by Rio Youers
He licked his lips with a chuckle and returned his stinging eyes to the road.
A fog lay ahead.
Thick as cotton, swallowing the path.
Slow swirls like beckoning fingers called Tony to gun the bike and slam right on in. Penetrate the unknown . . . for The Thrill.
The ball of anticipation in his guts turned to a rock of fear and Tony’s hand eased back the accelerator. He slowed to a stop just before the wall of white, something in the back of his brain screaming a warning. The air was warmer here, moist.
The wall of fog reached for him, curling out and dissipating, never spilling over its invisible threshold.
He glanced back the way he’d come, a good fifteen miles from town. Nocturnal creatures chittered in the thicket, but other than them, he was alone here. He could make it through the fog if he cut the crap and took it slow, eased himself along and tried not to think of the damn otherworldly warmth oozing from the stuff. He’d call round to Henry’s in the morning, explain what he saw and get an answer. Henry knew plenty of trivial things, kept him king at the local pub quizzes.
“And you better have an answer for me, Henry, because this shit’s givin’ me the creeps.”
Tony rolled the Dyna forward, and the fog enveloped him.
The sudden increase in temperature sent a shiver through him and Tony’s teeth chattered. Not at all unpleasant, and that in itself was somehow . . . unpleasant. Unnatural, more like, he thought. But how could it be unnatural? There ain’t no factory belchin’ shit out here, no one burnin’ nothin’ or I’d smell it, no swamps . . . just woods.
The fog eased back a touch, revealing a sliver of road before his front tire, dishing out just enough to lead him forward. The road steepened, calling Henry to give a little more power, and the Dyna roared to take on the challenge. He imagined a sudden bend, one that sneaked out of the white and caught him off guard, and imagined the unexpected plunge through the icy night air . . . suddenly The Thrill had turned to fear, his adrenaline congealed to sickness. And what about a sneaky rock or downed tree in the path? Those would send him off into the unknown, too. Anything could if he wasn’t careful.
He blinked, clearing his vision, the fog in his head competing with the fog on the road. He shouldn’t have drank today. He knew better. Knew Lisa would smash his teeth in at the whiff of booze.
A scream cut through the fog, high and shrill. Tony’s arm hair rose to attention. He eased on the brake and slowed to a stop, his breath visibly disrupting the thick mist before his face.
“He’s dead!” The voice screamed. A woman. “There’s blood everywhere, Carl! Someone’s killed him!”
Tony arched an eyebrow. “Carl?”
He remembered the bartender, a burly bloke with two sleeves of tattoos and a face like a puckered arsehole. And a nametag to the right of his shirt. One that read Carl.
No, but I’m out of town? No way I’d hear someone finding that bum? Not out . . . here . . .
“It was that bastard on the bike,” Carl said. His voice whipped left and right like some studio effect. Tony turned his head, trying to discern the source. “I’m tellin’ ya, I was just waiting for him to slip up. Get Pat on the phone, have him come out. I’ll close up inside.”
The rolling fog slipped away on the right and the sudden clearing made Tony yell. A young woman crouched over a body, her face scrunched in fear, and as Tony dismounted the bike and jogged to her, the fog reclaimed her. He reached out where he’d seen her, but his fingers clasped only on thick air, his hand slamming in an empty fist.
“Hello?” he said. “Where are you?”
No one replied.
Tony turned and backpedaled to the motorbike, his heart racing. The fog cloaked everything, licking his face, slithering into his clothes.
The bike! What if I can’t find her?
Tony grunted as his stomach collided with the tank, sending the Dyna crashing to the gravel. His boots skidded in the dirt as he gripped the frame and pulled the Dyna back up. Once on the seat, his lungs burning, he wiped sweat from his forehead and grimaced as more fog slipped down his throat. The taste of rotted meat clung to the back of his mouth.
He batted his face, as if wiping the fog away could help. The ghostly figures stayed branded in his mind’s eye, though, the bourbon in his stomach half-heartedly claiming responsibility for the sight. His innards roiled, a lack of food adding to his conclusion.
Tony shook the thought as he began to move, the Dyna’s growl reassuring his nerves. With a nod to further steel his courage, he kept a steady eye on the road as the heavy mist dished out five-foot rolls. A bend came from nowhere and Tony balked as he whipped the handlebars right, narrowly avoiding the edge. Then a wind kicked, and the hollow gust sounded like guttural laughter. Tony’s skin prickled.
“Hey, buddy.”
The voice came from everywhere and nowhere, from inside his head and all around, an all too familiar toothless rasp. He eased on the brake but didn’t stop, the Dyna rumbling. He whipped his head left and right, but the curtain of fog kept everything hidden.
“Spare me some change? Know I gots to get inside tonight. Lost a toe last winter. Can’t lose another. Just a dollar, two if you got it.”
“Oh, fuck this . . . ”
The Dyna roared as the speedometer jittered, the wheels chewing up the gravel. Tony kept the engine gunned and fought to keep from slowing. No thrill came from the danger now, instead his stomach threatened to empty its contents and he gritted his teeth to keep steady.
“Come on, come on. End, you sonofabitch!”
The road blurred, a never-ending path of dirt, and then a figure appeared. Tony slammed the brake. The man smiled. Tony hit the dirt face first.
His breath whooshed from his lungs as pain bloomed around his nose and cheeks. Pressing his hands to the gravel, Tony pushed himself upright and gasped for air, winded. Warmth trickled down the left side of his face. He whipped around but the smoke-screen filled the road like soil collapsing back into a hole. The Dyna groaned from beside him and Tony righted the bike with a grunt, sniffling back fresh blood. Then his skin prickled as a presence came up from behind.
In his left ear, someone whispered, “Spare a dollar?”
The smell of stale whiskey attacked his nostrils and Tony leaped onto the bike with a yell. He took off as the back tire spat pebbles and smoke, fighting the urge to look back. Things just beyond the veil of white crawled and swayed all around him, shapes never quite close enough to discern. He swore he saw something slither along the ditch.
Then the fog broke.
Tony burst into a clearing, the fresh night and sudden cold making him gasp. He braked and spread his legs, the bike rocking like a bad carnival ride. A horn honked, and headlights blinded him as he veered left, back towards the guardrail, letting out a yell as chrome crushed chrome.
He landed with a thump, back screaming as air gushed from his lungs and his spine arched to breaking point. His skin burned as he clamored to his feet and watched the taillights of a hatchback disappear down the interstate. The stench of petrol sent alarm bells ringing and he spun to see puddles of brown splashing from the Dyna’s tank. The petrol seeped into the forest floor and pooled across the road.
“Shit! Not tonight, not tonight . . . ”
The bent handlebars sent a devastating punch to his heart and his legs almost gave up. With a sniffle, he brushed debris from his clothes, ignoring the stinging in his hands. The Dyna was dead, that much was clear, but a forest fire looked more than likely if he didn’t intervene. A cigarette out the window of a passing car was all it would take.
A car honked as it sped past, and Tony waved but the driver kept moving. He gave the bastard the single-fingered salute and got another honk in response. Across the way, a warm glow from the windows of Benjamin’s Breakroom beckoned, a single building in the middle of nowhere that promised safety, comfort, and a much-needed payphone. Two calls needed making: one to the police for the crash (he’d be long
gone before the blue and red started flashing and could claim the bike back tomorrow. “Had to rush to the hospital, officer, treat my wounds. Alcohol? No, sir, not a drop . . . ”)
The second call would be to Lisa. At this rate, he wouldn’t get home for god knows how long, and her chances of leaving skyrocketed by the second. The realization that he didn’t know her number forced his eyes wide and he stomped the ground, pulling at his hair.
“Fuck! Why tonight, huh? Why?”
Her mother’s place. At the very least, he could show up on the doorstep bandaged and bruised and bike-less in the a.m. Worth a shot.
“Hell, it’s my only shot.”
He glanced at his wristwatch. Close to four in the morning. At this hour, the all-night diner was most likely empty, but a single red Globetrotter truck said otherwise. It rumbled in the parking lot beneath a lone, dim streetlight, the driver-side door open.
The prospect of a conversation with someone, an act so simple and normal, turned Tony’s stomach. He took off, limping through the intersection like an undead ghoul. At the lot, the truck driver came into view. He sat by a tire of his vehicle, hugging his knees.
Tony fished his Luckies and Zippo free from his shirt pocket and lit a cigarette, left leg throbbing from the fall. He sucked smoke deep into his lungs, relishing the burn and the nicotine hit. The sudden silence, the cold night air, felt surreal in its normality after what he’d just been through. He worried this could be another hallucination, something shown to him by the fog just like the voices, but he pushed the thought from his mind, chalking it up to nerves. He crossed to the trucker, taking another pull from his smoke.
“I need a phone. Just trashed my bike. You got a . . . everything all right?”
The man, mid-fifties with a John Deere baseball cap, raised his head. His sunken eyes vibrated in their sockets, his skin ashen. His throat bobbed as he made to speak.
“I saw my kid,” he said, a voice like sandpaper.
What little heat and strength Tony had left drained from his body.
The man sniffled. “I saw the rope Richie used to hang himself, swayin’ off the overpass. Saw it and him and . . . Jesus, I can’t stop shaking, I . . . worst night of my life, pushed in my face and I couldn’t look away.”
Tony’s mouth dried. He tried speaking but his throat refused to open, and instead, he eased himself to the road. They sat in silence a moment, Tony unable to meet the trucker’s gaze. The bike and Lisa took second place to the implications of this man’s word.
A soft rain patted the pavement, then hissed all around. Tony flicked away his cigarette, the cocktail of nicotine and adrenaline in his system leaving him ill.
Finally, the man spoke. “You saw it, too, didn’t you?”
Tony didn’t answer.
“What’d it show you? Tell me.”
Tony swallowed. He wiped dried blood from his upper lip.
“Took me over along the highway, you know. Lasted ‘bout three minutes. That’s how long, I think. Been sittin’ here piecing it together. Just . . . couldn’t see anything, man. Only white. All white.”
Tony faced the trucker now, needing to see his eyes. See if he saw his own fears reflected. “It passed through the woods,” he said. “Caught me on the trail.”
The man nodded. “I know. I saw it slip down that way.”
“What is it?”
“I have no idea. Something no one should ever see, that’s all I know. But then again, I . . . ”
“You what?” Tony skittered forward. “You what? What?”
“Maybe it’s something I should’ve saw, after all. Things I couldn’t let to the surface before, things I kept bottled . . . popped into my face, made me look. That’s what I saw.”
Tony thought of the vagrant, the sound of the crash that night, the lack of emotion as he’d dragged the body off-road . . .
“I do know one thing.”
“What’s that?” Tony asked.
“It’s blowing south, past the mountain . . . and God help that town when it hits.”
NOT FROM DETROIT
JOE R. LANSDALE
Outside it was cold and wet and windy. The storm rattled the shack, slid like razor blades through the window, door and wall cracks, but it wasn’t enough to make any difference to the couple. Sitting before the crumbling fireplace in their creaking rocking chairs, shawls across their knees, fingers entwined, they were warm.
A bucket behind them near the kitchen sink collected water dripping from a hole in the roof.
The drops had long since passed the noisy stage of sounding like steel bolts falling on tin, and were now gentle plops.
The old couple were husband and wife; had been for over fifty years. They were comfortable with one another and seldom spoke. Mostly they rocked and looked at the fire as it flickered shadows across the room.
Finally Margie spoke. “Alex,” she said, “I hope I die before you.”
Alex stopped rocking. “Did you say what I thought you did?”
“I said, I hope I die before you.” She wouldn’t look at him, just the fire. “It’s selfish, I know, but I hope I do. I don’t want to live on with you gone. It would be like cutting out my heart and making me walk around. Like one of them zombies.”
“There are the children,” he said. “If I died, they’d take you in.”
“I’d just be in the way. I love them, but I don’t want to do that. They got their own lives. I’d just as soon die before you. That would make things simple.”
“Not simple for me,” Alex said. “I don’t want you to die before me. So how about that? We’re both selfish, aren’t we?”
She smiled. “Well, it ain’t a thing to talk about before bedtime, but it’s been on my mind, and I had to get it out.”
“Been thinking on it too, honey. Only natural we would. We ain’t spring chickens anymore.”
“You’re healthy as a horse, Alex Brooks. Mechanic work you did all your life kept you strong. Me, I got the bursitis and the miseries and I’m tired all the time. Got the old age bad.”
Alex started rocking again. They stared into the fire. “We’re going to go together, hon,” he said. “I feel it. That’s the way it ought to be for folks like us.”
“I wonder if I’ll see him coming. Death, I mean.”
“What?”
“My grandma used to tell me she seen him the night her daddy died.”
“You’ve never told me this.”
“Ain’t a subject I like. But Grandma said this man in a black buggy slowed down out front of their house, cracked his whip three times, and her daddy was gone in instants. And she said she’d heard her grandfather tell how he had seen Death when he was a boy. Told her it was early morning and he was up, about to start his chores, and when he went outside he seen this man dressed in black walk by the house and stop out front. He was carrying a stick over his shoulder with a checkered bundle tied to it, and he looked at the house and snapped his fingers three times. A moment later they found my grandfather’s brother, who had been sick with the smallpox, dead in bed.”
“Stories, hon. Stories. Don’t get yourself worked up over a bunch of old tall tales. Here, I’ll heat us some milk.”
Alex stood, laid the shawl in the chair, went over to put milk in a pan and heat it. As he did, he turned to watch Margie’s back. She was still staring into the fire, only she wasn’t rocking. She was just watching the blaze and, Alex knew, thinking about dying.
After the milk they went to bed, and soon Margie was asleep, snoring like a busted chainsaw. Alex found he could not rest. It was partly due to the storm, it had picked up in intensity. But it was mostly because of what Margie had said about dying. It made him feel lonesome.
Like her, he wasn’t so much afraid of dying, as he was of being left alone. She had been his heartbeat for fifty years, and without her, he would only be going through motions of life, not living.
God, he prayed silently. When we go, let us go together. He turned to look at Margie
. Her face looked unlined and strangely young. He was glad she could turn off most anything with sleep. He, on the other hand, could not.
Maybe I’m just hungry.
He slid out of bed, pulled on his pants, shirt and house shoes; those silly things with the rabbit face and ears his granddaughter had bought him. He padded silently to the kitchen. It was not only the kitchen, it served as a den, living room, and dining room. The house was only three rooms and a closet, and one of the rooms was a small bathroom. It was times like this that Alex thought he could have done better by Margie. Gotten her a bigger house, for one thing. It was the same house where they had raised their kids, the babies sleeping in a crib here in the kitchen.
He sighed. No matter how hard he had worked, he seemed to stay in the same place. A poor place.
He went to the refrigerator and took out a half-gallon of milk, drank directly from the carton.
He put the carton back and watched the water drip into the bucket. It made him mad to see it. He had let the little house turn into a shack since he retired, and there was no real excuse for it. Surely, he wasn’t that tired. It was a wonder Margie didn’t complain more.
Well, there was nothing to do about it tonight. But he vowed that when dry weather came, he wouldn’t forget about it this time. He’d get up there and fix that damn leak.
Quietly, he rummaged a pan from under the cabinet. He’d have to empty the bucket now if he didn’t want it to run over before morning. He ran a little water into the pan before substituting it for the bucket so the drops wouldn’t sound so loud.
He opened the front door, went out on the porch, carrying the bucket. He looked out at his mud-pie yard and his old, red wrecker, his white logo on the side of the door faded with time: Alex Brooks Wrecking and Mechanic Service.