When the Darkness Falls

by Gonzalez, J. F.

  Once everybody was in the house and their coats were off, Richard headed to the kitchen. “Guess this is the beginning of it. I stocked up on all kinds of stuff.”

  “Good,” Carrie said, heading to the refrigerator. The kids were in the living room, the television and Playstation already in use. “I was thinking of doing up a pizza for the kids.”

  “Sounds good.” As Richard leaned against the cupboard watching Carrie gather the utensils and ingredients she needed, he told her about his encounters at the grocery store and his conversation with their neighbor.

  Carrie laughed. “You’ve got to be kidding!” She turned around after putting milk in the refrigerator. “You’re serious?”

  “Oh, I’m serious all right. It’s a real epidemic. The entire population of Silver Spring is gone. Kaput! They’ve gotten the hell out of dodge.”

  “They actually believe this?”

  “Looks like it,” Richard said, glancing in the living room to check on the kids. They were safely embroiled in Play Station. “And they were serious about it. The people next door acted like a goddamn hurricane was coming. You should’ve seen the look on their faces.”

  Carrie looked shocked. “I can’t believe it,” she said, shaking her head. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

  “I did some checking today at the library,” Richard said, and as Carrie looked up at him at this revelation he told her everything he’d learned. Starting with the last storm in 1972, he traced what he’d learned all the way back to the last article he could find at the library. When he got to the murders he lowered his voice, noting how Carrie’s eyes widened at the mention of the incidents. “You’ve never heard of any of this?”

  Carrie shook her head. “No! Never in my life.”

  “Not even when you were a kid? Like as some kind of local urban legend?”

  “Not even as a girl scout at camping trips.”

  Richard thought back to that morning at the grocery store, how the only local to Silver Spring had been the only patron in the store that seemed to be in any real hurry to leave before the storm hit. Everybody else had been going about as normal, the way most folks usually stocked up before a big storm. There’d been no sense of panic or fear in their faces. Not the way he’d seen it in the faces of his neighbors, those that lived on their street who’d packed up their vehicles in a mass exodus to get out.

  “So they’re all freaked out that we’re staying?” Carrie asked, a grin on her face now.

  Richard noticed that grin and he smiled back. “Looks that way.”

  “Boy, will they be surprised when they come back and see us shoveling our sidewalks.”

  Richard laughed. Carrie laughed too, and Richard felt the tension ease between them. He thought Carrie was going to be worried about what he’d just told her. Instead, she’d seemed to take it as a joke, which it was.

  Later in bed, as the storm howled and raged outside, splattering snow against the shutters and windows, Carrie snuggled against him. “We’re okay, aren’t we?”

  “Of course we are,” Richard said, holding Carrie close to him. “Why wouldn’t we be?”

  “I was just thinking about all you told me,” she said, her head resting against his chest. They’d put the kids to bed hours ago and retreated to their room early, made love, and had lain awake listening to the storm rage outside. The house was warmed by the heater and the fireplace in their bedroom, which was now burned down to embers. “That story...about the religious group that was run out of town. What kind of religion were they?”

  “I don’t know. None that I’ve ever heard of.”

  They listened to the wind whip and howl outside.

  “Richard?”

  “Yes.”

  “All those people that died...the men that killed their families. They all had drinking problems, right?”

  “Exactly.”

  “And according to what you told me, they had marital problems as well. One of them had been laid off and couldn’t find work. They were already going through extreme times in their lives when they snapped.”

  “That’s right,” Richard said. He kissed Carrie’s forehead. “They had all kinds of problems. We don’t.”

  Carrie smiled. “No, we don’t. I mean...I love my job, I love living here. I love our life. Don’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  “You’re able to work at home now. I know you weren’t always able to, and that the kind of business you do has its ups and downs but—”

  “And I’m doing very good,” Richard reminded her. “Living here in the middle of the country where people stash all their old magazines and books in the attic for years has paid off well for me. Remember that box of old magazines I bought at that estate sale last week?”

  “Yeah?”

  “One of them was a crate full of pulps from the 1910’s and 20’s. It had early issues of Black Mask, Weird Tales, and All Story, including the issue with Edgar Rice Burrough’s first Tarzan story. Know how much one of those sold at auction last time it was offered?”

  “No.”

  “Eighteen grand.”

  Carrie gave a little gasp of surprise. “Are you kidding?”

  Richard shook his head. “Nope. First issue of Black Mask usually goes for five hundred, maybe more. And the first few issues of Weird Tales? Between five and ten grand apiece. I sell four or five of these old pulps on Ebay, that’s my yearly income right there. And you know I usually do that well just selling used books.”

  Carrie hugged him. “That’s wonderful honey.”

  Richard held her, feeling good. It was wonderful. The items he’d bought at that estate sale, old books and magazines that had been stored in somebody’s attic for eighty years, would fetch close to sixty grand. Maybe more. Normally, he was lucky if he made thirty grand a year just selling the usual stuff.

  That good feeling pervaded the next day. The storm didn’t let up; as they ate breakfast in the dining room, Richard and the kids watched through the window. Richard stood at the window nursing a cup of coffee as the snow piled up. He could barely make out the street they lived on. Everything was covered in swirling white.

  “What do you think?” Carrie asked as she brought a tray of scrambled eggs to the table. “Over a foot?”

  “At least that,” Richard said.

  “Can we go sledding today!” Mark asked. Susan was jumping up and down, anticipation on her beaming features.

  ”If the storm lets up we can go sledding,” Richard said. He smiled at his son.

  “Yay!”

  The storm didn’t let up.

  It continued unabated, dumping snow and blowing freezing wind all day. The kids went down in the basement to play games on the family computer, and he and Carrie watched the news. The Weather Channel reported that the storm was hitting South-Central Pennsylvania very hard. “Lancaster County has reported almost two feet of snow in the past eighteen hours,” the weather anchor reported, “with temperatures dipping below freezing. With the wind chill factor, it’s making for extreme Artic conditions. UGI is reporting a hundred thousand residents are without power due to downed lines, and Verizon has reported phone outages throughout the region. The Governor is also issuing a state of emergency and has ordered all vehicles off the roads except for emergency vehicles. If you don’t have to be anywhere, by all means stay home!”

  “I don’t think we’ve been through one of these in awhile,” Carrie said.

  “Yeah,” Richard replied. “At least since we left Maine.”

  Richard got a taste of what it was like outside when he took the trash out. He’d put on his snow boots, long-john’s, sweater, and a heavy jacket and gloves before going out, but he was still unprepared for the bitter sting of the snow as it slapped against his face, stinging him like angry bees. He dragged the trash bag to the cans tethered to the side of the house and got it in, slammed the lid down, then headed back in the garage. Once inside, he hesitated before going back in the house. Might as well drag th
e trash can in the garage so it’ll be within easy reach. If they were expecting three more days of this shit it would make things a lot easier.

  They spent the rest of the day lounging around the house, reading, watching movies and TV. Mark and Susan wanted to go outside and play in the snow but Carrie told them it was still snowing, that they could go outside when it stopped. The kids played computer games, then Susan fell asleep and Mark read comic books. They ate a light lunch of sandwiches and Carrie spent the rest of the afternoon making chicken and sausage gumbo, which they ate for supper. Then they retreated to the family room where they watched Shrek on DVD.

  That night in bed, with the wind moaning outside, Carrie asked, “Have you thought any more about what the locals told you?”

  “No,” Richard said. “Not at all. And neither should you. Now let’s get some sleep.”

  The following day it was still snowing and the wind was blowing hard. Mark and Susan got dressed up to go outside and they were just about to exit the front door when Richard stopped them. Couldn’t they see that it was still snowing outside? Mark looked at his father wide-eyed and Richard instantly regretted using the tone of voice he’d used on the boy. They were just kids; they were getting restless being cooped up in the house. Richard knelt down and promised them that the minute the snow stopped they’d all go outside for a little bit. The kids nodded, looking crestfallen.

  Richard ventured outside, bundled up like an Artic explorer to see how much snow had fallen. It piled up around the house, burying both cars. He spent an hour outside doing what he could to remove snow from the windows and the back door of the house, then retreated back inside to thaw out. Carrie and the kids were watching from the den, a fire going in the hearth. Carrie looked concerned. “It’s starting to come down harder,” she said.

  He looked back out. Fresh snow was falling heavily. “Great! Oh well.”

  “Thank God for self-employment, huh?” Carrie grinned, pointing at him. “When it’s over, you can stay home and shovel it all away from our house.”

  “Forget that; I’m calling a snow removal company.”

  “At least we still have phone service,” Carrie said, retreating to the kitchen to start dinner.

  The rest of the day went by smoothly. At one point, Richard checked his e-mail and found ten orders in his mailbox, one of them a credit card order for a mint condition copy of H. P. Lovecraft’s The Outsider and Others. What do you know? he thought as he processed the order and e-mailed the customer. I just made two thousand bucks without having to leave my house!

  The next day brought even more snow. The news was becoming more dire. The signal was fuzzy and as Richard tried to decipher the weather report, Carrie tried the phone. “Phone’s out,” she said.

  Richard turned to her. Carrie looked worried. “We’ll be okay, babe. We got a few weeks worth of food in the house and we still have power. And if we lose that, we’ve got the fireplace. We’ll be fine. Besides, you have the cell phone.”

  “Maybe I should check to see if we have any battery-powered lamps,” Carrie said.

  “Basement.”

  While that third day of the storm was spent doing more of what they’d been doing the last few days, things seemed different. For the most part, they caught up on their reading and film watching, Carrie called in to the office to make sure things were okay there, then did laundry and some knitting. Richard wrote a few pages of a novel he’d been working on for the past five years, the kids played either alone or together in the basement or in their rooms. A few times Richard caught them looking outside, then turning to look at him as if they were asking can we go out now? And each time Richard shook his head no. Physically and emotionally he felt fine, but he could tell the kids were close to bouncing off the walls. They really needed to get outside and play. They’d been watching the snow fall and batter their house for three days now, and he knew the sleds and snowboards were beckoning. If it would only stop!

  Carrie was quiet most of the day, and that evening in bed Richard asked her if she was okay. “I’m fine,” she said, snuggling up to him. “I’m just tired. And you?”

  “Couldn’t be better.”

  The next day’s weather report gave a damage count: ten dead, thousands without phone service or electricity, hundreds more injured in traffic accidents across the state. Four feet of snow had fallen and crews were working around the clock to remove it from vital areas. Homeowners were being advised to stay inside when possible, and to only venture out during brief lulls to remove snow from generators or windows. “It looks like we’ll have at least two more days of this, folks,” the weather reporter said. He was broadcasting from Harrisburg, which looked like somewhere in Alaska. “The snow has been falling steadily since Friday, and thankfully the wind has died down a little bit. But we’re expecting another strong front to move in by this evening to last through tomorrow night, and after that it looks like we’ll get a reprieve. So batten down the hatches and bundle up. This one looks like it’s going to be the Storm of the Century. And according to the National Weather Bureau, South-Central Pennsylvania hasn’t seen a storm of this magnitude since 1972.”

  Carrie glanced at Richard. “When was the one before that?”

  “Fifty-eight, I think.”

  “And that was the one when—”

  ‘Yes,” he said, motioning toward Mark and Susan, who were also watching. Carrie got the message, but he knew what she was trying to get at. The last time anybody from Silver Spring had stayed behind during a storm that brought these conditions was 1958...and the man that had stayed behind had slaughtered his entire family.

  Richard couldn’t work on his book that day. He tried to clean up some files on his hard drive, then finally shut down the system and poured himself a cup of coffee. He stood in the family room and watched the snow fall outside, his mind going back over what he’d read, everything Paul had told him. They don’t just go stir-crazy. It’s the weather conditions. When we get a Nor-Easter like this, at these conditions, it awakens them. They take over and look for a suitable host. And if you’re here—.

  Richard thought about this, his mind retracing everything he’d learned. Paul’s story was bullshit. It had to be cabin fever that set those men off. They’d had drinking problems, trouble at home, financial difficulties. That had been their breaking points. Richard was the exact opposite of that spectrum. He was fine. He was happy. He had a good life, he loved his wife, his children. Carrie loved him, his kids were healthy, well-balanced. Their finances were fine, neither he or Carrie had histories of violence or alcohol and drug problems. What could go wrong?

  The day went by smoothly.

  It snowed all day.

  And all through the night.

  The next day, the storm was stronger. Richard and Carrie stood at the windows and watched as it came down. Earlier that morning, Richard had once again braved the bitter wind and tried to shovel snow away from the windows, but the more he shoveled it, the more it fell. He let Mark and Susan out during the brief time he was out shoveling snow and they’d played in the white powder for perhaps five minutes and then stopped to watch him. The snow was so thick and deep he couldn’t see the cars, and it had been days since a plow had driven up the street. To get to the street they would have to climb a mountain of snow. Their cars were covered. If it weren’t for their covered porch, the snow would be piled around their front door.

  Richard sipped his coffee, his arm around Carrie’s shoulders as he looked at the sky. The clouds were dark. The wind howled, blowing the trees. He could feel the house shake as the wind whipped around the eaves. Mark and Susan looked up from their Play Station in the living room. “It’s getting worse,” Mark said, a hint of worry in his voice.

  “We’ll be fine,” Richard said.

  Later that day the power went out.

  Mark was lying on the sofa napping, and Susan was in her room taking a snooze when it happened. Richard was reclining on the sofa reading a book when the lamp suddenly w
ent out. He looked up, meeting Carrie’s gaze as the wind picked up again suddenly. A chill seemed to pass between them. Richard closed the book. “I’ll turn the circuits off and get a fire started.”

  When he came back Carrie was sitting up, looking outside, a strange expression on her face. Richard started making a fire. “You okay honey?”

  Carrie looked up, as if snapped out of a silent thought. “Oh, I’m okay. I’m just thinking about something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The dream.”

  “What dream?”

  “Remember the one I had four, five days ago? About that guy chasing me down the street of our old neighborhood with that axe?”

  Richard turned around. “Yeah?”

  “I had it again last night.”

  They looked at each other and Richard tried to read the look on his wife’s face. She was looking out the window, and he could tell she was worried about something. Probably the fact that the storm was really raging now, and that they’d been cooped up in the house for almost five days, all the work that would have to be done to shovel out of it, all the time lost from work. “You okay?” Richard asked.

  Carrie turned to him and mustered a smile. “I’m fine. It’s just...I had the dream again last night and it didn’t freak me out the way it did the first time. And...”

  “Yeah?”

  Carrie shook her head, picking up a cup of coffee she had set on the coffee table. “Nothing.” She looked at him and smiled. “I’m fine.”

  “Tell me!”

  Carrie looked at him. For the first time since the storm started, she looked frightened. “This time the guy chasing me in the dream...was you.”

  Richard regarded her for a moment and turned back to the fireplace, putting wood in the hearth, getting it all built up.

  When it was ready, Richard lit a match and held the flame to a bit of newspaper he’d put in as kindling. The flame caught and he closed the screen. He thought about what Carrie told him as he waited for the fire to build. Being cooped up in the house for five days, the insanity of the local urban legend and what Richard found out about its origin had surfaced in her dream. Perfect breeding ground for the nightmare resurfacing.