Back in Black (Awake in the Dark Book 4)

by Tim McBain

  I can only remember flashes. Sitting in the Taurus. Burger tumbling to the floor. Am I missing pieces?

  I bend, untie, ease myself down to the blacktop.

  I don’t bother running or any of that this time. There’s no reason to rush that I can think of. I find a dryish spot on the asphalt and sit down, Indian style. Likewise, Amity seems in no hurry. She moseys around the corner and heads my way.

  “What a beautiful gray morning it is,” I say, looking up at the sky.

  She rolls her eyes as she brushes the hood back. Maybe it was funny the first time I said it, but it’s not now. If I keep saying it, though, it will eventually get funny again in a new way, so I have to keep at it.

  She sits next to me. Close, but not close enough to touch, even accidentally.

  “What were you up to before you got the alley call this time?” I say.

  “The usual,” she says. “You know this is happening much more frequently now, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” I say.

  “Don’t you think that means the lesson is becoming more urgent?” she says. “And it must be something different, right? Different from last time, you know?”

  I don’t know if there’s any lesson, but I can’t tell her this.

  I lie back on the asphalt, hands weaved behind my head.

  “It’s hard to say what to make of any of it,” I say. “I wouldn’t worry about it, though. It tends to all make sense in time, right? Nothing we can do to rush it. Nothing we can do to make ourselves understand it.”

  She lies back as well, though she opts to bunch the hood beneath her head instead of a hand. She is close. I want to touch her, but I can’t.

  “Maybe you’re right,” she says.

  We stare up at the tendrils of gray winding over each other.

  “How do you think it works that you can stay out here for all of this time?” I say.

  “What do you mean?” she says.

  “I mean, you’re not really eating or anything, right?” I say. “Where is your body and how is it surviving?”

  She makes a weird noise, and then I realize that she’s laughing.

  “Why is that funny?” I say.

  “I don’t know,” she says. “You worry about everything, you know? You’re always waiting for the next bad thing to happen. I’m here, and I’m fine. That’s all that matters to me.”

  We are quiet for a moment.

  “You have to believe in something at some point, don’t you?” she says. “I mean, even if you don’t believe in all of this, that’s believing something, right? You’re always stuck somewhere in the middle.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” I say.

  “After all you’ve seen, I don’t see how you still have so much doubt,” she says.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “It’s like life itself. Just existing is such a crazy miracle, right? But then so much else is so senseless. I mean, can we be here for any reason when 3 million children starve to death every year? What would the purpose be in creating a world like that?”

  She doesn’t say anything, and I know I shouldn’t even talk about these things, that my negativity is like a disease that infects people’s minds and hurts them. And is that all I can do? Spread my misery around? Share these nightmares so neither of us will ever be able to brush them off?

  Is that what a relationship is for me?

  Chapter 11

  I open my eyes. It’s dark. I sit up, and my forehead peels away from the steering wheel. This sounds a little like pulling open the plastic on a slice of American cheese, and it stings. I lean back and poke at the sore area with my fingers, finding a divot pressed into my flesh just above my eyebrows that runs the width of my head. It feels wrong, like a weird forehead trench. I lift my eyebrows a few times, and this seems to loosen things up a little.

  Sleep warmth shrouds me, clouds my thoughts. I blink a few times, trying to think straight. I know I’m in the Taurus, that I was eating a burger when I passed out. Is there anything else I should remember? I hope not, because my mind remains blank.

  I don’t know. Maybe I’ve got it all straight, but the darkness is enhancing my sense of disorientation. I can’t see much.

  Steam fogs the windows, partially obscuring the little illumination coming in from the streetlights some distance away. Though it’s all a blur out there, I know the burger place must be closed due to the lack of light coming from that direction. So it’s late. I feel around for the cell phone, hoping to check the time, but my fingers sense only upholstery. Even the crack between the seats turns up empty.

  It’s stuffy in the car, and every breath feels thick and warm in my lungs, a little sticky. However, I can also sense a chill creeping in from the dropping temp outside. The cool radiates through the windows and floor. I guess my sleep warmth fought that off for now.

  It occurs to me how dehydrated my mouth is. My tongue feels like a dried-out sponge sitting next to a kitchen sink somewhere. I reach into the blackness, feeling a little plastic poke and finding the waxy tube of a paper cup beneath that. I grip it and bring the Dr. Pepper to my face, sip of its straw. It’s warm, flat, watered down from the melted ice. Yum. But now my tongue feels more like a dried-out sponge that some idiot poured watery syrup on, so it was all worth it.

  OK, now what? Fog be gone?

  I pull my hand inside the sleeve of my hoodie and smear the cuff on the windshield. Each stroke reveals a little more of the miniature golf course, half lit by the moon and streetlights. I give the driver’s side window a similar wiping.

  And then I decide a little cold air might wake me up the rest of the way. I crack open the door, and the dome light clicks on. The first flash of light blinds me, going from dark to bright way too fast for my dumb pupils to adjust. I pinch my eyes closed. Even the light coming through my eyelids is sort of painful. The cold air rushes through the crack where the door is open, tickling against my arm and swirling into the car. It feels good to breathe the cooler air. Crisp, not sticky.

  After a few seconds, I can look around if I squint my eyes down to little crevices. I keep my gaze pointed down, away from the light. My burger rests on the floor, still displaying the scene of its tragic accident. The top bun was thrown from the wrapper on impact. It lies pressed to the coarse fabric of the car floor, mayo side down, just under the accelerator. The rest of the burger remains at least partially wrapped. Sure, I can see a few strands of said car floor fabric clinging to the meat like stray pubic hairs. It took a tumble, but it’s mostly okay, right?

  Right?

  I pick up the burger, tweezing a few of those fibers out of the ketchup with my thumb and index finger. I hesitate. This could be a bad idea.

  But I’m hungry. I bite it, the cold beef crumbling in my mouth, ketchup and mustard and jalapeno giving it that zing of acidity. It still tastes good to me.

  And I keep the door propped open with my elbow, the wind blowing cold into my car. And I do feel more awake. More alive. Bite number two forces me to stop to pick one of the blue pubes from the floor out of my teeth, but it’s okay. It’s worth it.

  I catch my reflection in the rearview mirror as I eat. The imprint from the steering wheel looks like a snake crawled over my forehead, denting a pink trail in my flesh.

  I drive in silence, the only way the Taurus rolls. I click the tape player on just to see the red light glow in the blackness, returning to visit like an old friend.

  I suppose silence is an overstatement, though. Sure, there are no sounds inside the car, but outside the highway thrums and grunts like it always does, day or night. Engines growl. Metal parts grind against each other. Rubber spins over asphalt, double thumping as the front tires then the back hit the ribbons of smooth black tar patching cracks in the road.

  And I can’t help but feel frustrated, I guess. I try to not feel it. I try to feel nothing, but it crawls inside my brain and makes itself at home.

  Day after day spent like this. Mind lost in the clouds, dreaming up fifty
murder scenarios per hour. Petting the gun like a toy poodle, stroking and fondling and caressing it, scratching behind its ears. Eating garbage food when I can be bothered to remember that I’m supposed to eat at all.

  What a waste of time.

  My hands strangle the wheel, knuckles gone white. My foot hammers the gas, and various pieces of the Taurus shimmy like this is a rocket lifting off instead of a car going just over 55 miles per hour. I ease up a little. I need this puppy to last a while longer yet.

  I could have done it by now. I could have done it today. He sat alone, eyes glued to the table. He never would’ve looked up. He never would have seen me coming. Something like 15 paces to the door, 5 more to the table and pull the trigger. Just like that, this would all be over. Probably twenty seconds of effort.

  But no, no. I puff myself up, tell myself I’m a loaded gun waiting to go off, sit and stew about the violence that wells in me. So where is it? It must not be true. I must be scared or nervous or something. Maybe it’s just something I tell myself so I don’t feel out of control. Like the kid in school that talks so much shit all the time and bursts into tears the first time someone punches him in the nose.

  No. That’s not me.

  It’s not.

  So do it. Just go do it.

  No more waiting around.

  Tomorrow. Tomorrow I’ll do it.

  Chapter 12

  By the time I pull into the motel parking lot, a calm washes over me. It’s settled. It’s decided. No more dicking around.

  The tires fling gravel into the undercarriage. The rock to metal collisions sound a little like a steel drum.

  I park and open the door, so the dome light does its thing again. I scan the front seat, the back seat, the floor. Still no phone. What the hell?

  Only one place left to look, I guess. I rifle around under the seat, arm reaching into the shadows, fingers patting along the floor like some bottom feeder under the sea. First, I find the pickle slice that catapulted out of my burger. It’s warm now. Slimy. I don’t pick it up so much as it adheres to my hand like a leech. I toss it into the gravel and reach underneath once more.

  There. Stupid phone. Way the hell under there, of course. I can’t quite get a grip on it, but I manage to lodge a couple of fingernails on some edge bit, drag it closer and then pick it up.

  So it’s 2:11 AM. And I missed four calls. The first two I recognize to be Babinaux’s number. The third and fourth numbers are foreign.

  Weird, but it could be nothing. Spam or something. I call Babinaux as I crunch over the shards to my room. After five rings, her voice tells me to leave a message, but I don’t do that. I never do.

  It’s late. She is probably asleep.

  I turn the key, drive my shoulder into the wood, hear the scrape and pop of the door jerking loose from the frame. It opens up into blackness. The hair on the back of my neck stands up as I look into the dark room in front of me. It’s three steps to the light switch. Maybe four.

  I should start leaving the lights on. It’s not like I get charged for the electricity. Feels like such a waste, though, to leave lights on for twelve hours a day to prevent 20 seconds of fear. I guess I’m going green.

  I take the first step, my body still half-lit by the buzzing light over the lobby. Now, I know that Farber wouldn’t speak on my first step. He’d wait. He’d get me right as I hit mid-stride on that third step, just as my hand reaches out for the light switch. He’s a showman, remember? He’d be patient, let the suspense build.

  Step two moves me fully into shadow. When I look down, I can’t see my arm or legs.

  As I take step three, my heart hammers in my chest. It beats so hard that my ears physically throb in rhythm with my circulatory system. My mouth opens a gap, and I realize that I’m mouth breathing. Is that a thing people do in moments of crisis? Do I do that often when things get intense? Wait. Do I do that during sex? Jesus, I hope not. Embarrassing. I picture myself panting during the act of coitus, a frightened expression on my face like a spooked lemur.

  My hand reaches for the switch in super slow motion. I know that it’s about to happen. Farber is about to say something clever, his disembodied voice speaking from some undetermined spot within the gloom. Maybe he’ll clear his throat first for dramatic effect. Maybe he’ll yawn and sound a little bored with all of this. I would guess he’ll talk in that grainy register just above a whisper like Alec Baldwin or something.

  My fingers smear on the wall, tapping their way to the panel, the switch, flipping it. The light flicks on. I wheel around to face the room, arms in some type of judo position, ready to grapple any motherfucker that comes at me.

  Empty. Nobody here.

  Of course.

  Shut up.

  I flop down onto the bedspread pocked with melted blemishes and stare up at the ceiling. The only consolation I have is that nobody else witnesses these moments. Consolation might be too strong of a word for it. It doesn’t console me, exactly. No, it doesn’t make me feel better so much as make me know that I could feel worse.

  I don’t stay reclined for long. The gun digs pointy edges into my back, so I sit up, remove it from its nest, wrap it in a dirty t-shirt and tuck it away in the nightstand drawer, its home away from home. The Gideon’s bible doesn’t even flinch.

  Too jittery to sleep, I get a cola from the machine. No ice necessary tonight. It’s not worth all the running around. I’ll just drink it lukewarm. I figure some caffeine and a bunch of sugar should help me calm right down, you know? I turn on the TV. I have to sit on the edge of the bed and change the channels by hand. Yeah. No remote. Personally, I think that makes this more of a death camp than a motel. The idea that I voluntarily pay to stay here doesn’t sit right with me, but it’s okay. They have an excellent shower facility.

  It’s not like there’s anything on worth watching. Reruns of black and white TV shows where people say “golly” a lot. Infomercials selling weird devices, most of them used to either do crunches or cook food in an unorthodox manner. (Note to self: Invent product that can be used to both do crunches AND cook food in an unorthodox manner. Gold mine.)

  It’s not until I feel the cola can sweating in my hand that I realize how warm it is in here tonight. I guess it’s cold enough outside that the furnace kicked on. Weird. And now it’s hot enough to make a lukewarm can sweat. Weirder.

  I wipe my damp hand on the bedspread, and on cue, there’s a click and rumble from somewhere far away, and warm air blows through the ducts. I kneel and put my hand in front of the vent. I don’t know why I do this.

  Might as well pop off these pants, though, right? It’s warm. I’m alone. Might as well get comfortable. I get down to my boxers. Time to show this place what a little class looks like.

  It feels pretty good, freeing and all of that, but I’m already a little apprehensive about so much of my skin touching the top of the bedspread and so on. Lot of organisms running around in here, as I alluded to earlier.

  The phone rings, rattling against the nightstand when it vibrates. It doesn’t startle me this time, though perhaps it should considering the time. I walk to it, lift it. It’s the non-Babinaux number from the two calls I missed while resting my cranium on the steering wheel. I gaze into the LCD display for a moment, the phone pulsing in my hand one more time.

  I press the green button, lift the device to my right ear.

  “Yeah,” I say into the phone.

  “Mr. Grobnagger,” the voice on the other end says. It’s a man’s voice, a little thin, serious. He sounds intelligent.

  As I think about how I kind of wish he said, “Mr. Grobnagger, I presume,” it occurs to me that I recognize this voice. It’s Farber.

  Of course.

  I say nothing.

  “I assume you’re sharp enough to figure out who’s calling,” he says. “And what that means about your friend.”

  The only way he could have this number is through Babinaux. Not good. I should have answered the damn phone earlier.

&n
bsp; I close my eyes and rub my fingers into my forehead. It’s still a little sore from its steering wheel nap, but the indentation is gone.

  “She will be made comfortable,” he says. “For now.”

  Part of me wants to threaten him, wants to tell him how his story will end, but I say nothing. What use are threats? What use is talking at all?

  Bullets form excellent punctuation marks. They will do the talking for me as soon as possible.

  “I think you know by now that I’m not unreasonable. I’m neither irrational nor impatient,” he says. “So I will give you three days to get your affairs in order. Use this time to make the necessary arrangements, to close the open loops in your life. Sew up the dangling threads. Indulge in some final comforts. Perhaps say some goodbyes. And then you will turn yourself in to us to prevent the death of your friend. You will do this, because it is who you are.”

  I exhale too loud, pretty sure I’m blowing into the phone. I don’t like the idea that this could be perceived as an emotional response to his words. I tilt the transmitter away from my mouth.

  “If you try to run, she dies. If you try to fight, she dies. If you don’t surrender yourself by 8 am on Friday, she dies. That’s all there is to it.” he says. “She won’t suffer at any point. We’re not torturers. Do you understand these terms?”

  I say nothing.

  “Do I seem like a man of my word to you?” he says. “A serious man?”

  I say nothing.

  “Yes,” he says. “I know you understand, and I know you know that honor matters to me.”

  We are quiet for a moment.

  “I won’t lie to you. There’s no reason for me to deceive you,” he says. “This will be the end of your life in this realm. But I suspect you will carry on elsewhere. In any case, we both know that you will suffer more if harm comes to your friend, don’t we?”

  His tone matches that of a dentist explaining how to floss for the billionth time. Detached. Distant. A little bored.

  Another moment of silence passes between us.

  There’s an almost imperceptible change in the sound on the other end, like the quiet just got quieter. I look down at the phone and see the LCD screen flashing, “Call Ended.”