Lost Highways: Dark Fictions From the Road Page 13

  Except, that was only a dream.

  Her feet crunched in the snow in the dark of the trees. She turned and waited. It was cold, standing still. Her breath billowed out in front of her face and hung there for a half-second before blowing away.

  She watched her dad open the rear passenger door and he gasped and said, “No,” loud enough for her to hear, even though he’d never made a sound before on any of the nights they went walking on the road. She looked at the house. No lights went on. No one emerged with a shotgun or phone in hand already dialing 9-1-1. There was nothing. Like the night had swallowed everything up, leaving them all alone.

  Don’t touch him. Don’t touch him. Don’ttouchhim!

  He leaned into the car. She watched his broad back convulse once. Twice. Was he crying? She’d never seen her dad actually cry. He’d look like he might feel bad for a second and then he swallowed it up. She knew he swallowed it up for her. That’s why she tried to be brave, so he wouldn’t have to eat so much sadness.

  Her dad backed out of the car and closed the door. He turned and walked toward the house. She said, “Daddy.” He held up a finger to shush her and climbed the front steps. The door was unlocked. He walked inside.

  The girl wanted to run after him. This was the worst thing to do. They’d be caught. And if they were caught, people would take her away from him, because it was mommies that raised girls, not daddies. She knew they’d send her to live with someone else and then she’d be a real ghost—sad and alone all the time. She stayed put. Her feet were numb and felt frozen to the ground, and she was too afraid to follow him into the house. She tried to picture the people inside, blue like the little boy. As if they were all dead and this was the end of the world like that movie and she and her dad were the only non-blue people left alive. They weren’t though. She knew they were pink and warm and asleep.

  After a few short minutes, her dad walked out of the house. To her it had felt like forever, the way time feels to a child. Long and uncrossable, like an ocean. Or a hundred years. He came walking out, wiping at his eyes and joined her in the dark. “Time to go,” he said. She wanted to ask why he had to go inside. What he’d seen. But she didn’t say anything. Instead, she grabbed his hand and they walked up the driveway to the road.

  In the distance, she heard a siren wind up.

  They turned back the way they’d come, in the direction of their car. The weight in her pocket made her remember and she pulled her hand away and dug out the roll of quarters and held it out to him. “Here, Daddy.” She wanted to see him smile. Ten dollars was a lot. It would make him smile.

  A tear rolled down his cheek. He didn’t bother to wipe it away. He said, “That’s yours. Maybe you want to buy a new toy. A new monster doll.”

  “No. It’s for breakfast.”

  He shook his head. “Huh-uh. That’s yours, sweetie. We’ll go find something you can buy with it this afternoon.” He paused. The siren was getting louder and she wanted to run. But he stood there. He crouched and more tears dripped down his face. “I’m so sorry, baby. I’ll never make you do that again.”

  “It’s okay. I understand.”

  “No. It isn’t.”

  “How will we eat if I don’t go look in the cars?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. We’ll find a way. But you don’t ever have to do that again. Not ever.”

  Her dad picked her up like he did when she was six and carried her the rest of the way back to the car, walking slowly so he wouldn’t fall on the ice. She held on to the roll of quarters.

  When they got over the hill and were on their way down the other side, she saw the flashing blue and red lights appear behind them. The sirens were loud now and lots of lights were coming on in the houses along the road. People were looking out their windows.

  They reached the car and he tried to put her down so they could get in, but she didn’t want to let go of him. With her chest pressed to his, she felt her dad’s heartbeat. She held him tighter and never ever wanted down. But she had to get down to get in the car. “Can I sit in the front?” she asked. He nodded.

  “We’ll both sleep in the front tonight,” he said.

  “Did you touch him?”

  He shook his head.

  “Are we going to be okay?”

  He nodded. “We’re going to be fine, hon. Everything’ll be okay.” She let go and climbed in ahead of him, dragging her blanket out of the backseat up front with her. He climbed in behind her, started the engine, and turned the heater on full. Cold air blasted out, but soon it’d be warm.

  For a while, anyway.

  THE HEART STOPS AT THE END OF LAUREL LANE

  JESS LANDRY

  Even with her back pressed against the trees, the growl of the truck’s engine reverberates through Beth’s chest. Its headlights cut in and out of the treeline as it slowly creeps along the highway, its tires rolling over the loose gravel of the road’s shoulder. Beth squeezes harder against the bark, her boots sliding on the icy forest floor.

  She brings the canvas bag in her frostbitten hands closer to her chest, keeping her breath locked in her lungs, fearing that the condensation escaping her lips will get her caught.

  The growl passes, the dark truck speeding off down the road, for now. It will pass again; it’s been following her for hours.

  But she will not let it find her.

  Beth continues on as the night grows quiet once more, cradling the canvas bag. She sticks to where the trees meet the road, the highway’s mile markers always in her sight.

  ***

  When Linda opened her eyes, she expected two things: the TV on some shitty daytime talk show and a pounding headache brought on by last night’s bourbon bender.

  She sat up in bed as quickly as a thirty-something-year-old woman with a bad back could. Sure enough, Dr. Phil rattled on to some I-do-what-I-want teenager with a serious drug problem and a forty-year-old boyfriend, while the pressure in her head mounted.

  “You’re breaking your mother’s heart.” The doctor said in his Southern drawl just as Linda pressed the OFF button.

  Linda rubbed her eyes, trying to alleviate the self-inflicted throbbing. The sun pierced the cheap plastic blinds that had come with the rental house, a few slats in one corner bent out of shape. Birds chirped in the distance like it was the best day ever and not some cold-ass day in northern Minnesota, and like the past week hadn’t even happened. The world keeps spinning while we stand still, Linda thought, pulling a bottle of ibuprofen from her nightstand.

  She slowly got up, stretching and yawning, and dug through a pile of to-do laundry, pulling out her housecoat.

  The house was still as Linda shuffled down the hallway, running a hand through her tangled brown hair, her slippers sticking to the hardwood floors. She stopped at Beth’s room and readied to knock but stopped herself short. Instead, she listened, listened for movement—a breath, a laugh, a sob—from the other side, but none came. Just go in, she needs you, nagged the mom-voice inside her, the one she’d tried to silence during Beth’s formative years when Linda convinced herself that being a “friend-mom” was a much better strategy to raising a child than being a “mom-mom.” Stepping back from the door, Linda decided to let Beth sleep a bit longer. It was the least she could do.

  Linda groaned as she stepped into the kitchen: the worst part of any party was the next day clean up. Crusty paper plates and still-full red Solo cups spilled from two large garbage bags, the room stinking of stale pickles and day-old cream cheese sandwiches. Dirty mugs gathered by the sink, each with different levels of old coffee sitting in them. The sink itself had dishes piled high—fancy platters and chip bowls left with their dips and finger foods to solidify overnight—though, in all fairness, the well-to-doers hadn’t had much time to gather their things when the party had come to an abrupt end. The wide-eyed stares came flooding back to Linda as she stood in the mess, those glances that the guests had exchanged as Beth had ran inside the house, something clutched in her hand.
She’d talked to Linda, hadn’t she? Linda could recall Beth’s pale face, her brown eyes that seemed to glow red, her mouth moving, but no sound followed. Linda had sat on the couch, half-tanked in her Sunday best, rising whispers and hushed gasps cutting through the silence that followed Beth to her room, slamming the door behind her. Then, Linda had poured herself another bourbon.

  Tucked away in a corner of the kitchen sat Linda’s coffee maker, a little white-stained-brown one that she’d had for years. She grabbed the pot, dumped in some water, and let old faithful do the rest. The clock on the machine flashed 10:22 am.The stench of sour food and fresh coffee made her stomach churn, so she shuffled over to the front door to grab some air and get the paper.

  Linda shivered in the November wind, wrapping her housecoat tighter around her body. She looked on her doorstep—no paper. Sighing, she took a step out, the cold stinging at her exposed skin. The newspaper kid only bothered to lob it from the gravel road about 50 feet away. Kid had a shit arm—he could barely get it past the ditch that ran along the property.

  Linda squinted, her vision nothing like it used to be, looking out onto the snow-filled landscape. It was just her and Beth out here on the outskirts of Warroad, Minnesota, with nothing but the trees to keep them company. She thought the solitude would’ve kept them both out of trouble. So much for that.

  They’d moved from Minneapolis three years earlier. Beth, only fourteen then, had already spiraled out of control: she was failing all her classes (when she actually showed up), she would sneak out in the middle of the night and be gone for days, she’d even gotten physical with Linda after an argument about Beth’s boyfriend of the week. Had Linda been a better parent—a better person—she would’ve gotten them the hell out of Dodge at the first sign of trouble. And she should’ve known better, having lived through her own rebellious teen years, but it was only when Linda came home to their shitty two-bedroom apartment in North Minneapolis one night to find Beth passed out on the bathroom floor, a dirty needle dangling from her arm, that she decided it was time to get away from it all. The next day, Linda packed up her ‘89 Passat and shoved a screaming Beth into the back seat. She drove them as far north as they could get without becoming Canadian.

  Linda came to the ditch and, sure enough, two blue-bagged papers sat at the point where the land curved downwards. She snatched both bags from the snow and ran inside.

  Her coffee ready, she took a seat at the table, nearly tripping over the phone cord—she’d unplugged it two days earlier, tired of the incessant ringing. She sipped her coffee, the warm liquid instantly bringing new life to her frozen bones and quieting her pounding head.

  She untied the first bag and removed the paper—it was already four days old. Sighing, she shoved the paper back in the bag and threw it at the garbage pile. It hit some paper plates, knocking them onto the floor. She took another sip of her coffee and went for the second bag. It was already untied, and the paper was damp, the snow having found its way inside. She managed to unfold it and found the front page had been ripped clean off.

  Her inner-mom nagged her to call the Warroad Chronicle offices and complain about the god-awful service, but she couldn’t be bothered. It’s not like it was the Washington Post. No, the Chronicle was more of a National Enquirer meets small town America gossip mill than an actual paper. If you wanted to read about the library’s three (three!) new books, or how Farmer John befriended a pizza-loving sasquatch after he caught it rummaging through his trash, the Chronicle had you covered. As ridiculous as it was, it always brought out a chuckle or two from Linda—this was small-town living at its best: new books and a hungry bigfoot. Wasn’t this the American dream: a simple, uncomplicated life? A small town where everyone claimed to like you, even when you heard their whispers as you walked past them with your daughter, all of them passing judgement on who you used to be and who they assumed you still were?

  Even so, these people, they showed up without you asking them, they came to your house with every dainty under the sun, every eye shedding a small tear.

  “I’m so sorry,” they had all said yesterday afternoon, sympathetic hands on her, on Beth. And though Linda couldn’t say it, so was she.

  ***

  Linda tidied the kitchen the best she could, filling another garbage bag full of day-old food left on the counter. Just after noon, she finally decided to plug the phone back in, get dressed, and wake Beth.

  “Sweetie?” Linda asked, knocking at her daughter’s door. “Are you hungry? I can make you a grilled cheese.”

  Linda had never been one to barge in—she understood that a teenager needed her space—but something in her gut felt off. The feeling had been growing stronger over the past week, but she had shrugged it off given the circumstances, assuming that it would’ve passed by now. Instead, it was at its strongest.

  “Fuck it.” Linda said, opening the door.

  The phone rang as she stepped into an empty room.

  ***

  Tiny snowflakes glide down from the sky, the glint of the moonlight caught in their crystals. Beth kneels behind a large tree, eyes and ears on the road—the coast is clear. Still clutching the canvas bag in one arm, she pulls out a small flashlight and a folded paper from her back pocket, reading it as quickly as she can. She looks to the dark highway and smiles.

  Putting the light and paper away, Beth steps out from the woods and onto the icy black asphalt, the truck nowhere in sight. It’s just her and the snowflakes, the moon and the road. She crosses the snowed-over highway, her footprints and the truck’s tread marks the only signs of life.

  She grips the canvas bag a little closer and makes her way down the road at mile marker 156.

  ***

  Linda jammed the key into the Passat’s ignition. The engine turned over once (“Come on.”), twice (“Come on!”), three times (“Piece of shit.”), before it coughed to life. She sat in it for a moment, rubbing her cold hands together and letting the engine warm, trying to push the uneasy feeling out of her body. Beth was gone, and there was only one place she could be. There were no boys in the picture, no friends that had come around, she was alone. Alone with Linda.

  Her fingers still cold and the engine barely warmed up, Linda told herself everything was fine. Still, she put the car into drive and stepped on it.

  Twenty minutes later, she passed the bend on Lake Street, coming to a stop outside Solace Gardens’ wrought iron gates. The place was deserted, only two vehicles sat in the parking lot.

  She felt it now, sitting in her shitty VW, that feeling in her gut spreading outwards, digging its claws into her veins, rolling through her blood. Something wasn’t right. She had to find Beth.

  Pushing through the dread, she took her foot off the brake and drove through the cemetery gates.

  ***

  The winding gravel road is overgrown with frozen prairie grass and ice-filled potholes, but Beth is careful to mind her footing. The forest huddles around her, dense like a Terracotta army watching her from the shadows. All the while, the canvas bag feels lighter, like she could walk with it a thousand miles more. And she would. She would.

  The road feels like it winds forever. After every turn lies another and another, until finally it straightens, the trees still dense.

  How long had she been walking? Eight hours? Nine? After the sun went down, she lost track of everything, even the feeling in her toes.

  She stops, releasing one hand from the canvas bag. She pulls out the paper again, her fingers stiff, a frown spreading on her face. There’s no mention of where to go, just that she needs to be on this road.

  She looks up to the moon, a lighthouse over a still sea. Clouds threaten to mask it, heavy clouds bringing with them a wave of big, full flakes that float by like dandelion fluffs.

  She watches them fall around her, but then something catches her eye, something hidden off to the side, past the road, past the shoulder, in a tangle of branches and vines.

  Placing the paper back into her pocket, she
clutches the bag once more and lifts her feet through the prairie grass, the snow up to her knees.

  There, obscured by the trees whose branches seem to shift as she steps closer, is a piece of wood, too smooth and clean-cut to be here by accident. She brushes the tangle with a free hand, stepping through it like a curtain at a psychic’s salon. Beyond it is a path, as clear as the highway she’s been walking on. Warm air surrounds her, the feeling returning to her fingers and toes.

  She reaches out to the foliage that surrounds the wooden sign, and sees the letters written on it, drawn with a loving hand.

  Laurel Lane.

  As she lets the brush drape behind her, the roar of an engine sounds off down the road.

  ***

  Linda parked next to the police cruiser, the sun already starting its descent in the late November afternoon. She gathered herself and exited the car, making her way up the small hill to the black slab of polished granite that glimmered in the fading sun. It was etched with three simple things: a name, a birth date, and a death date. She’d stared at that final date yesterday, her eyes boring a hole into the stone, her hands clutching Beth’s quivering shoulders all while trying to keep her own body from shaking.