From the vault: Thunder Lane, Lincoln, U.S.A.

Note: This is one of those ideas I had one night that I never really picked up on. I kind of like it, but never really developed my thoughts on what was going on. I am still working on first part of next CD project so I thought I'd post a few of these type things in the interim. 

Thunder Lane, Lincoln, U.S.A.

“It’s a town full of losers, I’m pulling out of here to win.”

Thunder Road by Bruce Springsteen

Part 1 – Karl checks out

            Rain. Karl couldn’t believe it. Of all days, no of all the friggin’ days, today it had to rain. He slammed the lid on the burn barrel, clutching his thick journal to his chest and jogged back into the red brick ranch on Thunder Lane, only three blocks west of historical Main Street in Lincoln, U.S.A. That’s what folks always say here – Lincoln, U.S.A. – saying each friggin’ letter, every friggin’ time. Well, he wasn’t going to hear it ever again. Today, rain or no, he was checking right friggin’ out of Lincoln, U.S.A.

            He thudded against the back door and then fought to open it. When it rained, the damn frame swelled, and the cheap exterior door became a bugger to use. He shouldered it once, felt it give a bit, then jerked it out, nearly knocking off his thick-framed bifocals that were spotted by raindrops and fogged over.  Inside, his lenses turned ghost white, and he whipped them off, dropping them on the bench where he often sat to remove his muddy boots after fiddling in his garden.

            Without his glasses, the room before him was a haze of colors, shadows and obscene shapes. It didn’t matter. He could navigate his house in the pitch dark. He wouldn’t want to now, not ever again, but he could if he had to. He held out his journal, studying the red leather cover. As a historian, he had hundreds of journals, notebooks, and, even he, the last man to enter the World Wide Web, had a zip drive or ten full of documents. He had one wall in his study dedicated to the Civil War alone. But, none of the books or notes or journals mattered, only this one mattered, and he had to destroy it. He couldn’t burn it, at least not outside. He could burn it in the house, he supposed, but part of him, the part that had grown in strength and conviction the last three years, knew the house, the street, or “they” would stop it.  He could hide it among the other journals, but it could be found. The thought of somebody finding it would eat away at his conscience for the rest of his life. If anyone else read the contents ... well, he wasn’t exactly sure what would happen. The not knowing was the worst of it. All he knew was that “they” would congregate in one of the old basements and stay down there for days, and when they came out, well, the person would be changed, maybe he or she would even be gone, vanished, extinct. Karl was sure of it.

            “God damn rain,” he muttered. Outside, lightning flashed to drive home the point. He could have burned it outside. He felt water streaking off his hairless dome into the tufts of gray hair on the side of his wrinkled skull. One dripped down his brow, between his eyes and off his nose. Not for the first time, he wondered why the hell he had moved to Lincoln to retire. Why couldn’t he have gone to Florida? That’s where Margaret had wanted to go before the cancer ate away her life.

            He ran his hand across the top of the journal, remembering the day he found it for sale at The Book Nook on Main Street. That was the first time he thought about digging up a history on Thunder Lane. All the folks in Lincoln, U.S.A., said it was the oldest street in the country. The two houses at each end  – where it met with Main Street and met a dead end at Horizon Avenue – were thought to be original homes of Lincoln from when the city was first settled in the 1800s. He even heard whispers the homes were older than that, or at least the original foundations where laid well before that. As a historian, he didn’t put much stock in that, but there was surely plenty of actual history from Thunder Lane that he could chronicle during his retirement.

            “Stupid old man,” he said standing soaked to the bone in his kitchen. He shivered, all of a sudden, feeling like he wasn’t alone in his own home. “I could rip it page-by-page into pieces!” He sobbed at the simplicity as the journal fell from his hands and smacked on the linoleum below. His armed jerked out in surprise, knocking his set of knives onto the floor. They scattered in every direction. The biggest cleaver landed next to the journal.

He knelt, feeling both of his arthritic knees pop and opened the cover. Inside, the pages were a thick, yellow stock. It was going to be hell on his fingers to tear up hundreds of pages, but the pain would be worth it. He took the first page, filled with his neat, precise cursive, and nearly started to tear, but something wasn’t right. It was too quiet.

            Bending his neck, he watched the cuckoo clock on the wall above the kitchen counter. He recalled nights in his bed on the other side of the house where he could hear it tick. The clock made not a sound.

            “The batteries out, that’s all,” he said. Across the kitchen, the fridge was quiet. Not a single hum. He dismissed it, but his heart pounded in his eardrums. Even the rain outside made not a sound on the windows or roof. It was like he had entered a sound vacuum in his own kitchen. “Just focus on what you need to do, then get in the car and go.”

            He grasped at the page, but his hands were trembling so much that it only folded and bent. He couldn’t force a single rip. Then a sound came. The tap of wood soles on the linoleum floor. He lifted his eyes enough to see his reflection on the perfectly shined black shoes.

            “Tsk, tsk, Karl.” The voice said. A hand came down and lifted the journal off the floor. “Leaving without even saying goodbye. That’s just not how things are done here in Lincoln, U.S.A.”

            He tried to move, to jump for the journal, but before he could he felt the cleaver at his throat. A sweaty, meaty hand held it. There were others in the room. He sensed their eyes on him. He knew who they all were, anyway. His neighbors. Probably all of them in all the fantastic variety that Thunder Lane offered.  

            “I wouldn’t tell. Not a word of it to another soul. I wouldn’t. That’s why I was going to destroy the journal. I wouldn’t tell!”

            The black shoes turned so that he faced the heels. The shoes stepped away in even strides.

            “Goodbye, Karl,” the voice said, and Karl heard no more thereafter.