This Present Darkness

by Frank E. Peretti

  Now, sitting at this little table with a machine-vended lunch, her loneliness was stealing away her hunger and she was on the brink of tears.

  “Why, Daddy?” she whispered in very soft tones, dabbling her straw in her carton of milk. “Why can’t you just love me for what I am?”

  How could he have so much against her when he hardly even knew her? How could he be so adamant against her thoughts and philosophies when he couldn’t even understand them? They were living in two different worlds, and each disdained the other’s.

  Last night she and her father had not said a word to each other the whole evening, and Sandy had gone to bed depressed and angry. Even as she lay there listening to her folks turning out the lights, brushing their teeth, and turning in for the night, they seemed half a world away. She wanted to call them into her room and reach out to them, but she knew it wouldn’t work; Daddy would make demands and place conditions on their relationship instead of loving her, just loving her.

  She still didn’t know what had terrified her in the pit of the night. All she could remember was waking up plagued by every fear she had ever known—fear of dying, fear of failure, fear of loneliness. She had to get out of the house. She knew, even as she hastily dressed and ran out the door, that it was foolish and pointless, but the feelings were greater than any common sense she could muster.

  Now she felt very much like some poor animal shot into space with no means of returning, floating listlessly, waiting for nothing in particular and with nothing to look forward to.

  “Oh, Daddy,” she whimpered, and then she began to cry.

  She let her red hair fall down like soft blinds on either side of her face and the tears dropped one by one to the tabletop. She could hear people passing, but they chose to live in their own world and left her alone in hers. She tried to cry softly, which was hard to do when her emotions wanted to rush out of her like the cascade from a broken dam.

  “Uh …” came a soft and hesitant voice, “excuse me—”

  Sandy looked up and saw a young man, blond, slightly thin, with big brown eyes full of compassion.

  The young man said, “Please forgive me for intruding … but … is there anything I can do to help?”

  IT WAS DARK in the living room of Professor Juleen Langstrat’s apartment, and very, very quiet. One candle on the coffee table cast a dull yellow light on the ceiling-high bookcases, the strange oriental masks, the neatly arranged furniture, and the faces of two people who sat opposite each other, the candle between them. One of the people was the professor, her head resting against the back of her chair, her eyes closed, her arms outstretched in front of her, her hands making gentle sweeping motions as if she were treading water.

  The man sitting opposite her was Brummel, also with eyes closed, but not mirroring Langstrat’s expression and actions very well. He looked stiff and uncomfortable. At short intervals, and for a split second, he would crack his eyes open just enough to see what Langstrat was doing.

  Then she began to moan and her face registered pain and displeasure. She opened her eyes and sat upright. Brummel looked back at her.

  “You don’t feel well today, do you?” she asked.

  He shrugged and looked at the floor. “Ehhh, I’m okay. Just tired.”

  She shook her head, not satisfied with his answer. “No, no, it’s the energy I feel from you. You’re very disturbed.”

  Brummel had no answer.

  “Did you talk to Oliver today?” she probed.

  He hesitated, and finally said, “Yeah, sure.”

  “And you went to talk to him about our relationship.”

  That got a reaction. “No! That’s—”

  “Don’t lie to me.”

  He wilted a little and let out a frustrated sigh. “Yeah, sure, we talked about it. We talked about other things too, though.”

  Langstrat probed him with her eyes as if doing some kind of X-ray scan. Her hands opened and began to wave in the air just slightly. Brummel tried to sink out of sight into his chair.

  “Hey, listen,” he said shakily, “it’s no big deal—”

  She began to speak as if reading off a note pinned on his chest. “You’re … frightened, you feel cornered, you went to tell Oliver … you also feel controlled …” She looked at his face. “Controlled? By whom?”

  “I don’t feel controlled!”

  She laughed a little to put him at ease. “Well, of course you do. I just read it.”

  Brummel looked for a split second toward the telephone on the end table. “Did Young call you?”

  She smiled with amusement. “There was no need to. Oliver is very close to the Universal Mind. I’m beginning to meld with his thoughts now.” Her expression hardened. “Alf, I really wish you were doing as well.”

  Brummel sighed again, hid his face behind his hands, then finally blurted, “Hey, listen, I can’t tackle everything at once! There’s just too much to learn!”

  She put her hand on his comfortingly. “Well then, let’s deal with these things one at a time. Alf?” He looked up at her. “You’re frightened, aren’t you? What are you frightened of?”

  “You tell me,” and it was almost a dare.

  “I’m giving you a chance to speak first.”

  “Well then, I’m not frightened.”

  At least not until this very second, when Langstrat’s eyes narrowed and began to bore into him.

  “You are indeed frightened,” she said sternly. “You are frightened because we were photographed the other night by that reporter from the Clarion. Isn’t that right?”

  Brummel pointed his finger at her angrily. “See, now that’s exactly one of the things Young and I talked about! He called you! He had to have called you!”

  She nodded, unabashed. “Yes, of course he called me. He withholds nothing from me. None of us withholds truth from all the others, you know that.”

  Brummel knew he might as well open up. “I’m concerned about the Plan. We’re getting too big, too big to hide anymore; we’re risking exposure in too many places. I think we were careless to meet out in public like that.”

  “But it’s all been taken care of. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  “Oh no? Hogan’s on our scent! I suppose you know he was asking Oliver some very delicate questions?”

  “Oliver can handle himself.”

  “So how do we handle Hogan?”

  “The same way we handle anyone else. Are you aware that he talked to Oliver about problems he’s having with his daughter? You should find that interesting.”

  “What kind of problems?”

  “She’s run away from home … and yet she still had the desire to be in my class today. I like the sound of that.”

  “So how do we use it?”

  She smiled her cunning smile. “All in good time, Alf. We can’t rush things.”

  Brummel got up and began to pace. “With Hogan I’m not so sure. He may not be the pushover that Harmel was. Maybe having Krueger arrested was the wrong thing to do.”

  “But you got access to the film; you had it destroyed.”

  He turned to face her. “And what did that get us? Before that they weren’t asking any questions, and now they are! Come on, I know what I’d think if I got my camera back and the film was ruined. Hogan and Krueger just aren’t that gullible.”

  Langstrat spoke soothingly, putting her arms around him like the tendrils of a vine. “Ah, but they are vulnerable, first to you, and ultimately to me.”

  “Just like everybody,” he muttered.

  He should have expected her reaction. She grew very cold and frightening and looked right into his eyes.

  “And that,” she said, “is another topic you discussed with Oliver today.”

  “He tells you everything!”

  “The Masters would tell me even if he didn’t.”

  Brummel tried to turn his eyes away from her. He couldn’t stand whatever it was that made such beauty so immensely hideous.

  “Loo
k at me!” she insisted, and Brummel obeyed. “If you are not happy with our relationship, I can always have it terminated.”

  He looked down, stuttered a bit. “It’s—it’s okay …”

  “What?”

  “I mean I’m happy with our relationship.”

  “Truly happy?”

  He felt desperate to appease her, to get her to let go of him. “I … I just don’t want things to get out of control …”

  She gave him a slow, vampirish kiss. “You are the one who needs more control. Haven’t I always taught you that?”

  She was cutting him to pieces and he knew it, but she had him. He belonged to her.

  He still had a concern he couldn’t shake. “But how many adversaries can we continue to remove? It seems like every time we get rid of one, bingo, another pops up in his place. Harmel went out, in came Hogan …”

  She completed the thought for him. “You took care of Farrel, and in came Henry Busche.”

  “It can’t go on. The odds are against us.”

  “Busche is as good as gone. Isn’t there a confidence vote this Friday?”

  “The congregation is getting good and upset. But …”

  “Yes?”

  “You know he removed Lou Stanley from the church for adultery?”

  “Ah, yes. That should help the congregation decide.”

  “A lot of them agreed with that move!”

  She backed away in order to gaze at him better, freezing his blood with her eyes. “Are you afraid of Henry Busche?”

  “Listen, he still has a lot of support in the church, more than I thought he did.”

  “You are afraid of him!”

  “Somebody’s on his side, I don’t know who. And what if he finds out about the Plan?”

  “He will never find out anything!” If she had fangs, they would have been showing. “He will be destroyed as a minister long before then. You will see to that, won’t you?”

  “I’m working on it.”

  “Do not bow to this Henry Busche! He bows to you, and you bow to me!”

  “I’m working on it, I said!”

  She relaxed and smiled. “Next Tuesday, then?”

  “Ehh …”

  “We’ll celebrate Busche’s Friday demise. You can tell me all about it.”

  “What about Hogan?”

  “Hogan is a limp and weakened fool. Don’t worry about him. He’s not your responsibility.”

  Before Brummel knew it, he was standing outside her back door.

  Langstrat watched him through her window until he drove off, taking the usual alley route where he would not be seen. She opened the drapes to let some light in, extinguished the candle on the coffee table, then took a folder from her desk drawer.

  Soon she had arranged in neat piles the life histories, personality profiles, and current photographs of Marshall, Kate, and Sandy Hogan. When her eyes fell on the photograph of Sandy, they glinted maliciously.

  Hovering invisibly over Langstrat’s shoulder was a huge black hand adorned with jeweled rings and bracelets of gold. A deep and seductive voice spoke thoughts to her mind.

  TUESDAY AFTERNOON AT the Clarion resembled a battlefield after everyone is either dead or retreated. The place was deathly quiet. George, the typesetter, usually took the day after publishing off to recover from the wild deadline race. Tom, the paste-up man, was out covering a local story.

  As for Edie, the secretary/reporter/ad girl, she had resigned and walked off the job last night. Marshall had not known that she once was happily married, but gradually became unhappily married, and finally got a little thing going with a trucker that resulted in a very recent blow-up at home, with pieces of marriage flying everywhere and spouses fleeing abruptly in opposite directions. Now she was gone, and Marshall could feel the sudden void.

  Bernice and he sat alone in the glass-enclosed office at the back of the little newsroom/ad room/front office. From his secondhand, ten-dollar desk Marshall could look through the glass and survey the three desks, two typewriters, two wastebaskets, two telephones, and one coffeemaker. Everything looked cluttered and busy, with papers and copy lying everywhere, but absolutely nothing was happening.

  “I don’t suppose you know where everything is?” he asked Bernice.

  Bernice was sitting up on the worktable adjacent to Marshall’s desk, her back against the wall, stirring a personalized mug of hot chocolate.

  “Aw, we’ll find it all,” she answered. “I know where she kept the books, and I’m sure her Rolodex has all the addresses and phone numbers.”

  “What about the cord to the coffeemaker?”

  “Why do you think I’m drinking hot chocolate?”

  “Nuts. I wish somebody would’ve told me.”

  “I don’t think anybody really knew.”

  “We’d better get an ad in for a new secretary this week. Edie carried more than her weight around here.”

  “I guess it was a bad blow-up. She’s leaving town for good, before her husband’s black eyes heal up and he can see to find her.”

  “Affairs. Nothing good ever comes of ’em.”

  “So have you heard the latest about Alf Brummel?”

  Marshall looked up at her. She perched on the worktable like some coy bird, trying to look more interested in her hot chocolate than in the spicy news.

  “Under the circumstances,” he said, “I’m dying to hear it.”

  “I had lunch with Sara, his secretary, today. Guess he’s gone for several hours every Tuesday afternoon and never says where, but Sara knows. Guess our friend Alf has a special girlfriend.”

  “Yeah, Juleen Langstrat, psychology prof out at the college.”

  That ruined it for Bernice. “How did you know?”

  “The blonde woman you saw that night, remember? The day after one of my reporters gets busted for taking the wrong pictures at the carnival, Langstrat kicks me out of her class. Add to that Oliver Young’s ears getting all red when he told me he didn’t know her.”

  “You’re brilliant, Hogan.”

  “Just a good guesser.”

  “She and Brummel do have something going. He calls it therapy, but I think he enjoys it, if you get my drift.”

  “So what’s Young’s connection to either of them?”

  Bernice didn’t hear his question. “Too bad Brummel isn’t already married. I could have done more with it.”

  “Hey, reset your frequency, will you? We’ve got a little club here, and all three of these people are members.”

  “Sorry.”

  “What we’re really after is whatever it is they don’t want us to know, especially if—and I mean IF—it’s worth trumping up a false arrest to cover up.”

  “And destroying my film.”

  “I wonder if any of those fingerprints on the film would tell us something?”

  “Not much. They’re not on file.”

  Marshall twisted in his chair to face her more directly. “All right, who do you know?”

  Bernice was smug. “I have an uncle who’s very close to Justin Parker’s office.”

  “The country prosecutor?”

  “Sure. He does just about anything for me.”

  “Hey, don’t bring them into this, not yet …”

  Bernice raised her hands as if he were pointing a gun at her and assured him, “Not yet, not yet.”

  “But I’m not saying they won’t come in handy.”

  “Don’t think I haven’t thought of that.”

  “So tell me this: did Brummel ever apologize?”

  “After you bowed to him the way you did, are you kidding?”

  “No official, signed apology from him and his office?”

  “Is that what he told you?”

  Marshall had to sneer. “Aw, both Brummel and Young told me all kinds of things—how they hardly knew each other, how they were never anywhere near the carnival … boy, I just wish we had those pictures.”

  Bernice was offended. “Hey, you can believe me, Ho
gan. You really can!”

  Marshall looked into space for a second or two, musing. “Brummel and Langstrat. Therapy. I guess that makes sense now …”

  “C’mon, let’s get all the pieces out on the table.”

  What pieces? Marshall thought. How do you lay out vague feelings, strange experiences, vibes?

  He finally said, “Uh … this Brummel and Langstrat … they’re both into the same kind of thing. I can tell.”

  “What kind of thing?”

  Marshall felt cornered. “How about … whammies?”

  Bernice looked puzzled. Oh c’mon, Krueger, don’t make me have to explain it.

  She said, “You’ll have to explain that to me.”

  Oh boy, here we go, Marshall thought. “Well … now it’s gonna sound crazy, but when I talked to each of them—and you ought to try it sometime—each of them had this weird, gooney-eyed thing they did … kind of like they were hypnotizing me or something …”

  Bernice started to crack up.

  “Ehhh, go ahead, laugh.”

  “What are you saying? That they’re all into some kind of Svengali trip?”

  “I don’t know how to label it yet, but yeah. Brummel’s not nearly as good at it as Langstrat. He smiles too much. Young might be into it too, but he uses words. Lots of words.”

  Bernice studied his face for just the slightest moment and then said, “I think you need a good, stiff drink. Would a hot chocolate do?”

  “Sure, get me one. Please.”

  Bernice returned with another personalized mug—Edie’s—full of hot chocolate. “Hope it’s strong enough,” she said, and hopped back onto the table.

  “So why do those three try to look unconnected …” Marshall mused. “And what about the other two unknowns, Pudgy and the Ghost? You’ve never seen them before?”

  “Never. They could have been out-of-towners.”

  Marshall sighed. “It’s a dead end.”

  “Maybe not yet. Brummel does go to that little white church, Ashton Community, and I heard somebody just got kicked out of there for shacking up or something …”

  “Bernice, that’s gossip!”

  “What would you say, then, to my talking to a friend on the Whitmore faculty who might be able to tell me something about this mysterious professor lady?”