Chizmar, Richard - Turn Down the Lights by Chizmar Richard

Author:Chizmar, Richard [Chizmar, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: anthology, crime, dark, fantasy, horror, suspense
ISBN: 9781587674372
Publisher: Cemetery Dance Publications
Published: 2013-12-17T08:00:00+00:00

I graduated from college with a degree in English. I wanted to be a writer, but knew I had to have a day job to fall back on, and I obtained a teaching job at a charter school in Anaheim Hills. The teaching went better than the writing, and by my second summer as an instructor I had given up even pretending to write the novel that I’d told everyone I was working on. I spent my two-and-a-half months off going to movies, going to the beach, hanging out with friends. I spent the Fourth of July weekend with my mom and sister.

In late August, I was at a school supply store, looking for some new posters to hang on my classroom bulletin boards during the coming year, when I saw through the front window a woman in the parking lot outside waving at someone inside the store. I didn’t recognize her and assumed she was waving at someone else, but when I bought my posters and walked outside, heading across the lot toward my car, the woman approached me. She was nondescript, in her late forties or early fifties, dressed plainly in brown, but there was an expression of purpose on her face that made me quicken my step. I didn’t know if she was going to harangue me about some cause or ask me for money, but I could tell that she wanted to talk to me, and my goal was to get in the car before she reached me.

I didn’t make it.

Our paths intersected some five feet from my trunk, and she stopped and stood there, facing me. “Can I help you?” I asked.

“In the room,” she said softly, “you can write your story.”

Her words chilled me to the bone.

In the room...

“What are you talking about?” I said, trying to sound bolder than I felt. There were goosebumps on my arms.

She grabbed my hand, turned it palm up, and before I could pull it away, she was writing on it with a black marker that I had not noticed she was holding. She was finished in seconds and immediately started walking away.

“Hey!” I called, but she didn’t turn around, and I didn’t really want her to.

I looked down at my palm, turning it around so I could see what she’d written. As I’d feared, as I’d somehow known, it was an address.

In the room...

How had she known I wanted to be a writer? Was “the room” she mentioned related to the one my dad had told me about? There were too many questions and none of them had answers.

The address on my hand was not nearby. I lived in Anaheim, and the street whose name she’d written down was somewhere in Los Angeles. I’d heard it mentioned on newscasts—probably in connection with crimes of some sort. I knew I was going to go there and check it out, and rather than go back home and think things over and try to come to a logical decision, I decided to just head straight there.

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