Page 32 of Call Off the Dark

“Oh, yeah.”

“How close is your nearest neighbor?”

Helen said, “A few miles” at the same time that Wade said, “Practically next door,” and Isaac pretended not to notice. She glanced at Wade. How odd that he was now embarrassed by how remotely they lived when he’d always acted so proud of it before.

Isaac took another big bite of stew, and Helen wished she had dinner rolls to serve. Judging by the size of his bites, it seemed he wasn’t getting enough to eat on the road.

Isaac said, “I passed through a town twenty miles back. Is that the nearest one?”

“Yeah,” Helen said. “Once a month, we go in for supplies.”

“You’ve been stuck out here alone for an entire month?”

A shadow crossed her face. “Longer for me. I missed our last couple trips.”

“So other than me,” Isaac said, “you’ve seen no one but Wade for two, three months?”

“Three.”

“Three?!”

“There’s a neighbor though. Agnes. She hikes here to visit me every now and then when Wade’s out working.”

Isaac said, “Seems like you could choke on your own thoughts out here after a while.”

“Not really. It gives you a chance to sort out your thoughts and enjoy simple things.” Helen couldn’t meet Wade’s eyes. She was having a hard time keeping the sadness out of her tone, and she didn’t want to know if he could hear it.

The lights began to flicker again.

Isaac said, “I understand that.”

This time the flickering wasn’t temporary, and after a moment the lights cut out entirely, plunging the room into total darkness. After only a second, they came back on for a single flash.

In that flash, Helen saw a figure standing directly behind Wade. A woman in a dirtied nightgown, head down, long, tangled dark brown hair obscuring her face. It was only a split-second image in the light. As the house plummeted into blackness again, Helen drew in a breath to scream. But the terror of it—the impossibility of what she’d seen—kept her frozen instead, and the scream died inside her.

The lights were restored, steady now, and Helen sat rigid in her seat. Wade was still staring at Isaac. And Isaac, who should have seen the woman too, appeared unconcerned.

She turned to Isaac, the shock plain on her face. “Did you not see that?”

“See what?”

“Behind Wade? I thought . . .”

Isaac leaned in, listening intently. Warily, Wade watched the exchange.

She hesitated. If Isaac hadn’t seen it, describing it to him wasn’t going to suddenly make him think he had. It was just going to make her sound insane.

Finally, she said, “I guess my eyes were playing tricks on me. With the light.”

Isaac nodded in understanding. “It’s called an afterimage. Your brain can still hold images briefly after the lights go out.”

Helen remembered discovering this herself as a little girl. In early childhood, she’d been scared of the dark, so at bedtime her parents would leave her bedroom door cracked four fingers wide so she could see the light in the hallway. The difference between her darkened bedroom and the bright hallway had been significant, and when she lay in her bed and looked out at the hallway, she would sometimes close her eyes and still see the bright images behind her eyelids for a few seconds. She would do it over and over to remind herself that she wasn’t in total darkness.

This wasn’t that though. Her eyelids weren’t holding on to images of the kitchen cupboards. There had been a chilling womanly presence standing behind Wade, yet Isaac hadn’t seen it.

“That’s what happens when you die,” Isaac continued. “The heart can stop beating, but the brain still glimmers with images.” He spoke matter-of-fact, seemingly unaware of the effect his words were having on Helen. “If you’ve ever seen someone die, you can sense it—that the brain is still firing.”

If you’ve ever seen someone die . . .