The Face of Midnight

by Dan Padavona

  “What do you want to do?” I asked.

  “Check the basement.”

  “Christ.”

  “It’s the only locked door in the house.”

  I grabbed the doorknob and gave it a twist.

  “That door has been locked the entire time. The noise couldn’t have come from down there.”

  She pulled the switchblade from her pocket.

  “So we’ll check outside.”

  I went first through the door with Becca wielding our only weapon.

  Ice pellets stung my skin. The ground had grown slushy and slick.

  Indentations in the grass marked where I’d searched for the phone moments earlier. It was hard to tell if all those tracks were mine or if a stranger had come through the yard.

  The wind threw me back. We shielded our faces as the storm hurled sleet at us. There was no sign of anything that could have caused the thumping sound.

  By the time we finished circling the house, we were both too cold to continue searching.

  Pushing into the kitchen, I locked the door and tried to knead the chill off my flesh. Her teeth chattered. Tiny lumps of ice freckled her hair.

  “That was fruitful,” I said.

  Her eyes held on the basement door.

  “Let’s just get out of here. Another minute inside this house is a minute too long.”

  “Becca, we’re not dressed for a winter storm. And it’s too risky to ride a bicycle on icy roads.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “I do. If I crashed and hurt you, I’d never forgive myself.”

  “Fine. We’ll wait until the storm lets up and then leave. It’s Halloween, not Christmas. How much longer can this weather last?”

  “What about my phone?”

  “To hell with it. I’ve survived for twenty years without my own phone.”

  “Dammit, Becca. All of my information is on that phone. My name, all of my contacts. I might as well hang a sign on the wall that says, Steve Morgan was here.”

  “You should have thought of that before you lost it.”

  I followed her into the den and watched the storm through the window. Rivulets of melting ice blurred the glass. I had to sit down, needed to mitigate the impending explosion I felt rumbling inside me.

  Out by the brick barbecue pit, ice piled up on my bicycle seat. The weatherman’s forecast for Indian summer in two days seemed a pipe dream.

  Becca’s eyes softened, and she sat beside me with her hand on mine.

  “Let’s say they do find your phone and figure out your name,” she said, reassurance coloring her voice. “So what? Your name won’t matter anymore because no one will know where you are. Making a decision to follow me means turning your back on your previous life.”

  This wasn’t at all what I wanted. Once we put Barton Falls behind us, once we were free of this house and this cold, I wanted to get Becca off the streets. I’d show her she could trust me.

  The cold was our prison. She hadn’t experienced such confinement in three years of running.

  Had I one wish it would have been for the predicted warm-up to arrive early: we’d step out the back door bracing for the hard clench of winter, and instead we’d feel the warm sun on our faces and hear ice melt running off the hill. If only to experience the chirping of birds and buzzing of insects again, to travel past wildflower meadows and see the deep green of hillsides framing the valley.

  The storm was relentless on Halloween afternoon. We napped in the den, Becca nuzzled against my shoulder and sprawled so we barely fit on the couch.

  The television was on, but I was too tired to pay attention except for news updates. The weatherman issued his dubious promise of warmer days, but it looked grim for tonight’s trick-or-treaters. There was still no mention of a body found in the woods west of town. If the junkie was at the bottom of a gorge, he might not be found until spring.

  I don’t believe in second sight. But I believe the deepest recesses of our minds hold truths too frightening to share.

  The house was gloomy as the day withered away. We retreated to the bedroom when the confines of the sofa caused us to cramp. I guess we slept past sunset, for the hallway was black when my eyes popped open.

  “Do you ever worry the monster you’re running from is inside the room?”

  I don’t remember saying it, don’t even recall what I’d dreamed.

  When I awoke, Becca was sitting up in the bed with her hands clenched over her heart and staring at me. I sensed rather than saw how wide her eyes were.

  “Why did you say that?”

  The words came trembling out of her.

  “Say what? I didn’t say anything.”

  “You were talking in your sleep.”

  She repeated the words back to me. It felt as though dead things clung to my flesh.

  I was trying to remember what I’d dreamed when the phone blared downstairs.

  I slipped off the bed and nearly snapped my wrists while breaking my fall.

  It rang again, loud enough to be heard from the road.

  Then a third ring.

  By the fourth ring, Becca stood shivering in the doorway, glaring at me.

  The ringing ceased.

  “Did it ring that loud last time?” she asked. “It didn’t. It couldn’t have or I would remember.”

  “No, you’re right. It sounded louder this time. A lot louder.”

  “How could the volume change?”

  A few logical explanations came to me. The phone was old for one thing. Maybe the ringer was bad or the phone company was testing the line.

  Or someone had turned up the ringer.

  I started to get off the floor. My legs went wobbly, scarcely able to support my weight.

  I couldn’t see past her into the hallway. Everything had gone black.

  We crept into the hall. My arms extended in front of me, feeling for the wall.

  I heard Becca breathing beside me. All I saw of her was an ill-defined shadow amid a sea of darkness.

  She hissed.

  “Wait!”

  I stepped down and the floor that had been under me was there no longer.

  Becca grabbed me at the top of the staircase, or I might have tumbled over the rail and broken my neck.

  I stood balancing with one foot on the landing and the other extended over the precipice.

  Silence crawled up from below.

  I started to speak, and she shushed me again.

  “Go back to the room and grab the flashlight,” she whispered.

  The gray light of a starless sky pooled into the living room. There wasn’t much of it. I didn’t want to walk back in the dark, didn’t want to leave Becca alone, even for a few seconds.

  The darkness was sharper toward the bedroom. A terror I couldn’t put a finger on seemed to be right behind me the whole way.

  Why was I scared? Because the phone rang? Because I’d had a nightmare I couldn’t recall?

  Do you ever worry the monster you’re running from is inside the room?

  What would make me say such a thing?

  I tried to put it out of my mind. The memory hung there like a bat in the rafters.

  Something glimmered as I edged my way to the staircase. Becca held the switchblade.

  When I flicked the beam on, she shook her head. I turned it off.

  “Then why did you make me go get it?”

  She pointed at the business end of the flashlight, then at her head. I agreed: the flashlight would make a good bludgeoning weapon.

  “You don’t think there’s someone downstairs, do you?” I asked.

  “I’m not taking any chances.”

  It didn’t matter how quiet we tried to be. The steps squealed all the way down as though the old house betrayed us.

  The living room, the only room accepting the miserly shaft of gray light, was empty. The fireplace appeared as a gaping mouth.

  I stepped on a clump of dirt and knelt to examine it. It’s conceivable the dirt was t
here all along or one of us had tracked it in. Conceivable, but unlikely.

  Easy now, I told myself. You had a bad dream, and you’re sneaking through a strange house. Don’t start imagining ghosts and monsters.

  I couldn’t see into the back of the house. Black ink swam there.

  That I was too old to be afraid of the dark didn’t matter.

  Because we fear not what we know, but the unknown.

  Fear cannot be walled away or wrestled into submission. It does not show its true face nor scream so that we may hear its words clearly. Fear cryptically whispers on the backs of our necks, its power derived from what our subconscious minds cower from.

  Fear is the unseen snake under the bedsheets, the madman in the shadowed corner, the closet bogeyman.

  In the old house, it was what the darkness concealed.

  The kitchen lay straight ahead. If someone was in there, the dividing wall wouldn’t let us see. My fingers squeezed around the flashlight.

  Blood pounded through my head

  The stench hit me at the threshold. A rotting smell like roadkill along the highway.

  We stood to the side of the dividing wall.

  Becca caught my eye. I nodded.

  She shot into the kitchen with the knife thrust before her. I yelled and brought down the end of the flashlight, stopping myself when I realized the gray bulk at the corner was the refrigerator.

  My eyes swept across the room.

  It was empty and dark, a feeble glow rising off the faucet. The carrion smell lingered.

  “What’s that smell?” I whispered.

  She put her hand up and motioned at the den.

  My adrenaline amped as we approached the room.

  We weren’t alone. I was sure of it. The same dread I’d felt before the humpbacked man lurched out of the darkness was back. Even if we found the den clear, there were two unexplored bedrooms upstairs and an attic.

  And the basement.

  The locked basement.

  The den was empty. Just the tattered couch with its stuffings crawling out, the television and stack of DVDs.

  The DVDs.

  Something was different about them. A slight alteration in their configuration.

  Or maybe I was just tired and scared.

  I peeked inside the tiny bathroom and found it empty.

  Becca turned and went back into the kitchen. I wasn’t about to let her go alone.

  I found her staring at the telephone. Had the phone rung at that moment, I would have collapsed.

  The wind threw leaves against the windows. Around us, the old house creaked and groaned as though it was coming alive.

  “It shouldn’t keep ringing,” she said. “Are you positive the line is inactive?”

  “We’ve been over this. It’s dead. It doesn’t work.”

  To prove my point, I pulled the receiver off the hook and dialed my mobile phone. If the call went through, I’d hear my phone ringing and finally figure out where I’d lost it.

  The call didn’t go through. The phone squawked the same error tones. I held the receiver out so she could hear.

  “Then nobody should be able to call us,” she said.

  “I know.”

  Becca stared into the surrounding rooms. The fear of someone else in the house clawed at my back.

  “Steve, can you force a telephone to ring?”

  I knew what she was getting at and didn’t like it.

  There were ways to force a phone with an inactive line to ring. I was no expert at this, but my Uncle Jim used to work for the telephone company. With the right electrical equipment, he said, you could activate the ringer. But you had to know where to apply the voltage and exactly how much to use so you didn’t ruin the phone or electrocute yourself. Regardless, the rotary phone was in one piece. No one could have taken it apart and put it back together without us hearing from the top of the stairs.

  Yet something was different.

  Putting the receiver back in place, I ran my finger from the base to the dialer.

  I saw it. The slider on the bottom of the phone was at its maximum position. That’s why the ringer was so loud.

  “Are you positive you never touched the phone?” I asked.

  “Of course not. Why would I?”

  Had the slider always been set to maximum? Neither of us had touched it, so it must have been.

  “There has to be another way to make a phone ring,” she said.

  “Short of the phone company testing the line or—”

  Suddenly it hit me.

  When we were kids, back when we all had landlines and only the rich or technologically-savvy owned cell phones, we’d known a way to prank each other. If we wanted the phone to ring, we dialed a four digit number.

  2-1-1-2?

  I couldn’t recall.

  “Steve?”

  I knew I was scaring her.

  I yanked the receiver off the hook and dialed 2-1-1-2.

  As I held the receiver to my ear, the phone remained silent. Maybe I was wrong.

  “I think it’s a problem with the wiring.”

  In the faint light reflecting off the sink, I saw the color come back into her cheeks.

  I was about to chalk our panic up to paranoia when I realized I’d forgotten part of the process. The steps to make the gag work were hazy after so many years.

  Depressing the hook until the dial tone returned, I dialed 2-1-1-2. This time I put the phone back on the hook and stepped away.

  It was deathly quiet.

  Certain I’d gotten the gag right and the phone wasn’t responding, I exhaled.

  “You see? Nobody forced the phone to ring—”

  The phone blared.

  My heart shot through my chest.

  I snatched the receiver back to my ear and yelled, “Hello!”

  Silence replied.

  Silence and the scratchy sounds of an old, noisy line, like phantoms whispering.

  My hands felt cold.

  No, it wasn’t sensible for someone to sneak into an abandoned house and pull the old callback trick.

  Not unless he wanted to psychologically torture us.

  We’d checked the downstairs. Nobody was here.

  “It’s the phone company testing the line,” I said. “Or the ancient wiring is so screwy it keeps causing the ringer to go off.”

  “Then why did it work for you?”

  Becca pushed past me and flipped the wall switch. The kitchen light flared.

  “Where are you, you son-of-a-bitch?”

  “Stop it, Becca. There’s nobody in the house.”

  Cursing, she flicked the other switch, and a floodlight illuminated the backyard.

  I was angry enough to forget how scared I felt.

  “Turn off the damn light,” I said. “If someone drives past they’ll see.”

  She stared out at the backyard. The light pulled frozen grass out of the darkness.

  Nobody was outside. We were alone on Myers Road.

  She petulantly flipped off the floodlight. Becca’s switchblade was out again.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She wasn’t listening to me. Another thought already possessed her.

  “Come on, Becca. We’ve checked the entire downstairs.”

  “Not everywhere.”

  She stomped to the basement door and jiggled the knob. When she found the door locked, she pulled the picks from her back pocket and went to work on the locking mechanism.

  I started to ask her what she was doing, and she shot me a glare that buckled my knees.

  She was on one knee, lips pursed with her tongue protruding. For such an old door, it gave her quite a struggle.

  Then I heard something snap, and Becca yelled, “Shit!”

  Tossing the broken pick aside, she withdrew a second tool and fished it into the mechanism. I didn’t dare say anything, not with her face strangled in concentration and sweat matting her bangs.

  She jimmied the lock, twisting, testing, blindly f
eeling her way through the mechanism’s defenses.

  Snap.

  She slammed the second broken pick down and ripped another from her pocket. She was down to her last two.

  “Becca, nobody’s in the basement. You’re panicking.”

  “I’m not panicking, Steve. I’m exhausting every possibility.”

  “It sure looks like panic from where I’m standing. How are you going to break into the next house? Give up while you still have a few picks left.”

  “It’s an old lock. A child could—”

  Snap.

  She didn’t drop the pick so much as it fell from her hand. It clanged around on the tile as though mocking her.

  I snatched her back from the door as she reached for the last pick.

  “Get control of yourself.”

  Her body was taut, a live wire. I worried she’d lose control again and attack me. If she’d tried to fight her way free, I couldn’t have stopped her.

  She stared down at the final lock pick.

  How desperate our situation was seemed to flood over her. If she broke the pick, we’d be stuck here. Becca dropped her head into my chest and cried.

  I didn’t know where to put my hands. For a long time, I was a statue in the kitchen while she leaned into me and sobbed. Finally, I slid my hands around her back. When she didn’t protest, I pulled her closer and kissed her forehead.

  “I should turn off the light before someone comes driving up the hill and sees,” I said.

  Becca sniffled. I felt her trembling in my arms.

  “I hope someone sees,” she said. “I’d give anything for someone to come along and take us out of here. Even the police. Jail cells are heated.”

  “You don’t want to go to jail.”

  As much as I wanted to reassure her everything would be fine, I dreaded spending another moment inside the house.

  “Steve, let’s just leave.”

  Outside the window, the tree silhouettes rocked in the wind.

  “We won’t get far in this weather.”

  “I still have my tent. If we shelter ourselves from the wind—”

  “We’ll freeze to death.”

  The death scent grew stronger. It seemed to be trickling up from the basement. She kept staring warily at the door.

  “Okay,” I said. “Anything is better than another night in this house.”

  The tension slipped out of her.

  “Thank you. Let’s grab our things and go.”