Catching Hell

by Greg F. Gifune

  “Not outside a mortuary.”

  When they’d been a couple, Alex remembered watching him sleep on more than one occasion, and how his face often looked tormented or frightened even when he was deeply asleep. This time was no exception.

  “Wish I could sleep better,” Tory said, injecting himself into their conversation. “I can get to sleep, but I never stay asleep, you know? I wake up like every hour or so, it totally blows chimps.”

  Stefan caught Alex’s eyes in the rearview and fired off his best wiseass smirk. “All that critical thinking must be keeping you up.”

  “Huh?”

  “He just means you seem so mellow,” Alex said, trying not to laugh.

  “I am pretty laid back.” Tory looked out the window with an unusually pensive expression. “But we all got demons.”

  Surprised by the response, Stefan returned his attention to the road.

  Alex sat back without comment. Beside her, Tory placed the hat over his face and folded his arms across his chest.

  But for the steady hum of wind through the open windows, silence fell over the car. Alex again sat forward, this time saying nothing.

  “Are you all right?” Stefan asked.

  “I don’t know, little scared about school.”

  “It’ll be great. Think of the things you’ll learn. Besides, you’ll have two years of legitimate stage experience up on everyone else. You’ll be amazing.”

  Alex smiled. She could always count on Stefan to say things like that, and whenever he did, it reminded her of what a gentle, giving and sweetly awkward lover he had been. “Maybe I should just go to New York with you guys.”

  “Look, this is a big chance for you. Emerson’s program is outstanding. You’re getting an opportunity a lot of us never will, Alex, remember that.”

  She had listened before to Stefan recount how his parents considered his dream of being a playwright and actor foolishness, and how they had insisted he take something practical so he could earn a decent living. She also knew Billy had come from a relatively supportive family but had struggled in high school with a severe authority problem, and had been thrown out of several schools, which labeled him a troubled case and ruined his chances at college. “At least Billy’s got lots of professional experience and you have a degree,” she reminded him.

  “An Associate’s in Accounting,” he said. “Can you imagine anything more mundane? I’d rather put a gun in my mouth than ever put it to use.”

  “You could get a real job if need be. What the hell am I going to do with a degree in theater arts, whip it out at my auditions? But wait, I have a degree!”

  “If all else fails, you can wind up an aging, bitter, alcoholic drama teacher at some high school somewhere, directing hideous productions of Arsenic and Old Lace and West Side Story year after year.”

  “Don’t forget Oklahoma!”

  “God knows I’ve tried.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll hire you every tax season.”

  They let the sounds of the road take over a second time. “Seriously,” Stefan eventually said, “you’ll do fine, don’t give it another thought. And once you’ve graduated, we’ll be waiting. Literally. We’ll be waiting tables. But still.”

  Alex laughed, though the same nagging nervousness she’d felt for days continued to gnaw at her. “What’ll I do without you guys?”

  “Come on, I just spent the summer conning you then getting stabbed in the back and falling down a staircase four nights a week—twice on Saturdays—and you’ve spent it being terrorized by Billy’s Mr. Roat. I’d think you’d be sick of us by now.” He reached back and touched her hand with his own. “Alex, you’ve got more talent than Billy and I do put together. You’re the one who’s got a real chance at making it, and those four years at Emerson will only make you better. It’s the smart move. Make it.”

  She leaned in and kissed his cheek. “I love you.”

  “Of course you do,” he said, returning his hand to the wheel. “It’s called taste, darling.” And then, after a moment, softly, “I love you too. Now sit back and leave me alone before I wretch.”

  As the huge arched top of the Bourne Bridge appeared at the edge of the horizon, Stefan switched on the radio and turned the dial until he’d found a Top 40 station. With A Flock of Seagulls blaring through the speakers, he pressed harder on the gas and sped toward the bridge, leaving Cape Cod behind them.

  Chapter Two

  By the time they’d made it through Boston and merged onto I-95 toward New Hampshire, Billy had come awake. “Are we there yet, Mommy?”

  Stefan waved thanks to another motorist for letting him change lanes. “Not even in New Hampshire yet, Scooter.”

  Mumbling something unintelligible, Billy wrapped his arms around himself, turned toward the door and fell back to sleep.

  Tory smiled dreamily. “Thanks again for letting me come, Alex.”

  “Don’t be silly, happy to have you. Got anything going off-season?”

  “My old man owns a landscaping company in Jersey, said he could get me work, so I’ll probably hitchhike down there.”

  “Is your mom there too?”

  “Nah, she’s back home in Rhode Island.”

  “What does she do?”

  “Heroin mostly.”

  Alex froze. “Jesus, Tory, I—I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t sweat it.” He shrugged. “We all got problems. That’s hers.”

  Unsure of what else to do, Alex responded with a solemn nod. She hoped Stefan might rescue her but he was fiddling with the radio, so she put her head back, closed her eyes and concentrated on the motion of the car. She embraced its subtle tempo and realized there was a rhythm to it, like the slow cadence of a heartbeat, or the shallow rise and fall of her chest with each breath drawn then expelled. Like something alive, she thought.

  Or something slowly dying.

  After two hours of small talk, occasional silence, group sing alongs with the radio and Billy’s perpetual snoring, they had passed through New Hampshire, crossed into Maine and arrived in the city of Portland.

  Stefan found a fast food joint and pulled in so everyone could take a bathroom break and stretch their legs a bit. Since they’d made good time and it was only noon, they settled for coffee or soda and agreed to put off lunch and pull over again later, once they’d been on the road another hour or so.

  When they piled back into the Fairlane, Alex took the front passenger seat and Billy joined Tory in back. Within minutes, they had returned to the highway.

  As they continued toward Bangor, north along I-95, they left any semblance of city life in the rearview and ventured into a far wilder and more rustic landscape. On occasion, they passed a residence set back in the heavily wooded area through which the highway cut its path—sometimes a home built up into the side of a distant hill or nestled amidst the forest, sometimes a trailer standing alone, tires on the roof and a rusted pickup parked alongside it—but for the most part the route, though at times wonderfully scenic, was fairly standard highway fair. Traffic was also far lighter than it had been in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and the farther they went, the fewer cars they saw.

  Throughout, the weather remained sunny and beautiful, the sky clear and bright, which is why they were taken so completely by surprise when seemingly out of nowhere a bank of thick dark clouds suddenly appeared on the horizon.

  “Wow,” Stefan muttered. “Look at that.”

  Alex, who had been reclining in the passenger seat, one foot on the dash and the other out the window and supported by the side mirror, sat up and pulled her foot back inside. “Where did those come from?”

  “Roll the windows up. It’s running right into us.” Stefan removed his sunglasses, hung them on the front of his shirt and quickly closed his window.

  As they collided with the storm, the sky turned black, day turned to night, and a violent downpour assaulted the car.

  Rain poured across the windshield in a thick and steady stream, and even wi
th the wipers on full tilt, the watery veil made visibility all but impossible. The radio station they’d been listening to faded in and out, losing strength the farther they drove until it finally fell silent.

  Alex shifted her gaze from window to window. “This is way too dangerous to be driving in.”

  “Yeah, I’m pulling over,” Stefan agreed. “I can’t see a damn thing.”

  In the backseat, Tory was asleep and hadn’t stirred. Next to him, Billy’s nose was buried in a dog-eared paperback edition of Stanislavski’s classic, An Actor Prepares. “What happened to the tunes?” he asked absently. “I believe the brochure for this tour promised continuous tunes.”

  “I’ve never seen anything like this,” Stefan said, clutching the wheel with a white-knuckled grip and easing the car to the side of the road. “It came out of nowhere.”

  The sudden darkness forced Billy to glance up from his book. “Holy shit.”

  Rain drummed the roof with such ferocity it was deafening, and Tory finally came awake. “What’s with the waterworks?” he asked through a yawn.

  As the car rolled to a stop, Stefan dropped the shift into park and sat back, relieved. “We ran into a little unexpected storm.”

  “Cool.” Tory pulled a joint from his side pocket. “Let’s get lightly toasted.”

  “Do not light that in here,” Stefan snapped. “If the rain doesn’t let up, I’ll have to drive in this shit, which should be enough of a bitch without being stoned out of my mind, Okay?”

  Tory slid the joint behind his ear. “Sorry.”

  “Hey, commander,” Billy said with a smirk, “Okay with you if I smoke a butt?”

  Stefan rubbed his eyes. “You know, I was just thinking this situation needed a little more sarcasm.”

  Billy lit a cigarette. “I do what I can.”

  The rain stopped. Suddenly, as it had begun.

  Water sluiced along the windows and windshield, parted by the wipers to reveal sunshine. “Okay,” Alex said, “I’m glad that wasn’t too weird.”

  Stefan looked to the sky. The blue, cloudless canopy had returned in all its grandeur. “Must’ve just been a freak downpour.”

  “No harm no foul.” Billy exhaled a stream of smoke at the back of his head and slid his wayfarers on. “Let’s hit it, Magellan.”

  As Stefan reached for the shift, a moving blur appeared just beyond the windshield, a black smudge hurtling toward them that swooped down so fast they didn’t have time to process it or react.

  The blackbird smashed head-first into the windshield with a loud and sickening thud that shook the entire car.

  Alex screamed and Stefan ducked, raising his hands defensively as blood sprayed the windshield and the animal fell away, rolled off the hood and toppled to the pavement. A small hairline crack in the glass appeared, smeared with gore.

  “Oh my God!”

  “What the hell was that, a bird?”

  “Oh my God!”

  “Is everybody all right?”

  “Did you see that?”

  “Jesus, that scared the shit out of me!”

  Stefan opened his door and stepped out, nearly falling in his haste, but as he rounded the front of the car, he came to a sudden stop.

  The bird was gone. Except for the blood smears on the windshield, there was no trace of it whatsoever.

  Stefan crouched and checked beneath the vehicle. Nothing.

  “Where is it?” Alex asked, trembling hands to her mouth.

  “I don’t know, I— There’s no way it could’ve survived that impact.” Stefan pointed to the windshield. “Look at the blood.”

  “Maybe it’s just, like, stunned,” Tory suggested, “and—”

  “No, that—that bird was dead,” Alex insisted, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye. “You heard how hard it hit us. I saw the poor thing’s neck break.”

  Throughout, Billy remained quiet. Positioned in the breakdown lane a few feet from the front of the car, he faced the windshield and smoked his cigarette without comment, eyes masked by sunglasses.

  Stefan ran his hands through his hair. “So where the hell is it?”

  “This kind of thing happens sometimes.”

  The others turned to Billy in unison.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The old folks in my family, my grandmother and all the ones born back in Italy used to talk about this kind of thing when I was a kid. It’s superstition from the old country. When a bird hits a window then disappears, it’s a harbinger.”

  Alex hugged herself. “Of what?”

  Billy flicked the cigarette away then turned toward the highway. “Death.”

  There were still no other cars in sight, and but for a gentle breeze that blew through the trees and across the highway, the road was eerily silent.

  “You can’t honestly believe that nonsense,” Stefan scoffed. “Let’s all just calm down. Obviously the bird wasn’t killed.”

  “You just got through saying there was no way it could survive the impact,” Alex reminded him. “Which is it, Stefan?”

  “Well obviously, Alexis, the goddamn thing’s still alive, isn’t it? It has to be. I don’t see how but apparently it survived. There’s no other explanation. It certainly didn’t vanish into thin air. Can we agree on that or have you collectively lost your minds?”

  She drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Yeah, you—you’re right—of course. I bet it got caught in that storm and was disoriented. It must’ve limped off into the woods or—”

  “That’s bullshit and you both know it.”

  “Billy, please.” Stefan waved his hand, shooing him away. “A bird flew into the car and startled us. Clearly it was injured but survived. There’s nothing else to discuss unless you expect us to believe a bunch of old wives’ tales.”

  “I always thought it was superstition too. But listen to this. When I was twelve, I was sitting in the kitchen with my parents having breakfast one morning, and all of a sudden this blackbird flew right into the window over the sink. It hit so hard it spattered blood all over the pane. Just like this, there was no way it could’ve lived through it. I went outside with my father to pick up the body and get rid of it. Only there wasn’t any body. The bird was gone. We were still looking when my mother called out for us to come back inside because my aunt was on the phone. My grandmother had just died.”

  “Radical,” Tory said in a loud, awestruck whisper.

  “It’s known as a coincidence. They happen all the time.” Stefan indicated a road leading off the highway not far from where they’d pulled over. “Is that an exit?”

  “There’s no sign,” Alex said. “Might be a service road, I’m not sure.”

  “Why don’t we get off the highway and go find somewhere to eat?” Stefan moved back toward the car. “We can take a break and recharge our batteries before we make the last push to Bar Harbor. Sound good?”

  As Tory climbed into the backseat and Stefan slid behind the wheel, Alex approached Billy and put a hand on his shoulder. She’d never known him to be easily rattled or intimidated. If anything, he often behaved with recklessness that bordered on insanity. “Are you Okay?”

  Billy looked at her, saying nothing.

  “If it makes you feel any better, it spooked me too.” She offered an empathetic smile. “But we can’t stand out here all day because a bird hit the windshield. The sooner we get back in the car and on the road, the sooner we can get to the resort and forget about this.”

  He remained silent.

  “Please, Billy. Let’s just go, Okay?”

  Finally, he gave a halfhearted nod, and together, they returned to the car.

  Chapter Three

  Though the road bore no exit sign, by the time they’d gotten to it they could see it wasn’t a service road but rather an alternate route from the highway that clearly led somewhere. They followed the winding off-ramp into a heavily wooded area that eventually ended at a stop sign intersected by a single, larger road. Directly
across from the sign, a weather-beaten billboard read: Boxer Hills. Pop. 180.

  “Boxer Hills,” Stefan said. “Never heard of that one before.”

  “There are lots of tiny towns tucked away up here,” Alex explained, “the kind of places that generally go unnoticed unless you happen to run into them. They’re even more common the farther north you go. Some places don’t even have names. They’re identified by numbers on maps.”

  “Enchanting.” Stefan rolled his eyes and turned left at the stop sign. “Let’s just hope they have a restaurant in this burg.”

  The country road cut through more thick forest, continuing on for several miles before emptying into what appeared to be the town’s main street.

  “Civilization!” Alex announced as she sat forward and grabbed the dash.

  Stefan removed his sunglasses for a better look. “Hardly.”

  They drove down the main drag, a remarkably small stretch of road, either side of which was lined with expertly pruned trees. A modest but beautiful park with a sizeable gazebo at its center dominated the first block, followed by an antiquated-looking post office and police station. A weathered general store that resembled something out of a Norman Rockwell painting sat at the end of the street. From its old wooden porch and stairs to its squat, rectangular design, to the bay window segregated into small square panes facing the street, right down to the dirt parking lot, it—like the entire street—could’ve easily passed for a movie set from the 1940s.

  A few additional buildings were sprinkled along another street just beyond the General Store, including a quaint Victorian-style library. Next door sat an unassuming firehouse, followed by a dilapidated gas station with a garage and one antique pump. At the end of the street, a windowless stone structure that appeared to be a church of some kind rounded out Boxer Hills’s downtown area.

  “Great,” Stefan sighed, “we’re in fucking Mayberry.”