, my God, the clouds."

They were angry midnight chasing us. Lightning flashed. Thunder jolted.