darkness at midnight, part 1

by nick nelson

part one of three

johnny woke up. from a green dream where he was working in a supermarket finishing putting cans of cat food on a high shelf and wondering, what customers are going to reach up this high… ? then he was finished and wanted to go home and he looked around and there was no one else in the store. he headed for the front door but figured it must be locked and he did not want to set off the alarm.. so he headed back to the employee area but he couldn’t find it. he reached in his pocket for his cell phone to call 911 but his phone was gone… and he had to go to the registry of motor vehicles in the morning… then he woke up. what a crazy dream! especially as he had never worked in a supermarket in his life. but he had had a hectic day yesterday. it all started to came back to him… he had gone home for lunch snd found a police car outside. his wife, judy, had been found murdered and he, johnny, was arrested despite proclaiming his innocence and assuring the two detectives that he had been at work all morning and they should drive him back to the office and check that it was so. so the detectives drove him back to the office - the atlantic and siberian import-export company - and the atlantic and siberian import-export company was gone! even the sign ob the door was gone! the detectives got a key from the building manager but the office was completely bare and swept clean. it looked bad. but on the way to headquarters a big storm came up and a bolt of lightning hit the police car and it drove off the road and crashed and johnny escaped and ran through five back yards and got down to the entrance to highway 77. where he stuck his thumb up in the wind and rain and .was picked up by the world’s oldest, dirtiest pickup truck. the driver was an old man who face was covered covered by a battered brown derby hat and a long scraggly white beard,. johnny did not see how the old man could see the road between the hat and the beard but he was in no position to be picky. rough night, the old man observed after they had gone about two miles. yes it is, johnny agreed. where you headed? wherever you are headed. the old man chuckled. ain’t that always the way, on a night like this? name’s sam hill, by the way. what’s yours? tom dewey. pleased to meet you, tom. i got to make a quick stop up the road a piece. how far up the road? twenty mile or so. i can live with that. johnny leaned back. the old truck bucked and skidded through the storm, which had picked up. part 2