The Hidden Back Room

by Jason A. Wyckoff

  He went on, ‘Cusser Gus—you’d know why they called him that if you’d ever met him—he took pity on me and let me stick around. I think he was just bored, really. He taught me to drive and even got me driving the wrecker by seventeen.’

  ‘Is Gus still around?’

  ‘He’s around somewhere.’

  ‘Any chance I could talk to him later on?’

  Clint smiled for the first time; his version had his lower lip purse down to reveal long, thin teeth. He said, ‘I reckon you can talk to anyone you want.’

  I took that to mean I wouldn’t be getting an interview and could only imagine death, deformity, or dementia was the obstruction; I didn’t ask which.

  ‘And you’ve been here ever since?’

  The question was too stupid to answer, so he didn’t.

  I cast a look about the yard, in all directions except towards the elephant. ‘It’s sad, really. Americans sure love their cars.’ And it was sad to see all those extras and castoffs, parts and junk charred and dusty, waiting in sedentary oblivion.

  To which consideration Clint made the appropriate reply, ‘Do they?’

  I thought it was time to press forward. ‘When did you start work on . . . ?’ I waved a hand at the still-unidentified thing.

  ‘Didn’t. It started itself, really.’

  This time he milked the pause for his own pleasure. It was hard not to say, ‘Do go on.’

  He finally picked up, ‘Couple years back a late-night dozer went left-of-centre on a two-lane and met head-on with a family of four goin’ the other way. The kids lived. Crazy thing was the rear wheels on each car kept straight but the bodies—the cars’ that is—were locked together. Fire department ripped the doors off, but otherwise it was all one piece. They were gonna call a flatbed but I was there with the wrecker already and I told them I could tow it as is. So I did. I set it down in the middle of the yard so the Staties could take a look in the daylight and finish their report. One adjuster showed up for all the time it took to snap a picture. That was it. When they said they was done with it . . . I couldn’t bring myself to touch it. Couldn’t say why. I didn’t think anything of it and just let it sit there.’

  He took a few steps forward, crouched, and pointed.

  ‘You can still see just a bit of a back fender on the family car. If you want me to get a flashlight, I can show you.’

  I assured him it wouldn’t be necessary, then asked, ‘So why did you start adding to it?’

  He straightened. ‘I was sorting some bumpers one day. I leaned four of them up against the heart—the, uh, the double wreck at the core. I leaned ’em up there and two of them slid off.’ He accompanied a pantomime with sound effects, ‘Skreek —plop. So I picked ’em up and leaned ’em up again and I turned back around. Soon as I did, two of ’em—the same two—slid back off again. Skreek—plop. So I took the two that stayed standin’ up and I spread them out. Then I took the other two that wouldn’t stay still and I put them in between. I turned back around to grab another bumper. It took an extra second that time, almost like it needed a bit to figure it out, but sure enough . . .’

  ‘Skreek—plop,’ I volunteered.

  ‘Not quite. More like a skreek—ping—skreek—plop. Bet your ass as soon as it started, I whipped around so I saw it this time: The ones in the middle slid over, bumped the ones on the outside, bounced, and fell down to the dirt. The ones that didn’t fall didn’t budge an inch.’

  He waited for me to offer an interpretation but I turned it around, ‘Why do you think it happened like that?’

  ‘Back then? I had no idea. I thought it might be magnetism sticking some together and pushing others apart. But I tried both sets of bumpers with other pieces of metal and nothing happened. Even so, no matter how many times I tried it, the—the wreck—

  ‘The heart,’ I interjected.

  ‘It rejected those two bumpers and it accepted them other two. So I situated the two “good” bumpers on the wreck the way I thought they looked best, and I let them be. And then I tried out other hunks of metal and car parts from all over the yard. Some would stay on and some would fall off and roll away. I couldn’t see no rhyme or reason to it. But I got to likin’ the experiment. Sometimes it was all I wanted to do all day and sometimes late into the night—just goin’ round the yard and pickin’ pieces to try. First thing I found out quick is that it was only auto parts that was welcome—household items and other junk like them signs, they wasn’t any good for it. But auto junk is what I got the most of, anyway. It started pilin’ up. I don’t know why I put things where I put them. I don’t know why I thought to start running wires through and wrappin’ around everything. Sometimes I’d swear somethin’ got put together that I didn’t do, except I knew I probably did it and forgot, ’cause I would just go on with the next thing, you know? There wasn’t any point I saw to keep track. And yeah, I know people started talkin’ about me. But they always did and I never cared before so I don’t now, either.’ He looked off towards the town and made one firm nod of the head as if to congratulate himself for his thick skin.

  In the brief interlude, a pitch-black shadow rustled in the back of my mind.

  ‘You know now, don’t you?’ I asked.

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘You know what pieces to use now. You’ve figured it out.’

  He measured me and then confirmed, ‘Ayup.’

  I swallowed and started breathing more heavily. I thought I heard a low hum.

  He said, ‘It was about six months back. I took a call about a single-car off of 62 in Holmes County. I figured, “shit”, ’cause a single-car out that way sometimes means the other vehicle they didn’t bother to mention was a horse and buggy, which means you either have a dead horse or dead Amish or both. Turns out, close, but not quite: The driver had missed the buggy—missed it right into a tree. EMTs blue-bagged him and I got the car.’

  It was about here that I started feeling sick.

  ‘It was a blue Caprice. Driver took the windshield on his way through, and there was a big ol’ tree-shaped dent smack dab in the centre-front, but I knew I could get parts from the back half. So I scrapped it slow and methodical-like. And I lined everything I took off nice n’ neat in the dirt. And when I was done I saw them pieces just like they was from a jigsaw puzzle. And I put them on it.’ He gazed at the metal mound reverently. ‘Each and every piece went on hand-in-glove easy as you please.’

  I blurted out, ‘Death cars!’

  If he had said, ‘Ayup,’ just then, I don’t know what I might have done. But he didn’t—he just went on staring at the thing like he hadn’t even heard me. And the silence between us was filled with hum.

  I felt agitated, panicky. I shuffled quickly around the circumference of the thing. I was not at all reassured that there was no power running to it.

  ‘Is it a machine?’ I felt like I was shouting.

  He looked at me incredulously. ‘Do you love your car?’

  I was momentarily taken aback, but I answered honestly, ‘Yes!’

  ‘Is it a machine?’

  It was impossible not to take his point: Sure, one day I would trade in my car, or sell it, or leave it to be recycled, but I would regret it when I did. I’d apologise to her while I cleaned her up, and when the time came, I’d whisper a goodbye. I relied on my car; I spent untold hours in it; I encouraged her and patted the dashboard when she started without complaint on a cold morning. I knew my affinity for my vehicle was an indulgence and the idea that my expressions were received an invention; nevertheless, I couldn’t help but believe that my investment created a bond. Short answer: Yes, of course my car is a machine. Long answer: But, that isn’t all it is to me.

  The hum was low-toned almost beyond hearing but received thickly in the nerves. It partitioned into waves and pulsed as it swelled. Hidden from the strong sunshine of the afternoon in the deep recesses of the mound the myriad red and white lights shivered to life. The thing trembled, but did not shake so violent
ly that a single piece shifted or a single loose bolt fell. My skin crawled with every ripple flowing through me.

  Then there was what I can only describe as a ‘silent pop’, and the hum abruptly ceased.

  ‘What happened?’ I gasped.

  ‘It reached out,’ he said.

  His eyes were glazed as he stared reverently at that terrible mound of twisted black and bent chrome, creeping rust and dirty wires.

  ‘Reached out to do what?’

  There was a hint of a smug smile when he looked at me, a believer’s superior pity of an infidel suffering in darkness. ‘To do as it will.’

  You can ask a man what he thinks about God and you’ll get a man’s opinion in return. But so what? That’s not what you’re really asking for. You’re hoping he’ll have some insight into the truth of God, and that’s a damn fool thing to expect. Clint knew better than to ask. He knew better than to try to assign purpose to the thing that made use of him. He was the tool, the adjunct, the acolyte purposed to usher the thing into being, the nursemaid of a new god birthed from its own urge to exist. He was the more-than-a-machine, loved inexplicably by his master, trusted and relied upon to follow instruction and to deliver the thing he could never understand from one state to another. But Clint was more than plastic and metal; he was thinking flesh, and though he will never comprehend his master’s whims, he will thrill and marvel at their source with myopic joy. He will worship.

  ‘That’s all for now,’ he said. He shuffled back towards the truck.

  I called after, ‘What do you mean, “That’s all”?’

  ‘It takes a while for the energy to build back up—though it takes less time the bigger it gets, I’ve noticed. Well,’ he bent to pick up the bucket, ‘I better get prepped. Holiday weekends are always busy.’

  I shuddered. It seemed like he wanted to get rid of me, and I was only too happy to oblige. Somehow it seemed like a chance to make a break for it. I snapped a single picture of the thing. I don’t know why. I could never submit a story about it to my editor.

  As I powered down my camera, I heard Clint grunt.

  He was squeezing the water from the sponge and watching it splatter back into the bucket. Sponge and water were bright red.

  ‘Finish must’ve run,’ he guessed.

  I didn’t bother to disagree or take the time to say goodbye. I kicked up a cloud of dust behind me on my way back to asphalt.

  I wish to God that was the end of my story.

  Less than five minutes later I was headed north on state route 3, a well-maintained two-lane highway. Despite my haste to get the hell away from the auto-god, I was going slower than normal through the Mohican woods. I had no intention of ruining a deer’s or an Amish person’s day even if it meant being the slowpoke in the Toyota incurring the annoyance of the weekend bikers out for a ride. Not that I blamed them—it’s a scenic route that would’ve been a pleasure to drive on any other day. When I was near to emerging from the woods, just a couple of miles outside of Loudonville, I picked up speed. A silver sedan behind me seemed anxious to pass, but the increasingly steady southbound traffic wasn’t providing an opportunity. Also, I began to feel more confident that I was beyond the influence of the thing—and, with the faintest rumblings of a chuckle, I began to re-visit the entire idea of my fear.

  Then my car sputtered again like it had before I’d made the turn into the junkyard.

  ‘Hey, now, girl,’ I said.

  The car hiccupped and jerked to the right; my knuckles went white instantaneously. Something rattled and the car shivered unevenly. The engine light came on. I had caught up to a white service van that had turned on from a side road and I still had the silver sedan behind me as well as regular oncoming traffic to consider. I punched the emergency blinkers and whipped my failing car onto the shoulder and stopped short.

  It all happened so fast.

  That’s what you’re supposed to say about these things, right? And as it happened, in real time, I’m sure the whole thing was over in a matter of seconds. But when I see it—anytime I want, whenever I close my eyes—I see little snapshots in a row, morphing molasses-slow, one to the next:

  I looked at the oncoming semi’s tyres as if I knew it would happen. There was that unique sound, so familiar even though I’m not sure I’d ever really heard it before: POWsssshFLAP! One of the tyres blew and shredded immediately, throwing hunks of hard, curved rubber. The driver behind the truck instinctively swerved; to his credit, his conscious mind overruled his instincts in half a heartbeat, but he couldn’t straighten fast enough to avoid clipping the white van just in front of the rear tyre—just the wrong spot. The van spun 90 degrees and slid sideways into the path of a pick-up. The pick-up smashed into the engine on the passenger’s side of the van and ‘corrected’ it back into the northbound lane—at a dead stop, facing the wrong direction. The silver sedan ploughed into the van’s mangled grill trailing skidmarks no longer than brushstrokes. The real squealing came from a northbound semi passing inches to my left that crumpled the silver sedan into the white van and pushed both of them forty yards up the road.

  Everyone else managed to come to a stop with no worse than a tap ‘hello’. I made sure no one was moving before I got out, and then I checked again (I don’t know how many stories I’ve read about people who were killed after a traffic accident).

  I saw phones to heads on every witness; I didn’t bother reaching for mine. I hurried up the road, not sure what I could do to help; pretty sure I couldn’t do a damn thing. The driver from semi #2 had exited his cab and was looking around with stark fear: fear for the other drivers, fear of being blamed, and fear that no official absolution would prevent being haunted by self-recrimination. The driver of the oncoming pick-up had left his vehicle in a different fashion: through the windshield. Apparently he hadn’t cared to buckle up. His was intact but in an unnatural slump on the centre line with a short smear beneath him. I checked him out. He stared back at me, unseeing. I hustled up to the main wreck. The semi driver was still in moral shock. Somebody was shouting at the driver of the van as though higher volume might be better understood by the obviously concussed man with the purple mess of a nose.

  I’m no rubbernecker. I don’t go looking for blood. But I knew I had to look at the silver sedan, just in case a miracle had occurred.

  Hollywood had taught me to expect splatter, so I was surprised by the lack of blood. It was hard to see what was inside the mangled sedan. I saw the driver’s seemingly-undamaged arm, but immediately realised that was no cause for hope. There had been no miracle: The driver of the silver sedan was discontinuous.

  I stayed. I made my statement to the highway patrol. I stayed longer than I needed to, just to be sure, even though I never doubted for a second that he would come. Clint nodded my way indifferently when he arrived. My car started on the first try and performed perfectly all the way home.

  I don’t know what the thing in the junkyard is. I don’t know what it does. I’m sure Clint doesn’t know; he recognises it solely as a power that is greater than him and venerates it as such. He is its servant and aspires to no greater station. I had thought that the thing was a hungry beast, reaching out for more bloody metal to feed its mass, fulfilling a dull and primal impulse to become and to grow. But after the accident, I’m not so sure. My car, fearful as it had been, had been in the presence of the thing. Had it felt the evil at the auto-god’s heart and loyally preserved me when the thing extended its reach? Or had my car ‘synced’ with the junk-mound born and built from tragedy and somehow gained the prescience it used to preserve me from a terrible fate? When I had been in the junkyard, the thing had pulsed—had it then saved someone on the road somewhere else, and then, as Clint had observed, it needed more time to regain the energy to ‘reach out’ again—time it did not have before the accident that nearly claimed me? I thought it hungry, but perhaps it only grows begrudgingly—and unfortunately, inevitably—until it can pulse through the asphalt arteries of this land a cle
an blood, a blood without blood. I hope so. One in eighty-eight Americans will die in an auto accident. I hope our new god doesn’t require so many sacrifices. I’m watching the statistics to see which way they’ll go. If they go the wrong way, then at least I know where the thing’s heart is—though I suspect it might not let me back a second time.

  Having put down my story, I turn to today’s edition of my paper. In one section of ‘real news’, I note an article about the development of automated driving systems. The wire item stresses that major automotive companies disagree about the timetable for general utilisation of driverless cars, though several are optimistic we’ll let go of the steering wheel completely within a generation.

  THE DREAMS OF PALE NIGHT

  ‘There can be no doubt,’ Berenice quipped in her usual sharp tone, ‘my son is thirteen stone of stupid and getting bigger and dumber every day.’

  Jemimah was unsure how to reply. Berenice was so consistently disagreeable that most of the women in the village avoided conversation with her whenever possible. But the comment was clearly meant for Jemimah to hear and seemed to require a response. She equivocated for nigh-interminable seconds before deciding polite disagreement would be best, despite current evidence in support of Berenice’s unkind assessment.

  Unfortunately, Jemimah hadn’t divined what to say and so she faltered after an unconvincing, ‘Now, now, Berenice. I’m sure he’s . . .’ the result of which was to appear both contrary and disingenuous, as well as to insult Berenice’s son by proxy. Jemimah winced at the error.

  Luckily, Berenice’s attention was focused on the shame from her loins and Jemimah’s contrariness was the only part of her companion’s opinion that registered.

  ‘Look at him!’ she argued.

  Jemimah had been trying to do anything but. Physically, Hosea was the easiest boy in the village to look at; she certainly didn’t need to endure the mooning of her love-struck daughter, Hannah, to recognise Hosea’s desirability. Though he had the incomplete, top-tapered body of an adolescent, at already over six feet tall, Hosea’s thick legs indicated he had a few years and inches left to grow during which his shoulders and chest were sure to broaden as well. His near-black hair grew in an unparted thicket that somehow curved down to frame a clean forehead that shone nearly as bright and white as his cheerful smile, itself flawed only by its fixed application, which pushed his appled cheeks up to hide water-blue eyes. Hosea’s qualities held charm enough to make Jemimah not ashamed to notice them.