Dark Matter

by Blake Crouch

  I pass a construction site, abandoned for the night, and a few blocks later, the playground of the elementary school my son attended, the metal sliding board gleaming under a streetlamp and the swings stirring in the breeze.

  There’s an energy to these autumn nights that touches something primal inside of me. Something from long ago. From my childhood in western Iowa. I think of high school football games and the stadium lights blazing down on the players. I smell ripening apples, and the sour reek of beer from keg parties in the cornfields. I feel the wind in my face as I ride in the bed of an old pickup truck down a country road at night, dust swirling red in the taillights and the entire span of my life yawning out ahead of me.

  It’s the beautiful thing about youth.

  There’s a weightlessness that permeates everything because no damning choices have been made, no paths committed to, and the road forking out ahead is pure, unlimited potential.

  I love my life, but I haven’t felt that lightness of being in ages. Autumn nights like this are as close as I get.

  The cold is beginning to clear my head.

  It will be good to be home again. I’m thinking of starting up the gas logs. We’ve never had a fire before Halloween, but tonight is so unseasonably cold that after walking a mile in this wind, all I want is to sit by the hearth with Daniela and Charlie and a glass of wine.

  The street undercuts the El.

  I pass beneath the rusting ironwork of the railway.

  For me, even more than the skyline, the El personifies the city.

  This is my favorite section of the walk home, because it’s the darkest and quietest.

  At the moment…

  No trains inbound.

  No headlights in either direction.

  No audible pub noise.

  Nothing but the distant roar of a jet overhead, on final approach into O’Hare.

  Wait…

  There’s something coming—footfalls on the sidewalk.

  I glance back.

  A shadow rushes toward me, the distance between us closing faster than I can process what’s happening.

  The first thing I see is a face.

  Ghost white.

  High, arching eyebrows that look drawn.

  Red, pursed lips—too thin, too perfect.

  And horrifying eyes—big and pitch-black, without pupils or irises.

  The second thing I see is the barrel of a gun, four inches from the end of my nose.

  The low, raspy voice behind the geisha mask says, “Turn around.”

  I hesitate, too stunned to move.

  He pushes the gun into my face.

  I turn around.

  Before I can tell him that my wallet is in my front left pocket, he says, “I’m not here for your money. Start walking.”

  I start walking.

  “Faster.”

  I walk faster.

  “What do you want?” I ask.

  “Keep your mouth shut.”

  A train roars past overhead, and we emerge from the darkness under the El, my heart rocketing inside my chest. I absorb my surroundings with a sudden and profound curiosity. Across the street is a gated townhome complex, and this side of the block comprises a collection of businesses that shutter at five.

  A nail salon.

  A law office.

  An appliance repair shop.

  A tire store.

  This neighborhood is a ghost town, nobody out.

  “See that SUV?” he asks. There’s a black Lincoln Navigator parked on the curb just ahead. The alarm chirps. “Get in the driver’s seat.”

  “Whatever you’re thinking about doing—”

  “Or you can bleed to death right here on the sidewalk.”

  I open the driver’s-side door and slide in behind the wheel.

  “My grocery bag,” I say.

  “Bring it.” He climbs in behind me. “Start the car.”

  I pull the door closed and stow the canvas Whole Foods bag in the front passenger floorboard. It’s so quiet in the car I can actually hear my pulse—a fast thrumming against my eardrum.

  “What are you waiting for?” he asks.

  I press the engine-start button.

  “Turn on the navigation.”

  I turn it on.

  “Click on ‘previous destinations.’ ”

  I’ve never owned a car with built-in GPS, and it takes me a moment to find the right tab on the touchscreen.

  Three locations appear.

  One is my home address. One is the university where I work.

  “You’ve been following me?” I ask.

  “Choose Pulaski Drive.”

  I select 1400 Pulaski Drive, Chicago, Illinois 60616, with no idea where that even is. The female voice on the GPS instructs me: Make a legal U-turn when possible and proceed for point-eight miles.

  Shifting into gear, I turn out into the dark street.

  The man behind me says, “Buckle your seat belt.”

  I strap myself in as he does the same.

  “Jason, just so we’re clear, if you do anything other than follow these directions to the letter, I’m going to shoot you through the seat. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

  “Yes.”

  I drive us through my neighborhood, wondering if I’m seeing it all for the last time.

  At a red light, I pull to a stop in front of my corner bar. Through the deeply tinted front passenger window, I see the door is still propped open. I glimpse Matt, and through the crowd, Ryan, turned around in his stool now, his back to the bar, his elbows on the scuffed wood, holding court for his postgrads. Probably enthralling them with a horrifying cautionary tale of failure starring his old roommate.

  I want to call out to him. To make him understand that I’m in trouble. That I need—

  “Green light, Jason.”

  I accelerate through the intersection.

  The GPS navigation guides us east through Logan Square to the Kennedy Expressway, where the indifferent female voice instructs me, Turn right in one hundred feet and proceed for nineteen-point-eight miles.

  Southbound traffic is light enough for me to peg the speedometer at seventy and keep it there. My hands sweat on the leather steering wheel, and I can’t stop wondering, Am I going to die tonight?

  It occurs to me that if I do survive, I’ll carry a new revelation with me for the rest of my days: we leave this life the same way we enter it—totally alone, bereft. I’m afraid, and there is nothing Daniela or Charlie or anyone can do to help me in this moment when I need them more than ever. They don’t even know what I’m experiencing.

  The interstate skirts the western edge of downtown. The Willis Tower and its brood of lesser skyscrapers glow with a serene warmth against the night.

  Through the writhing panic and fear, my mind races, fighting to puzzle out what’s happening.

  My address is in the GPS. So this wasn’t a random encounter. This man has been following me. Knows me. Ergo, some action of mine has resulted in this outcome.

  But which?

  I’m not rich.

  My life isn’t worth anything beyond its value to me and to my loved ones.

  I’ve never been arrested, never committed a crime.

  Never slept with another man’s wife.

  Sure, I flip people off in traffic on occasion, but that’s just Chicago.

  My last and only physical altercation was in the sixth grade when I punched a classmate in the nose for pouring milk down the back of my shirt.

  I haven’t wronged anyone in the meaningful sense of the word. In a manner that might have culminated with me driving a Lincoln Navigator with a gun pointed at the back of my head.

  I’m an atomic physicist and professor at a small college.

  I don’t treat my students, even the worst of the bunch, with anything but respect. Those who have failed out of my classes failed because they didn’t care in the first place, and certainly none of them could accuse me of ruining their lives. I go out of m
y way to help my students pass.

  The skyline dwindles in the side mirror, falling farther and farther away like a familiar and comforting piece of coastline.

  I venture, “Did I do something to you in the past? Or someone you work for? I just don’t understand what you could possibly want from—”

  “The more you talk, the worse it will be for you.”

  For the first time, I realize there’s something familiar in his voice. I can’t for the life of me pinpoint when or where, but we’ve met. I’m sure of it.

  I feel the vibration of my phone receiving a text message.

  Then another.

  And another.

  He forgot to take my phone.

  I look at the time: 9:05 p.m.

  I left my house a little over an hour ago. It’s Daniela no doubt, wondering where I am. I’m fifteen minutes late, and I’m never late.

  I glance in the rearview mirror, but it’s too dark to see anything except a sliver of the ghost-white mask. I risk an experiment. Taking my left hand off the steering wheel, I place it in my lap and count to ten.

  He says nothing.

  I put my hand back on the wheel.

  That computerized voice breaks the silence: Merge right onto the Eighty-Seventh Street exit in four-point-three miles.

  Again, I take my left hand slowly off the wheel.

  This time, I slide it into the pocket of my khaki slacks. My phone is buried deep, and I just barely touch it with my index and pointer fingers, somehow managing to pinch it between them.

  Millimeter by millimeter, I tug it out, the rubber case catching on every fold of fabric, and now a sustained vibration rattling between my fingertips—a call coming in.

  When I finally work it free, I place my phone faceup in my lap and return my hand to the steering wheel.

  As the navigation voice updates the distance from our upcoming turn, I shoot a glance down at the phone.

  There’s a missed call from “Dani” and three texts:

  DANI 2m ago

  Dinner’s on the table

  DANI 2m ago

  Hurry home we are STARVING!

  DANI 1m ago

  You get lost? :)

  I refocus my attention on the road, wondering if the glow from my phone is visible from the backseat.

  The touchscreen goes dark.

  Reaching down, I click the ON/OFF button and swipe the screen. I punch in my four-digit passcode, click the green “Messages” icon. Daniela’s thread is at the top, and as I open our conversation, my abductor shifts behind me.

  I clutch the wheel with both hands again.

  Merge right onto the Eighty-Seventh Street exit in one-point-nine miles.

  The screensaver times out, auto-lock kicks in, my phone goes black.

  Shit.

  Sliding my hand back down, I retype the passcode and begin tapping out the most important text of my life, my index finger clumsy on the touchscreen, each word taking two or three attempts to complete as auto-correct wreaks havoc.

  The barrel of the gun digs into the back of my head.

  I react, swerving into the fast lane.

  “What are you doing, Jason?”

  I straighten the wheel with one hand, swinging us back into the slow lane as my other hand lowers toward the phone, closing in on Send.

  He lunges between the front seats, his gloved hand reaching around my waist, snatching the phone away.

  Merge right onto the Eighty-Seventh Street exit in five hundred feet.

  “What’s your passcode, Jason?” When I don’t respond, he says, “Wait. I bet I know this. Month and year of your birthday backwards? Let’s see…three-seven-two-one. There we go.”

  In the rearview mirror, I see the phone illuminate his mask.

  He reads the text he stopped me from sending: “ ‘1400 Pulaski call 91…’ Bad boy.”

  I veer onto the interstate off-ramp.

  The GPS says, Turn left onto Eighty-Seventh Street and proceed east for three-point-eight miles.

  We drive into South Chicago, through a neighborhood we have no business setting foot in.

  Past rows of factory housing.

  Apartment projects.

  Empty parks with rusted swing sets and netless basketball hoops.

  Storefronts locked up for the night behind security gates.

  Gang tagging everywhere.

  He asks, “So do you call her Dani or Daniela?”

  My throat constricts.

  Rage and fear and helplessness burgeoning inside of me.

  “Jason, I asked you a question.”

  “Go to hell.”

  He leans close, his words hot in my ear. “You do not want to go down this path with me. I will hurt you worse than you’ve ever been hurt in your life. Pain you didn’t even know was possible. What do you call her?”

  I grit my teeth. “Daniela.”

  “Never Dani? Even though that’s what’s on your phone?”

  I’m tempted to flip the car at high speed and just kill us both.

  I say, “Rarely. She doesn’t like it.”

  “What’s in the grocery bag?”

  “Why do you want to know what I call her?”

  “What’s in the bag?”

  “Ice cream.”

  “It’s family night, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  In the rearview mirror, I see him typing on my phone.

  “What are you writing?” I ask.

  He doesn’t respond.

  We’re out of the ghetto now, riding through a no-man’s-land that doesn’t even feel like Chicago anymore, with the skyline nothing but a smear of light on the far horizon. The houses are crumbling, lightless, and lifeless. Everything long abandoned.

  We cross a river and straight ahead lies Lake Michigan, its black expanse a fitting denouement of this urban wilderness.

  As if the world ends right here.

  And perhaps mine does.

  Turn right and proceed south on Pulaski Drive for point-five miles to destination.

  He chuckles to himself. “Wow, are you in trouble with the missus.” I strangle the steering wheel. “Who was that man you had whisky with tonight, Jason? I couldn’t tell from outside.”

  It’s so dark out here in this borderland between Chicago and Indiana.

  We’re passing the ruins of railroad yards and factories.

  “Jason.”

  “His name is Ryan Holder. He used to be—”

  “Your old roommate.”

  “How’d you know that?”

  “Are you two close? I don’t see him in your contacts.”

  “Not really. How do you—?”

  “I know almost everything about you, Jason. You could say I’ve made your life my specialty.”

  “Who are you?”

  You will arrive at your destination in five hundred feet.

  “Who are you?”

  He doesn’t answer, but my attention is beginning to pull away from him as I focus on our increasingly remote surroundings.

  The pavement flows under the SUV’s headlights.

  Empty behind us.

  Empty ahead.

  There’s the lake off to my left, deserted warehouses on my right.

  You have arrived at your destination.

  I stop the Navigator in the middle of the road.

  He says, “The entrance is up ahead on the left.”

  The headlights graze a teetering stretch of twelve-foot fencing, topped with a tiara of rusted barbed wire. The gate is ajar, and a chain that once locked it shut has been snipped and coiled in the weeds by the roadside.

  “Just nudge the gate with the front bumper.”

  Even from inside the near-soundproof interior of the SUV, the shriek of the gate grinding open is loud. The cones of light illuminate the remnants of a road, the pavement cracked and buckled from years of harsh Chicago winters.

  I engage the high beams.

  Light washes over a parking lot, where streetlamps have topple
d everywhere like spilled matchsticks.

  Beyond, a sprawling structure looms.

  The brick façade of the time-ravaged building is flanked by huge cylindrical tanks and a pair of hundred-foot smokestacks spearing the sky.

  “What is this place?” I ask.

  “Put it in PARK and turn it off.”

  I bring the car to a stop, shift out of gear, and punch off the engine.

  It becomes deathly silent.

  “What is this place?” I ask again.

  “What are your Friday plans?”

  “Excuse me?”

  A sharp blow to the side of my head sends me slumping into the steering wheel, stunned and wondering for a half second if this is what it feels like to be shot in the head.

  But no, he only hit me with his gun.

  I touch my hand to the point of impact.

  My fingers come away sticky with blood.

  “Tomorrow,” he says. “What do you have scheduled for tomorrow?”

  Tomorrow. It feels like a foreign concept.

  “I’m…giving a test to my PHYS 3316 class.”

  “What else?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Take off all your clothes.”

  I look in the rearview mirror.

  Why the hell does he want me naked?

  He says, “If you wanted to try something, you should’ve done it while you had control of the car. From this moment forward, you’re mine. Now, take off your clothes, and if I have to tell you again, I’m going to make you bleed. A lot.”

  I unbuckle my seat belt.

  As I unzip my gray hoodie and shrug my arms out of the sleeves, I cling to a single shred of hope—he’s still wearing a mask, which means he doesn’t want me to see his face. If he were planning to kill me, he wouldn’t care if I could identify him.

  Right?

  I unbutton my shirt.

  “Shoes too?” I ask.

  “Everything.”

  I slip off my running shoes, my socks.

  I slide my slacks and boxer shorts down my legs.

  Then my clothes—every last thread—sit in a pile in the front passenger seat.

  I feel vulnerable.

  Exposed.

  Weirdly ashamed.

  What if he tries to rape me? Is that what this is all about?

  He sets a flashlight on the console between the seats.

  “Out of the car, Jason.”

  I realize that I see the interior of the Navigator as a kind of lifeboat. As long as I stay inside, he can’t really hurt me.