The lights took him.
I have a difficult relationship with memories. I still remember how it felt to be five and know nothing. How I stiffened when Daddy went to hug me, until I was convinced he was, indeed, my father. My hesitantance to eat broccoli until I believed what Daddy had told me, that I did in fact love it cooked, but not raw. Forgetting memories is a task I have yet to master. Max Riddle lifting my skirt in front of the junior-high football team. What it was like to have three daughters, each with the stomach flu. The early morning call from Roxy about the cancer diagnosis for her husband.
Pushing aside memories, I have found, is easier. They’re sneaky, though. When someone says to me they’re so sorry about William, that they wish there was something they could do, memories start to sneak in. When Chris shares his latest research on his detailed spreadsheet of all the known sex offenders in the five surrounding zip codes, they try to dodge around the protective barrier I’ve put in place.
I’ve tried, I thought as I rolled over in the bed, seeking a cool spot on the pillow. I can’t pretend anymore like I don’t know.
The lights took him.
It seemed like it was always cold in the days I first heard those words.
* * *
The landscape had slowly altered outside the window of the Oldsmobile Cutlass, from the still-green trees in Nashville, to the relative lushness of Kentucky and Southern Illinois. I will like it here, I remember thinking. It looks like home. Three hours later we entered the cornfields of Central Illinois standing beneath the gray skies.
Tom, my husband of two weeks, had smiled sheepishly and kissed my cheek. “If I told you how terrible it is, you’d never have agreed to come.”
We arrived in the town of Champaign-Urbana, the home of the University of Illinois. As picturesque as the university appeared, it still paled in comparison to my alma mater, Vanderbilt, which I’d only been able to attend thanks to a full academic scholarship. When we found our new apartment, I followed the landlord into the building and was nearly struck by the swinging door. It was the first time in my life a man had not held the door for me.
By Christmas, the snow piled high, along with our bills. My father never had much money, but I had never been this truly poor. It soon became apparent that Tom’s life would have to become the law if he were to pass the bar. He was gone most of the day in class and was often away at night, studying at the law library. He wasn’t on scholarship, and there wasn’t time for a job. Tom’s mother was dead, and he wasn’t close to his father.
That meant I had to find a way to make money if we were going to eat. Stopping all attempts at writing my first novel, I took a job as a waitress at a late-night diner. I had a degree in English and graduated with honors, and I was serving up coffee.
When we returned to Nashville for Christmas, I went straight to Daddy, who took my face in his hands and told me that this was just part of marriage; that my home was in Illinois now and coming home wasn’t an option; and that through the plant circuit, he knew a professor in the university’s agriculture department who might be able to find me a job.
A few weeks later, I got a call from the university, thanking me for my interest in an office-manager position and saying that I had been given a job. It was decent money that would pay the bills, with a little left over for used books and cheap wine. I wasn’t thrilled, but it meant using my brain, and I was proud that I was the sole breadwinner for my little family. I was given directions to the building and instructed to start work the following Monday.
At first, I thought I had the wrong building. But sure enough, there was an office manager job not in agriculture studies, but in the astronomy department, of all places. When I reacted with surprise, the dean of the department said he could certainly offer the job to someone else, but I quickly lied that I had always been interested in the stars. Once I had even located the Big Dipper, even though I had no idea how to find it again.
Yet the professors in the department didn’t care. They were thrilled that they now had a full-time office manager. At first, I thought it was strange that a department with only five professors would even need such a position, but soon I came to understand why. There were, of course, the demands of students and scheduling, but there was also need to proof articles for industry publications, and near constant requests to book time in the university’s planetarium. I took all of the tasks in stride, quietly enjoying being among the academics who seemed to constantly push up their horn-rimmed glasses above the bridge of their noses and thank me for completing even the smallest task. They had long dealt with bored undergrads assigned to man the front desk as part of their student work programs.
The only exception was Dr. Steven Richards. The young professor never picked up his messages from his students, never made eye contact with me as he walked briskly from his classes, and always kept his office door closed, even when he was inside. No one beside him ever entered. Sometimes, as he shut his door, I swore he lingered, staring at me while I typed.
And then there were the phone calls from nervous people anxious to speak with him. When he wasn’t in, they insisted I write down bizarre messages to pass along to him. “Five stars on the horizon tonight,” was a particular repeated message, and then their names and phone numbers. They called from all over the country—sometimes the world, based on the various accents. I started to think it was one big joke, and began to grow weary of the ridiculousness of it all.
While Dr. Richards always treated those messages with urgency, snatching them out of his mailbox and stuffing them quickly into the pocket of his tweed jacket, he would let messages from students pile up without responding.
Finally, when a student called for the fifth time, practically sobbing, saying she couldn’t graduate unless she could talk to Dr. Richards about her final research paper, I’d had enough.
Granted, it had been a bad day. I’d broken the coffeepot at home, spilled ink on my white blouse, and the laundry Tom had promised to fold remained mounded up around the apartment. I took Dr. Richards’s messages and marched to his office door. I knocked.
A soft response. “Who is it?”
“It’s Lynn at the front desk. You have several students who need to speak with you, Dr. Richards.”
“I’ll get to them.”
I turned the handle, expecting to open the door just enough to stick the messages in and then quickly close it. Instead, the knob turned easier than I thought and the door flew open.
“What are you doing?” Dr. Richards said.
“I am so sorry,” I replied, my face flushed. I held out the messages. “I really feel like you should call them—”
I stopped in midsentence. The maps covering the walls all had red pins with connecting strings, making the room feel like a bizarre spider’s web. Each of the pins seemed to have a note with some kind of furious writings. The maps continued all the way across the ceiling.
“Miss, you’re going to have to leave. You’re not allowed in here. And I will call those people back when I can.”
“Those people?” I found myself firing back. Stop talking! You need this job! “They are your students! You don’t even know my name, do you? I’ve worked here for four months.”
It was clear he didn’t. He ran his fingers through his hair, which was in desperate need of a cut. “I’m sorry, I’m very busy.”
Be quiet! “Students are asking for their grades. Some are waiting to graduate.”
“I will respond to them all today.”
I nodded once and began to close the door when he spoke again. “You are Lynn Stanson, married name Lynn Roseworth. Vanderbilt graduate, English lit major, 4.0 grade point average, from Nashville, Tennessee.”
I looked back at him in surprise, only to see that he was back to reading the papers in front of him. “I wouldn’t let you take my messages if I didn’t know who you were.”
I turned to walk away and then stopped. “Why are those messages so strange? Is it some kind of joke? Are
they friends of yours trying to be funny? Because they don’t sound funny. They sound angry.”
“They are colleagues of mine. Take down the messages and make sure you write them down exactly.”
Get out of this office. “I’m the office manager, not just a secretary. The other professors even use me to proof their research papers. Dr. Long is sending me to the library now to do research for him. So I don’t need to be told how to do simple tasks.” You are going to get fired, and Tom will have to drop out of school. “I’ll tell you what: From now on, if someone calls for you, I’ll see if you are in. And if you are, you can take the call. If not, I’ll ask them to call back later. That way, you’ll never doubt that your messages were taken down correctly.” Thank you for the four months of employment.
I had hoped the dean wouldn’t call me immediately with the termination notice. I might have a day or two to find a new job—
“Mrs. Roseworth, do you think … you could do some work for me? Obviously, I’m a little disorganized. I don’t mean to be aloof. It comes naturally.”
When he smiled, it was almost childlike. He was clearly unaccustomed to it, like an awkward boy sitting for a school picture. Dr. Richards couldn’t have been more than seven, maybe eight years older than me. Shut up and thank him and agree to help.
I stared over the rims of my own glasses. “Get those students straightened out, and I’ll be happy to help you. What kind of work do you need me to do?”
“Just … keep taking the messages accurately for now. And I’ll let you know when I need you for something more.”
I closed the door, hoping he would never make the request. If my old babysitter, Mrs. Ross, had seen that mess of an office, she’d have said, “Bless his heart.”
I’d gone back to the library and come back with so much research on solar flares for Dr. Long that he looked at me in astonishment. I wanted to explain that what I did two hours ago in Dr. Richards’s office could have gotten me fired, so I needed to earn some goodwill among the other professors. Instead, I returned to my desk and prayed.
When I arrived the next day, two large boxes were stacked on my chair. A note on top read: “Start with these. Organize by date. Only date.—Dr. Richards.”
I put the boxes aside, thinking it would take me no time flat to organize the files by date, even though the boxes were quite heavy. I would do as Dr. Richards asked and politely thank him for the task. Be sure to let me know if you need anything else, I would say quietly.
The day had been busy with arranging meetings for students and the professors, fetching coffee, and copy editing an article about the gases around Saturn. The boxes stared at me like a hungry dog.
Before I prepared to leave, I peeked at a few of the files, knowing that my calendar tomorrow appeared freer, and I could tackle the project, maybe even finish it by late afternoon.
The first few pages in the file had most of the words blacked out. So many of the words were marked through I couldn’t comprehend even what was typed or written on the pages. A quick glance through the files found them all to be the same.
Dr. Richards had to be in on this joke. My face grew hot. I strode down the hallway. Tom hadn’t even thanked me for staying up late the previous night to prepare his lunch. He’d also washed my favorite blouse with a pair of his red basketball shorts.
I went to Dr. Richards’s office and knocked on the door. When he didn’t answer, I turned the handle.
He sat at his desk, several books stacked in front of him. He didn’t look up. “Apparently, that lock is broken. I’ll have to have maintenance come fix it. I didn’t say enter.”
“I saw you come in a few hours ago. You should respond when someone knocks on your door. So, is this a joke? There isn’t a date on these, and they’re all blacked out.”
“There are dates. You won’t find them in their usual locations. You have to look within the paragraphs.”
“Why? What is this? Why is it all blacked out?”
He looked up, irritated. “When I feel like you can do this job, I’ll explain more. If you can’t do this job, then there’s no need to explain.”
I wanted to take his stupid boxes and stack them outside his door so when he opened it, he might trip on them. I flushed at the thought. “Yes Dr. Richards,” I managed to say.
I returned to my chair, trying to ignore the boxes jeering at me. Tom would be working late. I had no interest in or desire to spend another night eating alone.
It was nearly seven o’clock when Dr. Richards left. As usual, he didn’t acknowledge anyone or even note that I was still at my desk, hours after I was typically gone.
I immediately began pulling out the pages from the first box and began reading.
Two hours later, I was completely lost. At times, I could almost make out a few sentences, but even those made no sense. And what made it even more ridiculous was that none of it seemed to pertain at all to astronomy or his students’ work.
Was he just crazy? Did he suffer from some kind of medical condition? I’d come across several dates that were not blocked out, but hundreds of other pages and letters had nothing to decipher.
I looked over at the picture of Daddy and me from graduation on my desk. Give a Stanson a job and we’ll get it done, he always said.
This sudden attitude of mine could cost me this job. And I hated confrontation. Tom rarely became angry with me, and when he did, I quietly tried to even his temper to end the argument. I certainly never fought with Daddy. Perhaps it was that no one had ever totally dismissed me before or spoken to me like hired help.
I am wasting my time, I thought. I could be working on my writing. I leaned back in the chair, holding up two pages. These are the last two. I’m dumping this all back outside his office and apologizing for my inability to finish the project. I imagined sending all the students inquiring about him back to his office, and telling them to knock loudly because, despite being in his late twenties, Dr. Richards is a little deaf.
The fluorescent light above flickered. I sat forward and began to toss the papers into the box, when I stopped. I read the page again and found nothing. Then I leaned back and held up the pages.
The paper was so thin, I could easily see through to the blocked out words on the first page. I had encountered that problem myself before, when I tried to black out one of the professors’ home addresses on a handbook that all the students would see, only to find the address could been seen when angled correctly in the light. But this time, it wasn’t an angle that revealed what was marked through. When I held the two pages together, I could not only see the blacked out words, but also saw the words on the page behind it. The words from the second page fit the sentences from the first page perfectly.
I held the pages up to the desk lamp. I read them over and over again. The second page wasn’t a second page at all.
I reread the sentence on the first page:
“I had noticed (blacked out) were blowing, so (blacked out) outside, and that’s when I saw the (blacked out) and I (blacked out). The (blacked out) had (blacked out) him.”
Dr. Richards—or someone, I guessed—took the time to type out a key for every single page. When I held the pages up to the light and matched up the paragraphs exactly, the words on the second page were, in fact, the words that had been blacked out on the first.
I had noticed (blacked out) were blowing.
The word behind the blacked out word was “trees.”
I had noticed trees were blowing, it read. I smiled.
The words “trees,” “ran,” “streetlight,” “panicked,” “knew,” “lights” and “taken” had all been blacked out on the first page and placed strategically on the second.
I snatched a pencil and wrote the words above the blacked-out smudges, and read the sentence in full:
I had noticed trees were blowing, so I ran outside, that’s when I saw the streetlight and I panicked. The lights had taken him.
SEVEN
I had stayed until m
idnight the night I first unraveled the code of the files. It had not been dedication that had kept me glued to the pages.
The letters were not always written to Dr. Richards. Many were firsthand accounts, all had most words blacked out. I knew all I was supposed to be doing was finding the dates to figure out some kind of order, but I quickly realized it would be more complicated than that. While some were dated in the upper left-hand corner in standard letter format, the rest required full readings to find some mention of a day, a time, or even a month.
Soon, even if letters were clearly dated, I found myself reading them in their entirety. Several I read more than once. I had to put on my sweater due to the goose bumps on my arms.
When the clock hit 12:30, I grabbed my coat and hurried home, fearing Tom would be pacing in alarm. But he wasn’t home either, which meant he was out with his law-school buddies, blowing off steam.
I made angry laps around the apartment. I’d never been a drinker, and while I didn’t disapprove of alcohol, I certainly didn’t like how it was contributing to my solitude. He hadn’t even stopped by to leave me a note to say he was going out.
The next morning, I left without leaving him a note, making his lunch, or waking him, since had slept through his alarm.
I got to work early and waited. When Dr. Richards arrived, I practically blocked his entrance into his office, holding up one of the files.
“What is this?”
The professor’s head was down as usually, but upon seeing the letters in my hand, he glanced at my face and told me to come in and close the door.
He sat down, folding his fingers behind his thick, dark-red hair, which was already streaked with silver, even though he wasn’t yet thirty.
“You can read them?” he asked.
“Of course I can read them.” I hoped the bags under my eyes didn’t give away how long it had taken me. “I don’t know how else to say this: It’s disturbing. These are letters about people disappearing, being abducted, losing their loved ones. This has nothing to do with astronomy.”
The Darkest Time of Night Page 5