Listening to Fear by Robert J. Crane

Author:Robert J. Crane [Crane, Robert J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-02-02T00:00:00+00:00

chapter

twenty-nine

WHAT THE HELL was going on in my town?

I ran, circling the town in the widest possible circuit. The sands shifted beneath my feet, and a cloud of dust rose behind me, grains glinting in the cloud-filtered moonlight.

What was happening was that it seemed like people were going nuts.

Ellie Montgomery had started screaming and crying about how she was going to die alone. Then Tania Gilbert had gone off at the taco stand about her husband leaving her. And just now I'd heard two different cries of despair, one about someone leaving them and the other about losing 'them.' Whoever that was. A man talking about his family? His pets? Impossible to say.

I ran without purpose, without meaning, unsure of what to do or where to go. I couldn't go home; that had to be the first place they'd look. They could already be there, especially if they'd called in the sheriff's department.

But I couldn't go to Mia's, either. She was what the cops called a “known associate.” Same with trying to hide at Dad's work; that was a place I was clearly tied to.

Where could I go? The school, but it was closed, and who wants to hide in their school? I didn't have that many hangouts, and I had hardly any friends.

I turned, and in the distance I could see the steeple of St. Anthony's. Sure, the doors were always open, as evidenced by Grandmother Marquez being on her epic seven-day prayer-fest, but I doubted I'd find sanctuary there; Dad and I had never been much in the way of church attenders. We weren't even “Easter and Christmas” goers.

Stopping in a rush of sand, I felt the cloud billow around me and closed my eyes against its graininess. I stood on a hill about three miles outside town, looking down on the lights, now winking on as distant howls seemed to come over the desert and reach me.

I plopped down, careful to keep my shorts, which billowed on my frame, from dropping into the sand. It has long been said, and I think it is true, that there is no problem that can not be made worse by getting sand in your underpants.

“Well,” I said, to the desert and myself, “this is another fine mess I've gotten myself into.”

Running from the FBI? Now I was a wanted fugitive on the run. Sheriff Carter had to be salivating at this. Now he'd finally have a chance to do what he'd really wanted to do all this time – arrest me.

Another light clicked on across town, another howl joined the chorus, this time almost wolf-like, as a human being seemed to lose it, dissolving into anguished cries as the howl tapered off. An anguished scream followed it a moment later, from a different part of town entirely – close to the trailer park, it seemed.

And so it went, on and on, as lights clicked on all over town, and people stepped outside to listen to the madness overcoming Sunvail, and others, like me, just stood there and watched helplessly.

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