by Scott Shoyer
The world dissolved around Jason as he focused on the headless body of his daughter and cried.
“A vacation,” Jason said between sobs. “I just wanted to take my family to the goddamn Grand Canyon.” He fell to the ground and tilted his head up and cried.
In the distance, Jason heard a word being repeated in a chant.
“N’Xabez, N’Xabez, N’Xabez …”
The chanting got louder as the shapes of robed bodies formed from the fog.
“N’Xabez, N’Xabez, N’Xabez …”
“What the hell do you want with us?” Jason screamed. “Why the hell are you doing this?”
“N’Xabez, N’Xabez, N’Xabez …”
Jason recognized a few of the faces of the six men as they slowly walked through the fog and circled around him. He knew a few of the men from the town of Derleth. They kept their distance, but never shifted their eyes from him.
“N’Xabez, N’Xabez, N’Xabez ,” the six men now chanted loudly.
Jason sat on the ground and threw whatever he could find around him at the robed men.
“Fuck you!” Jason said as he threw a large rock. “Fuck all of you.”
The men’s chanting grew louder until that word became a buzzing in Jason’s ear. He covered his ears with his hands and threw his head back as he screamed.
A tentacle shot down from the sky and jammed itself down Jason’s throat. Jason’s eyes grew wide at the violation, and before his mind could process what was happening, the tentacle retracted and took Jason with it…
…back into the clouds.
2
Present Day
Damien Squire took exit 121 off I-40 West and smiled as he turned onto one of America’s most historic roads, Route 66. Damien wasn’t overly sentimental about such historic Americana, but he remembered all his father’s stories about driving his motorcycle along the infamous Route 66. Back in the day it was the country’s main artery, with vehicles of all types pulsing across the country.
Between his father’s nostalgic memories and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, one of Damien’s lifelong dreams had been to traverse Route 66. But like so many of his other dreams, Damien’s road trip from Chicago to California vanished into the past. As the tires of his SUV rolled down the worn road, Damien couldn’t help but think about his own goals and dreams that had also faded into the past.
It’d been a tough year for Damien and his family. The business he had created and gave his everything to, had gone belly up. The so-called experts said that the economy had recovered, but he knew firsthand that was bullshit.
After he’d lost his business, his home had been the next domino to fall. The housing market in Washington, DC had never recovered from the 2008 crash, and the place he, his wife Kate, and his son Brandon, had called home was foreclosed. The house where they’d raised their child for sixteen years was taken from them by the bank.
They’d downsized their lives and relocated to central Texas, but the scars of failure still marked their lives.
Damien had been taught by his father that what made the man was how well he could support his family. The ideas of sacrifice and struggle had been pounded into his brain by his old man until those virtues had become his own. And with the loss of his business, his means to support his family, Damien had also lost his reason for living.
Kate had found a job and picked up the slack, and whereas Damien appreciated and was grateful for having such a supportive, intelligent, and hard-working wife, he felt that she now looked at him in a different light—as a failure of a man who could no longer support his family.
Depression and anger and hopelessness filled Damien’s mind as he continued to spiral into a dark abyss. He had always been prone to the darkness that lived inside everyone. In his youth, he’d explored the darker side of things and would go through small bouts of depression. Damien had always assumed that was just the way he dealt with things. When a girlfriend broke up with him, he’d spiral into a shallow depression where he’d explore the darkness within, and then after a few days would shake it off and move on with his life.
Kate was a strong woman whom Damien knew had never understood his darkness. When life threw curveballs at Kate, she would shake it off and continue to move forward. Damien always admired that about her, but he also wished she had understood what he went through. Lately, Kate had been so busy with work that she hadn’t taken the time to stop and listen.
She’d understood, though, when she’d found Damien in the bathtub after he opened the artery in his left wrist. The cut had been so deep that he’d temporarily lost the use of his left hand and couldn’t hold the razor. Doctors had told him that if his wife hadn’t have come home from work early, she would have found him dead instead of just unconscious.
Damien remembered the darkness that slowly wrapped around him as the blood spilled from his veins. He’d discussed it at length with two different therapists. He’d told them that he found the darkness comforting and inviting. He wanted to let go and welcome the darkness into himself. Damien had also realized that, if he kept telling his shrinks that he looked forward to the next time he confronted the darkness and that he would fully embrace it, he’d never get out of the hospital. So he’d told the doctors what they’d wanted to hear, had been released, and secretly lived with his memories of the darkness.
Time healed some of his wounds. He was no longer suicidal and no longer felt like a failure, but the darkness still flowed through him, and he could admit that he looked forward to the next time he confronted it.
Damien looked around as he watched the landscape pass by. He laughed as he equated his life to Route 66. At one time it’d been the symbol of adventure and success and the promise of a journey that would lead to something new. But as time had gone on, the road was deemed outdated, unnecessary, and as such had been decommissioned.
Forgotten.
What used to be the lifeline of the country was now just a decrepit and withered reminder of a faded past. Considered useless, the oncevital artery of the country was cut open and left to bleed out until it was completely forgotten.
Damien shook his head to push back the darkness and focused on the road. It’d taken him forty-five years to finally get onto Route 66, and he was going to enjoy the experience.
“How much longer do we have?” Kate asked from the passenger seat as she woke up.
“Not too much longer,” Damien answered. Then, more excitedly, added, “We just turned onto Route 66.”
“Oh yeah?” Kate asked as she stretched her arms. “Like from the old television show. ‘Get your kicks on Route 66.’”
“This was more than just an inspiration for an old television show,” Damien said. “This road has been around since 1926. It runs almost 2,500 miles and connects Chicago to Los Angeles. You can drive through Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona on Route 66. This is a piece of American history,” Damien said excitedly.
“If it’s so historical,” Kate said, “then why does it look like shit?”
The road was full of cracks and uneven surfaces as a result of neglect. Damien looked at Kate for a few seconds and didn’t answer. He didn’t know why he’d expected her to be excited to travel on this road. Instead, he took a deep breath and changed the topic.
“We should be at the lodge in the next forty to forty-five minutes,” Damien said.
“Good,” said Kate. “If we broke down on this old road, we’d never be seen or heard from again.”
Like so many other things in his life, Damien ignored his wife’s comment. He looked in the rearview mirror and watched his son as he slept in the back seat. Brandon meant the world to Damien, and he often felt that Brandon was the only thing worthwhile in his life. Brandon was the one shining beacon of light in his darkened existence.
This trip to the Grand Canyon was more than just a vacation. This was Damien and Kate’s attempt to get their marriage and relationship back on track. Since his suicide attempt, they’d grow
n apart and let an immeasurable distance come between them. They still loved each other, but it seemed they had forgotten how to love each other.
Besides Damien’s sessions with a psychiatrist, they went to couple counseling once a week. The counselor was confident their relationship could be saved, but had told them that they both had a lot of work to do. Together.
They worked through the attempted suicide. She understood his feelings and pain and couldn’t help but feel that if she’d been around more, that it wouldn’t have happened. Damien had eased Kate’s conscience and reassured her that, at the time, he would have found a way to do what he’d done regardless of her presence.
There was now no concrete thing or event that was the focus of their problems. There was just a malaise that had descended upon their marriage and lives.
Their marriage counselor had told them that they’d hit a point in their relationship where they needed to redefine who they both were and to accept each other for who they had become. He reminded them that they had been married for fifteen years and had known each other since the third grade. People, their therapist told them, grew, and never stopped becoming. They just needed to discover who they were now, in the present.
For as long as he could remember, Damien had thought Kate had it together and knew who she was and what she wanted.
But for Damien, he felt his life was cursed. As he looked back, he felt he’d lived his entire life always trying to define who he was, what he was. Even worse, Damien was never happy with what he found. Just when he thought he’d discovered himself, that same creeping uneasiness would return months or even weeks later. He was like a lizard that could shed its skin, but was never happy within that new flesh.
Until he’d discovered the darkness. In that darkness, Damien felt accepted and wanted.
And happy.
The darkness wasn’t putting bad thoughts into his head. It wasn’t telling him to kill others or to kill himself. It wasn’t evil.
It was the unknown part of himself that he had been searching for his entire life. He now understood that he could never define himself because he’d never known the darkness existed. But now he’d finally experienced it, and knew it was out there waiting for him when his time was finally up.
For Brandon, this was just another family vacation. But for Damien, this was a journey to learn to live with that darkness and further explore what it was and how it connected to the unknown part of who he was. Driving on Route 66 was supposed to aid him in that discovery. It was supposed to reconnect him to his youth, but all it was doing was reminding him of how pointless and hopeless life truly was. If something as important as a historical road could be so easily cast aside and forgotten, then what hope was there for him?
Damien cleared his head as he heard Brandon waking up in the back seat.
“We almost there?” Brandon asked. “I’m starving.”
“Starving? We just ate lunch about an hour-and-a-half ago,” Damien said as he laughed.
At sixteen years old, Brandon was about a foot taller than most of the kids in his school. He was always hungry and never gained a pound. Damien called him Jaws because he was a ‘remorseless eating machine.’
“Yeah, buddy,” Damien answered, “we’ll be at the Hualapai Lodge soon. For now, there’s some snacks in the cooler behind you.”
“Cool,” Brandon said as he fished around for a snack.
Yeah, Damien thought. Cool.
3
“We’re getting closer,” Damien said as they passed a land marker alerting them that they’d entered the Hualapai Reservation. The reservation, located in Peach Springs, Arizona, covered almost 1,200 square miles and was home to the Hualapai people. Route 66 took tourists right through the center of their small town, which consisted of the Hualapai Lodge and a small grocery store with a one-pump gas station. As small as this town was, tens of thousands of tourists flocked to the Hualapai Reservation during the summer season because it was relatively close to some of the best viewing spots in the Grand Canyon. It was also the closest town to the Hualapai Hilltop, which was the trailhead to Supai, Arizona and the famed Havasu Waterfalls. The viewing sites were all still open and there were barely any visitors. Best of all, no tourists came to stay on the Hualapai Reservation during the off season.
“Uh, I hope you know where you’re going, Dad,” Brandon said from the back seat. “It looks like your GPS is dead.”
Damien looked down and saw a message on his phone telling him there was no service in this area.
“Excellent,” Damien said as he smiled. “I was hoping we’d be off the grid for the trip.”
“Wait a minute,” Brandon said as he sat up in his seat. “You mean there’s no service out here? What about Wi-Fi?”
“Nothing, my man,” Damien said. “For all you know, buddy, we just went back in time.”
Damien glanced over at his wife and saw the uneasy look on her face.
“What?” he asked. “Not you too?”
“No, no,” she answered. “I don’t care about not being able to check emails. In fact, I love that I can’t. It is just a weird feeling that we’re cut off.”
Damien looked at his wife and could see she was genuinely concerned.
“One of the things that makes me feel safe when I have to work late at night,” she continued, “is knowing that I have my cell phone and can call for help at any moment. It’s something I’ve come to rely on, and it makes me feel safer.”
“Well, don’t worry about anything out here, Kate,” Damien said as he tried to reassure her. “The only things we’re going to have to worry about out here are elk darting across the road and falling rocks from the nearby mountains. I promise there’s no banjo players out here.”
Catching his reference, Kate smiled and smacked him playfully on the shoulder.
“You’re such a jerk,” Kate said as she laughed.
“Nope, sorry,” Damien continued. “You won’t be meeting Ned Beatty on this trip.”
Kate laughed out loud as she covered her mouth.
“What the hell does that mean?” asked Brandon.
Brandon’s question made Kate and Damien laugh harder.
“We’ll tell you when you’re older,” was all Damien offered as an explanation.
“Oh gross,” Brandon said as he pushed himself against the back seat. “That means that’s some kind of sex reference.”
This caused a new round of laughter from the front seat.
“I’ll keep a look out for rocks and elk,” Kate said as her laughter faded away, “but I’m more concerned about gas.”
“Don’t worry,” Damien said. “I filled up not too long ago and we’re almost there. Look,” he said as he nodded at the sign they passed on the road. “Only ten more miles until we’re at the Lodge. Once we’re there, I’m sure we’ll be able to fill up on some grossly overpriced gasoline.”
The miles passed as they got closer to their destination. Then, from the backseat, Damien heard his son excitedly ask, “What is that?”
Ahead on the right was what looked like a huge junkyard. The sun glimmered off old metal, and as they drove closer, Damien realized that it wasn’t a junkyard, but an auto graveyard. It was garish and stuck out against the beautiful landscape like a zombie would on a painting of the Mona Lisa.
“Damn,” Damien said as he slowed the car. “That graveyard is huge.”
“That’s not a graveyard,” Brandon said. “It’s just cars.”
“It’s an auto graveyard where old cars are put when they break down and can’t be repaired,” Kate explained.
The graveyard was as large as a football field, and it looked like every square inch of the land had some kind of vehicle covering it. Cars of all makes and models were piled on top of each other, along with motorcycles, campers, four-wheeled recreation vehicles, Winnebagos, and there was even a tour bus. The vehicles were all in different conditions. Some were completely rusted, while others looked as though they were still driva
ble.
“Look at that car over there,” Kate said as she pointed out the window. “That car looks like it is in better condition than the car I drive.”
Damien laughed as he looked at the car. It was a dark green Toyota Sienna minivan that obviously hadn’t been in the graveyard too long. The cars around it had the tell-tale fade of the scorching Arizona sun, while the Sienna looked as though it just needed a good carwash to return it to its former glory.
“No kidding, hon,” Damien said as he slowed the car down even more. “Look at the tires. They look almost new.”
“Maybe whoever owns the junkyard fixes up the decent ones and sells them,” Brandon said.
“Maybe, buddy,” Damien said as his eyes scanned the graveyard. “Maybe.”
“Maybe we should stop and make an offer on the Sienna to the owner,” Kate said as she playfully jabbed Damien in the ribs with her elbow.
Damien found it difficult to take his eyes off all the vehicles. Something wasn’t right about it. His gut told him there was something wrong with the graveyard, something not good.
Damien found himself thinking about the tenebrous darkness he’d experienced during his suicide attempt. As mysterious and unknown as that darkness was, he’d never found himself afraid of it. He’d never thought for a second that he was in any danger. The darkness was just something that was always there and always would be. He considered himself lucky to have been able to experience it without completely giving in to it.
But the graveyard was something else. There was something wholly unnatural about it. As he scanned the broken down and rusted vehicles, an uneasiness swept over him.
The darkness he experienced was a natural part of the world. It was like looking at a beautiful painting and realizing there was another side to it. If you flipped the painting over you would see nothing but the empty frame. That’s what the darkness was—the Nothingness that exists on the flip side of reality. The graveyard, though, was nothing that should exist. This was a place constructed to hide something from the rest of society.