Lost Highways: Dark Fictions From the Road Read online

  There is only one road now, no option to turn left instead of right. It is the same road I have traveled, the same one I have known, the one with endless banality and no sun. I have sculpted these same, repeated moments with my hands. I should not be surprised that they have found me again, that they are mimicking my memory to construct the endlessness of this road.

  I drive, and there is no end to the trees, their branches heavy and arching over the road, and there is the roaring, and I could laugh instead of cry. The trees have begun to move. Their shadows bend and jerk, dipping toward the earth as if in honor of my passing.

  If the school is at the end of this road, I am certain I will find it emptied. Or, if there is anyone left, that they will be faceless bodies propped up in desks. Pale imitations of the students they are trying to become until eventually, their mouths form into gaping holes that make that same roaring sound as the road.

  I could press my foot to the floor, accelerate and then jerk the car off the road and into the trees, but I am afraid they would make space for me, afraid they would not let it be so easy as all of that. Death is not anything to vanish into. Not here. Not now.

  The roaring is a screaming now. The sky tearing itself asunder, but there is no light beyond the darkness, and I lift my voice up in chorus and laugh. High and clear.

  I take my hands off the wheel. The car does not drift but stays steady on the road, and I think of Rebecca, of her carefully constructed life and my jealousy, and how even now, I would wrap my hands about her throat if it meant I could have all of the things she has or had. There’s no way to be certain this darkness hasn’t swallowed her up, too. But I don’t think it has. It is meant only for me.

  Perhaps the car will run out of gas, and I will begin walking until the breath comes gasping out of me, my body failing and dropping under this black sky. Perhaps there will be only this movement without any true destination. I do not know which is worse, and I cannot be certain I didn’t wish for this. Standing in front of the mirror before another day of classes and students and boredom and wishing for an end to this existence, I somehow opened a door that will not be closed. I think of those pale hands, those fingers curling around wooden frames, reaching. I think of the shadowed forms of the trees and how they look like those fingers.

  When I reach the end of this road, I will look for something sharp. I hope that I will find it.

  THE MAG-BAT

  Wes Freed

  MR. HUGSY

  ROBERT FORD

  “Did you pay this time?”

  Andy watched his father in the mirror as the car turned back onto the road. Daddy looked sleepy. His whiskers were thick on his face.

  “Yeahhhh, I paid this time.”

  “Mommy says stealing is bad.”

  “Andy, I know, all right? But sometimes to get ahead, you gotta do bad things to make good. That’s grown up life. Stealin’s bad but spending your life behind the damned 8-ball is worse.”

  “8-ball?”

  “Yeah, the 8-ball. Bustin’ your ass workin’ for the man.”

  “Ass is a bad word.”

  “Butt, then.” Daddy rolled his window down a little and spit. “Don’t worry, though. You and me? We ain’t never working for the man again. Partners in crime, you hear? Daddy and you, buddy.”

  “Okay.”

  “Try to get some sleep. There’s a blanket beside you and I got you some of that beef jerky you like for when you wake up.”

  Andy stretched his legs and kicked his feet together, watching his light-up sneakers come to life. He leaned his head back and turned toward the sunset. It had been a long, long time since Andy had seen Daddy and he said they were going on a surprise trip. Boys only.

  The desert blurred by. The sky was smeared with reds and oranges, and reminded him of finger painting with Mommy. Andy was excited about the trip, but he missed her. He was a little sad he hadn’t been able to give her a goodbye hug and kiss. Daddy said it was okay though, that he could hug and kiss her twice as much when they got back from their trip.

  Usually, Mommy wasn’t very good at keeping secrets, but this must be a really special trip because she hadn’t said a word about it. Not one single word.

  ***

  Dixon Keller was a man given to sly glances and nods.

  In the first grade, Dixon planned a heist on a classmate named Susan Silhan. His partner in crime was Preston, a kid with red hair and freckles who lived five houses down the block from him. Preston liked to let Elmer’s Glue dry on his fingers and nibble at it all afternoon.

  During lunchtime, Dixon told Preston to slow down when he got close to where Susan sat in the cafeteria—slow down, and accidentally trip and spill his carton of chocolate milk.

  Preston nailed the performance and all heads turned toward the carton, burping the milk onto the gleaming tile floor. When everyone’s attention was on the spill, Dixon ducked beneath the table. He unzipped her backpack and took the two boxes of Crayola 64 packs from Susan’s backpack. Snooty bitch had been bragging all week about them and the built-in sharpeners, and Dixon had heard enough. After paying Preston fifty cents and a new carton of chocolate milk, Dixon had two almost brand new boxes of crayons for himself.

  For a full month afterward, he smiled to himself every time he used the sharpener.

  That childhood score started Dixon down a path he could not bring himself to veer from. Didn’t much want to, either. Fixed card games. Collecting payments for bookies. The horse track. Insurance scams. The short con. The long con. Grifts.

  Name almost anything that lived in the gray area of life and Dixon had been involved. And every shady deal, every back alley exchange of cash and greased palms, began with half-assed plans. Those plans, for Dixon Keller, all started with a sly glance and a nod.

  It had been almost a year since he’d seen the wrong side of prison bars for the last score that had gone in the shitter. Two weeks before he was going to get released, Dixon Keller sat up on his prison cot in the middle of the night. He thought of Andy. Right after Andy turned four, Dixon pulled a score that went bad and he ended up back on the inside.

  But that was before he saw Andy’s dancing shadows trick.

  Granted, he had only been around his son a total of two and a half years, and even that time hadn’t been consecutive. He was there for Andy’s birth, went behind bars about six months after, and came back when Andy was almost three. That time was good. He was there almost a full two years. Oh, Dixon had tried. He had tried best he could to lean toward the straight and narrow. He enjoyed being a father. He and Loretta were making an effort to get along. He got hired down at Walder Hardware. It was a shitty job, but it was a paycheck.

  It was a normal life.

  But the thing about a normal life was that it was . . . So. Fucking. Boring.

  Every night, Dixon put Andy to bed. Some nights he read a book and some nights he sang, and if Andy had been especially good that day, Dixon would do both. It was on one of those nights Dixon found himself singing the Eagles’ Hotel California.

  Andy had closed his eyes, but Dixon knew from experience he had to keep singing for at least another thirty seconds or else Andy would wake up like an alarm had gone off.

  From the corner of his eye, Dixon saw a flutter of movement on Andy’s bedroom wall. Like most kids, Andy had a dim nightlight plugged in, and it cast fuzzy silhouettes across the canvas of his room.

  But these, Dixon saw, were shadows on the wall behind the top of his dresser, below the SpongeBob poster. Two of them, moving and swaying and seeming to dance with each other as he continued to sing.

  Dixon stopped singing and the shadows stopped moving. Their heads shifted and looked at him. Andy turned over in his bed and let out a relaxed sigh. Dixon watched the shadows fade into the light blue paint of Andy’s wall.

  The night Dixon sat up in prison, stark awake, it all became clear. So many things became clear. The dancing shadows. His Granny. And going over.

  His father couldn’t
do it, but Dixon’s Granny could. She was the one who called it going over, as in going over to the other side.

  His father had told Dixon about the things Granny could do, but even as a kid, he thought it was bullshit. Daddy said Granny could heal people of the cancers—had seen it himself when he was young. She washed her hands in cold creek water and ran them over the sick person. Granny would squeeze her eyes shut and the person would get feverish and start to shake. Granny would pick a spot on the person’s body and start tapping her fingertips in a light rhythm on their skin. Not long after, the flesh would start to bulge and move, and something would start to crawl out of the person’s body. Odd little creatures the size of newborn kittens pulled themselves free as they clenched something gray and spindly in their mouth, like a dried root. They would march up to Granny, their bodies slick and wet, and drop what they had fetched right into her open hand. Granny would throw the twisted thing in a jar of alcohol and the little creatures would fade away into nothing. Granny had gone over and brought them back to do her work for her. Their deed was done. They went back. Sick person healed.

  She asked for donations but never outright charged for healing folks. All her life she lived in a small shack without any running water or electricity, while the townspeople she cured stayed in fine homes with lights and indoor plumbing.

  What a fuckin’ waste. Woman didn’t know how to get ahead. Didn’t realize the edge on life she had. But Dixon Keller knew. Oh, he knew too well how to use a gift like that. He glanced in the mirror at Andy, the boy’s head angled down toward the driver’s side window, eyes fluttering behind his lids.

  Ohhhh Andy, son of mine, there are so many great things in store for us.

  Dixon shook a cigarette from a half-empty pack, lit it, and rolled the window down another few inches. Can’t expose the kid to second hand smoke. Have to start thinking healthy. Time to quit the smokes and heavy drinking. What use was there in getting rich if he died from lung cancer or an enlarged liver?

  Dixon took a long drag from the cigarette and blew it through the open window. He’d quit. He would. Once they got to where they were going, he’d quit the damned cigarettes. And the booze? Well . . .

  Dixon reached for the cold Coors in the middle console. He twisted the top off and took a long swig. I’ll try to quit the goddamned booze, too. No smoking. No drinking. As soon as we get where we’re going.

  They were about a half hour from Prescott when Dixon twisted the cap off his third Coors. At the sound of the fresh beer, his kidneys decided he had to pull over and take a piss.

  Andy murmured in his sleep, but Dixon couldn’t make out the words. Long day for the little guy, but it was going to get better. A lot better.

  Dixon killed the engine, but left the headlights on, pinched his cigarette between his lips, and got out. Goddamned beautiful out here with the moon shining over everything. If it weren’t so damned far away from life, he’d consider living here permanently.

  Dixon let the piss fly and tilted his head back with relief. Christ Almighty, the sky was so clear you could almost see the letters on the satellites. Goddamned beautiful. Maybe he and Andy would buy a second home out here just to get away from it all.

  He was squeezing his ass cheeks together and streaming his last bit of piss when he heard the huffing, snorting sound in the darkness ahead of him. There was a black shadow in the distance, just beyond the reach of the headlights, about fifty yards out in the desert. It snorted again, and Dixon heard the heavy thumping noise of stomping. The dark figure broke into a run. It wasn’t graceful and light. It was fucking thunder. Whatever it was, it was hauling ass toward the car like a runaway freight train.

  The shape broke the reach of the car’s headlights and for a moment, Dixon stood there like an idiot, holding his dick in the open air, mouth open enough to let his cigarette fall in a shower of firefly sparks down the front of his body.

  The thing was bigger than a mini-van, and gray in the Chevelle’s headlights. The speed of it. The goddamn speed. Thick trunks of legs blurred among the flying dirt. But what held Dixon’s focus was the head of the thing. Ash-colored skin, wrinkled with deep grooves surrounding pothole nostrils and angry obsidian eyes. Planted firmly in the center of its face were two horns, one longer and slightly curved, the other shorter and wide, like an inverted shark’s tooth. And along the ridge of its spine were two rows of protruding fins, long as Dixon’s legs. A thick tail swung side-to-side, yard-long spikes coming out of it at odd angles.

  Dixon stumbled from the edge of the road. “Andy!” He screamed, ignoring his pants as he hobbled to get inside the car. The sounds of thunder were closing in.

  The boy’s murmuring was getting louder. Andy was thrashing his head and his hair was pasted to his forehead with sweat. Dixon scrambled over the driver’s seat and slapped his son across the face. “ANDY!”

  He opened his eyes and stared at Dixon, confused, his face pinched up. “Owwwww . . . ” Tears rimmed his eyes and Andy rubbed his cheek.

  The quiet in the middle of the desert was the loudest thing Dixon had ever heard.

  “Are we there?”

  Dixon slumped in the driver’s seat, pants down to his thighs, and wished he had a shot of Jack Daniels. “Not yet, buddy.”

  He stared into the reach of the Chevelle’s headlights. He could still see the trampled plants and wide tracks in the dirt. Jesus Christ.

  Dixon turned to look at his son. “Andy, what happened just now? What happened while you were sleeping?”

  “I was dreaming.”

  “About what?”

  Andy reached into his lap and held up his toy Stegosaurus. “Dinosaurs. And Rhinos, too. Did you know their name means horn nose?”

  “No, I . . . ” Dixon looked at the rubber toy in Andy’s hands. “But you can do more than just dream, can’t you, Andy? Things other kids . . . other people can’t.” He reached out and patted his son’s leg. “Special things?”

  Andy put the toy back in his lap and stared at it. “Mommy doesn’t like me to.”

  “Yeah, well Loretta doesn’t know what the fu—” He cleared his throat, stopping himself. “I hate to say it, but Mommy’s a little . . . jealous, okay? She loves you, but . . . I mean, she can’t do it. That’s why you’re so special. It’s okay around me, though. It’s a good thing. A gift. I’ll never be jealous, buddy. I want you to use that gift.”

  “Sometimes . . . ” Andy stared at his lap. “Sometimes bad things come through.”

  “Bad things?”

  “Like Mr. Hugsy.”

  “Who’s Mr. Hugsy?”

  Andy’s face scrunched up. “I have bad dreams about him sometimes. He scares Mommy, too. She gets mad at me and I get in trouble. Mommy says bad boys need correcting.”

  “That sounds like some shit your mother would say.”

  “I don’t want to talk about Mr. Hugsy anymore.” Andy yawned and leaned his head back. “Will you sing to me, Daddy?”

  Dixon ran through his mental catalog of songs and decided on Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire. He started singing and the silent black desert wrapped around the two of them.

  Dixon heard the pace of Andy’s breathing change as he slipped back into sleep. He turned, his gaze falling on the rubber Stegosaurus toy in Andy’s lap. Dixon picked it up and looked at the ridge of plastic fins on its back. Dinosaurs and rhinos. Son of a bitch. He shook his head and tossed it out the window.

  “Fucking Animal Planet,” he whispered. “You need to watch more cartoons, kid. Bugs Bunny never killed anyone.” Dixon pulled up his jeans and buckled them. He started the car, threw it in drive, and punched the gas. The driver’s door slammed shut on its own.

  The next town was about ten miles out. Dixon would gas up again and after that, they were in the home stretch. He tilted the last of his warm beer and felt an odd lump swirling in the liquid. It was both soft and brittle, and Dixon felt a rapid vibration against the roof of his mouth and then a white-hot sting against the back of his tongue.r />
  Dixon bit down and swallowed reflexively. The fluttering tangle of a wasp’s body slid down his throat among the mouthful of Coors. The pain was an atom bomb and Dixon’s stomach flipped as he realized what had happened. As his tongue slid across his teeth, road flares of pain ignited. He slung the beer bottle out the window, shattering it on the asphalt.

  “Fuuuuucckkkkkk meeeeeeeeeee!” Dixon spat the words through a grimace and opened his mouth like an overheated dog as hot spit flooded over his tongue. Heat flushed through his body. He figured he had fifteen, maybe twenty minutes before his throat closed up. Dixon pushed the Chevelle’s speedometer up to 90.

  He’d been in and out of prison. He’d been caught up in the Mexican mafia as a drug mule for a while. He’d been on the wrong end of a gun barrel more times than he could count.

  But for the first time in his life, Dixon Keller was truly worried he might die.

  ***

  The blue-white tower lights of a gas station announced Papi’s Gas-n-Go and Dixon slid into the gravel lot. He killed the engine and grabbed the keys as he jumped from the Chevelle, not bothering to close the door behind him.

  His head was on fire for fucksake. Snot ran from his nose through the stubble on his chin. His tongue felt foreign, like a piece of sunbaked rubber. He could feel scalding pressure in his face and his eyes were starting to swell shut.

  A bell jingled on the door as Dixon ran inside and walked straight to the cashier. The skinny teenage Mexican boy sat on a stool behind the counter, his eyes bloodshot and heavy-lidded. He gave a nod and his eyes went wide as they took in Dixon’s condition.

  I must look like the goddamn Elephant Man.

  “You have EpiPens?” Dixon’s voice had turned to sludge. It sounded wet and reedy passing over his vocal chords.

  The kid blinked at him. He shook his head slightly.

  “Fucking EpiPens! Do. You. Have. Them?”

  The kid shook his head again but found his voice. “Habla español?”