They approached the obstruction to its right – an overturned car, lying belly-up in the oncoming breakdown lane. Its rear end had broken through the railing and hung half on and half off the bridge, teetering like a seesaw. Flames licked from the undercarriage, reaching skyward with desperate, consuming fingers. The tires still spun.
Pete couldn’t take his eyes off the mess. He drove by at a snail’s pace, staring at the deep gouges in the paint. Broken glass, illuminated by his headlights, transformed the surrounding blacktop into a sea of sparkling crystals. He glimpsed a hand trying to work its way out of the smashed side window. It seemed tiny next to the twisted wreckage of the car. He slowed down even more.
“Don’t,” JT said with panic in his voice. “Keep going.”
Pete turned to him. The kid’s eyes were wide, glowing yellow as they reflected the flickering blaze. There was something besides fright hiding behind that gaze. He just couldn’t figure out what.
“Don’t stop,” continued JT. “Call 911 or something. You don’t wanna get involved in this.”
“I don’t have a cell phone.”
JT cleared his throat. “Who cares? Just keep going. It’s probably too late anyway.”
Pete considered it for a moment, stepped on the gas, felt the shift in gravity as the car gathered speed, watched the fiery wreck appear in his rearview mirror, and then slammed on the brakes. He thought of the person that hand belonged to. Searching, scraping, trying to find an exit before as the heat and smoke rose, screaming for help as the cab became an oven, feeling the pain of fire searing their flesh, until finally succumbing to fate. What if that was me? he thought. I have to help.
Not your job, his mother’s voice retorted. Not your nature.
Shut up. You don’t know me.
Pete parked the car. “It’s okay,” he said, trying to appear reassuring for both his young travel companion his own psyche. “I’ll be right back.”
After flinging the door open hard enough to bend the aluminum seams, Pete jumped out and ran full bore toward the burning wreck. His feet pounded and the wind whistled across his ears while the fire crackled. The only other sound he heard was the rippling water below.
The air grew warmer the closer he got until, when he stood beside the wreckage, it became too much to bear. He pulled his shirt up over his nose, trying in vain to block out the smoke, dropped to his knees, and crawled to the passenger window, pulling his sleeves over his hands to brush away the broken glass. He wished there were an easier way, but it was the only opening available.
Thick smoke ballooned from the narrow breach. He coughed, waving his arm in an attempt to clear his line of sight. “Hello!” he screamed. “Are you all right in there?”
A muffled groan answered him.
The flames grew closer, conquering the wheel wells and spilling over the side. Pete held his breath, ducked his head, squinted, and wedged the top half of his body into the gap.
The heat inside was scintillating. It smelled of burning leather.
Pete opened his eyes, feeling the sting of foreign gasses as they cooked the fluid in his sockets. Everything appeared blurry, but he could see well enough to know there was only one occupant in the car. A woman, hanging from her seat still buckled in. Blood covered her face and dripped from the tips of her short blonde hair. Her eyes were barely open and she stared at him as if he were just another piece of failed machinery. He reached out and touched her neck with his fingertips. Still breathing. Her mouth opened, and more blood accompanied her words, spilling over her top lip and up her nose.
“Help…me…”
Pete nodded. His heart beat faster and faster with no hope of slowing down. He felt like he would pass out any second. What do I do? I don’t know what to do! He slapped the overturned roof. Flames shot into the front from the burning back seat. He had to act fast.
He crawled in deeper, until only his calves were exposed to the crisp air outside. With visibility failing, he groped about with his hands, pulling the woman close to himself, feeling around her, searching for the seatbelt clasp. When he found it his fingers naturally withdrew from the blistering metal catch. He did his best to ignore the pain, again wrapping his hand around the mechanism. He pressed the button with his thumb. It wouldn’t give. He tried it again. Still nothing. A disgusted grunt erupted from deep in his chest. Give, damn you! Give! He pressed one last time, bearing down with such force it seemed his tendons would snap.
The latch finally gave way and the spring drew the harness back with the might of a slingshot. The woman dropped like a rock. Pete held out his arms, trying to stop her head from smacking the roof. Her eyes opened wider than he thought possible the instant her back struck the headrest. She let out a yelp.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I got you.”
“Thank you,” she replied meekly.
He slid his hands around the woman’s back, looped his forearms under her armpits, and pulled. She proved much heavier than he imagined, and with her legs still lodged at an odd angle beneath the destroyed steering wheel, his effort was more a practice in displacing body weight than a straight-forward yank. As if sensing his struggles, the flames kicked it up a notch, trickling in from beneath the floorboards, coating the air above them in seemingly liquid fire.
“C’mon,” he growled, tugging on the woman’s upper body. Inch by inch she gave way, kneecaps sliding free, followed by calves covered in tattered, bloody fabric, followed by one foot, then the other. Her legs dropped with a thump, bouncing when they hit the roof’s smoking, felt-covered lining. Pete inched backward one leg at a time, maneuvering over the window frame until he felt the strangely reassuring discomfort of kneecaps digging into glass and coarse pavement. He kept hold of the woman the whole time, towing her out of the small opening with surgeon-like care. The hairs on the back of his neck singed.
In a matter of seconds they were free of the smoldering vehicle. Pete stood up, still grasping the woman under her armpits, and lugged her across the median. Her car ceased being a car any longer as the inferno consumed it, devouring the entirety of its practical aluminum-and-fiberglass hull. The gas tank exploded – a small detonation, but enough to knock Pete off his feet. He fell backward, landing on his butt with the woman’s head in his lap.
The sound of sirens emerged in the distance. Relieved to be finally a good distance away from the heat and poisonous black smoke, Pete forced a deep breath – the air going through his lungs sounded like a whistle – and looked down. The woman reclined against his leg, as still as a mannequin. Her eyes were wide open and glossy, staring up into the sky without blinking. Her chest didn’t move.
“God, no.”
Fire erupted again from the overturned car with renewed vigor, as if it heard his admonishment. He leaned forward, pulling up her blood-soaked shirt. A huge black knob revealed itself just below her bellybutton. The lump jutted out, its sharp end sticking up, forming a pyramid of twisted steel – probably remnants of the shattered steering column. His thighs grew steadily wetter, drenched with warm fluid. A bubble of bloody spit popped in the corner of the girl’s mouth.
With an almost prissy amount of sensitivity, Pete closed the woman’s eyes. He glanced down the bridge. Flashing lights approached from around the bend and the wailing sirens grew even louder. The paramedics would be upon them in no time. But time was a thief. They were too late.
Just like me.
He looked at the woman again. Even covered in blood with a piece of shrapnel sticking out of her stomach, he could see her beauty. She was probably in her early twenties, maybe home from college or grad school on spring break. He wondered what she’d been like in life. Was she studying to be a doctor? Did she have children already? How close was she to her family? Would he have liked her if he’d known her? Could they have been friends?
None of it matters now.
Grief overtook him for the second time that night. It poured from his tear ducts in a torrent, out his nostrils in sticky brooks. He buried
his face in his hands and screamed. His body shuddered out of control. The forthcoming sirens and revving engines became nothing more than background noise.
“I’m proud of you,” a voice declared.
Pete choked back his tears and turned his head to the sound. JT stood a few feet away, hands crossed in front of his chest. In the confusion, he’d forgotten about his passenger. But the kid didn’t seem to mind. He simply gawked at him, head tilted to the side, a smile plastered on his pouty lips.
“You did a good thing,” he said.
“What’re you talking about,” growled Pete.
JT’s grin disappeared. “You didn’t have to stop. You could’ve left her there to burn. But you didn’t. You put your life on the line to help her. That’s honorable.”
“Honorable? You wouldn’t know honorable. You’re just a kid.” Pete felt anger rise up in his gut. It flowed through his veins with the potency of the flames engulfing the dead woman’s car. He grabbed her arm, lifted it, and let it go. “There’s nothing honorable about this!” He tried to hold on to his fury, but the anguish took its place again. “She’s gone,” he cried, “I couldn’t help her.”
The youngster’s expression became sympathetic. He walked up to Pete and put a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t cry for her,” he said, his voice easily rising above the noise of the sirens. “Her last moment was one of hope thanks to you. She lived her life. Death isn’t everything. She’s got other journeys to experience.”
Pete nodded. He wanted to believe those words, even if they came from a neophyte. He really did.
“This here,” continued JT, tapping Pete on the shoulder, “is nothing but a vessel. In the end, it doesn’t really matter.” Pete watched as the youngster pointed to his own temple, then his chest. “These things here, that’s what really matters. It’s an ongoing quest, Pete, filled with a thousand different choices and a thousand different roads. Your choices. Your roads. Destiny isn’t planned out. You gotta make your own. It’s the one thing your mother, intelligent as she was, never understood.”
Pete gawked at the kid as if he’d been lobotomized. The arriving ambulance tore around the corner, capturing his attention for a moment, until it skidded to a stop twenty feet away. A fire truck followed close behind. The ambulance doors flew open and the paramedics jumped out, rushing behind the vehicle, presumably to get a stretcher and med pack. It all happened in slow motion. Pete was in another world. He glanced back at JT. That wide, tender smile had returned to his face.
“Wha – who are…” began Pete, but he found it hard to form words. He choked on them instead.
JT wagged his finger. “Don’t do that to yourself. Don’t do the guessing game. Just live your life.” A mischievous gleam appeared in his eye. “You’re not bound by the sins of your father, you know. You never have been. What you did tonight proved it.”
Finally, Pete found his voice. “Are you…Him?”
JT sighed. “I told you not to do that. Stop trying to figure it all out, Pete. Just know you did the poor girl a favor. She’ll always thank you for it. We both will. Trust me.”
Pete blinked, and JT was gone. A paramedic took his place a second later, bending over, coming face-to-face with him.
“What happened here?” he asked.
Pete shook the cobwebs from his head. “Huh? Sorry, what was that?”
The man glanced at the woman in Pete’s lap. He grimaced. “Is she…”
Pete nodded. “I tried to help. She must’ve passed while I was dragging her out of the car.” He looked at her forever sleeping face. “I’m sorry.”
The medic straightened himself, ushering for his partner to set up the stretcher. “I know, man. It’s tough. At least you tried.”
“I did.”
The EMT fixed him with a sideways glance as the firefighters began spraying down the smoldering husk of an automobile. “Was she still alive when we got here?” he asked.
“Come again?”
“When we got here you were talking. Was it her? Was she in pain?”
Pete ignored the question and gazed off into the distance. The Connecticut River rippled below them. A million gallons of water, rushing off in a hurry. Heading for the ocean. Heading for freedom.
A solemn smile crossed his lips.
BLIGHT
By Daniel Pyle
I was the border man’s friend. Many times I have saved him and his people from harm. I never warred with you but only to protect our wigwams and lands. I refused to join your paleface enemies with the red coats. I came to the fort as your friend, and you murdered me. You have murdered by my side my young son…For this, may the curse of the Great Spirit rest upon this land. May it be blighted by nature. May it even be blighted in its hopes. May the strength of its peoples be paralyzed by the stain of our blood.
—The dying words and curse of Chief Cornstalk, November 10, 1777
SARAH KNEW she’d locked the trailer’s front door before putting Tommy down in his crib and laying herself down on the sofa in front of the flickering television. Double locked it, in fact: flipped the thumb latch and twisted the deadbolt until it clacked. So her first reaction upon waking and finding the large Indian standing between her and the TV was not to scream or reach for the nearest blunt object but instead to sit up and rub at her sleepy, new-mother eyes.
She dropped her hands from her face, but while fragmented memories of her dreams and sleep thoughts faded, the looming man didn’t. For a second, he seemed to flicker out of and back into reality, but then she saw the television beyond him and blamed the optical illusion on the dead-air snowflakes drifting across the screen.
If he’d taken a step toward her, she might have screamed after all, but he only stood there, backlit, looking down at her with his big, brown eyes. The bear of a man had what seemed to be (but couldn’t possibly be) eight black bullet holes in his chest and arms.
Don’t be ridiculous. No one can take eight bullets and keep walking.
Not that the man was walking. Or moving at all.
The afghan she’d draped over herself before falling asleep had dropped to her lap. She clutched it, lifted it to her chest, and started to ask him who he was, what he was doing here, what he wanted. Before she could utter a word, he nodded his head toward the kitchen. Just a half-movement she wouldn’t have noticed if she hadn’t been looking right at him. He raised his eyebrows at her and nodded toward the kitchen again.
Which was when she smelled it: smoke, fire, burning plastic.
She hopped off the couch and rushed past the mute man. When she passed, she stumbled a little and brushed against his animal-skin clothing. He had an odd smell. Not dirty exactly, but earthy, like a fresh hole in the ground. She managed to simultaneously register and ignore this.
In the kitchen, she found a plastic pitcher of sun tea melting and spilling all over the stove. She twisted the knob to turn off the burner, wrapped a dirty dish towel around her hand, and grabbed what was left of the pitcher by the deformed handle. She plopped the dripping wad of plastic into her largest pot and carried the whole mess out of the kitchen, through the back door, and toward the uncovered barrel behind the trailer. Rain water and floating mosquitoes filled the barrel to the brim. Jacob had been promising to get rid of the thing since they’d moved in, but a promise from Jacob wasn’t always worth much more than…well, a barrel full of breeding bugs.
How could she have left the stove on? She didn’t remember turning it on in the first place. And the pitcher on the burner? Sleep deprived or not, midnight feedings or not, how could she have been so careless?
She dropped the pot and the melted mess into the barrel and backed away when water splashed over the edge and onto her bare feet.
She watched the pot sink into the barrel’s murky depths. When the pitcher tried to float back to the surface, she held it under until she was sure it had cooled off.
Something moved behind her, and she turned to find the big Indian standing between her and her home. She hadn’t
heard him follow her out, hadn’t sensed his presence until just that second.
He starred down at her, silent, managing to look both sorrowful and victorious without ever changing his expression.
When she finally looked away from his eyes and saw the glint of sunlight coming from the back steps, her breath caught halfway between her chest and her mouth, choked and gagged her.
The tea pitcher sat on the bottom step, full of sun tea, unmelted.
She remembered putting it out that morning, remembered deciding to leave it out until Jacob came home. It couldn’t have melted on the stove, had never been on the stove in the first place. Except it had. Had she not just dumped the thing into the rain barrel?
She turned her narrowed eyes to the big, silent man.
An armful of corn stalks had appeared in his hands. He looked ready to decorate for Thanksgiving, although the holiday was more than seven months away. He nodded toward the barrel.
She turned, and what she saw there was so much worse than the unmelted tea pitcher, so much more confusing and impossible: a tiny, wet leg hooked over the edge of the barrel, a leg clad in blue footie pajamas with little stars and moons. She’d made those jammies herself.
And beyond the leg…
She screamed, dropped to her knees, and looked back over her shoulder at the intruder.
He had disappeared.
* * *
After the sheriff and his men took Sarah away, Jacob went into the field where they’d found Tommy’s poorly hidden body and cried. Part of him wanted to chase down the sheriff and swear his wife’s innocence; the rest wanted to go into the house and burn everything she’d ever given him. What were you supposed to believe when nothing was believable?
He thought about the day the boy’d been born, of holding him until he fell asleep against his chest, of kissing the soft spot on his forehead and promising never to let anything bad happen.
Didn’t exactly hold up your end of that bargain, did you?
The Gate: 13 Dark & Odd Tales Page 5