Dark Humanity

by Gwynn White

  My Soul to Stalk

  The flushed tones of daybreak seeped across a sky that curdled with the threat of thunder. Not the karma Kyra Williams was counting on. Her heart hammered under her navy blue Chanel suit as she accelerated her Lexus SUV onto the I-95 freeway toward Detroit. Everything hung on this deal, the largest Buffington & Associates Advertising had ever bid on. Securing the contract would sway the board. Her tough-talking-Texan boss had kept his cancer under wraps until now, but Don had six months at best. Kyra glanced in her rearview mirror and smacked her glossed lips together. If she pulled this off, Buffington’s board of directors would be looking at their new Vice President of Marketing.

  Five miles from downtown, a heavy rain fell from a giant swathe of gray, and cars bunched up like widgets on a conveyer belt. Moments later, the inching cavalcade screeched to a halt. Kyra gripped the steering wheel tighter and looked at the clock. Only forty minutes to make her meeting. Slamming the shifter into park, she pressed her back into her leather seat and turned her head toward the window.

  The deluge pummeled the roof of her car, drowning out the drumbeat of Kelly Clarkson’s, Since U Been Gone. Kyra flicked the wipers to maximum speed, cranked up her iPhone and stiffened. A barely perceptible shadow melted into the downpour in front of her SUV. She slid up in her seat and peered through the cascading rain. Was someone out there? Broken down, perhaps? She scanned back and forth between the vehicles and along the hard shoulder. No hazard lights that she could see. Perturbed, she glanced behind her and then in front again. No one.

  An eerie shiver rippled down her spine as she reached for her coffee mug. Had she imagined it? Early morning jitters? With a multi-million-dollar contract at stake, she’d barely slept in a week. She sipped her latte and frowned. Today was not a good day to fall apart.

  A loud honk alerted her that traffic was moving again and Kyra shoved her mug into the cup holder and settled back in for the final stretch of her commute out to the prestigious commercial zone where Buffington & Associates Advertising had its headquarters. Three years she’d worked for the booming multinational, and today she would step into the power—the future she wanted to own.

  Traffic thinned as Kyra sped along, her stomach gnawing on itself in anticipation. The rain had almost petered out and miraculously she was still on schedule. She might even make it in time to run through her proposal again before her nine o’clock meeting.

  What the—

  A scream clawed at her throat as a massive eighteen-wheeler truck thundered toward her, extended red mirrors glistening like the flared nostrils of a rabid beast. She jolted up, knocking her coffee mug to the floor, and coiled both hands around the steering wheel. Heat flooded her eardrums. The truck’s giant, metal grille loomed in front of her like the iron jaws of death. A muffled rumbling filled her head and the car shook. Before she could twist the wheel, the mammoth truck flew over her SUV, clipping her cargo rack, and vanished through the guardrail into a ravine.

  Pressure exploded like a gunshot in Kyra’s ears as her car flipped and barrel-rolled across the asphalt, her seatbelt lashing her firmly in place.

  “Help! Somebody help me! Please!”

  Her screams clashed with the deafening crunching of her vehicle caving in on her like a metal coffin. The airbag deployed and the acrid smell of explosion engulfed her, glass shards spraying her flesh like toxic glitter. Clawing hysterically at the nylon airbag, she gagged on the chalky fumes as her car careened through the guardrail and plunged into the rocky, ravine below. She flipped like a ragdoll, her long, blond hair gyrating over her face, until the downward dance of groaning metal flatlined.

  As suddenly as it had begun, the grinding din dissolved into silence. Kyra lay motionless, barely daring to breathe as a wave of panic etched an acid trail from her gut to the pool of warm saliva beneath her tongue. Cautiously, she nudged her eyes open. The sky spun like a giant merry-go-round. White-feathered apparitions gazed solemnly down on her, and then slowly penciled into focus.

  Clouds!

  A garbled sound came from the back of her throat as tears of relief leaked down her cheeks. She’d survived the fall. She tried to lift her hand to wipe her face and instantly a fresh swell of panic surged through her.

  I can’t move!

  Her jaw trembled as the truth of her predicament ricocheted through every nerve ending. She turned her head to the side and fixed her eyes on a tuft of weeds. A fog of confusion filled her brain as she watched the grasses bending and jiving in a light breeze. Had she been thrown from her SUV? An eddy of dust cart-wheeled by her face and stung her eyes. Choking back a sob, she blinked helplessly, her useless limbs draped around her.

  How did it happen? Why hadn’t she seen the eighteen-wheeler smash through the divider? That cockeyed truck driver came out of nowhere. If the semi hadn’t gone airborne at the last second, he would have killed her. It didn’t make sense. Forty ton trucks couldn’t levitate like that. A cold shiver prickled the nape of her neck. It was all wrong.

  All wrong like the shadow on the freeway.

  Her pulse raced. That shadow melted into the rain the instant she spotted it. Did someone really walk out in front of her car only minutes before the accident?

  Kyra took a few deep breaths and slowly scanned her surroundings, struggling to clear the haze from her eyes. Twenty feet from where she lay, small spires of orange flames writhed through the corrugated metal pyre that had been her SUV. Her heart jammed in her throat. If the fuel tank exploded, she had no chance of making it out of here alive.

  A ball of despair lodged in her gut. She was trapped and there was no one down here to help her. Sweat trickled beneath her clotted bangs as she locked her gaze on the wreck, willing it not to erupt. A flicker of movement caught her eye and she squinted at the vehicle. Was someone there or was it just the shifting flames? Blood drained from her temples as a wraithlike charcoal form slunk from the blaze and faded from sight. The shadow again!

  Her tongue moved like a sloth behind her parched lips as she fought for breath between fresh waves of panic. She parted her lips, but her windpipe constricted, as if strong, stubby fingers had latched around it, and her scream evaporated into the crisp morning air. Coughing, she spat into the grass, then panned her eyes around the deserted ravine.

  The figure had vanished. She stared fixedly at the wreck for several minutes, but the shadow didn’t resurface. She scrunched her eyes shut and weighed the possibilities. Was it real? Maybe what she thought she was seeing wasn’t there at all. Her injuries might have triggered some kind of brain short-circuit. Concussion? So much for priding herself on not needing anyone. She’d never needed another human being more than now. There must be someone out there who had seen the accident happen—someone who could hear her screams.

  She sucked in a deep breath and a panicked cry finally ripped from her lips. “Help me, please.” Her voice trailed off, her plea mocking its way back to her from the other side of the ravine. She glanced around, troubled by the feeling she was being watched. But by whom? Shadows, that didn’t exist?

  A suffocating silence followed her eerie echo. Kyra gritted her teeth. How can this be happening to me? Today of all days? By now the entire department would know she hadn’t shown up for the negotiations. Her boss would be in panic mode, his thatched brows drawn together, wielding expletives, as he struggled to salvage the twenty-million-dollar deal. Her deal. The one they’d all be shaking hands on by now if it wasn’t for the fact that she was lying in the dirt at the bottom of a ravine, unable to move or even feel anything. She squeezed back more tears and watched a hawk hang glide far above her, its shredded wingtips idling on the breeze. Whatever it took, she would get out of here. She hadn’t worked this hard for nothing. She drew her lips together and mustered another breath. “Is anybody there?”

  For a moment there was no response, and then a floating sensation startled her as powerful arms gripped her from behind and raised her off the ground. Her heart beat faster. She tried to say s
omething, but her throat seized up like a dried-out riverbed. Was she being rescued? She hadn’t heard an ambulance siren. Why was this person lifting her like this? It was too dangerous with her injuries. A leaden terror filled her heart as they suddenly soared full tilt through the air toward the freewheeling bird. The hawk squawked, flapped its wings and veered off out of the ravine. Fear detonated in Kyra’s head as they flew higher, their synchronized movements weaving a hypnotic effect, her body abandoned to weightlessness. A barrage of images battered her brain; the red truck that materialized out of nowhere, and then vanished over the guardrail, the shadow walking in front of her car on the freeway, the figure that fled the flames, and now this. Was she dying after all, experiencing her brain’s last impulses in a final burst of life?

  They crested the ravine and reached the edge of the freeway, wafting out into the center lane of oncoming traffic. Kyra swayed in sync with the stranger, disconnected from her senses. No stench of gas, no sting of gravel flung from spinning tires on the hot belts of asphalt that tapered into the distance. A silent movie of vehicles reverberated by her, the drivers gripping their wheels, sipping coffee, jawing on their phones, oblivious to her presence.

  Her head spun as if it were orbiting an axis between life and nonexistence. She squeezed her eyes shut, a reluctant spectator in her own confusion. Was she still alive, or not?

  She flinched when the stranger’s voice washed over her. Holding her breath, she strained to catch the unorthodox rhythm of words, like air in motion, that whooshed from behind.

  “Awake to unseen things, the end is coming.”

  The end of the world?

  “Beware the Soul Stalkers—”

  The voice melted softly into silence as they wheeled upward, flouting physics, shadow skating through the air. Kyra opened her eyes wider at the streaming panorama as they glided back over the embankment and dropped down into the ravine, circling above her vehicle’s smoking remains.

  “—we have snatched you from their hands.” The words, now deep and urgent, whipped around her like a rotating column of air, resonating through the ravine.

  She glanced down, and her insides turned to ice. Not far from the battered wreck lay a familiar figure in a tattered Chanel suit, long blond hair pasted to the dirt, arms and legs splayed like a broken mannequin. Kyra stared at her shattered body, her breath frozen in her defunct lungs. The stranger’s lyrics vibrated in her ear like plucked strings, but she was past making sense of any of it. Her head slumped to the side, and everything went black.

  “Ma’am, can you hear me?”

  A rich, baritone voice collided with her senses like a rogue rip tide.

  “Ma’am?”

  Memories of the accident streamed in, dragging her back to reality: the SUV flipping, the plummet into the ravine, the shadow in the flames, the mysterious stranger. Her mind scrambled for a foothold, registering alarm.

  This must be him! But was he real?

  She ran her tongue over her chapped lips and made a muffled sound at the back of her throat. Grit clung to the inside of her mouth like calloused limpets, and her breath smelt musty and old.

  Her eyelids quivered at the image in front of her, weaving and trailing a wake of yellow light. Who was this person? She blinked away the film from her eyes, and the jiggling chinstrap of a firefighter’s helmet hovered into focus. The fire! They must have seen her burning SUV.

  She let out her breath and scrounged up a trickle of saliva, relief flooding through her. “Thank you.” Her chafed throat stung and the words hit an unfamiliar off-key chord. The firefighter nodded as he responded to a garbled voice coming over his walkie-talkie.

  Beyond him, black-rubber boots passed in and out of her line of vision. She was still in the ravine. And she was alive! But how was that possible? She furrowed her brow, foraging through every crevice of her mind for answers. Hadn’t she just looked down on her crushed body, sprawled in the dirt? She squinted at a flickering shaft of sunlight and studied the flurry of action around her. Maybe she had some kind of near-death experience. That vague sensation of floating like a spirit above her wrecked SUV. The accident replayed without mercy in her mind but what happened next was a blur. She must have blacked out. But for how long? She lifted her chin and contemplated the cottony sky pricked with powder blue. An hour, at best. Had she spent that time hovering in the trenches between life and death? Or had she died?

  Angling her head to see past the rescue workers, she caught a glimpse of her charred SUV gaping at the sun like a disemboweled sacrifice. Her heart struck several erratic beats. She’d driven her Lexus new off the lot only two months earlier. That crazy fool trucker had destroyed it and almost killed her in the process.

  “Can you tell me your name, ma’am?” The firefighter’s creased face peered over her.

  She opened her mouth to respond, but nothing came to mind. What’s my name? She raced through the alphabet, her pulse picking up pace. She pictured her office on the ground floor at Buffington & Associates Advertising, the cherry blossoms on Elk Avenue where she’d bought a bungalow last spring, her financier boyfriend, Brian, her younger sister, Bridget, her father, Greg—her mother, Janis. The long-gone Janis, one memory that never bleached out no matter how hard she tried to rid her life of the stain. It was all right there. Except for her own name. A ripple of nausea spread through her.

  She scrunched her eyes tighter. “I don’t—I don’t know.

  The firefighter gave her a reassuring smile. “Normal enough after a traumatic accident, it’ll come back.”

  “How long was I out?”

  He adjusted the rim of his helmet. “We’re not sure yet, ma’am. Took us twenty minutes to find you, but you’re safe now.”

  Time enough for it to have happened. But did it? Or was the firefighter the stranger who had lifted her and removed her from danger. Two paramedics maneuvered her onto a spine board and secured her head and limbs.

  “You’re good to go, ma’am.” The firefighter’s expression softened as he leaned over her. “We’ll take you up the fire road to the ambulance now.”

  She swallowed to level the emotion in her voice. “What about the truck driver?”

  A puzzled look flitted over his face. “It’s just you, ma’am. There were no other vehicles involved.”

  “I saw a red semi-truck. It flew over my car at the last second and went into the ravine.”

  The fireman wiped the back of his hand across his eyes. “There’s only your tire tracks up there.”

  “That’s not possible! Somebody in a red truck forced me off the road.” Kyra winced at the hint of hysteria creeping into her voice.

  The firefighter leaned over and gripped the stretcher. “You might have seen a truck passing in your peripheral vision before you flipped. It’s normal to be confused. Trust me, it’ll pass.”

  Doubt sparked in her brain like drunken fireflies. Was she confused? Even before the accident happened, things didn’t add up. Had she really seen someone out in the rain on the freeway? She hadn’t slept well the previous night, her mind was running on adrenalin and a bucketload of caffein. She squeezed her bottom lip between her teeth. The shadow in the wreckage could have been an illusion created by the flames. And the stranger? It was all so unbelievable. Perhaps she had dreamed the part about flying while she was unconscious. But the eighteen-wheeler was real. She was wide-awake when that maniacal truck came at her.

  “Kind of feels like elevator doors keep opening in your brain but none of the floors are familiar, doesn’t it?” said a paramedic, cinching a strap as they approached the ambulance.

  “There was a semi-truck. It flipped my SUV when it veered off the freeway.” She closed her eyes, picturing the steel grille of the eighteen-wheeler hurtling toward her like a missile locked on its target, the thunderous jolt when it clipped her Lexus. They’d believe her once they found the wreckage. “You are going to look for it, right?”

  “Be hard for something that big to smash through the divider a
nd disappear without a trace.” The paramedic smiled sympathetically at her. “It might have been going the other way and flashed into your line of vision when you rolled.”

  “No! I’m positive it crossed the divider and came at me head-on.” She furrowed her brow, pain stabbing her temples. There had to be tire tracks, skid marks, some trace of the eighteen-wheeler. It didn’t make sense. And there was something else about the truck that didn’t fit, a detail that gnawed at her like a lodged splinter she couldn’t get at.

  The fireman leaned over and gave her a lopsided grin. “It’s easy to confuse things when you’ve been unconscious. You had me tagged as an angel at first. Does happen to me sometimes, in the line of duty.” He chuckled and rubbed a hand over his stubble.

  She blinked, trying to assemble her jumbled thoughts. An angel? Was it possible a firefighter was the powerful stranger who had lifted her? The out of body experience could have been a wild trip she’d taken in her head while coming around. She frowned as the paramedics lifted the stretcher. She couldn’t rely on her own memory, that was a first, but she wasn’t used to relying on others, even if they were professionals. Everything in her kicked against believing what they were telling her. Tears of frustration welled up, but she sniffed them back. How could this have happened to her on the verge of landing the biggest contract of her career?

  “You’re in good hands now, ma’am.” The black and yellow helmet dipped in her direction as the emergency vehicle doors slammed shut. Sirens blaring, the ambulance pulled out and merged onto the I-94.

  “I need to check your vitals again,” said the paramedic, leaning over her. “Just relax and breathe normally.”

  She watched as the male medic Velcroed a blood pressure cuff over her arm. Despite being “in good hands” as the firefighter had reassured her, she was leery of trusting anyone. The claustrophobic array of high-tech equipment jostled around her, caging her in. A feeling of unease built. She was helpless, trapped. It was almost as if she were being watched—stalked even. It was that same feeling she’d had in the ravine.