He had left Louisiana and was crossing Texas. It was a dusty, rugged landscape. He compared it to the surface of the moon. The towns were sparse and far between. It was September, but the air felt as super-heated as a cast iron frying pan over high flame. Ahead of him a shimmering on the tarmac made it seem there were wide puddles of gray-blue water. Just the sight of those mirages made him cooler. He thirsted, lifting a hand to his brow to shield the sun’s rays. He spied a café-grocery-gas station ahead and began to walk faster. The food Marva had packed for him was long gone. He had eaten nothing the day before and had drunk nothing since morning when he found a hand-pump at a farmer’s cattle tank.
The place was called Ed’s Gas Station and Café. Nick burst through the glass door, out of breath and sweating. He saw a man behind a lunch counter, wiping it with a wet cloth.
“Howdy, stranger. Take a load off.” The man indicated the swivel stools at the counter.
Nick slumped onto a stool and said, “Can I have a glass of water?”
“Sure thing.” The man dropped the wash rag into a sink of sudsy water. He served Nick a tall glass of water with ice. “Hot out there!”
“It is that all right.” Nick emptied the glass, handed it over and the man refilled it.
“I’ll take a hamburger and fries and a vanilla milkshake, if you have it,” Nick said, wiping water droplets from his mouth.
While the man cooked the meal at the grill behind the counter, he kept up a running monologue. There was no one else in the small establishment and it seemed the cook was happy to see another human soul.
“Walking? Hitchhiking?” he asked. When Nick nodded, he said, “Well, stranger, there’s a lot of people doing that these days, just taking to the roads on foot. It’s a long haul across Texas, though, and I think of my place as an oasis in the desert.”
“I’d call it that, too,” Nick agreed.
“Where you from?”
Nick could have said I’m from the right hand of God, or from the dark and terrifying void, or I’m from England or Charlotte, North Carolina. He said instead, “Back east.”
“That’s a long walk. Where you going?”
Nick could not say. “I don’t know for sure.”
“I see, one of those. Some come in here heading for Arizona, others mean to trek all the way to California. But you’re leaving your options open, I take it?”
“That’s right.” A plate was set before Nick and his mouth filled with saliva before he could take a bite of the hamburger. It was a full three inches tall, stacked with a big burger patty, lettuce, tomato, the works. He could hardly get it into his mouth. He thought he might faint just from the good smell of it.
While he ate, Ed told him about how he’d come to be in this place. He, too, had come here from somewhere else. “Peoria, Illinois,” he said, “land of Lincoln.
“Found this café and gas station on a road trip west. It was gonna close, due to not enough business, and I picked it up for a song. I made payments on it up until two years ago, when I paid the whole place off. It don’t get much business, that’s for sure, but I like the peacefulness of it. I like the sunlight streaming down ninety-nine days out of a hundred. I even like the dust storms. They come out of the north, kicking up sand and rolling tumble weeds, smacking everything before it, layering it all with sand until it looks like Egypt. Or what I think Egypt might look like.” He grinned and balled the wash rag into his fist.
Nick finished up his meal, slurped the last of the frosty milkshake, and sat back, his hands still on the counter. “So you live here all alone?”
“I do. Couldn’t find a woman would wait tables here, much less marry an old coot like me. But that’s all right. Like I said, I like the peace and quiet. A woman now, woman’s not going to be peaceable and keep her mouth shut, woman wants to go shopping, see a movie at the theater sometimes, wants high heel shoes and cars with leather seats. I can’t promise none of that. Therefore, they want none of me.”
Nick let him talk, enjoying the company. Ed advised him on the road ahead and made up a package of beef jerky, potato chips, and a water thermos for his trip. For a bit Nick thought about staying put, asking for a little work from Ed, but something niggled at his brain, urging him to walk on. It wasn’t that he felt Angelique at his back. But he did feel her and he knew she was coming in search of him. She couldn’t do otherwise. She felt she had too much invested and he’d betrayed her by leaving. She felt he owed her his life, and in a way he did, this life, but not enough to stay at her side while she murdered and marauded and sinned like the demon she was, with him as her silent witness. Then there was what she'd done to Mary, his poor Mary, lying staked and naked in the moonlight, half out of her mind...
“I want to thank you, Ed, you’re a lifesaver.” Nick held out his hand to shake.
“Stop in on your way back one day,” Ed said. “I need all the business I can get.” He smiled, showing yellowing teeth and the tip of a pink tongue.
When Nick left the café, it was afternoon. He wouldn’t get far before night covered the land and snakes came out to cool themselves on the highway in the light of the stars. Nick welcomed the twilight that lowered the roasting temperature by thirty degrees so the sweat dried between his shoulders. Ahead he could see the silhouettes of mountains and not a light anywhere on the land stretching ahead. It was desolate, empty, bare of green vegetation. Pebbles littered the rust red chalky dirt along the highway and shallow ditches ran next to telephone poles stretching out across the lowering darkness.
Nick walked on, breathing in the cooled air, going over his conversation with Ed. It really was a peaceful part of the country. Uninhabited except by reptile, wolf, coyote, and hawk. Inhospitable to man, but a welcome retreat for the lower beasts and angels on the run…
#
Angelique cursed God with every step she took. On her own, on the road, she had to hide in ditches and behind tall grass or trees anytime a car came past. She felt she was on the right path, though, to find Nisroc. It wasn’t anything definable, nothing she could see or touch. Just a feeling that pulled her like an invisible rope tied round her waist, tugging her forward, heading west.
She couldn’t hitchhike. She couldn’t take public transportation. Not a child alone. And she hadn’t time to find and train an adult to stand in as a parent. This time she was on her own for real. She didn't like it, not at all. She hated it.
She remembered the last time she had been so alone. The days when she hid in the mountainside cave on the island after Columbus came. Her own mind her only company. She had nearly gone mad before she made contact with the Spaniards. Her mind had teetered on the edge of madness with her thoughts going in and out of a conscious state and dreaming. Reality glittered like a mirage so that she felt she could reach out and touch it, shattering the illusion for all time, leaving her like the walking dead, senseless, insane.
“You sorry example of godhood,” she muttered, talking to a god she knew might not be listening. “Throw me out, thwart my tries to bring more of my kind to earth, and now turn Nisroc against me. I know it’s Your doing, You have a hand in it someway. He never would have turned his back on me if he hadn’t started changing. And You made him change, didn’t You? You’re the one responsible for this.”
She gnawed the inside of her cheek and wiped sweat from her brow. The road was paved, but nearly empty. Someone drove by only every now and then. Deep woods lined both sides of the road and the sun overhead seemed to follow the road from east to west, watching over the little shadow below.
She had not eaten all day. The night before she had caught a mouse that tried to sneak up on her prone body where she slept next to a log in the woods. She ate the rodent, fur and all, bones, guts, and blood. She was not particular about what she ate, only that she gave the body fuel to keep going. Nothing, no matter how disgusting, could turn her stomach and make her retch. She had that much control over the body ever since she’d taken it.
She needed water more th
an food. She couldn’t control the specific needs the human body demanded, though she could go longer than any human without these necessities. Still, she needed water. Food. Without those, eventually she would wither and die just like everyone else.
The woods were thinning and ahead she could see pastures and farmland. Maybe she’d find a house, sneak close enough to pump some water. Or a lake, a river crossing…a puddle. She’d drink anything at this point, her mouth so dry her tongue kept sticking to the roof of her mouth.
Toward evening, once out in the open, land lying straight and flat ahead of her, she saw thunderclouds approaching. The air, full of new damp, cooled her hot skin. She could feel beads of sweat dry and watched as spots of sweat evaporated on her arms leaving circles lighter than her flesh, sweat freckles, she thought. She sat down next to the highway and waited for rain.
When it came it was a gully-washer. Water fell like a silver curtain and Angelique leaned back her head and lapped at the falling water like a cat. Water covered her face, soaked her in a minute, and puddled in her little black shoes.
She walked on, the near darkness and the rain hiding her from people in the few and far between farm houses. Around midnight she crept into an open barn and climbed into the hay loft. She fell asleep with both hands under the side of her head as a pillow.
When morning came, a breaking dawn cool and wet, rays of light spreading across the near fields, Angelique woke to the sound of someone in the barn. She crawled to the ladder and peeked down. A boy around her age drew a hand wagon in his wake and carried a pitchfork. He dropped the wagon’s handle to the ground with a bang when he got to a hay bale and began to fork over hay into the conveyance.
“You,” Angelique called softly. “Hey you.”
The boy jerked and hay fell off the pitchfork. He glanced up. His eyes were the same deep, dark brown color as his shaggy, long hair. Those dark pools were filled with fear until he saw it was just a girl.
“What’re you doing up there?” He couldn’t keep the slight tinge of fear out of his voice.
She swung to the ladder rungs and came down. She threw back her head. “I need some food. Got any?”
He stood watching her. “Where’s your folks?” He looked up the ladder as if he thought they were in the loft yet.
“Got none. But I bet you do. Can you get me something to eat without them knowing? I can’t let grown-ups know I’m alone.”
He studied her, the tangled hair, the wet and mud-streaked dress, the shoes all scuffed and worn. He seemed to make a silent decision. “I guess I could,” he said.
She watched him leave the barn. He looked back at her twice, a frown showing beneath the hair falling forward over his eyes. If he told his parents, she’d see them coming and take the back exit.
But he proved to be a good boy.
Angelique soon had a biscuit in one fist and a thick slab of baked ham in the other. Ham juice ran down between her fingers. She wolfed the food like a starving animal. This caused the boy to step back. “Gosh,” he said.
“I told you I was hungry. Now I’m going to sneak out of here. Your folks still in the house?”
He nodded.
“You won’t tell?”
He shook his head.
“Well, just in case you change your mind, here…” She reached out touching his cheek just before he could snap his head away. He stood frozen, her hand on his face, his eyes glazing over. He swayed on his feet and she caught his arm to keep him from tumbling over.
“There,” she said, satisfied. She took a moment to contemplate the idea that came to her. If only she had been a real girl, instead of an entity controlling a child’s body, she could have stayed a while and played with the boy. Played a child’s game—hide and seek maybe. Played as if she did not know the turning of the world and the machinations that kept it on an even axis.
She turned and ran from the barn, throwing aside the thoughts that racked her mind. She was not a child; she had never been a child. Not ever.
She knew the boy was watching, but he wouldn’t remember her or stealing the food from his mother’s kitchen. He wouldn’t remember a thing.
CHAPTER 22
WESTWARD TRAVEL, HO
A farmer picked up Nick and took him twenty miles west. Afterward he walked three more miles before the sun set. He slept at the base of a lone leafy tree that grew near a dried waterbed. The next day he caught a ride with a traveling salesman who took him out of the state of Texas and dropped him off in a little town in New Mexico. Nick found Mexican food at a little cart parked on the street—soft tacos filled with shredded pork and peppers. After walking a while, he found and rented a room at a dusty courtyard motel called Piney Inn. There he showered and slept the sleep of the dead until late morning.
When he woke he realized he had done little thinking or planning for his future. He counted the money he had left and knew it would last a month, maybe two if he was careful. But eventually he would have to stop traveling and make more money. He knew Arizona lay beyond New Mexico and decided that is where he would stop, at least for a while. He was now several states away from Angelique. He had a short reprieve from her, affording him enough time to gather himself and replenish his resources. He couldn't chance going into a bank and requesting money from their accounts in Charlotte. Angelique would be watching for that.
It took him two more days of walking and hitchhiking to get to Phoenix. It was a dusty town, hot baking tarmac and buildings that looked naked and stunned under the relentless sun. It felt like a warehouse town, a sprawling outpost in the desert. He found quarters in a rooming house right away, the next day secured a job with a grocer, and settled in to think about where he was going.
#
Another young man worked at Peeble’s Grocery. Knowing no strangers, only friends, he struck up a fast friendship with Nick. Holding out a hand the size of a slab of beef steak he said, “Hiya, I’m Dodge, Dodge Carter. Where you hanging your hat in town?”
Nick liked him immediately. Not only because he was so open and friendly, but because the look in his eyes said, I’m trustworthy. I’m exactly what you see, that’s what you get. I’m not going to be a problem to anybody.
He was a big boy, over six feet-three inches tall with shoulders like a football linebacker. His hair was sandy blonde, his eyes a cool green. When he smiled his mouth went lopsided, giving his big-jawed, stubble-bearded face a charming, innocent look.
The first night in town, Dodge took him to a bar after work at the grocery. While playing three games of pool, Nick learned all about his new friend’s past.
“Been on my own since I was fifteen,” Dodge said, but there was no self-pity in the confession. “My folks wanted to head back to Oklahoma, where we’d come from when I was six, and I didn’t want to go. Phoenix ain’t no New York City, but it’s better than a forty acre farm in the middle of Okie nowhere, I tell you that.”
“They let you stay behind alone at fifteen?” Nick asked.
Dodge shrugged. “Had no choice but to leave me. I ran off from home while they were still packing.” He grinned and that lopsided smile caused Nick to smile back.
“I honked around this town for almost a year, picking up a little money doing yard chores, running errands, selling newspapers. I slept in culverts and cleaned up in gas station men’s rooms. When I was sixteen I came by Peeble’s and checked in for whatever work they might have. Mr. Peeble took a direct interest in me being on my own and all. He put me in a little apartment he had over his garage, gave me work, and look at me now. I'm a real made man. I’m the produce man, the produce manager himself, king of the cucumbers and watermelons!”
Nick laughed with his new friend, liking him very much.
Dodge and Nick made the pool playing a weekly event. Dodge didn’t have a steady girlfriend, much to his chagrin, and the two young men got along so well.
Then came the night when Evil walked through the door of Peebles Grocery. Dodge was acting manager on the night shift,
Nick worked stocking shelves, and a lone cashier filed her nails between the few customers who ventured out after dark. It would be an hour before they closed.
In walked two boys, not yet eighteen by the looks of them, and the one in the lead had the eyes. They were dark with death. The boy was not on drugs or liquor, nor was he in some kind of emotional rage left over from some kind of argument. No, Nick could see the look in this boy’s eyes came from deep inside where it had been festering for years, maybe eons. He was in no way supernatural. He was deeply human and a born killer.
Passing the cashier, ignoring her, and she ignoring them, they walked down the aisle past Nick. They both wore long brown dusters, and both were Hispanic. The one with the look in his eyes was taller, broader, but still under six foot. His hair was cut in ragged patches as if an insane barber had been wielding the scissors. The boy who followed behind had a scared rabbit look on his face, which made him almost as dangerous as his buddy.
Nick stood from where he was crouched before a shelf, two cans of green peas in his hand. He almost threw them at the boys; his muscles contracted, his instinct was to bring on an assault. Instead, he set the cans on the shelf carefully and followed the boys who had turned the aisle corner and were out of sight.
Nick’s heart raced. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t been around evil humans before. He had stopped or averted several attacks on both himself and Angelique over the long years they had been together. The evil ones in the human population were fewer than other humans believed. To be truly evil, a person had to give up all that was decent and compassionate in his soul. Such a person gave up the most human part of himself—his conscience. Not that many were able to really eradicate all vestiges of love, hope, and desire for approval. When they did, that’s when evil creeped in and took hold, killing the good soul, and the conscience that controlled that soul, little by little until it vanished forever.
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