Lost Highways: Dark Fictions From the Road Page 16

  All he had to do was pick up the phone and call the police.

  Peter got slowly to his feet. His knees felt creaky, and the clammy fear sweat coating his flesh had begun to stink. No matter. He’d been through a traumatic event. The more shaken up he acted, the better.

  Taking care to avoid Janice’s corpse, he made his way through the kitchen, past the single bathroom, and into her bedroom, where a phone sat atop her nightstand.

  He was reaching for it when a voice said, “You got your souvenirs.”

  Peter shrieked. He stumbled backward, his feet tangling, and hit the cheap paneling headfirst. There was a crunching sound, and his vision grayed. A moment later the world stopped carouseling and he was able to make out the figure sitting on the edge of Janice’s bed.

  It was Merry.

  “Hey, tiger,” the young man said.

  ***

  Peter licked his lips and stared at Merry’s form in the semidarkness. He couldn’t be sure, but the side of Merry’s head appeared to glisten. “You’re . . . you’re dead.”

  “I been dead. Long before I met you. I been drivin’ around for weeks, waiting on the tug.”

  “Tug?”

  “The pull that tells me where to go.”

  Peter’s thoughts churned. “You’re telling me you we were . . . pulled in my direction? After I hit Janice?”

  The jeering grin resurfaced. “First smart thing you’ve said tonight.”

  Peter stared at Merry, the fine patina of sweat on his neck like an icy drizzle. “Is that what this is? Like a second chance kind of thing?”

  Merry eyed him. “Come on, tiger. Use that rich boy education your papa bought you.”

  Peter clenched his jaw. “I see. I’m supposed to believe I’m the bad guy. Because I had the audacity to make money?”

  Merry chuckled, his fingers touching something that bulged in his hip pocket. “This might come as a shock, tiger, but not everything’s about you.”

  Peter fell silent.

  “I’m talking,” Merry went on, “about why I’m here. Why I’m doing this night in and night out. Roamin’ the countryside. Goin’ where I’m called to go.”

  Peter sat there trembling.

  “I had an English teacher,” Merry continued. “She was okay at first. But the more you had her, the more you realized she had it in for you.”

  Peter began to ask a question, but Merry was already waving him off. “Not me personally. I mean kids in general.”

  Peter waited, knowing he could do nothing to brook the flow of words.

  “She had us pick a poem, one from what she called the Romantic Era. I skimmed a bunch of stuff, but none of it made sense. Till I stumbled upon a poem by a guy named William Blake.” He glanced at Peter. “Ever hear of him?”

  Peter hadn’t.

  “I picked this poem,” Merry said. “Was called ‘The Tyger.’ I memorized it just like we were told to, and even if I didn’t understand it, I still suspected it meant something.”

  “Look, Merry,” Peter began, but Merry’s eyes had taken on a glaze. Staring at the paneling above Peter, he started to recite:

  “Tyger, Tyger, burning bright,

  In the forests of the night;

  What immortal hand or eye

  Could frame thy fearful symmetry?”

  Peter shook his head. He was aware of his gaping mouth, the drool stringing from his bottom lip, but the words Merry had uttered kept reverberating in his brain, condemning him, teasing him, and when he was able to speak, his question surprised him. “Who are you?”

  Merry slouched on the bedside, elbows on knees, fingers drooping limply, head down, the side of his head a glistening goulash of blood and curly hair. Staring at the ruin of Merry’s temple, a thought began to tickle at Peter’s subconscious. Not a clear thought, but persistent.

  “Say something,” Peter hissed. “Tell me what the hell you are. Whatever’s going to happen to me, why don’t you get it over with?”

  Merry shook his head wearily. “You don’t get it.”

  Peter wanted to scramble to his feet, to seize Merry by his flannel shirt and shake him until he started making sense. But he couldn’t. The sight of the gunshot wound, so real and undeniably fatal rendered Peter powerless.

  Peter asked the question, though he dreaded the answer. “Are you really dead?”

  “Only guys like you can see me,” Merry answered. “I’m here because of what I did.”

  Like a rat darting from beneath a dumpster, the thought for which he’d been groping finally scurried into the light. “You said ‘when I snipped Daddy.’ Earlier, in the truck. You said—”

  “I know what I said,” Merry snapped, and when the eyes met Peter’s, they were tinged with a red glow. “How was I supposed to know?”

  “Merry, I—”

  “Don’t Merry me!” he shrieked and launched himself off the bed. Bent at the waist, he shoved his face in Peter’s, shouted at him, his breath like carrion meat. “I shouldn’t’ve done it, I know that, but he was always on me, always tellin’ me I wasn’t no man. When I’d come home from drinkin’ and found him passed out, even more shitfaced than I was, I told myself he deserved it, he got what was comin’ to him.”

  Peter shook his head slowly. This capering little fool was insane. The bullet had somehow grazed Merry, had somehow spared him. It was the only explanation.

  Merry crouched before Peter, eye to eye now. The carrion breath was withering. “I drove off in his truck, thinking I’d leave town. Then I—” Merry broke off, and tears shimmered in his eyes. “I ran into someone. On the road.”

  This isn’t happening, Peter told himself. This is madness.

  “He took me for a drive, and when we were a good ways from town, he gave me the same choice I gave you.” Merry’s chest hitched. His teeth bared, he grasped Peter’s shoulders and spoke directly into his face. “And I been drivin’ ever since!”

  Peter swallowed. “What are you telling me?”

  Merry grinned a terrible grin. “Shit, you still don’t get it? Head on back to that fancy car of yours, you’ll see.” Merry’s fingers went to the hip pocket of his jeans again.

  Peter gaped up at him. “You mean I’m free to leave?”

  Merry bellowed laughter. When he got control of himself, he fixed Peter with a look so haunted, Peter could scarcely stand it. “That’s the hell of it,” Merry said. “We’re always free. Free to do good, free to fuck up. Free to ruin our lives and other lives, just as pretty as we please. My daddy, he was a stone-cold sonofabitch. Got what was comin’, he did . . . no doubt about it. But what I done to him . . . uh-uh. I reckon I had it comin’ too.”

  Peter got up. “You won’t follow me?”

  Merry squinted. “Why would I? You made your decision. Once you decided you weren’t going back, you reserved your ride.”

  “My ride?”

  Merry chuckled. “A special kind of hell. You’d be surprised at how many people hurt others and just leave ‘em like roadkill. What we do is give assholes like you the choice to go back, to make things right.” A shrug. “Or righter. But once you shot me, you made your choice. Now you carry your keepsake just like I carry mine.”

  Peter patted the pockets of his coat. “Where’s the gun? I swear I . . . ”

  Merry only watched him, a disdainful grin twisting his lips. Merry again touched his hip pocket, the fingers stroking whatever lay within. Peter began stepping toward the door.

  “Go on,” Merry urged. “Head back to your car. It’ll start now.”

  Giving himself no time to lose his nerve, Peter hastened toward the bedroom door, jogged down the short hall, kept to the right side of the trailer to avoid Janice’s body—still motionless, the head still surrounded by a penumbra of congealing blood—and then he was out the door and sprinting across the front yard. He didn’t even spare the Titan a sideways glance.

  It was—he checked his Rolex—well after three in the morning. He had no idea what he’d do now but getti
ng away from Merry was his first priority. Madness emanated from that bleeding, cryptic hilljack. The farther he got from Merry, the better.

  Though a stitch had started in his side and his feet were blistering from the friction between his loafers and his heels, he reached the BMW in ten minutes. Before getting in, he peered through a window into the backseat, certain Merry was lurking there in the murk. Although it was difficult to tell for sure, the backseat appeared to be empty. Still . . . the terror of having Merry speak to him in Janice’s bedroom when he’d been absolutely certain that Merry was dead was fresh enough that Peter paused at each window of the car to peer inside. When his inspection revealed nothing except his briefcase and a cardboard McDonald’s Big Mac container, he climbed inside, engaged the door locks, and sat there for a moment to allow his throbbing heartbeat to calm.

  Headlights appeared behind him. Oh hell, Peter thought. Not the Titan. Not Merry.

  He knew he should be trying the ignition, should attempt to drive away, but the sight of the swelling headlights had petrified him. He could only watch the vehicle draw nearer.

  It wasn’t the Titan. Was just a compact car; he could tell that by how near the road the headlights were.

  A new fear assailed him. What if the car clipped his BMW?

  In dread, Peter watched the car approach. It drew nearer, nearer, definitely heading toward a collision with Peter’s rear bumper. Then, as it reached him and Peter closed his eyes to prepare for the impact, he experienced the oddest sensation. Like a gust of cool air blowing through his body.

  When he opened his eyes again, the car—a silver Toyota Corolla—was motoring away.

  My God, he thought. He could almost swear that the car had passed right through him. Through his BMW, as well.

  He exhaled shuddering breath. After thirty seconds or so, he removed the key from his coat pocket and inserted it in the ignition.

  It’ll start now, Merry had promised.

  With nerveless fingers, Peter twisted the key.

  The car started immediately.

  A lifting sensation, a quickening of hope. Peter actually felt a smile threaten.

  He reached out, took hold of the gearshift.

  He stopped. His smile faded.

  For some reason, the sight of the glove box made his stomach muscles tighten. He had no reason to open the glove box, but some unseen force lifted his hand, made it drift to the handle. Peter pulled on it, and the glove box door dropped open, and then he was sucking in air, jerking away his hand as if scalded by boiling water. He crowded into the door, afraid of what lay outside the car, but more terrified of what the orange glove box light illuminated.

  A handgun. He didn’t know what model, but he knew it wasn’t his. His gun was at home in the nightstand. This one looked very much like the gun with which he’d shot Merry.

  Hand trembling, he reached over, pushed the glove box shut. Seething bile rose in his throat. He thought he might vomit.

  Peter reached out and depressed the door locks again. But something told him this was a pointless measure. What was the poem Merry had recited? Peter despised poetry, but for some reason he had no trouble remembering this one.

  Tyger, Tyger, burning bright, he thought.

  He became aware of a pressure in his hip pocket.

  In the forests of the night.

  Peter swallowed, raised his hips so he could slide his fingers inside the pocket.

  What immortal hand or eye.

  And felt something cold and squishy within.

  Two somethings.

  Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

  A scream rose to his lips even before he grasped the pair of moist souvenirs and removed them from his pocket. As he gazed down upon the severed ocular nerves, the light brown irises—Janice’s light brown irises—he realized what had lain within Merry’s hip pocket, the eternal reminder of what Merry had done to his father. The drunken castration.

  For a long time, Peter sat there screaming.

  Then, he returned Janice’s eyes to his pocket and began to drive. There was a peculiar sort of peace that came from knowing that Greta, his children, his business associates could no longer see him.

  Peter drove. He had no idea where to go, but he knew when the time came there’d be a tug.

  WITNESS

  Tyler Jenkins

  YOUR POUND OF FLESH

  NICK KOLAKOWSKI

  Jill Cafferty thought of herself as a smart woman with good instincts. Certainly not the type to pick up hitchhikers on dark roads. So why did she pull over for the rail-thin girl with stringy blonde hair?

  Later, in the brutal light of day, Jill would blame it on the divorce, combined with the two beers and a shot she downed at the Will O’ Wisp (“Home of the Flaming Cocktail!”) before climbing behind the wheel. Leaving her husband had been easy, especially after he cracked her cheekbone—it was the aftermath that was proving difficult. Over the past year, as the balance in her bank account dipped toward zero and her credit-card bills bumped against her limit, she had found herself caring less and less about her worthless little life. Now, roaring down I-84 in an alcohol haze, nothing but black fields on either side, she pressed her foot a little harder than usual on the gas, and let the wheel drift ever-so-slightly in her hands. Testing. Would a crash at this speed kill her?

  Probably not, she thought. That was the bitch of it: they built cars so well these days, even a collision with the concrete pillar of a highway overpass was no guarantee of instant death. Knowing her luck, the impact would probably just cripple her, and then she would have giant medical bills on top of everything else.

  Something wispy and white flashed on the highway shoulder: a blonde girl, young but worn, maybe a hundred-ten pounds at most. In the glare of headlights Jill could see the narrow ravines of ribs through the girl’s torn t-shirt. The girl’s bony arm extended, the thumb jutting high.

  Jill hit the brake. Reality became distant, a movie that she could settle back and watch. It was a weird feeling, different than the liquor buzz, but not an unpleasant one. She came to a stop on the shoulder maybe a hundred yards beyond the girl, flicking on her hazard lights as she did so.

  In the theater of her skull, Jill the Filmgoer asked: Why are you doing this?

  Before some other part of her could answer, the girl was at the passenger window, the headlights’ glow casting her eye-sockets in deep shadow. She looked like all kinds of trouble, and yet Jill’s hand zipped down the window a few inches. I demand an explanation, Jill the Filmgoer yelled at her traitorous body, in vain.

  “Hey,” Jill said.

  “Hey,” the girl replied, almost too soft to hear over the night wind rustling the endless grass.

  “Need a ride?”

  The girl smiled slightly, her crooked front teeth poking beneath her lip. “That’s why I’m out here.”

  Don’t you do something this stupid, Jill the Filmgoer yelped, even as the girl climbed in, and the car accelerated back onto the road. The girl settled into the passenger seat with her arms folded tightly over her chest; she had no bag, no wallet shoved in the pocket of her threadbare denim shorts.

  “What’s your name?” Jill asked.

  “Sarah,” the girl said.

  “Where you headed, Sarah?”

  “West, as far as you’re going.”

  “I can drop you off in Boise. That okay?”

  I must have had a stroke, Jill the Filmgoer murmured. Or someone put something in my beer. The speedometer crept toward eighty, her old car creaking in protest. Cops were rare on this stretch of highway: great if you were a leadfoot like her, bad if something happened to you.

  “Yeah, sure, whatever,” Sarah said, shrugging.

  “You hungry? We can stop somewhere, get some food.”

  Sarah patted her pockets. “I don’t have anything. Money, I mean.”

  “That’s okay, I think I can cover us.” Barely.

  “No, it’s okay.”

  “You won’t owe me or any
thing. I don’t . . . ”

  “Seriously, it’s okay.”

  Jill’s sweaty palms made for a slick wheel. “Kind of dangerous, being out there.”

  Sarah stretched out an arm, revealing a vicious bruise on her elbow. “Not as dangerous as staying at home.”

  “Got friends you can crash with?”

  “That’s where I’m headed.”

  A white pickup passed on the left, its lights and engine filling the world. Jill noted its panels smeared with drying mud, the empty rifle-rack bolted to the rear window, the fading bumper sticker that announced: ‘KEEP HONKING: I’M RELOADING.’ As it pulled away, she glimpsed the driver in profile, illuminated for an instant by her headlights: a stubbled jaw, a cheek etched with a curlicue scar, the eyes hidden beneath a fading red baseball cap.

  “Honk your horn,” Sarah said.

  “Why?”

  “Because that guy’s a jerk.”

  “No. It’s . . . rude.”

  “Whatever.” Smirking Sarah flicked the truck off. The driver accelerated, his brake-lights disappearing beyond the next bend.

  When Jill turned her head again, the girl was gone.

  ***

  At three in the morning, Jill stopped for an early breakfast at an all-night diner a few blocks from her house, hoping that she had enough credit on her cards to cover it. It was an old-school place, heavy on the neon and chrome, and it served the best pancakes and finger steaks in the valley. Her arms shook like tuning forks as she parked the car in the diner’s lot.

  Jill was the only customer. The waitress served her coffee and took her order. The television above the counter showed the news. It was easy to tune out the litany of bombings and preachers-turned-politicians—until she caught a familiar flash of white out of the corner of her eye. It was the girl again, onscreen, staring at her above a single line of massive, crisp letters that blared the word: ‘MURDER.’

  The coffee cup dropped from Jill’s numb hands. The waitress advanced on her with a towel, her murmurs of comfort drowned out by the blood roaring in Jill’s ears. The newscaster reappeared, mouthing the words “corpse,” and “no witnesses,” and “ditch.”