A Song In The Dark by P. N. Elrod

ceiling. Not much space in here for a tall guy. On hands and knees I worked over to the windows,finding my hat along the way. My head wasn’t to the point of supporting that much weight yet. Hell, even my hair was too heavy. I folded the thing and stuffed it in a pocket, glad it wasn’t one of my fancier fedoras. Lately I’d taken to wearing only my second- and even third-best clothes, fearing (rightly) that something like this situation might drop itself on me like a net. If I didn’t take things in hand with these mugs, I’d end up with a pawnshop wardrobe.
    I pulled out my keys, using one to scrape away paint from a corner of the window. When I had a peephole I looked through.
    Not a lot to see. Flat, snow-crusted fields. Farm country. How long had I been out? I held my watch up to the feeble light. An hour? The way I felt it had to be more than that. The watch still ticked, though, the time correct. No one at my club would miss me until closing, which was in the wee hours. It was still well on the right side of midnight, though to me it felt much later.
    The rumbling changed in tone as the driver made a sharp turn. The truck shook like an earthquake, indicating unpaved road. I braced, holding on to a length of wood bolted to the metal side. Damned wood. Why couldn’t they have just shot me? It’d have ruined a suit, but I could have taken care of them back in town. Idiots. Both of them. And Hoyle.
    I deliberated about vanishing and sieving through to the front compartment to surprise the driver.
    Not at this speed. The peephole showed an undistinguished country lane of frozen churned mud that made the truck bounce and skid erratically. This kind of road at this time of year tolerated sturdy vehicles going no more than ten miles an hour, if that much. We were moving considerably faster. I didn’t care to be in a crash and have to walk home.
    And if we were an hour’s drive from Chicago, meaning a long walk, then I wouldn’t be seeping my way out the back to escape, either. If my luck ran bad—and lately I had no reason to expect different—I’d have to improvise shelter from the sun. That meant spending the day away from my home earth, which meant I’d be a prisoner of whatever nightmares my brain threw out. After Bristow’s work on me, it’d have plenty of horrors to draw upon. No, I wouldn’t put myself through that. Better to wait until we stopped, then hijack the truck, leaving them stranded.
    And roughed up. A lot. Yeah, I liked that idea.
    We slowed somewhat. I took another look out the back. Lots of snowy acreage, twin furrows of tire tracks leading back the way we’d come and . . . headlights in the distance. Someone following? Maybe it was Hoyle in his own car, taking it easy to keep from breaking an axle. I’d break his head given the chance.
    A shift in the gears and the truck’s voice. Slowing even more, then finally coasting to a stop.
    We were in an open yard by a low metal barn. A single electric light burned bluely against the dark. It was on a tall, lonely pole under a shade shaped like a Chinese hat. The cone of light from the oversized bulb covered a wide area before the barn. A car was already there, and four men emerged from it. One of them opened the trunk and handed out . . . what? . . . baseball bats? . . . to the others.
    The truck doors in front slammed shut almost in unison, and Ruzzo joined their friends getting something swingable. They must have thought I was still alive, then, or they’d have been hauling me out instead.
    I’d heard about this kind of send-off. Find a deserted spot for some batting practice on some poor son of a bitch, then either leave what’s left in the cornfield for Farmer Jones tofind come harvest, or make a shallow grave in the stalks. It was too late in the season for that; harvest was long over and the ground frozen, but they might not care.