A SHOT IN THE DARK

Jason Friendly is fourteen minutes into his run when he hears a loud noise. It sounds like a car back firing, but he can’t be sure. He looks around and doesn’t see anything or hear anything except for some birds clattering in the trees close by. He checks his watch. He thinks he should be further along by now. Someplace in town instead of down by the railroad tracks, which is where he is. This was not the only distraction Jason’s had on this evening’s run. The first was back at the library. The library used to be a train station and stands close by the railroad tracks. It was abandoned in the late seventies when they closed down the line. That’s when the library took the space. It’s been that long since the station’s been used for its original purpose, but here now, as Jason jogs up to the parking lot, stands a train. Stopped at the old platform. People spilling from its cars. Looking, Jason thinks, like it did in the old days. Someone’s opened the gate in the safety-fence. Passengers wander through it into the parking lot and dribble into Jason’s path, slowing him down. He catches snippets of their conversations as he navigates his way through them. “Trouble on the line,” wafts over them like a gentle refrain. Then the chatter dies down, and the people thin out and Jason’s jogging away from the library and along the cinder track that parallels the train line. It’s when Jason turns towards town that he hears it. The noise that sounds like a car backfiring. The birds squawk for a bit then there’s nothing. Not an engine firing up or even a yell. Just the night noises, his panting, and the noise of his shoes slapping the ground as he jogs in place. He checks his watch to see how far behind he is and bares down to try and make up some lost time. Soon he’s through the town, up the other side of the golf course, across the greens, and home. He calls it an “orbit” and it usually takes him twenty minutes. This time it takes twenty-four. Once in a while he likes to do it twice. Tonight is one of those times. When he reaches the library the second time around, the parking lot is deserted and the train and its passengers are all gone. There’s not a sign that they were there. Not a cigarette butt or candy wrapper or a discarded tissue. Even the safety-fence gate is closed. He wonders if he imagined it, that perhaps an endorphin kicked in and he’s on some sort of a runner’s high. Or maybe it’s a “Twilight Zone” thing and someone out there is playing tricks on him. Then something catches his eye up ahead. Pencil beams of light stabbing at the dark. Someone lights a flare and eerie shadows move urgently across the horizon. Jason hears sirens and sees cars with flashing lights converge on the baseball field up ahead. He runs towards them with renewed vigor. As he gets closer a policeman looms out of the darkness. Someone he knows. Guarding the perimeter of whatever’s happening up there.