See Tom Run (20 page)

Erin,
he
thought.
Why did he feel like he knew this
girl?

“Sir?” she said, staring at him expectantly.

Tom wondered how long he’d been staring at her.

“Oh, sorry! Yes,” he stammered, still trying to place
the girl in his mind.

“Paper or plastic?” she asked as she scanned the
milk.

“Um, neither, really. I’ll just carry them.”

“That will be $13.79, sir.”

Tom fumbled for his wallet and got out his credit
card. He swiped it through the machine. Erin handed him a receipt
and he signed it then returned it to her.

“Thanks, have a nice day,” Erin told him as she
handed him another receipt.

“Uh, thank you. Can I ask you something, Erin?”

“Sure.”

“Have we ever met?”

She smiled sweetly. “No. But I think I’ve seen you
here before. In fact, I believe I waited on you yesterday
afternoon.”

Tom thought back to the day before, gazed at Erin and
recalled that she had indeed been the one who had waited on
him.

“Oh, yeah, you did! Well, thanks for waiting on me
again,” he said stupidly.

Erin giggled. “No problem.”

“Goodbye, Erin.”

“Bye.”

Tom placed the beer and milk back into his grocery
cart and headed for the exit. Once he reached Peg’s car, he opened
the trunk and unloaded the cart, his thoughts still on the checkout
girl.

He knew the girl better than that, he thought. In
fact, he knew her quite well …

But how? When?

Slamming the trunk lid, Tom walked around the car and
got in, his mind lost in thought. He started the car, threw it into
reverse and backed out of the spot. He felt like he was moving in
slow motion as he headed for the street.

Her name was Erin. Why did that name
seem just as familiar to him as her face did? He
knew
that girl,
somehow.

But she apparently didn’t know him. She had basically
denied knowing him beyond having waited on him the day before. She
had not shown the slightest shred of recognition while he had been
standing there before her all that time.

So he must be wrong, he decided. He must be confusing
her with someone else.

Trying desperately to dismiss it from his mind, Tom
turned on the radio just as the Beatle’s Hey Jude was beginning to
fade out. The song helped him put Erin out of his mind, but not for
long.

He recalled driving on a snow-laden highway in total
darkness, a young girl sitting in the passenger seat. She was
telling him her life story—how she had been orphaned and run off to
New York with Kyle—

“Jesus Christ!”
he cried aloud.

Erin was Erin Myers. The girl he had rescued from
those delinquents at the Waldorf Astoria!

Tom nearly drove over the curb as the events came
back to him in jumbled bits and pieces: The drive to New York in
search of Erin and Kyle. The total desolation of New York City.
Being assaulted and manhandled out of his Jeep in front of Macy’s
by those lowlife assholes, Chappy, Hoops, and what the hell was his
name? Bummer! That was it.

His heart pounded furiously as Tom tried to negotiate
a turn along Hartford Road. He realized that he was going to have
to pull over before he had an accident. He made a right onto the
next street and parked halfway down the block.

Heaving a huge sigh, Tom killed the engine.

What in the holy hell had he just been thinking
about?

Where were these memories coming from? Why did they
seem as real as this street he was now parked on?

Have to think this
through
, he resolved.

He had been awakened in his Jeep by those three
hoodlums in front of Macy’s, he recalled. One of them, the Brit,
was going to shoot him. He’d made a break for it and ran like
hell—could barely see a thing, it was so dark. He’d ducked into a
store that had been looted and hid, but they found him. They had
led him back to Macy’s and forced him into a goddamn hearse of all
things!

The subsequent events raced through
his mind. Being locked in a room at the Waldorf where the maimed
and tortured body of Erin’s old boyfriend Kyle was hanging from the
ceiling, his escape to the elevator, his confrontation with Bummer
(had he actually
killed
someone?
), finding Erin in the room tied to
the bed, their escape …

Tom’s head was swimming. Why did these events seem so
real—as though they had actually taken place the day before? How
could they seem so real when in fact he knew they couldn’t be. He
hadn’t gone anywhere yesterday but to the supermarket—

Then it hit him.

Like a ton of bricks.

Of course none of this had really
happened.
He had been dreaming it had
happened—

He must have dreamed all of this shit while he’d
been under the influence of raw gasoline and carbon monoxide!

Tom drew in a deep breath and stared straight
ahead.

More accurately, he had probably been hallucinating,
as well. The doctor had said that hallucinations were a possibility
…

Whatever it was, it hadn’t been real, thank god. It
had just been the worse nightmare he’d ever had.

And the longest one by far, he suddenly realized.

But why was he recalling it only now?

Of course, it had to be from seeing Erin and
recognizing her. Seeing her at the checkout line had triggered his
memory and made it all come back to him.

He wondered now how much of the dream he could
recall. He knew there had been more to it. Much more. What had
happened leading him up to his being in New York in the first
place? He knew he had been looking for Erin, who had been abducted
by Kyle from his home, of all places. Why had she been in his
house?

Of course—the power outage! He had
come home from the supermarket to discover that the power was out
everywhere and that his family and friends had totally disappeared.
In fact,
everybody everywhere had
mysteriously disappeared!

Tom recalled the beginning of the dream now, from the
moment he’d discovered his family was missing to the wild chase in
pursuit of Erin in his stolen Jeep on I-270 to the sudden unwanted
appearance of Kyle at his home the next morning. As he recalled the
events, he sat in utter fascination of the clarity of everything,
how real and vivid it all seemed now instead of being some sort of
vague, random recollection.

Somethi
ng
special in those lethal gas fumes?
he
thought dryly.

But the ten thousand dollar question was why? Why had
he dreamt this absurd dream in the first place? Did it have some
purpose? Was it some kind of spiritual sign from the heavens? Or
had it simply been a random gas fume-induced, hallucinatory trip
from hell?

And why would he even sport the notion that it could
have some real purpose in the first place? Dreams basically had no
purpose, other than to help relieve stress. That was a
scientifically proven fact, wasn’t it?

Tom sat back in his seat and recollected the entire
dream from beginning to end, astonished at the fact that he could
actually do it. He recalled the drive back from New York to
Columbus with Erin and what he had learned about her past: her
being an orphan, the foster father who had molested her as a child,
her troubled teen life at school and her running off with Kyle to
New York City. Tom grew increasingly angry recalling how Kyle had
not only emotionally and physically abused the girl but pimped her
into doing kiddie porn movies so that he could sell them on the
internet. Then he recalled how she had managed her escape from the
lowlife prick down the fire escape and made it back to Ohio by the
skin of her teeth.

When Tom reached the part when he and Erin had
returned to Columbus and discovered a suspicious car parked in his
driveway, his heart began to race—

Donnie Shortridge!
Now what in the hell had that been all
about?

Tom recalled how he had entered his home and found
this strange hillbilly redneck sitting at the kitchen table with a
gun pointed at him. Like a blast from the past, this character
claimed to have been married to a girl Tom had knocked up and now
blamed Tom for his being sent to prison for assaulting his poor
wife in a blind rage.

And that he intended to pay Tom back by robbing him
blind and then killing him.

How crazy had that been? He hadn’t even known a
Donnie Shortridge, much less gone out with his wife—

Jesus Christ—he had gone out with his wife!

Mindy Conkel!

Mindy Conkel, he did know. And not only had he gone
out with her, he had gone to bed with her. Just once.

And that one time had been enough to get her
pregnant!

And now suddenly Tom was beginning to understand why
he had had this crazy dream. He had felt guilty for blowing off
Mindy when she had called him in New York to let him know that she
was pregnant with his child. He hadn’t given the news much thought
at the time—he had been way too wrapped up in his new life in the
Big Apple to give a shit. In a nutshell, he had basically told her
“too bad, so sad—”

Wait a minute here!

Erin had shown him a picture—

Tom recalled the very end of the dream. And like a
bolt of lightening from out of nowhere, he was struck with why he
had dreamed this dream and what he now had to do about it.

Erin had shown him a photo of her birth mother
holding her as an infant before she had been put up for adoption.
The woman in the picture had been none other than Mindy Conkel!

Was it really possible that he was Erin’s father? And
that was why he had dreamed all of this?

It had to be! As crazy and
impossible as it seemed, this whole dream must have occurred so
that he would discover he had a child running around in this world
that he never knew he had. It was one of those weird, unexplained
psychic phenomena like he’d seen on
Unsolved Mysteries!

He had to talk to Erin, he resolved. He had to find
out if she really was his daughter.

On impulse, he fired up the engine
and pulled away from the curb. He circled the block and headed back
toward the supermarket, trying to decide what he was going to say
once he approached Erin with this. He realized it wasn’t going to
be easy.
“Hi again, Erin. I was just
driving home with my groceries and started wondering if perhaps you
are my daughter. I know it sounds a little weird, but you see, I
had this dream yesterday and I—”

Tom laughed out loud. Yeah, right—she’s going to
think I’m a blithering idiot!

As he drove through the intersection at Dublin
Granville Road, Tom realized he would have to ease gracefully into
this when he spoke to the girl. Maybe just start up a casual
conversation and then ask if he could perhaps up meet with her when
she got off work—that he had a couple of questions to ask her.

And of course she would look at him oddly, no doubt
wondering why this strange man old enough to be her father was
basically asking her out on an impromptu date—

Frick it! he sighed. This would be more difficult
than he’d thought.

He reached the Jubilee Supermarket parking lot and
pulled in. As he searched for a space, he spotted Erin getting into
her car at the far end of the lot. She was probably just getting
off work and heading home.

Tom glanced at the clock in the dash: 4:05. That had
to be it.

He pulled into a spot and watched Erin start up her
car and back out of the parking space. He waited until she drove
past him and stopped at the exit before pulling out behind her. She
turned left and was stuck at a red light on High Street. Tom pulled
out and stopped behind her at the intersection.

When the light changed, she turned left onto High
Street and drove south several blocks before turning into a gas
station and pulling up to a pump. Tom also turned into the station
but parked beside the mini mart. He looked at his rearview mirror
and saw Erin get out, swipe her credit card through the machine and
reach for the pump handle.

As he sat there, Tom wondered if it was such a good
idea following her like this. He almost felt like he was stalking
her. After all, he was a virtual stranger and when he approached
her, she was going to feel intimidated if not downright threatened
by him. Perhaps he should wait until he could speak to her at the
supermarket another day.

Erin placed the pump handle back into its slot and
got into her car. Tom backed out and followed her. She continued
south on High until she entered Clintonville and took a right onto
a street just north of North Broadway. Tom followed behind, trying
to keep as much distance between the cars as possible.

Erin drove another block or so, then pulled into the
driveway of a gray two-story house. Tom recalled that she had lived
in an apartment building in Worthington in his dream. This was a
house large enough for an average sized family to live in.

He pulled up to the curb a couple of houses before
Erin’s and parked. He watched her as she got out of the car and
headed for the front porch.

It was now or never, he thought.

He jumped out and walked swiftly toward her.

“Hey Erin!” he shouted.

She glanced back at him. At first it looked as if she
was going to ignore him as she continued up the steps to the porch.
But she came to a halt on the porch and turned around.

As Tom drew closer, she stared at him with a confused
look on her face and said, “Hi. What do you want?”

Tom caught up to her and smiled idiotically. “Um, I
just wanted to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind. It will
just take a minute.”