All his life, in the Marine Corps and out of it, to the best of his
ability, Ernie Block had done what was required of him, all that could
be expected. And now, by God, he was not going to fail his own wife.
Behind the wheel of the Dodge van, racing westward toward the
Tranquility Motel under a smeary orange-purple sky, Ernie Block wondered
if his problem was premature senility, Alzheimer's disease. Even though
he was only fifty-two, it almost had to be something like Alzheimer's.
Although it frightened him, at least he could understand it.
Understand it, yes, but he could not accept it. Faye depended on him.
He could not become a mental invalid, a burden on her. The men in the
Block family never let their womenfolk down. Never. Unthinkable.
The highway rounded a small hillock, and a mile ahead, north of the
Interstate, lay the motel, the only building in that vast panorama. Its
blue and green neon sign was already switched on, shining fiercely
bright against the twilight sky. He'd never seen a more welcome sight.
Complete darkness was still ten minutes away, and he decided it was
foolish to risk being stopped by a cop when he was this close to
sanctuary. He eased up on the accelerator, and the speedometer needle
swiftly dropped: ninety ... eighty-five . . . seventy-five . . .
sixty . . .
He was three-quarters of a mile from home when a curious thing happened:
He glanced southward, away from the road, and his breath caught. He did
not know what startled him. Something about the landscape. Something
about the way the light and shadow played across those down-sloping
fields. He was suddenly gripped by the odd idea that a particular piece
of ground-a half-mile ahead, on the opposite side of the highway-was of
supreme importance in understanding the bizarre changes that had been
taking place in him during the past few months.
. . . fifty . . . forty-five ... forty . . .
He could see nothing to make that piece of land different from the tens
of thousands of acres around it. Besides, he had seen it countless
times before and had been unimpressed by it. Nevertheless, in the slope
of the terrain, in the gently folded contours of the earth, in the
bisecting wound of an arroyo, in the configuration of sagebrush and
grass, and in the scattered gnarled outcroppings of rock, something
seemed to cry out for investigation.
He felt as if the land itself were saying, "Here, here, here is part of
the answer to your problem, part of the explanation for your fear of the
night. Here. Here But that was ridiculous.
To his surprise, he found himself pulling to the shoulder of the
highway, stopping a quarter-mile from home, not far from the exit ramp
to the county road that led past the motel. He squinted south across the
highway, at the place that had mysteriously captured his attention.
He was gripped by the most amazing sense of impending epiphany, an
overwhelming feeling that something of monumental importance was about
to happen to him. The skin prickled along the back of his neck.
He got out of the van, leaving it idling behind him. In a state of
tremulous expectation that he could not understand, he headed toward the
far side of the interstate, where he could have a better look at the
plot of ground that fascinated him. He traversed two lanes of blacktop,
clambered into the twenty-foot-wide gulley that divided the halves of
the interstate, and scrambled up the far slope. He waited for three
huge trucks to roar past, then crossed the eastbound lanes in the windy
wake of those rigs. His heart was pounding with an inexplicable
excitement, and for the moment he had forgotten the advent of night.
He stopped on the far berm, at the crest of the highway's elevated bed,
looking south and slightly west. He wore a bulky suede jacket with
sheepskin lining, but his brush-cut gray hair provided little protection
from the chilly wind, which scrubbed its cold knuckles across his skull.
He began to lose the feeling that something of immense importance was
about to happen. Instead, he was seized by the even creepier notion
that something had already happened to him on that patch of
shadow-banded ground out there, something that accounted for his recent
fear of the dark. Something he had assiduously banned from his memory.
But that made no sense. If important events had transpired here, they
simply would not have slipped his mind. He was not forgetful. And he
was not the kind of person who repressed unpleasant memories.
Still, the back of his neck continued to tingle. Out there, not far
into those trackless Nevada plains, something had happened to him that
he had forgotten but that now pricked him from his subconscious, where
it was deeply embedded, much the way a needle, accidentally left in a
quilt, might jab and startle a sleeper out of a dream.
With his legs spread wide and his feet planted firmly in the berm, with
his blocky head hunched down on his blocky shoulders, Ernie seemed to be
challenging the landscape to speak more clearly to him. He strained to
resurrect the dead memory of this place-if, indeed, there was one-but
the harder he tried to grasp the elusive revelation, the faster it
receded from him. Then it was gone altogether.
The thought vu deserted him as completely as the sense of impending
epiphany had evaporated before it. The tingle left his scalp and neck.
His frantically pounding heart settled slowly into a more normal pace.
Bewildered and somewhat dizzy, he studied the fast-fading scene before
him-the angled land, the spines and teeth of rock, the brush and grass,
the weathered convexities and concavities of the ancient earth-and now
he could not imagiNe why it had seemed special to him. It was just a
portion of the high plains virtually indistinguishable from a thousand
other spots from here to Elko or from here to Battle Mountain.
Disoriented by the suddenness of his plunge from the brink of
transcendent awareness, he looked back toward the van, which waited on
the north side of the interstate. He felt conspicuous and foolish when
he thought of the way he had dashed from there to here in the grip of a
strange excitement. He hoped Faye had not seen him. If by chance she
had been looking out a window in this direction, she could not have
missed his performance, for the motel was only a quarter of a mile away,
and the flashing emergency blinkers on the truck made it by far the most
noticeable thing in the swiftly descending darkness.
Darkness.
Abruptly, the nearness of nightfall hit Ernie Block hard. For a while,
the mysterious magnetism that had drawn him to this place had been
stronger than his fear of the dark. But that changed in an instant when
he realized that the eastern half of the sky was purple-black and that
only minutes of vague light remained in the western realm.
With a cry of panic, he bolted across the eastbound lanes, in front of a
motor home, oblivious of the danger. A horn blared at him. He did not
care, did not pause, just ran pellmell because he could feel the
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darkness clutching at him and pressing down on him. He reached the
shallow gully that served as a lane divider, fell as he started down
into it, rolled back onto his feet, terrified of the blackness that was
welling up out of each depression in the land and from under every rock.
He flung himself up the other side of the gully, fled into the westbound
lanes. Fortunately there was no oncoming traffic, for he did not look to
see if the way was clear. At the van, he fumbled with the door handle,
acutely conscious of the perfect blackness under the truck. It was
grappling at his feet. It wanted to pull him under the Dodge and devour
him. He yanked the door open. Tore his feet loose of the hands of
darkness. Clambered into the cab. Slammed the door. Locked it.
He felt better but far from safe, and if he had not been so close to
home he would have frozen stiff. But he only had a quarter of a mile to
go, and when he switched on his headlights, the gloom fell back, which
encouraged him. He was shaking so violently that he did not trust
himself to pull back into traffic, so he drove along the shoulder of the
interstate until he came to the exit ramp. There were sodium lamps
along the ramp and at the base of it, and he was tempted to stop there
at the bottom, in the yellow glare, but he gritted his teeth and turned
onto the county road, out of the light. After driving only two hundred
yards, Ernie reached the entrance to the Tranquility Motel. He swung
through the parking area, slid the van into a slot in front of the
office, switched off the headlights, and cut the engine.
Beyond the big windows of the office, he could see Faye at the front
desk. He hurried inside, closing the door behind himself with too much
force. He smiled at Faye when she glanced up, and he hoped the smile
looked more convincing than it felt.
"I was beginning to worry, dear," she said, returning his smile.
"Had a flat tire," Ernie said, unzipping his jacket.
He felt somewhat relieved. Nightfall was easier to accept when he was
not alone; Faye gave him strength, but he was still uneasy.
She said, "I missed you."
"I was only gone the afternoon."
"I guess I'm hooked, then. Seemed longer. Guess I've got to have my
Ernie fix every couple of hours or go through withdrawal symptoms."
He leaned across the counter, and she leaned from her side, and they
kissed. There was nothing half-hearted about their kiss. She put one
hand to his head to hold him close. Most long-married couples, even if
they remained in love, were perfunctory in their displays of affection,
but that was not the case with Ernie and Faye Block. After thirty-one
years of marriage, she could still make him feel young.
She said, "Where are the new lighting fixtures? They did come in,
didn't they? The freight office didn't make a mistake?"
That question jolted him back to an acute awareness of the night
outside. He glanced at the windows, then quickly away. "Uh, no. I'm
tired. I don't really feel up to hauling them in here tonight."
"Just four crates-"
"Really, I'd rather do it in the morning," he said, striving to keep a
tremor out of his voice. "The stuff will be all right in the truck.
Nobody'll touch it. Hey, you put up the Christmas decorations!"
"You mean you just noticed?"
A huge wreath of pine cones and nuts hung on the wall above the sofa. A
life-sized cardboard figure of Santa Claus stood in the corner beside
the rack of postcards, and a small ceramic sleigh with ceramic reindeer
was displayed at one end of the long counter. Red and gold
Christmas-tree balls hung from the ceiling light fixture on lengths of
transparent fishing line.
"You had to get up on a ladder for some of this," he said.
"Just the stepladder."
"But what if you'd fallen? You should've left this for me to do."
Faye shook her head. "Honey, I swear to God I'm not the fragile type.
Now, hush up. You ex-Marines carry macho too far sometimes."
"Is that so?"
The outer door opened, and a trucker came in, asking about a room.
Ernie held his breath until the door closed.
The trucker was a lanky man in a cowboy hat, denim jacket, cowboy shirt,
and jeans. Faye complimented him on the hat, which had an elaborately
sculpted leather band brightened with chips of turquoise. In that easy
way of hers, she made the stranger feel like an old friend as she
shepherded him through the check-in process.
Leaving her to it, trying to forget his curious experience on the
interstate, trying not to dwell on the night that had come, Ernie moved
behind the counter, hung his coat on the brass rack in the corner by the
file cabinets, and went to the oak desk, where mail was stacked on the
blotter. Bills, of course. Advertistments. A charity solicitation.
The first Christmas cards of the year. His military pension check.
Finally, there was a white envelope without a return address, which
contained only a Polaroid color photograph that had been taken in front
of the motel, beside the door to Room 9. It was of three people-man,
woman, child. The man was in his late twenties, darkly tanned and
good-looking. The woman was a couple of years younger, a pretty
brunette. The little girl, five or six, was very cute. All three were
smiling at the camera. Judging from their clothes-shorts and
Tshirts-and the quality of sunlight in the picture, Ernie assumed that
the snapshot had been taken in the middle of summer.
Puzzled, he turned the photo over, looking for a scribbled note of
explanation. The back was blank. He checked the envelope again, but it
was empty: no letter, no card, not even a business card to identify the
sender. The postmark was Elko, December 7, last Saturday.
He looked again at the people in the picture, and although he did not
remember them, he felt his skin prickle, just as it had done when he had
been drawn to that place along the highway. His pulse accelerated. He
quickly put the picture aside and looked away from it.
Faye was still chatting with the cowboy-trucker as she took a room key
off the pegboard and passed it across the counter.
Ernie kept his eyes on her. She was a calming influence. She had been a
lovely farmgirl when he'd met her, and had grown into a lovelier woman.
Her blond hair might have begun to turn white, but it was hard to tell.
Her blue eyes were clear and quick. Hers was an open, friendly Iowa
face, slightly saucy but always wholesome, even beatific.
By the time the cowboy-trucker left, Ernie had stopped shaking. He took
the Polaroid snapshot to Faye. "What do you make of this?"
"That's our Room Nine," she said. "They must've stayed with us." She
frowned at the young couple and little girl in the photograph. "Can't
say I remember them, though.
Strangers to me."
"So why would they send us a photo without a note?"
"Well, obviously, they thought we would remember them.
"But the only reason they'd think that was if maybe they stayed for a
few days and we got to know them. And I don't know t
hem at all. I
think I'd remember the tyke," Ernie said. He liked children, and they
usually liked him. "She's cute enough to be in movies."
"I'd think you'd remember the mother. She's gorgeous."
"Postmarked Elko," Ernie said. "Why would anybody who lives in Elko
come out here to stay?"
"Maybe they don't live in Elko. Maybe they were here last summer and
always meant to send us a photo, and maybe they recently passed through
and meant to stop and leave this off but didn't have time. So they
mailed it from Elko."
"Without a note."
"It is odd," Faye agreed.
He took the picture from her. "Besides, this is a Polaroid. Developed a
minute after it was taken. If they wanted us to have it, why didn't
they leave it with us when they stayed here?"
The door opened, and a curly-haired guy with a bushy mustache came into
the office, shivering. "Got any rooms left?" he asked.
While Faye dealt with the guest, Ernie took the Polaroid back to the oak
desk. He meant to gather up the mail and go upstairs, but he stood by
the desk, studying the faces of the people in the snapshot.
It was Tuesday evening, December 10.
8.
Chicago, Illinois
When Brendan Cronin went to work as an orderly at St. Joseph's Hospital
for Children, only Dr. Jim McMurtry knew that he was really a priest.
Father Wycazik had obtained a guarantee of secrecy from the physician,
Koontz, Dean R. - Strangers Page 17