LONDON, ENGLAND
February 4, 1996
The stranger materialized before the sedan as if piercing the curtain of snow and stepping through. He fixed his gaze upon the driver, Robert Chesler, leaning forward with anticipation, as if yearning to be struck and killed.
Karen Chesler screamed, her trembling hand clutching her husband’s arm.
The man dressed as if from a bygone era, emerging from the depths of time. Donned in a black coat and vest, his white hair wildly disheveled. But it was his eyes that grabbed her attention – bloodshot to the extreme, bulging grotesquely from their sockets.
Robert stomped on the brakes, wrenching the steering wheel in a frantic bid to avoid hitting the man. Doing so launched the car into an uncontrollable spin on the icy road. Karen, seated in the passenger seat, saw her side of the car slide towards the man, his eyes fixed upon her husband, a wide, cold grin on his face.
Robert wrestled with the wheel, but the tires had lost all traction.
Karen shut her eyes tightly, waiting for the collision that would extinguish the mystery man’s life. There was nothing – absolutely nothing – she could do to save him.
The collision never came.
Curses erupted from Robert’s lips, his hands struggling with the wheel as if trying to wrench it from the dashboard. She opened her eyes, seeing the parked sedan only moments before their Caprice slammed head-on into it.
The windshield shattered, and Karen squeezed her eyes shut to keep out flying glass. She was flung forward with bone-jarring force, the seatbelt biting into her chest and waist before flinging her back against her seat.
Silence descended abruptly. All Karen could hear was herself gasping for air. A hissing sound – she assumed the radiator, gradually rose, becoming almost as loud as her breath.
She turned to check on her husband.
He was gone.
Her stare fixated on the empty seat. She couldn’t figure out where he might have gone. His door was shut. Then she remembered with horror his tendency to avoid seatbelts.
She slowly turned her head forward, her neck stiff from the impact, and peered through the shattered windshield. Her husband lay on the hood of the other sedan, not moving.
“No!” she shrieked, unbuckling herself with trembling fingers. “Oh, God! No!”
She pulled at the door latch, but the door refused to open. She threw her shoulder against the door, but it resisted.
The impact. The impact must have wedged it shut.
Giving up on the door, she grabbed the dashboard and dragged herself onto the crumpled hood, sweeping broken glass out of her path with one gloved hand.
Robert’s head rested against the other car’s cracked windshield, his body spread-eagled.
“Robert?” she whispered, grabbing his leg and shaking it. “Robert!“
She convinced herself he would be fine. Perhaps a small fracture on his skull or a few broken bones maybe. He was unconscious; that’s why he wouldn’t respond. Out cold, but he’d be back home in a couple days. Right? Right?
She crawled onto the hood of the other car so she could see him more clearly. His eyes were open, staring at her. Thank God! He’s not even unconscious! In a couple of seconds, he’d try to get up, and she would tell him to lie still while she fled to the nearest house to call for an ambulance. She would insist on riding with him for support, telling him she was thankful he wasn’t seriously hurt.
Then she realized his head was at an impossible angle, turned more than ninety degrees on his shoulders. Only one eye looked at her. The other seemed focused on the sky.
“Oh no,” she whimpered, putting one hand over her mouth and trying to hold back the nausea welling inside her.
He wasn’t blinking. His neck! God, his head’s turned the wrong way on his neck! Blood trickled from his mouth, pooling under his pallid cheek.
“Robert?” she asked, desperate to believe her eyes deceived her, begging for a response.
Dead. Robert’s dead. My husband’s dead. My husband of thirteen years is dead. Johnny’s daddy is dead. Robert’s dead.
She frantically scanned the area for help. They were in a small business district, all of the stores shuttered for the night. The owner of the parked car they’d struck must be nearby, but she saw no lights on in the buildings.
She suddenly remembered the man she’d seen in front of the car. Where had he vanished to? Had they struck him? Though she never felt the jolt, she didn’t see how he could have avoided being hit. Why had he been in the road? It seemed as if he’d been trying to bring about the accident. The grim reaper, though not merely out to collect, but to cause.
She slid herself backwards along the hood until she stumbled off and landed on her back on the cold, snow-covered pavement. She barely registered the impact or the chill of the snow on her legs.
She’d had so many concerns about the direction their lives were going, and it was all futile now. She’d been worrying for months, ever since their relocation from Chicago to London, about Johnny’s inability to make friends at school, about Robert’s career as a reporter, keeping him too busy to make time for her. She had to fight tooth-and-nail to get him to devote this one night to her, to take her to a play – and this was the outcome. Her husband’s life snuffed out in an inexplicable accident, orchestrated by a man who materialized and vanished within seconds. Months of worry, suddenly ending in the cruelest way.
I’m a widow now.
She lay on the pavement, paralyzed by despair, yearning for some kind of escape from her situation. The desire to succumb to the cold and just let the paramedics carry her away, even if it meant transporting her lifeless form, consumed her thoughts.
Johnny was only ten, and already having so many problems she’d considered sending him to a therapist. How would he cope with his father’s death? If she laid here and froze to death, how would he react to suddenly finding himself an orphan?
He was home, waiting. Waiting for his parents to return. Waiting for his mom and dad.
Her gaze fixed on the descending snowflakes, settling on her dress and her disheveled hair. The flakes danced in the streetlight, unaware of her misery. She focused her thoughts on their serenity, the hypnotic effect of the snowfall lulling her senses, making her lose track of time. Were the authorities on their way yet? Had anyone witnessed the accident and alerted them?
Suddenly, a voice pierced the stillness. “Mommy?”
A chuckle escaped her lips. Johnny never addressed her as ‘Mommy’. She was ‘Mom’, even when he’d been in diapers.
It took her a moment to realize the voice wasn’t a figment of her imagination.
“Johnny?” she whispered, struggling to rise from her prone position. Through the snowfall, she could barely discern a small figure standing by the side of the road. A streetlamp between them caused the snow to glow, obscuring her vision. “Sweetheart?”
The figure by the roadside remained silent, momentarily vanishing from sight due to a sudden shift in the snowfall before reappearing once more
When he moved, she knew she wasn’t seeing things. He turned away from her and disappeared into the falling snow, as if through the same door from which the old man had magically appeared.
She took a deep breath and hoisted herself to her feet, holding the car for support. Breathing was painful, her ribs bruised from the accident.
She staggered after her son on trembling legs, her head spinning perilously close to the brink of passing out. She stepped onto the curb and followed the sidewalk. The wind seemed to change direction. Now the snow headed straight at her, whipping up her ankle-length dress to paralyze her legs. Unless she looked at the ground, she didn’t appear to be moving at all. She saw nothing but the gauntlet of snow.
She panted harshly as she arrived at the first intersection, gasping in icy air. She stopped, trying to catch her breath and spot her son. Did he turn? Go straight? She cursed her lack of maternal instinct, grappling with uncertainty as to which path her son might have chosen. Straight made more sense, as this was the way home.
“Johnny?” she called, the raspiness of her voice shocking her.
She suddenly heard sirens coming closer. Someone had indeed seen or heard the accident. She knew she was injured, and should stay behind and wait for them to show. But, damn it, Johnny was outside in a snowstorm. He needed his mother.
She stumbled across the street, her lungs protested against the frozen air. Common sense urged her to slow down, but the need to reach home propelled her forward.
It was absurd. Johnny wouldn’t have walked two-and-a-half blocks in the bitter cold. How could he have known about the accident? The sound couldn’t have carried that far in the snowstorm.
He was probably snuggled up in bed, or had snuck downstairs to watch T.V.
She couldn’t bring herself to believe it, though. Despite the absurdity of his having come to the accident scene, she’s heard him. Seen him.
Karen plodded on, the pain in her chest screaming, her dizziness intensifying, her vision blurring.
—–
No response.
What?
The thought echoed in her mind. No response. She had no memory of what came before. She’d lost time somehow. All she knew was that something was amiss.
She stopped to survey her surroundings. She was on her hands and knees, gasping for air like a wounded animal. The white surface beneath her wasn’t snow, but tile. She looked up, finding herself in the entranceway to their home. She suddenly remembered coming inside and calling for her son before collapsing to the floor, only a few seconds ago, but the moment seemed to slip into the distant past. But she remembered little about the run home after the first few moments.
“Johnny! It’s mommy!” she cried out, her voice hoarse and gravelly. God, I’m probably scaring the kid to death! She tried to get up, but couldn’t find the strength. She settled for sitting up against the closed door and letting her hammering heart and wheezing breath settle for a moment. She believed Johnny was inside, had to believe he was inside.
But what if he isn’t? What if he’d never found his way home in the snowstorm? Jesus, what if he was still out there? What if he wore nothing but his pajamas…no, he didn’t wear pajamas to bed…his underwear, trying to find his way home?
She couldn’t face going back out into the blizzard, but she had to! Johnny was out there, terrified, maybe freezing to death while his mother sat in the warm entranceway to their home.
Wait. Maybe I imagined the whole thing.
But I saw him!
No, it was just my imagination.
My husband’s dead!
The intruding memory of his broken body shocked her. Only a few minutes, and she’d almost forgotten she was a widow.
Uncontrollable sobs wracked her body, terms mingling with the melting snow on her cheeks. The man outside the car, Johnny being at the scene – they couldn’t have been real. Perhaps none of this was real. Perhaps she’d just lost her mind and imagined everything. The unsettling thought brought a twisted comfort. If it was all some kind of delusion, then perhaps her husband and son were unscathed.
She started weeping uncontrollably, the tears commingling with the melting snow on her face. She’d seen the man outside the car, but he couldn’t have been real. She saw and heard Johnny outside, but that couldn’t have been real, either. Maybe none of this is real! The thought gave her a strange comfort. If none of it had been real, then perhaps the accident and the run home hadn’t been real, either. It implied she was insane, but, if so, it was rather likely her husband and son were fine.
Should she call the police? Search the house? Venture back outside? Uncertainty gnawed at her. Deciding what to do next was difficult when she couldn’t trust her own perceptions.
One thing had to be real. Johnny had to be home. He would never have gone outside in this blizzard. First she had to make sure she wasn’t wrong about that.
She needed to find him, to settle her mind.
Karen waited only a few moments before she stood, fighting the pain, dizziness and nausea. A gassy smell assaulted her nostrils, something she couldn’t explain and didn’t try to. She hobbled up the stairs, clutching the banister as if it were a lifeline. She got to the top of the stairs and staggered past the study, past her room, and to Johnny’s. She knocked before pushing it open.
The lights were out. She flipped them on, leaning against the doorjamb.
Johnny’s bed lay in disarray, though she’d made it herself that morning. He’d been sleeping, but had gotten up.
The clock above his bed said it was past eleven. Where could he have gone? There was probably a logical explanation which, in her insanity, she couldn’t see. Maybe it was eleven in the morning and he was at school. The sky outside appeared dark, but she couldn’t trust her own perception. Perhaps the sky was bright as day, and her mind was distorting reality. Perhaps she was asleep and dreaming all this.
She checked the other rooms on the floor; her bedroom, Robert’s study, the bathroom, even the linen closet. All empty.
Okay. I know. He couldn’t sleep, so he crept to the den to watch television, and fell asleep there.
She headed back down the stairs, straining to hear the familiar sound of the television, but only hearing a hiss that emanated from somewhere on the main floor. The gassy smell permeated the air once again.
Hiss. Gas.
Oh, Jesus!
She burst through the kitchen door. The nauseating stench of gas overpowered her, causing her to instinctively recoil and stumble backwards, slamming the door shut, gagging.
In the moment before retreating, her eyes took in the unsettling scene in the kitchen. The gas oven had been pulled away from the wall, the connections to the gas supply severed. The back door stood ajar. Someone had come in, intending to fill the kitchen with deadly gas.
She pictured the dark figure she’d seen on the road, the gray-haired man with the bulging eyes and black vest, the one who had caused the accident. She envisioned him pulling the stove away from the wall and removing the hoses, laughing like some villain from a Dickensian nightmare. She saw him turn and grin at her, revealing rotten yellow teeth.
But, wait. That made no sense. He did this much earlier, so why would he be smiling then at where she was now? A chill coarse through her veins, a shudder that hinted at a sinister foreknowledge possessed by her tormentor. She suspected he had foreseen her standing there, haunted by his malevolent presence.
Okay, clearly I’m not entirely sane.
Her mind was making nonsensical connections and feeding them to her, filling her with uncertainty and chaos. She had to push them away, and focus on one single fact – that she had to shut off the gas.
She took a deep, fortifying breath, and entered the kitchen, heading quickly to the stove. The hose connecting the valve to the stove was completely severed, and the shut-off knob had been removed. Gardening shears, her gardening shears, lay partially hidden beneath the stove.
She frantically tried to think of a way to stop the outflow of gas. Could she somehow manipulate the hose, bending it to obstruct the flow? But with only a few inches protruding from the metal nozzle, she realized it was futile. Shutting off the gas was impossible. Her only option was to flee her house before the gas claimed her life.
Her gaze shifted to the open back door, her only escape. But her eyes locked on what stood in the doorway.
Her son, Johnny, donned only in his underwear, one hand behind his back. Snow settled on his light brown hair and shoulders, yet he seemed oblivious to the bitter cold.
Thank God! She suddenly understood what had happened. He’d woken, smelled the gas, and had gone next door.
But her relief turned to terror when she realized Johnny had a cigarette between his lips.
She opened her mouth long enough to shout, “No!”
“Relax, Karen,” said Johnny, the cigarette bobbing between his lips. “It ain’t lit.”
I haven’t gone insane. He has. “Johnny…” She was running out of breath, but was frozen in place by what she saw.
Johnny brought his hand from behind his back. A small blue lighter was clutched in his fist, with a picture of a tiger on it. It was one Robert had gotten years ago, at a zoo in Logan, Michigan, when they were in town visiting his sister, Lucille. It was just before he gave up smoking, so would still have plenty of fluid.
“Stop! Gas!” She waved her hands frantically. She needed to breathe, but the air around her was deadly.
Johnny took no notice of her plight.
This isn’t him! This isn’t my little Johnny!
“It’s been nice being your son,” he said casually. “Dad’s been a son of a bitch, but you’ve been okay.”
Karen’s lungs spasmed, drawing in what they assumed would be air. She collapsed, retching, pulling in more gas.
She watched as Johnny spun the wheel on the lighter, cupping it with one hand as if he’d been smoking for years. It caught, and she waited to die.
Nothing happened.
Of course, she realized. The gas wasn’t sufficiently concentrated at the doorway to ignite.
“All little birdies gotta leave the nest someday,” he said, sucking pleasantly at the cigarette.
She watched the tip glow bright red, redder. Hell fire.
Johnny pulled it from his mouth, smiling. “Gotta fly, Ma.” With a flick of his hand, he tossed the cigarette onto the kitchen floor, then slammed the door.
Karen stared at the cigarette rolling across the floor. The haze of the cooking gas made everything blurry, like a show on an old color television.
This isn’t real, she decided. It’s a show on an old color television.
The world turned into an inferno. She gasped in shock, flamed erupting within her lungs, while fire danced in her eyes.
A show on an old…
David E Anderson - Author 