Back in Black (Awake in the Dark Book 4)

by Tim McBain

  Waste of goddamn time.

  I need to get out of this garage. I need a break.

  Walking through the steel door from the garage back into the house, something is off, something is different. I feel it as I take the first step onto the berber carpet, and my stomach drops.

  Is someone here?

  Wait.

  Light streams in all of the windows, cold and white. Glared spots pock the walls and angle across the floor. A rectangular shadow forms behind the TV, opposite of the windows. The sun came up while I was sealed in the garage. From the looks of it, it’s been up for a while.

  I sigh, the air rushing out to deflate me. Some of the tension lets go in my back and shoulders. I let my eyes droop to a close and smile. That’s all it was. No one is here. Nothing is wrong. The change in light freaked me out for a second.

  I walk through the house, moving from room to room, partially to appease the most paranoid part of my brain, which is reluctant to let moments of fear fade away. I also turn off all of the lights that I flicked on upon my arrival. The sun provides plenty of illumination now.

  I sort of can’t believe the sun is already up, but I guess time flies when you’re picking through a dead guy’s garbage.

  My tour ends in the kitchen where I sift through the cupboards. Several varieties of coffee remain on hand, the expensive stuff in the colorful foil sleeves. I have a tough choice to make here. I cull the list down to three blends, but which to go for? Loretta Very Dark Italian Roast? Starbucks Cafe Verona? West Coast Breakfast Blend?

  I peel open the foil and give them each a smell, but I can barely tell the difference. I mean, they smell good and everything, but they smell like coffee. My nose isn’t that sophisticated, I guess.

  Hm... I have to go with Loretta on this. It has a cool cartoon on the package.

  I dump a bunch of beans in the grinder. I never measure. I’m basically awesome. I secure the lid, press the button, and the blades decimate beans, bursting them into mini coffee bits. I give it a few pulses. I judge it by sound. When the churn sounds ever so slightly less coarse, I stop. If you go until it sounds all the way smooth, the coffee gets down to a fine powder that sticks inside the grinder and tastes way too bitter. I guess that’s like an espresso grind – not ideal for the drip coffee machine.

  I learned that the hard way.

  Anyway, one full pot of the black stuff should do. For now.

  As I dump the water into the top of the machine, it occurs to me that just the ritual of making coffee has gotten my mind off of the meaningless treasure hunt I am on. The feel of the foil in my fingers, the sound of it peeling open, the smell of the whole beans, the sound of pulverizing them in the grinder, the hard button under my thumb, the pressure turning my fingernail white, that little tug of the lid resisting as I pull it free, the new smell of the ground beans, the feel of a filter edge against my fingernail as I remove it from the stack, the rising pitch of the water filling the carafe and the splash of it dumped into the machine. It’s a familiar sequence of sensory experiences. Vivid. Tactile. Stimulating.

  And it all doesn’t seem so bad now. There are worse things I could be doing, for sure.

  I stand and watch to finish the rite of morning passage: the glow of the red button on the front that controls the burner, the purr and gurgle of the machine as the water drips, and yet another smell of brewed coffee, the best odor yet.

  I pour a big mug. I’d add a splash of milk, but I know not to even look in the fridge. Anything in there would be 40 days past date or so.

  I sip. It’s good. It might not be as good as when Glenn made it, but I did all right for myself. I can hold my own.

  Chapter 17

  After a mug and a half of coffee, my eyeballs open all the way up like I’m a coked-up owl, and the search resumes. I decide to leave the garage for now and try to keep my mind fresh by looking someplace new. I pad down the hall to Glenn’s bedroom.

  I almost feel like I’ll jinx it just by thinking about it, but so far the coffee is totally winning the battle against sleepiness. I feel normal. Alive. Awake. All of these types of things. I know it can’t last forever, but I’m enjoying it so far.

  Crossing through the doorway, the atmosphere changes. My senses heighten. The still and the quiet lurk forward to make their awkwardness known. A clock ticks somewhere in the distance. It’s so quiet here. It’s so vacant. I can feel all of my skin like it’s about to crawl, but it doesn’t, sort of like when you feel the tickle of a sneeze coming on that never blows.

  I stand just inside doorway and take the room in like I’m seeing it for the first time. The king size bed dominates the room, a muted blue bedspread topping it. It centers itself against the far wall, taking up much of the floor space. Two dressers man the walls to the left and right, both dark wood, almost black. They look old, ornate, possibly antiques.

  The wood floor croaks as I step forward. I think it’s trying to express how I feel through creepy sound effects. A decent effort.

  I check some classic bedroom hiding spots: under the bed, between the mattress and the box spring, in the underwear drawer, underneath the bottom drawer of each dresser. I find nothing in these spots.

  Once I’m searching that self consciousness dies down a little, the uneasiness fades away, and I work. I pick through drawers and a plastic storage container in the closet. I pop pictures out of their frames to look for documents hidden behind them. I do everything short of turning the room upside down and shaking it to see what falls out of the pockets.

  Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

  I take a deep breath, willing the frustration to die down a little like adjusting the flue in a chimney. The bedroom is a bust, yes, but there are other rooms to check. No reason to lose my cool just yet.

  I stalk from room to room, checking the most obvious spots. There’s a glass display case in the dining room that I rip through, but there’s not much else to look at in there. The living room is equally sparse. Nothing under the couch or love seat. Nothing under the TV stand. Nothing in the plant pots. I can cross this room off of the list as well.

  In some sense I’m making progress, but the hours are blowing by like nothing. It’s after 2 pm already. Time always gets away from me in these moments. The more scarce it becomes, the harder it gets to handle. I need to hold onto it, to make it count for something, but it slides between my fingers, eludes my grip, runs away faster and faster, and I can never keep up.

  As I perform a cursory sweep of the room with the exercise equipment, I spot a wooden box on the top shelf of the closet. It looks fancy. I don’t want to get my hopes up, but this looks more promising than anything else I’ve happened upon.

  I reach up, my hands extending beyond my frame of vision, the shelf blocking my view. I feel around for a second, finding the sides of the box, securing it. I ease it down. Something about it looks familiar. Not that I’ve seen this particular box before, just that I’ve seen others like it and can’t place when or where.

  A metal clasp holds the top down. I can’t help it, I’m a little excited now. Sure, it wouldn’t be like Glenn to leave something important in a conspicuous looking piece of carpentry like this, but it feels like anything could be in there. After all of this searching, shouldn’t I be rewarded with something useful? Shouldn’t I make a smidgen of progress?

  I undo the clasp and swing the top open. Before it’s even all the way ajar, the smell hits, and I know what this is. Seconds later my eyes confirm what my nose already knew.

  Cigars. It’s a box of cigars.

  I fold it closed, latch the clasp and put the box back on the shelf. I don’t even get mad this time. I don’t know. Just disappointed, I guess. My shoulders slump. My neck sags, and my head angles down toward the floor.

  I shuffle out of the room. Time for another break, I guess. I walk a while, but it’s like I’m not all the way in the house, not all the way in my body. I’ve retracted back into my shell, pulled myself up in there to hide out a while. Everyt
hing else is far away and cold.

  And then I realize that I’m no longer moving, that I stopped some time ago. And I find myself in the guest room, looming over the bed, eyes dancing over the pillows, stopping to examine the edge of the blanket. It’d be so easy to peel that back, to crawl in there. I can already feel the blanket going from cool to warm to hot, the heat starting in my core and spreading down the length of my limbs.

  Yeah. Yeah, that could work. No reason to keep rifling through trash piles to never find anything, right? It can’t hurt, the way I see it. I might as well lie down for just a minute. That’s all. Just a minute.

  I don’t even bother getting undressed or anything. I climb in and pull the blanket up over my head, and I wait for the warm to take me.

  Chapter 18

  When I wake up, my stomach snarls at me. Shit. I forgot to eat again. I sit up, drag the blanket off of my face. Sunlight still courses through the windows, little dust motes swimming around in the sunniest spots. Good. So I wasn’t asleep for too long after all. Maybe just a couple of hours. I feel oddly refreshed considering that. Bonus.

  I lie back down. Soon enough I will rise and find myself something to feed to the pissed off sasquatch living in my abdomen. I picture it sitting in my stomach cavern, brow furrowed, hair disheveled, foam all frothy at the corners of its mouth. It screams and growls and barks and bellows. Then I throw it a massive turkey leg, and it finally shuts the hell up.

  Anyway, yeah. For now, I will just lie still and think a minute. The giant turkey leg can wait its turn.

  When I close my eyes, I see a pink splotch throbbing in the lower left side of my vision. I think it’s a blood vessel in my eyelid. Whatever it is, this happens when I get stressed or if I drink a bunch of energy drinks. High blood pressure or something. So I guess the stress is building, wearing on me. I’m not panicking. Not yet. I have some time, but I don’t know exactly what to do.

  Searching Glenn’s place looks more and more hopeless. Box after box of garbage. For all I know, I’ve already seen some of what I need and passed right by it. Hell, I could have held it in my hands and thought nothing of it.

  I think I’ll give this angle just a little longer, but if I don’t find something tonight, I’ll need to move on. Line up some other plan of attack. But what can I do? They thought of most every angle. I can’t run. I can’t fight. I can’t hide. It’s impossible.

  Balls.

  I can already imagine the swords piercing my flesh, skewering my innards, pinning me to some makeshift altar in front of everyone at the League of Light Church. I see my blood drain down, little red rivers rushing out of me, pooling on the carpet.

  Or maybe they’ve saved something even worse for me.

  Don’t panic, dude. Don’t do it. You have some time left.

  I rise from the bed and head for the kitchen. As I stride down the hall, that unease creeps in again, like I’m not really safe, not all the way alone, like some member of Glenn’s family could barge in at any moment to check on the place or something. What would I even say?

  I browse through the cupboards. My eyes keep returning to a box of Raisin Bran Crunch. I really want to eat a bowl of it, but the milk situation verges on disaster. I still haven’t even opened the fridge. I guess I’d prefer not to. My stomach yips a couple of times, imploring me to hustle it up.

  Ah, but wait. What do we have here? I pull a container of shelf stable milk out of the back of this little pantry. I’m only vaguely familiar with this product. It’s sort of like a huge juice box of milk that doesn’t need to be refrigerated until after you open it. I’m guessing Glenn had it on hand in case of an emergency. Like say the power went out for a few days, he’d have something to go with his Oreos.

  This could get weird, but I’ll try it.

  I pour the cereal and pop the weird milk open. It smells like milk, I think. I give it a dump into the bowl. It looks like milk, the proper consistency and all of that.

  I shake my spoon through the cereal. I’m not sure what I’m trying to accomplish, but I always do it. Am I trying to wet all of the flakes with milk? Won’t that just get things soggy faster?

  I scoop up a huge bite with a good mix of flake, cluster, and raisin. The spoon moves to my lips, enters them. I chew, food chunks sloshing around in my mouth.

  It’s good. The milk tastes good. It’s maybe a little sweet, and it’s also a little odd to be ingesting room temp milk, but for something that’s just been sitting on the shelf, it’s pretty tasty. What the heck? I feel like I’m in a science fiction movie with this future milk.

  I shake my head, but the moment of wonderment has passed. I focus on eating, which I do as fast as I can, shoveling spoonfuls even before I’ve chewed and swallowed the last bite, future milk dribbling down my chin. I don’t do this because I’m pressed for time, though that is the case. I do it because I’m a gross person and generally eat like a dog.

  Once the bowl is empty, my eyeballs go right back to the box. Perhaps I’ll have another. I slide the cell phone out of my pocket first to check the time. It’s still light out, but I want to see where I stand.

  It’s 7:37. Not too bad, really, and I’m not tired at all. Pretty great considering my nap couldn’t have been more than a couple of hours, maybe 3.

  I can’t look away from the phone, though. Like I know I’m missing something, not processing something fully. It can’t be 7:37. The light isn’t right.

  Oh.

  It’s 7:37 AM. I slept for like 14 hours.

  So yeah. That makes it official. I am the worst.

  Chapter 19

  My hands slam on the steering wheel, and I half stand to get even more weight on the gas pedal. I’m not actually in a hurry. There’s no place to go, really. I just hate myself, and I like to express this through the abuse of an elderly automobile, I guess.

  The Taurus slowly gets up to top speed and the car starts shaking and whining and rattling all around me. I feel the vibrations through my seat, see the top of the water rippling in the bottle snugged in the cup holder.

  Good.

  Let it go.

  Let the bumper detach and the fenders fall away.

  Let all the moving pieces under the hood grind against each other until they glow red with heat.

  Let the whole fucking thing explode for all I care.

  I yell a wordless yell, full-throated like an ape telling all of the other apes to back the hell up. And my hands bash down on the wheel again, rising and crashing over and over.

  I wonder what this looks like to the people in the line of cars streaming past me on the left. Does it look like I’m rocking out? Pretending to play the drums, maybe?

  I’m not.

  Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t. Not in the Taurus. I push the button and the tape player spits out the cassette, balancing it between its lips.

  I let up on the gas a little. The Taurus sighs, and the shaking cuts off. It seems quiet now without the rattling and such. Awkward.

  I try to think of what the hell I can do, but nothing comes to mind. My eyelids droop, half closed. I think I probably should drink some coffee, that maybe a bunch of caffeine will spur my thoughts some, but I don’t want it. No more.

  Where am I going? Does it matter? Did it ever matter at any point in my life? The go-getters like Farber make the real decisions, don’t they? The schemers. The rest of us just drift along, caught up in the currents they create, sucked down into the funnels they set up, so they can get our money or our affection or whatever the hell they want from us in that particular moment. And we get spent and spit out, and we drift off into nothing.

  The black, newish asphalt on this part of the freeway ends, giving way to the older, grayer stuff. The sound of the road changes as the car rolls over the dried-out stretch of road, broken apart and patched back together. The pitch goes higher and there’s a rougher texture to it, like you can hear the rubber abrading against the coarse blacktop. The tires bump-bump over the lines of tar again. At least that�
�s better than total silence. It has a rhythm to it.

  I veer onto the exit ramp. I guess I’m going to the motel.

  Chapter 20

  After a shower, I feel a little better. I sit on the edge of the bed, sliding my socks on. This clarity comes upon me. I think I remember a little what it was like before I got involved in all of this, before I got tangled up with a bunch of people and all of their conflicting motivations I never understand, at least not all of the way.

  The post shower warmth clings to me, nestles me in its arms like a kind lady. It’s a good feeling, a little touch of false safety in what might be my waning hours on this planet. My chest and neck actually give off heat that I can feel if I hold my hand a little in front. It radiates off of me like nothing can touch me right now, and I suppose that’s true enough for a little while longer here.

  Just a little while.

  But I think back to how things were before all of this. I think back to a simple life, an easy life. I played video games, read books, watched movies, took care of my cat. A little lonely, I suppose, after Allie and I broke up. Maybe I could have met someone else. Somehow. Eventually. Maybe.

  Even so, was that so bad? Why did an easy life make me so unhappy, leave me feeling so unfulfilled? Is what I have now any different or any better? Can it ever be any better? Is better always just a carrot dangling in the distance that we flail after until we have it and flail after another one a little farther along? Do you ever get to “better” and possess it? Or does it always elude you, perpetually just out of reach?

  And I know there are people out there suffering for real. People with no food. People with no place to stay. People dying in droves of hunger, disease, violence and on and on. I know from some intellectual point of view, my feelings made no sense back then, just as they make no sense now.