Midnight by Dean R. Koontz

The number rang nine times. Sam was about to hang up, guiltily relieved that he’d failed to get through, when Scott finally answered.

“Hello. It’s me, Scott. Dad.”

“Yeah?”

Heavy-metal rock was playing at high volume in the background. He was probably in his room, his stereo cranked up so loud that the windows shook.

Sam said, “Could you turn the music down?”

“I can hear you,” Scott mumbled.

“Maybe so, but I’m having trouble hearing you.”

“I don’t have anything to say, anyway.”

“Please turn it down,” Sam said, with emphasis on the “Please.”

Scott dropped the receiver, which clattered on his nightstand. The sharp sound hurt Sam’s ear. The boy lowered the volume on the stereo but only slightly. He picked up the phone and said, “Yeah?”

“How’re you doing?”

“Okay.”

“Everything all right there?”

“Why shouldn’t it be?”

“I just asked.”

Sullenly “If you called to see if I’m having a party, don’t worry. I’m not.”

Sam counted to three, giving himself time to keep his voice under control. Thickening fog swirled past the glass-walled phone booth. “How was school today?”

“You think I didn’t go?”

“I know you went.”

“You don’t trust me.”

“I trust you,” Sam lied.

“You think I didn’t go.”

“Did you?”

“Yeah. So how was it?”

“Ridiculous. The same old shit.”

“Scott, please, you know I’ve asked you not to use that kind of language when you’re talking to me,” Sam said, realizing that he was being forced into a confrontation against his will.

“So sorry. Same old poop,” Scott said in such a way that he might have been referring either to the day at school or to Sam.

“It’s pretty country up here,” Sam said.

The boy did not reply.

“Wooded hillsides slope right down to the ocean.”

“So?”

Following the advice of the family counselor whom he and Scott had been seeing both together and separately, Sam clenched his teeth, counted to three again, and tried another approach. “Did you have dinner yet?”

“Yeah.”

“Do your homework?”

“Don’t have any.”

Sam hesitated, then decided to let it pass. The counselor, Dr. Adamski, would have been proud of such tolerance and cool self-control.

Beyond the phone booth, the Shell station’s lights acquired multiple halos, and the town faded into the slowly congealing mist. At last Sam said, “What’re you doing this evening?”

“I was listening to music.”

Sometimes it seemed to Sam that the music was part of what had turned the boy sour. That pounding, frenetic, unmelodic heavy-metal rock was a collection of monotonous chords and even more monotonous atonal rims, so soul-less and mind-numbing that it might have been the music produced by a civilization of intelligent machines long after man had passed from the face of the earth. After a while Scott had lost interest in most heavy-metal bands and switched allegiance to U2, but their simplistic social consciousness was no match for nihilism. Soon he grew interested in heavy-metal again, but the second time around he focused on black metal, those bands espousing—or using dramatic trappings of—satanism; he became increasingly self-involved, antisocial, and somber. On more than one occasion, Sam had considered confiscating the kid’s record collection, smashing it to bits, and disposing of it, but that seemed an absurd overreaction. After all, Sam himself had been sixteen when the Beatles and Rolling Stones were coming on the scene, and his parents had railed against that music and predicted it would lead Sam and his entire generation into perdition. He’d turned out all right in spite of John, Paul, George, Ringo, and the Stones. He was the product of an unparalleled age of tolerance, and he did not want his mind to close up as tight as his parents’ minds had been.

“Well, I guess I better go,” Sam said.

The boy was silent.

“If any unexpected problems come up, you call your Aunt Edna.”

“There’s nothing she could do for me that I couldn’t do myself.”

“She loves you, Scott.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“She’s your mother’s sister; she’d like to love you as if you were her own. All you have to do is give her the chance.” After more silence, Sam took a deep breath and said, “I love you, too, Scott”