Dark Whispers & Other Stories

The Man in the Long Black Sedan

A TV producer called me one night and said he really really liked my stuff and really really wanted to bring one and perhaps two of my novels to the tube as soon as possible. In the meantime — God, the guy was so excited he was nearly out of breath — in the meantime, see, he’s doing this syndicated package of half-hour horror programs and did I have anything he could do that was effective but cheap, something, you know, basic. Actually, I didn't but by this time I was just as excited as the producer, so next morning — still pretty much out of breath myself — I sat down and wrote this story and FAXed it to him and he was practically orgasmic on his return call from Hwood. He was sure his People would love it just as much as he loved it. He was sure of it. I never heard from the guy again.

At first light, the crickets still unceasing and the neighborhood dogs joining in, I eased from bed so as to not wake Ellen, and walked along the hardwood of the hallway to Christopher’s room. It was August and humid, and the floor was almost sticky against my bare feet.

Two of them lay in bed, my eight-year-old Christopher and his classmate Donny. They’d spent all day yesterday taking full advantage of hot blue summer and slept now in sweet exhaustion. Donny was his best friend, Christopher had confided recently. Donny liked to rent Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom just as often as Christopher did and his favorite Stooge was Shemp. You couldn’t ask for a better friend than that.

In the downstairs bathroom I gave myself what my mother always calls a sponge bath, afraid a full-force shower would wake Ellen. Ellen would have questions for which I would have no answers.

I dressed in a clean white button-down shirt and newly dry-cleaned blue slacks. Add a tie and you have the uniform I wear every day to the computer store I manage. Just before I left the bathroom, I stared with disbelief at the thirty-nine-year-old face fixed forlornly in the mirror. I’ve always felt a tiny shock of betrayal when I look on my mirror image, as if my real face had been stolen and an imposter put in my place. What I feel seems to bear no relation to the wry, even smug face I’ve been given.

In the basement, in a cabinet that locks with an ancient antique key, I found the Smith and Wesson .38 that had belonged to my father. Taking it to a cobwebbed window, holding it up to the dust and dawn, I turned it over and over in my slender hands, as if by doing so it would reveal some sublime secret about its purpose.

But of course I knew its purpose, didn’t I?

Harcourt is a Midwestern town of forty-two thousand. It wakes early. White milk trucks crisscross the wide streets and avenues, and paperboys and papergirls on quick new bikes toss their papers with reasonable accuracy on silent front porches still silver with dew. After college, I did not want to go back east. I wanted the furious rolling green of heartland summer and the vast cool shadows of its nights.

The motel I sought sits half a mile from the westernmost part of town. A one-floor, twelve-room complex with the office in the center, it is the sort of place I often stayed in as a boy, when my angry father and defeated mother spent their vacations driving across country in search of a peace neither of them would ever find.

The long black sedan sat in the last parking slot on the northern wing of the building. It was this year’s model but dulled by the dust of gravel roads. A red, white, and blue bumper sticker said STAND UP FOR AMERICA.

Oh, he was some ironic bastard, he was.

I pulled in next to him, took the .38 from the glove compartment, went up to his door.

Despite the noisy country-western music coming from the next room, I could hear his shower running.

He was making it damned easy for me.

I took out my credit card and went to work, looking around to see if anybody was watching. It’s never as easy as it looks on TV shows, opening doors this way, but most of the time it does work.

He had clothes laid out on the bed, a blue summer-weight suit, a short-sleeved blue shirt, a red regimental-striped tie, white Jockey shorts, and black socks. Beneath the clothes, the bed lay unmade and you could see black hairs on the pink pillow where he’d slept. The air smelled of steam from the shower and after-shave and cigarettes.

I sat down in a patterned armchair next to a nightstand with a phone and a copy of Penthouse that was probably his. He was very good. Very, very good. All these little bits of business to disguise who and what he really was. The magazine was a nice touch.

When I heard the bathroom door open, I got the .38 ready.

He was a short, chunky man of perhaps fifty, balding, jowly, and cross looking, like the crabby neighbor on TV sitcoms. He had a wide white towel wrapped around his fat belly and green rubber shower thongs that went thwack against his heels when he walked. On his right bicep was a tattoo of a panther. That was another nice touch, the tattoo.

He had his head down so he didn’t see me at first, but when he came into the room and raised his eyes, his first reaction was to get angry. Most people would be afraid — startled — to see somebody with a .38 sitting in their motel room chair. But not him.

“Who the hell are you?” he said, nodding to the gun, “and just what the hell are you doing in my room?”

“I know who you are. I know what you are.”

“What the hell are you talking about, pal?” He shook his head in disgust. “You want my money, right? And my wallet, too, I suppose. For the credit cards.” He scowled. “Nice little town like this, you don’t expect this kind of thing.” Keeping the towel modestly about him, he went over to the nightstand, his thongs thwacking against his heels again, and picked up his wallet and tossed it to me. “There you go, pal. Now put the gun away and get the hell out of here.” He didn’t sound so angry now. More disappointed in his luck.

I just let his wallet lie at my feet where it had landed. “I know who you are.”

“Who I am? What the hell’s the big deal about that? I’m Larry Washburn and I work for Calico Chemical Company and I’m in this burg for a week to sell my herbicide to farmers. So what?”

I smiled. “You’re good. I’ll say that for you.”

For the first time, his voice softened. “Are you all right, pal?”

“You’ve chosen my son, haven’t you?”

“Your son?”

“What’ll it be? A car accident? Drowning?” I shook my head, repelled at the sight of him. “No, it’ll more likely be a disease, won’t it? Cancer, I suppose, or cerebral palsy. Something that will make him suffer a long time.” When I thought of how poor little Christopher would suffer with cancer, I raised the .38 so that it was square at the center of his chest “You like them to suffer, don’t you? And for their parents to suffer, too, right? Accidents are over too quickly. They’re not nearly as much fun as disease.”

For the first time, he started glancing around the room and looking afraid. “Pal, you’ve got me confused with somebody else.”

“You drive around from town to town and you pick them out, don’t you? One by one. A boy here, a girl there. They’re so innocent and loving and trusting and you don’t care at all how much you make them suffer, do you? Do you know what it’s like to hold your little child in your arms and know that this child is going to die from a horrible disease? Do you know how heartbreaking that is? But you feed on it, don’t you? And nobody ever recognizes you for what you are. Nobody ever realizes you’ve got the power. But I know. Because I’ve got the power, too. But I use my power to help people.” I thought of Dr. Russo at the state university where I ultimately went when no other kind of doctor could help assuage my headaches. “They’re not headaches,” Dr. Russo had told me: “They’re visions. You’re seeing things other people can’t see. And it’s terrifying you.” I said, “You know how I knew you were here?”

He didn’t say anything. He just kept looking around the room. Especially at the door.

“Little Cindy Brisbane. Her mother brought her over to my son’s birthday party and I saw inside Cindy’s head. I saw what was growing there. A tumor. And six days later, they rushed her to a hospital after she kept fainting. And you know what they found? They found that tumor I’d seen.” I was starting to get angry again. “Why the hell did you put that tumor in Cindy? She’s had a hard enough life as it is being adopted and all.” I gripped the .38 tighter. “You’re not going to get my son.”

“You got a ring. Your married.”

“What?”

“Wedding ring. We can call your wife.”

I looked at the gold band on my finger. “You know all about me. You’ve been checking me and my family out for the past several days. You know I’m married. And you know about my son.”

“Why don’t we call your wife?”

“What?”

“Call your wife. Have her come over.”

“So you can give her an aneurysm? Or rheumatoid arthritis? Or some kind of spinal disease? You’d just love to have my wife come over, wouldn’t you?”

“Pal, please, look, you got me confused with somebody else. I’m from Traer, Iowa, born and raised there. I’m a door pounder. A goddamn salesman, can’t you see that? I don’t even know what this power is you’re talking about.”

He had a lot of wiry gray hair on his chest and little breasts like a thirteen-year-old girl. I put the bullet right there, right between his breasts.

He went over backward on the bed. The funny thing was that the towel kept him covered very well.

His arms went out as if he were falling helplessly into a swimming pool. Blood made his chest hair the color of copper wire even before he hit the bed.

I’d struck him directly in the heart.

Far away on the other side of the motel room walls, I could hear shouts and curses. The gunshot had awakened people, of course.

I had to hurry now.

I went over to him and stood over him. If you didn’t know who and what he was, you’d think he was dead. His eyes had rolled back and his tongue was angled out of his mouth and his fingers were already getting rigid.

But because I knew exactly what I was dealing with, I knew that in no time he would be up and coming for Christopher.

Shouts grew louder; distantly, I heard a siren.

I needed to get out of the motel room and I did.

On the drive back home, I could sense him stirring back in the room. When you’re able to see things in the way I can — identifying Cindy’s tumor, for example — you’re sometimes able to tell what people are doing even at great distances.

I could see him sitting up now, holding his hand to the pumping wound in his chest, cursing me.

Then I saw what he had planned for Christopher...

I hurried.

“Hi, hon,” Ellen said when I got home. She was in red shorts and a white T-shirt and standing over the stove where she was fixing bacon and eggs. “You sure got up early this morning. You run down to the store?”

“No,” I said.

How could I possibly explain to her what I had to do?

She smiled. “Our son and his friend are getting used to summer hours. I’ll bet they won’t be up before afternoon.”

“He’s coming,” I said.

“What?”

“He’s coming.”

“Who’s coming?”

“He wants to hurt Christopher. A disease. Maybe Donny will be lucky and get off with an accident. But Christopher will get a terrible disease.”

I could see she was scared now. She put down the spatula and came over to me. “Honey, what are you talking about?”

Up in the room, they were still sleeping. Christopher and Donny.

My head was throbbing. He was very angry back there in his motel room. Very angry.

In Christopher’s body I see, I hear, I feel the cancer cells already beginning to grow.

I think of the photos I’ve seen of youngsters with cancer after chemotherapy. Those round, hairless little faces. Those sad and yearning eyes. And the parents standing by so brave, so brave.

She wanted to stop me, Ellen did, and that’s why I had to kill her.

She just didn’t understand why I need to help Christopher before he can get to him...

But then, it’s not possible to understand unless you have the power.

I raise the gun.

Christopher stirs.

Begins to look up.

Blond hair mussed.

Face smudged with sleep.

Eyes on the .38 now.

I’m not going to let him have them. He wants them to suffer. Even Donny will suffer. I see that dearly now.

But I won’t let them suffer.

“Dad, what’s wrong?” Christopher says.

I wish he’d stayed asleep. Sleeping, it would have been easier for me.

“I’m sorry, Chris,” I say. “I love you, honey. I love you.”

I get him near the temple. Death, a red blooming flower against his blond hair, is quick and final.

I kill Donny right after.

I’ve scarcely started to leave the room when I hear them coming up the stairs so heavily, heavily in the narrow echoing staircase.

Police.

I turn, the gun still in my hand and.

“You scared us, Mr. Washburn.”

“Oh? How’s that?”

“Several of our guests were sure they heard a gunshot in your room.”

Washburn laughed. “Gunshot? Afraid not.”

“It’s a terrible morning, anyway,” the desk clerk said, taking the key from Washburn and shaking his head. “Real nice fellow named Tom Brice went crazy this morning and killed his wife and his son and a friend of his son’s. Shot them dead.” You could hear the numbed disbelief still in the clerk’s voice. “Just don’t know what to make of a thing like that, do you?”

Washburn frowned. “Nope, guess I don’t, my friend. Guess I don’t.”

Then he pushed out into the sunlight and got in his long black sedan and drove away.