The gun made such a little noise dropping to the rug. Because his fingers couldn’t hold it. Because his fingers were soft as her hair. They couldn’t get up. They couldn’t ever get up.
Not ever.
He hadn’t meant to do it. He didn’t do it on purpose. He wouldn’t hurt Nan. He wouldn’t hurt Nan for anything in the world, he loved her.
She was his girl.
He wouldn’t hurt Nan. He wouldn’t kill — he wouldn’t kill anyone.
He hadn’t! They were doing this to get even with him. He began shouting again, “Get up! Get up!”
But his voice didn’t sound like his own voice. It was shaky like his mouth and his hands and the wet back of his neck.
“Get up!”
He heard his mouth say it and he started over to take hold of Jim and make him stop acting like he was dead.
He started.
He took one step and that was all. Because he knew. He knew whatever he said or did couldn’t make them move. They were dead, really dead.
When his mind actually spoke the word, he ran. Bolting out of the house, stumbling off the stoop down the steps to the curb. He didn’t get there too soon.
He retched.
When he was through being sick, he sat down on the curb. He was too weak to stand. He was like the leaves blowing down the street in the little moans of wind.
He was like the shadows wavering against the houses across the street.
There were lights in most of the houses. You’d think the neighbors would have heard all the noise. Would have come running out to see what was going on. They probably thought it was the radio.
They should have come. If they had come, they’d have stopped him. He didn’t want to kill anyone. He didn’t want even to kill Jim. Just to scare him off. Just give him a scare.
She couldn’t be dead. She couldn’t be, she couldn’t be, she couldn’t be. He sobbed the words into the wind and the dark and the dead brown leaves.
He sat there a long, long time. When he stood up his face was wet. He rubbed his eyes, trying to dry them so he could see where he was going.
But the rain came into them again, spilling down his cheeks, filling up, overflowing, refilling, over and over again.
He ought to go back and close the blurred door. The house would get cold with it standing wide open, letting the cold dark wind sweep through.
He couldn’t go back there. Not even for his gun.
He started down the street, not knowing where he was going, not seeing anything but the wet dark world.
He no longer feared the sound and shadow behind him.
There was no terror as bad as the hurt in his head and his heart.
As he moved on without direction he saw through the mist the pinprick of green in the night. He knew then where he was going, where he must go. The tears ran down his cheeks into his mouth. They tasted like blood.
1952
HOWARD BROWNE
MAN IN THE DARK
Howard Browne (1908-1999) was born in Omaha, Nebraska, and from 1929 worked for more than a dozen years in various jobs, many of them in department stores, before becoming a full-time writer and editor. Beginning in 1942, he worked for nearly fifteen years as the editor of several Ziff-Davis science-fiction magazines (a genre he actively disliked, preferring mysteries), including Amazing Stories and Fantastic Adventures. During this time, he wrote numerous stories for pulp magazines, as well as several novels under the pseudonym John Evans, most successfully the somewhat controversial series about Chicago private detective Paul Pine. The Pine novels were probably closer in style to Raymond Chandler than any other writer (with the exception of the early Lew Archer novels by Ross Macdonald) of his time. Halo in Blood (1946) was the first; Halo for Satan (1948) is about a manuscript purportedly written by Jesus Christ; Halo in Brass (1949) deals with the then-unmentionable subject of lesbianism; and The Taste of Ashes (1957) was published under his own name and is among the earliest works of fiction to deal with child molestation.
Browne went to Hollywood in 1956 and wrote more than 100 episodes of numerous television series, including Playhouse 90, Maverick, Ben Casey, The Virginian, and Columbo. He also wrote numerous screenplays, notably Portrait of a Mobster (1961) with Vic Morrow playing Dutch Schultz, The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre (1967) with George Segal and Jason Robards, and Capone (1975), with Ben Gazzara.
In 1952, while Browne was editor of Fantastic, he called his friend Roy Huggins (creator of such famous television series as Maverick, 77 Sunset Strip, and The Fugitive) and asked him if he could write a detective story with fantasy elements in it. Huggins agreed, but when the time came to turn to it, he was too busy writing a screenplay to do the story. Since Browne already had the cover of the fall issue of the magazine ready to go, with Huggins’s name on it, he wrote “Man in the Dark” himself, under the “pseudonym” of Roy Huggins.
I
She called me at four-ten. “Hi, Poopsie.”
I scowled at her picture in the leather frame on my desk. “For Christ’s sake, Donna, will you lay off that ‘Poopsie’ stuff? It’s bad enough in the bedroom, but this is over the phone and in broad daylight.”
She laughed. “It kind of slipped out. You know I’d never say it where anyone else could hear. Would I, Poopsie?”
“What’s all that noise?”
“The man’s here fixing the vacuum. Hey, we eating home tonight, or out? Or are you in another deadline dilemma?”
“No dilemma. Might as well —”
“Can’t hear you, Clay.”
I could hardly hear her. I raised my voice. “Tell the guy to turn that goddamn thing off. I started to say we might as well eat out and then take in that picture at the Paramount. Okay?”
“All right. What time’ll you get home?”
“Hour — hour’n a half.”
The vacuum cleaner buzz died out just as she said, “Bye now,” and the two words sounded loud and unnatural. I put back the receiver and took off my hat and sat down behind the desk. We were doing a radio adaptation of Echo of a Scream that coming Saturday and I was just back from a very unsatisfactory rehearsal. When things don’t go right, it’s the producer who gets it in the neck, and mine was still sensitive from the previous week. I kept a small office in a building at Las Palmas and Yucca, instead of using the room allotted me at NBS. Some producers do that, since you can accomplish a lot more without a secretary breathing down your neck and the actors dropping in for gin rummy or a recital of their love life.
The telephone rang. A man’s voice, deep and solemn, said, “Is this Hillside 7-8691?”
“That’s right,” I said.
“Like to speak to Mr. Clay Kane.”
“I’m Clay Kane. Who’s this?”
“The name’s Lindstrom, Mr. Kane. Sergeant Lindstrom, out of the sheriff’s office, Hollywood substation.”
“What’s on your mind, Sergeant?”
“We got a car here, Mr. Kane,” the deep slow voice went on. “Dark blue ‘51 Chevrolet, two-door, license 2W78-40. Registered to Mrs. Donna Kane, 7722 Fountain Avenue, Los Angeles.”
I could feel my forehead wrinkling into a scowl. “That’s my wife’s car. What do you mean: you ‘got’ it?”
“Well, now, I’m afraid I got some bad news for you, Mr. Kane.” The voice went from solemn to grave. “Seems your wife’s car went off the road up near the Stone Canyon Reservoir. I don’t know if you know it or not, but there’s some pretty bad hills up —”