Strangers (5 page)

Then worse. Night.

The outside lights, including the blue and green neon sign that could
be seen clearly from the freeway, had blinked on automatically as dusk crept in, but that had not made Ernie feel any better. Dawn was an eternity away. Night ruled.

With the dying of the light, the outside temperature fell below freezing. To cut the chill in the office, the oil furnace kicked in more frequently. In spite of the chill, Ernie Block was sweating.

At six o’clock, Sandy Sarver dashed over from the Tranquility Grille, which stood west of the motel. It was a small sandwich shop with a limited menu, serving only lunch and dinner to the guests and to hungry truckers who swung in from the highway for a bite. (Breakfast for guests was complimentary sweet rolls and coffee delivered to their rooms, if they asked for it the night before.) Sandy, thirty-two, and her husband, Ned, ran the restaurant for Ernie and Faye; Sandy waited tables, and Ned cooked. They lived in a trailer up near Beowawe and drove in every day in their battered Ford pickup.

Ernie winced when Sandy entered, for when she opened the door he had the irrational feeling that the darkness outside would spring, pantherlike, into the office.

“Brought supper,” Sandy said, shivering in the gust of cold air that entered with her. She set a small, lidless, cardboard box on the counter. It held a cheeseburger, French fries, a plastic container of cole slaw, and a can of Coors. “Figured you’d need a Coors to sluice all this cholesterol out of your system.”

“Thanks, Sandy.”

Sandy Sarver was not much to look at, plain and washed out, even drab, though she had more potential than she realized. Her legs were too thin but not unattractive. She was underweight, but if she put on fifteen or even twenty pounds, she would have a reasonably good shape. She was flat-chested, though an appealing suppleness compensated for her lack of amplitude, and she had a charming feminine delicateness most apparent in her small bones, slender arms, and swanlike neck. Also, she possessed an infrequently seen but arresting gracefulness that was usually disguised by her habit of shuffling when she walked and slumping round-shouldered when she sat. Her brown hair was lusterless and limp, probably because she washed it with soap instead of shampoo. She never wore makeup, not even lipstick. Her nails were bitten and neglected. However, she was good-hearted, with a generous spirit, which was why Ernie and Faye wished she could look better and get more out of life.

Sometimes Ernie worried about her, the same way he used to worry about Lucy, his own daughter, before Lucy found and married Frank and became so obviously, perfectly happy. He sensed that something bad had happened to Sandy Sarver a long time ago, that she had taken a very hard
blow which had not broken her but had taught her to keep a low profile, to keep her head tucked down, to harbor only meager expectations in order to protect herself from disappointment, pain, and human cruelty.

Relishing the aroma of the food, popping the tab on the Coors, Ernie said, “Ned makes the best darned cheeseburgers I’ve ever eaten.”

Sandy smiled shyly. “It’s a blessing having a man who cooks.” Her voice was soft, meek. “Especially in my case ’cause I’m no good at it.”

“Oh, I’ll bet you’re a fine cook, too,” Ernie said.

“No, no, not me, not even a little bit. Never was, never will be.”

He looked at her bare, goose-pimpled arms, exposed by her short-sleeved uniform. “You shouldn’t come out on a night like this without a sweater. You’ll catch your death.”

“Not me,” she said. “I…I got used to the cold a long time ago.”

That seemed an odd thing to say, and the tone of voice in which she said it was even odder. But before Ernie could think of a way to draw her out and discover her meaning, she headed toward the door.

“See you later, Ernie.”

“Uh…much business?”

“Some. And the truckers’ll be pulling in for supper soon.” She paused with the door open. “You sure keep it bright in here.”

A bite of cheeseburger stuck in his throat when she opened the door. She was exposing him to the dangers of the darkness.

Cold air swept in.

“You could get a tan in here,” she said.

“I…I like it bright. People come into a motel office that’s dimly lit…well, the impression is it’s dirty.”

“Oh! I would’ve never thought of that. Guess that’s why you’re the boss. I was in charge, I’d never think of little things like that. I’m no good at details. Gotta scoot.”

He held his breath while the door was open, sighed with relief when she pulled it shut behind her. He watched her scurry past the windows and out of sight. He could not remember ever hearing Sandy admit to a virtue. Likewise, she never hesitated to point out her faults and shortcomings, both real and imagined. The kid was sweet, but she was sometimes dreary company. Tonight, of course, even dreary company was welcome. He was sorry to see her go.

At the counter, eating while standing up, Ernie concentrated intently on his food, not once lifting his eyes from it until he was done, using it to take his mind off the irrational fear that made his scalp prickle and kept the cold sweat trickling down from his armpits.

By six-fifty, eight of the motel’s twenty rooms were occupied. Because it was the second night of a four-day holiday weekend, with more than
the usual number of travelers, he would rent out at least another eight units if he stayed open until nine o’clock.

He could not do it. He was a Marine—retired, but still a Marine—to whom the words “duty” and “courage” were sacred, and he had never failed to do his duty, not even in Vietnam, not even with bullets flying and bombs bursting and people dying on all sides, but he was incapable of the simple task of manning the motel desk until nine o’clock. There were no drapes at the big office windows, no blind over the glass door, no way to escape the sight of darkness. Each time the door opened, he was sick with dread because no barrier lay between him and the night.

He looked at his big strong hands. They were trembling. His sour stomach churned. He was so jumpy he could not keep still. He paced the small work area. He fiddled with this and that.

Finally, at a quarter past seven, surrendering to his irrational anxiety, he used a switch under the counter to turn on the
NO VACANCY
sign outside, and he locked the front door. He clicked off the lamps, one at a time, edging away from the shadows that rushed in where light had ruled, and he quickly retreated to the rear of the room. Steps led up to the owner’s apartment on the second floor. He intended to climb them at an ordinary pace, telling himself that it was silly and stupid to be afraid, telling himself that nothing was coming after him from the dark corners of the office behind, nothing—such a
ridiculous
thought—nothing, absolutely nothing. But reassurances of that sort did him no good whatsoever, for it was not something
in
the dark that scared him; he was, instead, terrified by the darkness itself, by the mere absence of light. He started moving faster, grabbing at the handrail. To his chagrin, he quickly panicked and bounded up the steps two at a time. At the top, heart pounding, Ernie stumbled into the living room, fumbled for the wall switch, snapped off the last of the lights below, slammed the door so hard that the whole wall seemed to shake, locked it, and leaned with his broad back against it.

He could not stop gasping. He could not stop shaking, either. He could smell his own rank sweat.

Several lights had been burning in the apartment during the day, but a few were unlit. He hurried from room to room, clicking on every lamp and ceiling fixture. The drapes and shades were all drawn tight from his previous nocturnal ordeal, so he had not a single glimpse of the blackness beyond the windows.

When he had regained control of himself, he phoned the Tranquility Grille and told Sandy that he was not feeling well, that he had shut down early. He asked them to keep the day’s receipts until tomorrow morning rather than bother him tonight when they closed the restaurant.

Sickened by his pungent perspiration odor—not so much by the smell
itself as by the total loss of control that the smell represented—Ernie showered. After he had toweled himself dry, he put on fresh underwear, belted himself into a thick warm robe, and stepped into slippers.

Heretofore, in spite of his bewilderingly unfocused apprehension, he had been able to sleep in a dark room, though not without anxiety, and not without the aid of a couple of beers. Then, two nights ago, with Faye in Wisconsin, when he was alone, he was able to nod off only with the constant companionship of the nightstand lamp. He knew he would need that luminous comfort tonight, as well.

And when Faye returned on Tuesday? Would he be able to go back to sleeping without a light?

What if Faye turned off the lights…and he started screaming like a badly frightened child?

The thought of that impending humiliation made him grind his teeth with anger and drove him to the nearest window.

He put one beefy hand on the tightly drawn drapes. Hesitated. His heart did an imitation of muffled machine-gun fire.

He had always been strong for Faye, a rock on which she could depend. That was what a man was supposed to be: a rock. He must not let Faye down. He had to overcome this bizarre affliction before she returned from Wisconsin.

His mouth went dry and a chill returned when he thought about what lay beyond the now-concealed glass, but he knew the only way to beat this thing was to confront it. That was the lesson life had taught him: be bold, confront the enemy, engage in battle. That philosophy of action had always worked for him. It would work again. This window looked out from the back of the motel, across the vast meadows and hills of the uninhabited uplands, and the only light out there was what fell from the stars. He must pull the drapes aside, come face to face with that tenebrous landscape, stand fast, endure it. Confrontation would be a purgative, flushing the poison from his system.

Ernie pulled open the drapes. He peered out at the night and told himself that this perfect blackness was not so bad—deep and pure, vast and cold, but not malevolent, and in no way a personal threat.

However, as he watched, unmoving and unmovable, portions of the darkness seemed to…well, to shift, to
coalesce,
forming into not quite visible but nonetheless solid shapes, lumps of pulsing and denser blackness within the greater blackness, lurking phantoms that at any moment might launch themselves toward the fragile window.

He clenched his jaws, put his forehead against the ice-cold glass.

The Nevada barrens, a huge emptiness to begin with, now seemed to expand even farther. He could not see the night-cloaked mountains, but
he sensed that they were magically receding, that the plains between him and the mountains were growing larger, extending outward hundreds of miles, thousands, expanding swiftly toward infinity, until suddenly he was at the center of a void so immense that it defied description. On all sides of him, there was emptiness and lightlessness beyond man’s ability to measure, beyond the limits of his own feeble imagination, a terrible emptiness, to the left and right, front and back, above and below, and suddenly he could not
breathe.

This was considerably worse than anything he had known before. A deeper-reaching fear. Profound. Shocking in its power. And it was in total control of him.

Abruptly he was aware of all the
weight
of that enormous darkness, and it seemed to be sliding inexorably in upon him, sliding and sliding, incalculably high walls of heavy darkness, collapsing, pressing down, squeezing the breath out of him—

He screamed and threw himself back from the window.

He fell to his knees as the drapes dropped into place with a soft rustle. The window was hidden again. The darkness was concealed. All around him was light, blessed light. He hung his head, shuddered, and took great gulps of air.

He crawled to the bed and hoisted himself onto the mattress, where he lay for a long time, listening to his heartbeat, which was like footfalls, sprinting then running then just walking fast inside him. Instead of solving his problem, bold confrontation had made it worse.

“What’s happening here?” he said aloud, staring at the ceiling. “What’s wrong with me? Dear God, what’s
wrong
with me?”

It was November 22.

4

Laguna Beach, California

Saturday, in desperate reaction to yet another troubling episode of somnambulism, Dom Corvaisis thoroughly, methodically exhausted himself. By nightfall, he intended to be so wrung out that he’d sleep as still as a stone locked immemorially in the bosom of the earth. At seven o’clock in the morning, with the night’s cool mist lingering in the canyons and bearding the trees, he performed half an hour of vigorous calisthenics on the patio overlooking the ocean, then put on his running shoes and did seven arduous miles on Laguna’s sloped streets. He spent the next five hours doing heavy gardening. Then, because it was a warm day, he put on his swimsuit, put towels in his Firebird, and went to the beach. He
sunbathed a little and swam a lot. After dinner at Picasso’s, he walked for another hour along shop-lined streets sparsely populated by off-season tourists. At last he drove home.

Undressing in his bedroom, Dom felt as if he were in the land of Lilliput, where a thousand tiny people were pulling him down with grappling lines. He rarely drank, but now he tossed back a shot of Rémy Martin. In bed, he fell asleep even as he clicked off the lamp.

•

The incidents of somnambulism were growing more frequent, and the problem was now the central issue of his life. It was interfering with his work. The new book, which had been going well—it contained the best writing he had ever done—was stalled. In the past two weeks, he had awakened in a closet on nine occasions, four times in the last four nights. The affliction had ceased to be amusing and intriguing. He was afraid to go to sleep because, asleep, he was not in control of himself.

Yesterday, Friday, he had finally gone to his physician, Dr. Paul Cobletz, in Newport Beach. Haltingly, he told Cobletz all about his sleepwalking, but he found himself unwilling and unable to express the true depth and seriousness of his concern. Dom had always been a very private person, made so by a childhood spent in a dozen foster homes and under the care of surrogate parents, some of whom were indifferent or even hostile, all of whom were dismayingly temporary presences in his life. He was reluctant to share his most important and personal thoughts except through the mouths of imaginary characters in his fiction.