In late July, the northern border of Minnesota cooked under a heat wave for twenty-one days straight. Daytime highs flirted with triple digits. Nights were muggy, and even the mosquitoes, which were plentiful, seemed lethargic, having grown obese on the blood of slow-moving people whose relief-seeking efforts ended disappointingly around lukewarm backyard pools, sunbaked patios, or lawns that crackled like needles when you walked across them barefoot. On the twenty-second day, things changed. A cold front dipped its big blue toe down from Canada and churned up the skies with thunderstorms. Squadrons of anvil clouds shot forked lightning from their underbellies, dropped buckets of rain, hailstones, and at their southernmost edge—the counterclockwise rotating vortex of a tornado.
Adam sat in the doorway and watched the heart of the afternoon go dark, as if a bowl flipped over— bam !—trapping everything in sight. The wind carried the mineral smell of coming rain. It tested the repaired screens of the cabin and slapped a loose piece of paper off the table. Adam retrieved the paper and pulled his camp chair a little closer to the open door; he kicked it a few inches wider, the better to see the storm. He wiped ice chips off a can of Pepsi he’d taken from a red Coleman cooler, popped the tab, and took a long satisfyingly oversweet sip.
He never wanted this summer to end.
After the Pitch had laid siege to his town, burned down his family’s motel, and nearly killed every person he loved in this world, he decided to take a semester off. He had a month left until his break was over. He’d be back in school. Life would return, pretty much, to normal. It was about time to take another shot at being a college student, and he was determined to be a decent one this time.
He booted up his laptop.
It hadn’t exactly been a long lazy vacation.
After his parents collected the insurance money from the Rendezvous fire, they agreed not to rebuild and instead put the highway lot up for sale. The future demanded a new setting. They did not have to go far. Lakefront property on stained river-fed water interrupted by a cluster of uninhabitable rock islands: Along the western shore ran a string of cabins badly in need of refurbishing and an old bait shop complete with its miniature armada of sun- faded Lund fishing boats and 40 HP Mercury outboards. Now that his wounds had healed, his father had enough work to keep him busy for a decade. Or two.
Kalypso Kottages.
Adam could see the signpost if he leaned forward far enough.
There it was . . . right off the gravel road, stuck on a hilltop above a staggered arrangement of knotty-pine A-frame chalets with spinach green roofs. What any of it had to do with “Kalypso” he couldn’t figure. He heard the whine of a circular saw and guessed his dad was in cabin number 4, fixing the ladder that led up to the sleeping loft.
Adam had other plans for the weekend.
He smelled coconuts.
She was so quiet climbing down from above.
Vera bent over, her hair falling in his eyes, as she kissed his neck. He felt the sunny touch of tight bronze skin. Her warm, wet lips. Coconuts and limes.
“Nice nap?” he asked.
“Wonderful. I could get used to this weekends off thing. I’ve got so many splinters, my blisters are feeling jealous.”
“Where else can you work on your tan, spend day and night with your new boyfriend, and get paid?”
“A hard-labor prison camp?”
“Ha ha.”
Vera hopped her bottom up on the table. She was wearing a bikini, unbuttoned denim cut-offs, flip-flops. She noticed the piece of paper next to Adam’s laptop. She picked it up. It was a postcard. She’d seen it before. Max sent it to them from Death Valley a couple of weeks ago. She’d read the thing so many times she knew it by heart:
Max, here. I can’t wait to see you guys. I have something to tell you, and I think it will put your minds at ease. At least, that’s what I’m hoping. Tell Annie her daddy’s coming to get her!
—M
There was a date for the visit scribbled underneath.
Today’s date.
“Think he’ll show?”
Adam shrugged.
Vera flipped the postcard over. The photo might’ve come from another planet. No extra moons on the horizon; it was enameled blue, not a cloud in the sky, but the ground was covered with what looked like dirty icicles growing upward. The fine print said the place was called the Devil’s Golf Course. It was a salt pan. The icicles were crystals. Vera thought it was creepy. Why would anybody go there? It looked like where people got lost and died of thirst.
“He knows where we are,” Adam said. “My parents put the info about the cabins up at the Rendezvous Web site. It says we won’t reopen until the fall. But Max can find us if he needs to.”
At the mention of her owner’s name, Annie began to thump her tail against the floor under the table. Vera twitched off a flip- flop and ran her foot through Annie’s thick silky coat. “He’ll come back for her,” Vera said. “She’s all he’s got.”
“He has the stone.”
“I thought you didn’t want to talk about that.”
“My mother hasn’t had a vision since Max took it. She’s happy. My dad’s happy. I’m . . . we’re happy. I don’t want to risk that.”
“Max isn’t a bad guy,” she said.
“But he attracts them.”
“Maybe he’s figured out a way to neutralize the . . . artifact. Maybe that’s what he wants to tell us. So we don’t have to worry.”
“I notice you didn’t say destroy it.” Adam tapped keys. He checked his e-mail, and then he checked the in-box of the Rendezvous Motel.
One new message.
With an attachment.
From Max.
The e-mail was blank. The attachment was the message. Max sent a video clip. It took forever to load, and the virus and spy- ware scans took even longer. When it started to play, the resolution was poor. Max was sitting at his computer in the back of a new camper. He looked . . . healthy. He was eating a tuna salad sandwich and beaming into his Webcam.
“Hey guys, I sure miss my old Westy, but I put satellite Internet in the Winnebago! All I need is Annie and I’m ready to bit the road again. (He looked at his watch.) I’m about two hours from American Rapids. The sky’s turned to shit and I was hungry, so I stopped for a bite to eat and a bottle of Dew. I’m working on a book, you knowf It’s kind of a dream log. Dark fantasy, of course. (Laughter.) First novel I’ve written in twenty-five years. Let’s hope I haven’t forgotten how to do it. I know you were probably pissed at me for taking off like I did when you were at the clinic.
I had no choice. That’s how it felt to me at the time, and that’s how it feels now. I hope you understand. I want you to know I’m in control. My body ... inside ... 7 feel like a kid again. The pain disappeared overnight. I don’t need a doctor to tell me the cancer’s gone. And I don’t think you kids need to ask why, either. That satchel hasn’t left my side since Christmas. We got it wrong before. Our perspective was prejudiced. (His hand moved as if he were erasing a chalkboard.) It’s a miracle, really. What I learned is that Whiteside was the problem, not the Stone. Well, I’ll explain it all to you in a couple hours. Annie better get her kisses ready. (The sound of rain drummed on the RV.) See you soon ... if I don’t drown first.”
The clip ended.
Midnight. Max hadn’t shown. They received no more messages. No calls. Adam and Vera decided to go out looking for him. First, they watched the video again.
“Definitely looks like he’s at a rest stop,” Vera said.
Adam found the Mn/DOT Web site, clicked on a map of the state’s rest areas and waysides. “If he really was two hours away, then he was here.” He pointed to the screen.
“Okay, we drive there and see if he broke down, or something.”
“Right,” Adam said. “Or something.”
“What if we see—”
He touched her. “We call the cops and leave.”
They drove in his pickup. They didn’t tell Opal or Wyatt where they were going. Annie sat between them, staring through the windshield. The rain had stopped, but the highway glistened. Trickles of water branched out over the glass. Adam drove fast. He didn’t expect to find Max pulled over on the shoulder with a flat tire or bad hose. He expected much worse.
They didn’t talk.
They didn’t play the radio.
Ninety minutes.
“There’s the rest stop,” Vera said. She pointed to a wash of brightness across the highway. Adam took the next exit ramp. He reentered the highway traveling in the opposite direction. He pulled off at the rest area, followed the sign for cars, and saw nothing. The place was deserted. Light poles shined down on the wet walkways, grass, trash barrels, and an empty parking lot.
“We’ll go around the back,” Adam said.
He reversed to the sign, this time going in the direction of the sign that read trucks.
In the second to the last extended parking spot. . .
“Oh my god,” Vera said.
A Winnebago.
It was the only vehicle other than theirs.
Adam pulled up behind it.
He saw the satellite dish on the rooftop. “That’s got to be him.”
The RV’s interior lights were on. The front seats were unoccupied. They didn’t see anybody, or any movement, through the rear or side windows.
“I don’t like this,” Vera said.
Adam popped his door.
Annie whimpered.
Vera said, “I thought we were going to call the cops?”
“We will.”
“When?”
“When we have something to tell them.”
He slid out of his seat.
Vera climbed behind the wheel. She handed him the dog’s leash. Before she let go she said, “One quick look and you come back.”
“One quick look,” he said.
Adam walked up to the passenger door. He peered in. Tried the handle.
It was unlocked.
He opened it.
The interior smelled like leather upholstery and new carpets. He pressed a button on the door control panel. The side doors to the coach slid open.
To Adam’s left and coming closer, Vera said, “There’s his computer.”
She couldn’t stay in the pickup.
Adam wasn’t about to argue with her.
He stepped into the Winnebago. “And here’s his sandwich.” Half-eaten.
Set down between bites?
“Let’s look for it,” Vera said.
For ten minutes they did.
Found nothing.
No stone.
No Max.
Adam sat in one of the coach’s leather swivel seats.
“He said it hasn’t left his side since Christmas.”
Vera turned in the other seat until their knees made contact. Anything.
“So?”
“So if somebody knew that. . . and they lured him . . .”
Adam scanned the parking lot. Black trees shaking in the wind. Wet grass. Rainbow puddles on the asphalt. There at the edge of the lot, where the wooded nature preserve buzzed with insects: a bottle. He went for it.
Annie sniffed the ground.
It was a Mountain Dew, Code Red.
Ann-Margret stopped and lifted her head in the moonlight to make the saddest sound Adam had ever heard.
“What is it?” Vera yelled.
“Nothing,” he said. “Go back.”
It’s nothing. No one.
The darkness.
.
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JAMIE HOWARD
"[Steven Sidor] has outdone himself with The Mirror's Edge, a supernatural-nuanced, soul-chilling mystery....Crime fiction and horror fans alike will find The Mirror's Edge a dark, disturbing gem."
"Frank Millers Sin City has nothing on Booth City....This tale is a dark classic by an author with a long career ahead of him."
It's Christmas Eve, and Vera Coffey is on the run. She doesn't know the men who are after her. She has never seen them before, but she has seen the horrors they visit on people who don't give them what they want. Vera has something they want badly. She'd give it up if it weren't the only thing keeping her alive.
The Larkins have known the toll violence takes on a family ever since they were trapped in a madman's shooting rampage. They've been coping with the trauma for nearly twenty years. Now, on a cold and lonely winter morning, Vera collapses at their roadside motel. And she's brought something with her. Together they'll have to make one last stand against an evil that has followed them further than anyone could've imagined.
With a story so fast-paced that it's impossible to let go and an ominous sense that everything is destined to go wrong. Pitch Dark is an intense read from a master of suspense.
is the author of three acclaimed novels, most recently. The Mirror's Edge. He lives near Chicago, Illinois, with his wife and two children.
Visit him online at www.StevenSidor.com.
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Cover design by Lisa Marie Pompilio Cover photographs © Arcangel Images
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