Darkness Falling

by Peter Crowther

  The lights in the gas station glared dimly against the strengthening sunlight but Gram Kramer was nowhere to be found, though his prized leather jacket hung stiffly by the side of his stool in the windowed booth overlooking the pumps, a copy of the Enquirer open on the counter and a burned away cigarette butt lying on the counter, a long perfectly formed funnel of undisturbed ash lying in the ashtray beside it. At least here there was some sense of normality – the radio was tuned into their station and Melanie's voice suddenly drifted in on the closing strains of Ray Charles's "I Got a Woman", speaking to all those people who had loved ones "way over town". Her voice now had a sense of urgency, a sense of needing somebody to respond to what she was saying. Rick wondered what Mel and Johnny had been talking about up there on the mountain; wondered whether they'd started making telephone calls and finding nobody home. Nobody home anywhere.

  "You need to give her a call," Rick said without turning.

  "Uh huh," Geoff said. "I'll do it from Eddie's."

  There were two blue-and-whites parked outside the sheriff's office, which meant that there should be somebody inside. Even without the cars, there was no way Shirley Pakard would leave the office unattended. And how come nobody had wondered why they couldn't get a response from Don Patterson, his car wrapped around the fire hydrant on the outskirts of town? The answer was there was nobody to make that call, nobody to wonder why the response didn't come in.

  Rick strode up to the door and pushed it wide.

  "Troy, Shirley?"

  Only a little over one hour ago, Rick and Geoff had edged into places shouting out names and other things to go with the names – things like, "Hey, what's happening?" and "Come on, time to rise and shine," – but they had given that up after a while. Now they just burst into homes and through doors and even the shouted names were half-hearted at best, the volume of the call lessening each time.

  Rick pulled a notebook from his jacket pocket and slumped into Shirley's chair. He pulled the phone across the desk and started to dial.

  "Who you calling?"

  Rick leaned back and looked up at his brother. "Mom."

  Geoff looked at his watch, about to say something – something like don't call her yet, too early or let's not worry her about this… there has to be a logical explanation – but he knew those would just be excuses. The fact was he feared the same thing that his brother feared, though neither of them was prepared to put it into words. He leaned against the desk and waited.

  When Angela Grisham's voice came on the phone, Rick's face lit up like a fourth of July fireworks display… but when that voice kept on talking without waiting to hear what Rick had to say – telling him she couldn't get to the phone right now but instructing him (even though the long-ago recorded voice didn't know who she was talking to) to leave a message – his face collapsed. He returned the phone to the cradle. "It's almost six o'clock for mom – she should be there. Whatever it is, it stretches out to the West Coast."

  Geoff said, "Try Mel's brother, Bob… New York." He recited the 212 number from heart and watched Rick prod the keypad.

  "What time is it there?" Rick said as he listened to the ringing tones.

  Geoff checked his watch. "Around nine. He should be there." Bob and Linda McAuley worked from home, running a small press publishing operation in the Village. They were always there, at least one of them. But not today.

  Rick shook his head. "No answer."

  Whatever it was, it stretched right across the country.

  They didn't like to think how much further it went.

  "You gonna call Mel?"

  Geoff shook his head. "Let's just get back to the station," he said.

  (9)

  They were in the 16th Street Mall and it had to be getting late – Ronnie could see the sky darkening through the glass roof. He checked the watch on his wrist once again, forgetting for the God-knew-how-many-times that the thing had been at 5.46 or so ever since the crash. He looked around.

  "You OK there, Samantha?" Angel Wurst asked her doll. The doll conveniently waved its arms, with just a little assistance from Angel. They had found Samantha in a store called Going Back on one of the upper levels. Ronnie thought that was maybe a strange name for what was a toy store but closer investigation of the price tags suggested that this was no common kids' store but something altogether different.

  "What's nostalgia?" Angel Wurst had asked when Ronnie had tried to explain what the store was about, but then her attention had switched to the muzak – "What's that song? My mom loves that song." It was the second time he knew about – he suspected that maybe he'd heard it once before those – that he'd recognized a saccharine sweet instrumental rendition of Simon and Garfunkel's "The Boxer". To Ronnie, it was like a sign – he loved Simon and Garfunkel.

  It had taken them almost four hours to reach the city limits, three hours of which they'd done on foot and another hour in a succession of vehicles beginning with a 4x4 of indeterminate manufacture, a private hire cab and, finally, a crimson Chevy with gloriously large tailfins. Ronnie had felt like he was in Happy Days – or at least happier days than he was in right now. They had found the Chevy parked up with its door open and engine still running outside of what appeared to be a 24-hour newsstand, just beyond a multiple vehicle pile-up at which they'd had to ditch the cab – the stand was decked out in all the usual magazines and newspapers, lit up and just sitting there as though the owner had stepped around back for a pee.

  The last hour or so they had picked their way slowly along streets littered with car wrecks, some of them serious – cars through store windows – and some just looking like they'd run out of gas and drifted up against other car fenders or mailboxes. On an overpass coming into the city, Ronnie had seen a break in the railings and broad-black skid marks leading up to it. The skid marks suggested that someone had fought for control – someone maybe blinded by a bright light but not removed by it – but that someone had lost it and veered over towards the rail. He didn't stop the Chevy to check for signs of life below the rail: he could see right from where he was that it was a long way down.

  They had reached the 16th Street Mall a little after one o'clock and Ronnie had just slumped back in the seat and closed his eyes. Angel was already sound asleep in the back seat, her legs curled up and her hands clasped beneath her cheek, all wrapped up in a tartan blanket. He had gone out like a light, reliving the experience in the plane, the light, Martha's disappearance – hell, everyone's disappearance – and then meeting up with Karl, the map-reader turned pilot.

  When he had woken up it was after four o'clock in the afternoon and it already seemed to be getting a little overcast. The sky over to the east was slashed with ribbons of dark cloud that appeared to be snaking their way westwards. Ronnie had checked over behind him, to the west, and it looked fine over there so he put it down to maybe an approaching storm – it was too early for sunset. And anyway, the sun always set in the west.

  He had woken Angel who didn't say anything at all, just rubbed her eyes some and then checked the seat alongside her. When Ronnie asked how she was, Angel simply said, "I'm not good in a morning." He imagined her picking the phrase up from one of her parents and immediately wondered if she would ever see them again. Or if he would ever see Martha again, Queen Bitch Mistress of the Mouth, but now strangely missed. He suddenly felt a frisson of affection for her. But no sooner had it made its presence felt, the frisson was gone.

  They had walked across an eerily semi-deserted parking lot that seemed to be around the size of Ronnie's old campus at Kent State, where the National Guard had shot the students back in May 1970 – that was almost 15 years before he'd started but the wounds were still open, the blood still wet. They went up to a wide array of glass doors under the legend "East Entrance". As they approached the entrance, the doors opened with the vaguest swish noise, drew them into the muzak-filled chromium warmth and closed again right behind them. Ronnie had thought of the Romero zombie film, where the survivors were h
oled up in a mall, and he'd given a little shudder.

  That was hours ago now.

  By Ronnie's reckoning, they had been in the Mall for three hours, maybe even a little longer. The next thing he had to do was get a hold of a new watch. He felt naked without the time on his wrist, naked and vulnerable.

  There was no doubt the Mall had been reasonably busy whenever what had happened had happened but the place was completely deserted – just the muzak echoing along the corridors, and an occasional fountain gurgling in a never-ending spray. Here and there, soft drink containers and fast food packets – hamburger cartons and KFC cardboard buckets – were spilled on the concourse, their contents fallen out into alien shapes and unpleasant-looking mounds of fat and grease.

  They had walked up and down, gone up the escalators, travelled up in the elevator, had coffee and soda plus almond croissants in a Passin' Thru (where Ronnie had to make the coffee), found the toy store where Angel had picked up Samantha (because she had whispered to her, Angel had said, her brow furrowed with abject sincerity) but the one thing that wasn't here was a hardware store or an outlet that specialized in tools. As far as Ronnie was concerned, they needed a heavy-duty battery-operated chainsaw and maybe an oxy-acetylene torch.

  Leaving the table, Ronnie had actually considered taking their plate, mug and glass across to the counter – even thought about leaving a five dollar bill near the till area – but the thought didn't last long. As time went by, he was pretty sure he wouldn't ever think of doing it.

  Another hour or maybe even a half-hour later, Ronnie and Angel Wurst lifted pre-packed sandwiches – a triple-decker pastrami on rye and an egg and cress in a seeded baguette – out of the cold cabinet in Stephenson's Pharmacy, completing the banquet with a couple bags of potato chips and a mineral water and a Coca-Cola. "My mom never lets me drink Coca-Cola," Angel confided to Ronnie, keeping her voice low and conspiratorial as she swung her legs over the edge of her plush leather stool at the Pharmacy counter, her egg and cress double-decker in the one hand and the Coca-Cola bottle – clearly a rare treasure for the girl – in the other. She chewed a little, took a big swallow, legs still swinging, took a drink of the coke, and then said, "You think we'll ever see her again?" It sounded like she was saying, Hey, you think it's gonna rain tomorrow?

  "Your mom?"

  Angel nodded, took another bite out of the sandwich and delicately added a large potato chip into her mouth.

  "I don't know, honey," he said, narrowly banishing the pedant in him that cried out to inform the girl that, never having seen her mother, he clearly could not see her again.

  "I wonder where she is. And my dad."

  There was nothing Ronnie could think of to say to that so he let the silence say it for him. The silence and the muzak.

  And then there was something else.

  It was Ronnie who heard it first, far off, and he wondered if it was maybe in his head. He looked around at Angel, eyebrows raised questioningly, and she nodded.

  "Telephone," she said.

  "Telephone," Ronnie said, the word assuming mantra-like significance. "Someone's ringing the phone."

  They stood up together from the pharmacy counter stools and tried to get their bearings.

  "It's coming from out there," Angel said, nodding towards the empty corridors of the shopping mall.

  "Come on."

  Ronnie took a hold of the girl's hand as they ran out of Stephenson's Pharmacy and into the spacious walkway of the mall. They stopped, listened some more, silently praying for the phone to keep ringing, and Angel Wurst lifted her arm and pointed in the direction of the escalators. "There," she said.

  Ronnie started running and then realized that he couldn't go full speed while holding the girl's hand. "Here," he said, turning to her and crouching down. "Let me carry–" She was shaking her head.

  "What's the matter? I can carry–"

  "It's stopped," she said.

  Ronnie turned in the direction they had been running and all he could hear was the distant thrumming of the air conditioning or the escalators, or maybe both. A cheesy instrumental version of "Sweet Caroline" started up.

  "This music sucks big time," Angel announced, pulling a face.

  Ronnie was nodding as he stood up.

  "You think maybe it was Karl, the pilot man?"

  "He doesn't know we're here."

  "I thought you told him we were coming–"

  "He doesn't know the number."

  He took a hold of Angel's hand and again they walked in the direction of the escalators. "I think it was coming from around here," Ronnie said as they reached a central area which saw walkways continuing in three directions. He scanned the area around the escalators but couldn't see any telephones.

  "Maybe it was from one of the stores," Angel offered.

  Ronnie checked the stores – sporting goods, chocolate, all-year Christmas goods, a music store, a cheap-and-cheerful cut-price women's wear store, a lingerie store, a Starbucks coffee wagon, a Barnes and Noble and a big toy store. "I don't think we'd have heard it if it had been in the stores." He looked around some more and noticed a pair of blue doors on the way to the restrooms with a stenciled

  PRIVATE

  STAFF ONLY

  across them. One of the doors was propped open with one of the metallic standing platforms that they used in the bookstores when they needed to reach the high shelves.

  "Let's check in here," Ronnie said.

  Inside the small corridor behind the doors was a world away from the glitz and glamour of the main mall. The corridor was the same blue as the outer doors, but the paintwork was scuffed and chipped. Down here they could hear a deeper hum.

  "Generators," Ronnie said, feeling Angel grip his hand tighter.

  "I don't like it down here," she said.

  "It's OK, we have to–"

  ring riiing

  ring riiing

  Ronnie pulled her down the corridor until they reached a door marked "Floor Supervisor" which he then pushed open to find a small office area that led onto a single open glassed room in the corner. The outside office featured three desks, a copier, a water cooler, a large trestle table littered with papers and two fax machines. It was the telephone on one of these desks

  ring riiing

  ring riiing

  that was ringing.

  Ronnie let go of Angel's hand and moved over towards the desks, hand outstretched.

  It wasn't the first one, which he passed quickly by, and it wasn't the second.

  "It's that one," Angel said, pointing at the desk immediately in front of the glass office. Ronnie did a side-step and lurched across the front of the desk, his fingers making first contact with the handset just as the

  ring riiing

  was abbreviated to

  ring rii

  followed by a dull click. He lifted it anyway and snapped into the mouthpiece – "Hello?" – but all he could hear was a dial tone. "Hello?" he said again, even though the tone was still there. People do that, he realized now. All that stuff on movies and in books, when you think that people just didn't do that kind of thing, it was all true. People really were that stupid.

  "They hung up?"

  Ronnie nodded and replaced the handset.

  "Maybe they'll call again. They done it twice now."

  "Could be they've done it other times," Ronnie said. He looked at the desk. There was a small calendar on it, tented open with a little marker strip with a crimson square poised over Thursday 12 April.

  He moved around the desk and sat in the chair. He lifted the phone and keyed in *69. A pre-recorded voice told him that the caller withheld their number. "Thanks," Ronnie said needlessly. He had to fight off the urge to ask the voice to wait, stay a while, talk to me…

  "Why'd they bother whiffolding their number?" Angel inquired, her forehead furrowed.

  "They didn't actually withhold it now," Ronnie explained. "It's already set up that way, their phone." He watched the girl's eyes trying t
o make sense of what he was saying.