“Damn it!” Jessica froze in the middle of the street as the car barreled toward her. “Slow down!” She waved her arms at the motorist, but the car just kept coming.
It slammed into her, and everything slowed down to a crawl. Air rushed from her lungs as her eyes met the driver’s startled gaze. Her body crumpled against the windshield and bounced off the hood, landing on the pavement. The loud crack of her skull hitting the pavement barely registered.
Jess lay in the street watching the red tail lights speed by and fade into the distance. Was this how the dog felt as its life drained out? Wracking pain turned to blinding numbness as cold crept into her body, dragging her down into the darkness. Into silence.
* * *
“I don’t know, Virgil. She’s kind of a mess.”
“We need someone to do the job. Unless you’re volunteering.”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so.”
“Is this protocol?”
“She doesn’t belong here. Send her back. She’ll do it.”
“Fine.”
The voices stirred Jessica from the quiet warmth and she snuggled in deeper. “Dad … turn down the TV. I’m trying to sleep.”
“Jessica. Time to wake up.”
Irritation spiked through her. “Dad, come on!” Jessica growled, sitting up. “Please, just let me sleep ...”
Blinking, her eyes becoming adjusted to a cold bright light, she found herself staring at an imposing gray haired man in white robes. A younger man with a shock of dark hair, in similar garments, stood next to him.
“You’re not my dad,” she said.
“No.” The older man smiled.
She rested on a white bed of something that looked suspiciously like clouds. No freaking way. She raised her sore arm and gingerly touched the back of her head. It hurt. A lot.
“Ow.” When she drew her hand back, it was covered in blood.
“Don’t worry,” he told her. “You won’t feel it for long.”
Jess frowned. “What happened? Where am I?”
“Time to go back. Good luck.”
She barely had time to register his words, and then she was falling.
* * *
The wind whipped through her hair. She screamed, gravity pulling her down. Faster. The pavement rose to meet her, coming closer and closer. Inches before she would have connected, something froze her fall.
Her back began to itch and burn. “Ow!” She flexed her muscles and something shifted behind her. She turned, expecting to see someone.
Nothing. Wiggling her back, she rotated her shoulder blades to try and dislodge the uncomfortable pressure. Out of the corner of her eye she saw muddy gray feathers expanding into huge fans. “What the fuck?”
“Nice wings,” said an unfamiliar voice.
“What?” Jess looked around and saw she was on the same lonely stretch of highway next to Fossil Lake.
It was almost like she had never left. Her car was still there, lights carving a path in the darkness. The body of the beagle rested next to the tarp. She trudged back toward the dead animal and tried to shake off the uneasy feeling that her world had completely shifted off its axis.
The sudden sharp memory of the car hitting her made her gasp. Horrified, her eyes scanned the street and found her own body lying in a heap on the concrete.
Am I dead? She reached down and pinched the pale flesh of her arm. Pain radiated across her skin.
“Okay, not completely,” she said. “Um. Okay.”
Now she was hearing voices and blacking out with freaky visions. God, that’s my body on the street! She stood there, gaping. This night was getting better and better all the time. God, she just wanted to go home, pop a bag of microwave popcorn in the nuker and have a beer. A really big one.
A fine mist began to fall and she shivered as the tee shirt and jeans she was wearing dampened. Her sneakers squished as she stepped into a puddle from the earlier rain.
Great.
Dead body. Deserted road. Middle of the night. Wings. Oh wow.
Her mind folded in on itself. Why the hell was she standing out here in the middle of nowhere? This was not going to end well. She was pretty damn sure of that.
Where’d I leave my phone? I need to call Dad!
He was probably home by now, wondering when she was going to get off her shift at the diner. Or fallen asleep on the couch.
She didn’t see her phone, but saw the shovel and bent to pick it up.
At least I can still touch things. That’s good.
The unfamiliar voice spoke again. “Are you going to help me, here? Or am I supposed to wait for the next one?”
“Who said that?”
“Down here.” A light touch of cold went down her leg as something brushed against her jeans.
Jess jumped. Standing at her feet was the translucent, silvery form of a beagle. Or, rather, two parts of a beagle. And one was talking.
“Is this a joke?” she asked.
“Seeing as how I’m dead and so are you, I wouldn’t say that it was a joke. No.” The beagle glanced over at his body by the tarp. “You need to send me home, okay?”
“How do I do that?” Jess snorted. “Look for some red shoes and click my heels together?”
The beagle gave her a cross look. “Didn’t they teach you anything while you were gone?”
“Um, no. I woke up, I fell, and now I have these ugly gray wings.” She shook her shoulders and said wings flexed and retracted against her back. “Oh, and apparently I’m just as dead as you.”
The beagle rolled his doggy eyes and dragged the bottom half of its spectral body so it could sit down next to her. “Well, not quite as dead. You’re holding the shovel, aren’t you? That’s something.” At her baffled expression, the beagle cocked its head. “Look, maybe you’re here for a purpose.”
“What? Wiping up carnage for all eternity. Nice.” Jess scowled and kicked at a rock in the road.
What am I supposed to do now? My body is lying in the street! Should I call someone? What the hell would I say?
“You really are a smartass for an angel.”
“Angel?” Jess laughed harshly. “ Now that is funny. Sorry. I’m a little cranky. Dying will do that to a girl.”
“Someone’s coming.” The beagle squinted at the bright but distant lights speeding down the deserted street and mewled deep in his throat.
Jess’s fingers began to tingle. She looked at the headlights and something deep in her gut tightened, fierce and visceral.
“It’s the same car,” she whispered, awareness flooding through her. “I feel it. The blood. It’s calling me.”
She flexed her fingers and made a fist, nails cutting into her palm. The freakishness of the moment should have alarmed her, but instead it solidified everything that had happened.
“Yeah. You can wash the blood away, but it still connects with you, you know?” The beagle growled under his breath, gazing out into the darkness at the ghostly shapes dotted along the stretch of highway. “He hit me. Most of the others too. Can you see them? Every time he comes this way, we’re drawn to the road. We watch, but there is nothing we can do.” He looked up at her mournfully. “Until you that is.”
The center of her back itched and her wings grew heavy, aching to fly. She wanted to catch the fucker and make him pay. Rage filtered through her, powerful and sudden. She stalked toward the road, her stride brisk.
Her newfound connection with the dead alive in her being, she called to the animals and they came. All shapes and sizes, they crept onto the forbidden territory of the road, the place that had been their unfortunate demise. Their ghostly forms flickered in the darkness, a sea of ghost lights.
“God, how many are there?” she whispered.
“Too many,” the beagle said. “He comes this way every day at least once. He aims for them.”
Jess’s mouth curved in a terrible smile. “My turn.”
She reached out to the dead, their blood mingling
on the advancing unholy car.
“Come,” she called. “We take what belongs to us.”
The animals converged. Their forms solidified, becoming flesh for a wild hunt once more. Howls rent the night air as the hissing of cats and barking of dogs merged with the trumpeting of deer and the chattering of squirrels and raccoons. Their eyes glowed red in the darkness, staring with malicious intent at the vehicle barreling down on them.
Jess heard music blaring from the speakers, the sound stabbing through the quiet night.
Why’d he come back? To make sure I was dead?
Anger coiled inside her, hot and vicious. Clenching her teeth, she opened her wings and took a step forward. The hunt followed, powerless victims no more. The hunted had become the hunter, and their prey approached.
Headlights washed over Jess’s body as the car came closer and closer. He had to see her. There was no way he didn’t. Uncharted rage spread through Jess and she broke into a run, meeting the car at full speed, her new powers giving her strength she never knew she had. Her sneakered feet pounded the pavement. As the car roared down the highway in her direction, Jess snarled and leaped, using her newfound wings as leverage. She landed on the hood.
She saw the driver’s wide eyes meet hers through the windshield, read a silent, “What the fuck?” on his lips.
Her wings spread to their full span, blinding him, blocking his view.
There was nowhere to go. He jerked the car to the left and Jess held on, her wings acting like sails in the midst of a storm. As the driver stepped on the brakes, the car went into a spin and collided with a tree close to the side of the road. Jess sprang high from the impact. The front of the car merged with the massive oak, accordion-style.
She hovered above, wings supporting her. The driver, hollering in pain and anger, struggled in the wreckage. It held him fast. Jess descended again onto the crunched hood. He stared at her with disbelief, then at the horde of animals surrounding the car.
“Oh, God!” he cried.
“Exactly.” She brought the shovel down onto the cracked windshield with full force. Glass shattered, a shower of fragments exploding inward.
The driver screamed. “You! You bitch! I killed you!” His voice was high and full of terror. He gave a futile swipe at his eyes.”You’re dead. So are the rest of you. Fucking road kill!”
Jess smiled a terrible smile and let her wings open to their full expanse.
“Come and get him.”
The wild hunt converged on the car, their rotting bodies crowding against the sides of the vehicle, mouths gaping in want. Teeth and claws ready to dispense justice, they moved forward, a mass of ghostly energy turned feral and very, very real.
A half-skeletonized buck gouged at the driver through the open window and several points connected with the man’s bloodied face. The buck let out a satisfied bellow. Undead squirrels and raccoons swarmed inside to scratch and bite at tender flesh. The beagle howled and the dogs and cats joined the fray.
The sounds of ripping and tearing rose into the night. Jess hummed as the flood of creatures that had been wronged took their vengeance. In minutes the passenger door was dislodged and hanging open, the driver’s lifeless body spilled out in the dirt.
With their terrible task completed, the animals began to drift again into a spectral state. Soon, they had returned to where they lay in death, waiting for Jess to find them at last. Only the beagle remained by her side.
She flicked her damp hair out of her eyes and surveyed the mess, then looked down at him. “I need to bury you, I guess.”
“Can you send me home first? I really don’t want to watch.”
Jess bent and patted the ghostly dog. “You got a name, boy?”
His silvery tail wagged. “Bernie.”
“Thanks, Bernie.” Jess smiled and fluffed his ear. “You were a great help. I couldn’t have done it without you.”
With a deep sigh, he rubbed his head against her leg, then vanished into the eternal night.
She sucked in a breath and blinked against the tears that threatened to fall.
Alone again.
Something in the distance drew her gaze, tearing her from her melancholy. She saw several more flickering wisps along the lake and highway.
The others were waiting. This wasn’t over. Not by a long shot.
The blood of the innocent called to her from the long and winding road around Fossil Lake. Jess brushed off her jeans and ruffled her wings.
She walked with purpose toward the lights, an avenging angel, shovel in hand.
SILVER SCREEN SHADOWS
Mathias Jansson
Shadows are moving on my wall
Characters moving and falling
Behind the shower curtain
Blood stains flows
Black feathers snows
In my isolation cell
The wall a rear window
To a place of insanity
On the hill the house
In the window my mother
Waving to me
That night I sewed my first
Lampshade of lips
Nitrate was burning
In the projector light
And shadows danced on the silver screen
Only for me
C-C-COLD
Ken Goldman
Just past the Busk Ivanhoe Tunnel, where the slim road practically disappeared, Matthew turned to Sharon. “The Snowcats will plow through this fucker. They’ll be by any minute, just wait and see.”
Three days spent shattering his marriage vows (again) had given Matthew the assurance that Mother Nature herself would happily bend over for him, too.
Sharon did not seem as assured. “I don’t see any Snowcats. Or any tire tracks. I doubt anyone’s crazy enough to come out here in this mess.”
Bitter cold air from the north filtered through Colorado’s mountain canyons into its basins and valleys to the south. It spilled over the mountain range, funneling through gulches and ridges, gathering strength. Wind speeds reached 75 mph, shredding even the sturdiest cabin roofs while taking down power and telephone lines. Fierce gusts conspired with thick snow squalls creating one bastard of a blizzard.
It had somehow managed to sneak past local forecasters and their meteorological charts to say howdy to the handful of dumbfounded weekend skiers attempting to maneuver jeeps and SUVs through the tricky passes that snaked their way through the Rockies.
“How well do you know this road?” she asked.
The ‘road’ was not really a road at all. Anyone having a passing familiarity with the mountainous terrain knew this half paved rock ridden passage was more of an elaborate trail. And during the winter months when the snow flew, it hardly could be called that.
“Hey, I know this region like the back of my hand - - or your magnificent cooch, lover.”
The truth was that this rampaging storm had transformed the terrain into an unrecognizable moonscape an Arctic expedition would have difficulty maneuvering. Matthew turned on the weather station.
“ . . . vehicles can get only about a mile past the water tunnel above Fossil Lake on the Leadville side. Deep snow has fallen up high so it will be awhile before the road opens. First heavy snow warnings have been posted along the trail at 11,510 feet before the ski hut . . .”
“We’re past that marker, Matthew. Damn!”
He already knew that much. Punching off the radio, he also knew that what threatened to bury his Trail Blazer was no longer snow. In under an hour’s time, it had become deep shit.
“We’re into a full white out here, babe. I can’t even see the moon. I think we may have to pull over and wait this out.” He reached for his cellular to inform his wife he would be late, but quickly decided against making the call. What was happening outside proved difficult enough. He didn't feel like starting another storm inside.
“If we get stuck here . . . I mean, if anyone finds us together . . .”
To the world, Matthew’s professional
relationship with Ms. Sharon Weist had lasted a mere fifteen minutes the previous winter, when she had shown him and Andrea some Arvada lake front property. What followed was pure serendipity, a chance meeting with the lovely young realtor at Starbucks that escalated into innocent flirtation, a stolen kiss or two eventually paying off with some nooners.
For almost a year, they had managed to pull off the occasional clandestine weekend. If he were caught in the middle of nowhere sharing this covert rendezvous with her, Matthew would have some clever explaining to do. But Sharon specialized in closing the big deals, and after months spent banging bones, maybe she figured their getting discovered might not prove such a bad thing after all.
Matthew’s cellular chirped. His attention remained fixed on what he could see through the windshield, but he felt Sharon’s stare boring in on him.
“Aren’t you going to answer it?”
Having no choice he put the cell to his ear.
“Hi, honey . . . Yes, I’m just heading home now. Hit a little snow, is all, so I’ll be late. No, babe, don’t wait up. I’ll warm up whatever you’ve got in the fridge. Yeah, skiing was really great. Kiss Derek goodnight for me, okay? Yes, I’m fine, really. Driving’s not so bad. Listen, you’re fading a bit. I’ll see you in the morning. Love you.”
Sharon’s silence turned deafening. Without looking, Matthew knew the expression that had crossed her face, a face that did not remain beautiful when she felt pissed. Hoping to deflect the elephant in his Trail Blazer, he went for the fake-out.
“I can phone my sports column in to the office tomorrow –”
“Maybe you should call your wife back first, tell your Andrea about those other slopes you’ve been hitting while she’s been home changing diapers, hey?”
“Very funny. Let me drive, okay? I can’t see for shit.”
“No, Matthew. You really can’t.”
Recognizing his no-win situation, he didn’t want to make an uncomfortable moment worse. But if Sharon were testing him to determine just how much testosterone he had, then he would have to show her.
Fossil Lake: An Anthology of the Aberrant Page 4