Don slanted his eyebrows and pursed his lips. “Not accepting my gift?” He put his hands on his hips. “I’m just trying to make-up for being a little short with you folks, and now you’re gonna be rude right back?”
I looked at Blake and mumbled, “Just say yes so we can get the hell out of here.”
Blake nodded and gave Don a thumbs up, just trying to get us back on our way without anymore trouble.
***
A few minutes later, Don was smiling and waving at us as we pulled away from the gas station. I turned and watched his crooked smile as his dirt-covered hand moved side to side in the air.
“What the fuck was that all about?” Michael asked from the back seat.
Blake looked at him in the mirror and shrugged.
Allie hugged herself, and I remember peeking back and seeing a lack of assurance in her bright eyes.
“Let’s just go back to the main road, guys,” Allie said. “I don’t like this.”
Michael smiled and wrapped his arms around her. His hands moved to her ribcage and he began to tickle her.
“Ooooooo, scared that Don is gonna get you?”
I could almost feel the burn across Michael’s bicep and his chest from the front seat when Allie slapped him.
“Stop it, asshole! I’m serious! I don’t feel good about any of this,” Allie said, her voice trembling.
“Nothing is going to happen, Allie,” Blake assured her.
As we passed over the hill, I took one last look at the gas station in the side mirror.
Don, the old man, was gone.
5
“Maybe we passed it already,” Allie said.
Blake had his hand on his chin, rubbing the stubble on his beard. He adjusted his aviator sunglasses and looked to his left, watching the passing corn fields as we continued down the empty highway.
“When was the last time we passed another car?” I asked.
Just then, we all simultaneously turned around as we heard sirens bellow behind us.
“Shit,” Blake said, and he pulled over to the right side of the road, just onto the shoulder.
A police car eased up behind us, and after a few moments, an officer stepped out of the vehicle.
He wore a brown uniform with a matching fedora style hat. The officer approached the window, and Blake cranked the metal handle and rolled it down.
“Good afternoon, officer,” Blake said.
“It’s Sheriff,” he replied sternly.
I heard Blake swallow, and then he smiled.
“I apologize, sir. Is there a problem, Sheriff?”
The Sheriff looked inside the truck and scanned each of our faces, then looked back at Blake. I saw the small metal tag on his chest, which read “Thomas”, as well as the sweat dripping down his cheeks.
“License and registration, please.”
Blake lifted his butt off the seat and reached into his back pocket. He opened the leather billfold and handed the Sheriff his identification. Then, he reached over my lap, opened the glove box, and pulled out an envelope which contained his registration.
“Here you go, sir,” Blake said, handing the envelope to him.
The Sheriff glared at Blake, and then stepped away from the Bronco, heading back toward his car.
“What the fuck?” Rob asked.
“I knew this was gonna happen. You’ve been speeding almost the whole time, at least since we passed Canton,” Allie added, her frustration amplified by the intense humid air outside.
“Alright, everyone, just shut up,” Blake said. “I’m sure it’s fine. I probably just have a tail light out or something.”
A couple of minutes later, I heard the car door shut behind us, and the Sheriff began to make his way back toward Blake’s side of the truck. He took his time, as if he was trying to intimidate us.
Sheriff Thomas handed Blake back his license and the envelope with his registration and insurance in it, then turned and spit onto the scorching asphalt.
“Where you kids headed?” he asked.
“Chicago,” Blake said.
The Sheriff moved his head back and removed the aviator sunglasses from his face, revealing a pair of pale eyes.
“Chicago? What the hell are you doing out here?”
“Taking a little detour. My friend back here really wanted to go see the Crossroads,” Blake said, pointing back at Rob.
“Ah. Very cool place. You kids know where you’re headed?”
Blake nodded. “We got directions from some guy at a gas station back there.”
“Don?” the Sheriff asked. “Interesting guy.”
“You could say that,” Blake said with a snicker.
Sheriff Thomas put his hands on his hips and flashed a smile for the first time, looking at me.
“Alright, then. You kids have a safe trip.”
He drummed twice on the door before turning around and heading back to his patrol car.
“Well, that was fucking weird, don’t ya think?” Rob said.
Michael slapped him over the back of the head, and Rob yelled out. The four of us laughed at Rob, as Blake put the truck back into drive, pulling back out onto the two lane highway.
***
A little further down the road, Michael hung his head out of the window behind me and pointed.
“I think that’s it,” he shouted.
I looked ahead and saw that the place we were supposed to turn was exactly as Don had described it. The grass parted for a dirt road to the right, and the large bail of hay sat on the corner. A single metal post stood in the ground a few feet from the hay with an open place upon the top of it for a street sign.
Beyond the miles of farm land, the sun scorched down on us. I remember getting more uneasy as the minutes passed. The meeting with Don had really jarred my nerves, and though we still had hours before dark, the last place that I wanted to be when the daylight went to sleep was in the middle of nowhere at a landmark rumored to have the presence of demons.
“We are just going to get a few pictures and leave, right?” I asked.
Michael rolled his eyes. “You too, Becky? Geez. You ladies need to chill out.”
I looked back at him. “I just don’t wanna be stuck in the middle of nowhere in the dark, you jerk.”
“Yeah,” Allie added. “Come on, Mike, leave us alone.”
I felt Blake’s hand clutch my knee. I looked up and his blue eyes brought comfort into my nerves.
“It’ll be fine,” he whispered. “We’re just going to go get a few pictures, and then we’ll head back out to the main road and we’ll drive for a while, then find a hotel for the night. Okay?”
I nodded. He took my left hand, which was clasped together with my right, and took it to his mouth to lay his soft lips on it. He kept a hold of my hand between the seats as he used his left to maneuver the car to the right and down the dirt road.
Like the gas station, the bail of hay and empty street sign were now behind us.
***
Blake hit the button near the odometer and reset the traveled miles to zero so that he’d know when we had driven five miles. Dust rose all around us and made the fields of tall wheat grass around us almost invisible.
We’d only made it about a mile and half down the road when the engine began to sputter. We started to bounce from more than the rough path as smoke rose from the hood. Blake slammed his hand four times on the steering wheel.
“Shit,” he said.
The car came to a stop in the middle of the road as the engine let out a tired sigh of relief.
“What the fuck?” Allie asked.
Blake popped the hood and stepped out of the car to check the damage; Michael followed.
I reached back and grabbed Allie by the hand.
“It’s okay, sweetie. We’ll be fine.”
Her lips trembled and her eyes moved around in their sockets as she looked back at me.
“You don’t know that! We’re in the middle of nowhere, Becky! What if we’r
e trapped out here?”
Rob rolled his eyes.
“Calm down. We will…”
She slapped him and went out the same door that Michael had.
“What the fuck?” Rob asked.
I looked back to him. “It’s okay. She’s just scared. Suck it up.”
I opened the door and stepped out onto the dirt path.
***
While the boys worked around the smoking engine to try and figure out what was wrong, I took the twenty yard walk back behind the broken down car and joined Allie.
She paced back and forth as I approached her, crying into her hands. Her crop top waved in the wind that blew down the empty road and her hair moved with it. I approached her and gave her a hug. She rested her head against my shoulder, crying into the strap of my tank top as her tears ran with the sweat on my collarbone.
“We’re going to be stranded out here,” she cried.
I ran my hands through her hair and tried to comfort her.
“Don’t you know it, Beck?” She pulled away and looked into my eyes. “We haven’t seen a car in God knows how long. And we’re like twenty miles away from that fucked up guy at the gas station. We’re stuck out here!”
“You don’t know that, Allie,” I said, trying to calm her. I opened my palm to the sky, directing her attention to the front of the car. “Maybe it just needs to cool down and we can get the hell out of here.”
Then Blake approached us, wiping his hand with a blackened towel. He pulled me away from Allie, shaking his head. When we were out of her earshot, he gave me the bad news.
“It’s shot.”
“What is?”
“The motor,” he mumbled. “The radiator is shot.”
My lips began to tremble. “You can’t fix it?”
He shook his head and smiled. “I don’t carry an extra radiator in the trunk.”
My eyes glared and I turned and walked away from him.
He reached out and grabbed me by the arm. “Becky.”
I turned and hit him. “This isn’t funny, Blake.”
He put his arms out to the side. “I never said it was, Rebecca.”
It sent a chill up my spine when he used my full name, and only heightened my frustration with our current situation. I took a deep breath, but couldn’t hold in my emotions anymore. I began to cry then, which sent Allie into a tailspin.
“We’re fucked, aren’t we?” Allie cried. “Fucking, fuck!”
She pulled at her hair and Michael ran over to her, trying to calm her, but she just pushed him away and screamed. She sat down in the middle of the road and began to rock back and forth, saying to herself quietly, “I want to go home.”
Michael knelt down at her side but she ignored him.
Rob approached and Blake looked to him.
“We gotta go and try to find help.”
Rob looked over his shoulder and then looked back at Blake, putting his finger into his own chest.
“Me? And you?” He snickered. “No way man, fuck that.”
Blake put his hands to his hips and shook his head. “This is your fault, Rob. We are only out here because you wanted to take this fucking highway so badly.”
“So, what? I’m not walking down this road in this fucking heat.”
Michael looked up at Blake and said, “I’ll go.”
Blake shook his head. “No, I need you to hang here with the girls. They need someone worth a shit to be here with them.”
I grabbed Blake’s arm to get his attention.
“Let’s just wait, sweetie. Surely someone has to drive by here at some point.” When I said it, I put as much love into the tone of my voice as I could so that he knew I didn’t want him to go.
He put his hands to his hips and looked at the ground. For a moment, I thought that he’d reconsidered. But apparently he’d already made up his mind that he was going to do the manly thing to try and get us out of the mess we were in.
“Come on, Rob,” he said, as he stepped away from me and went to the car. The look on Rob’s face was one of confusion and reluctance, but he put his head down and stood next to the car, waiting on Blake. A few moments later, Blake came out of the car with a flashlight in his hand.
“Ready?”
Rob slowly nodded. He wasn’t ready. They were out in the middle of nowhere and the heat was scorching, and he had no interest in wandering away from the car when we were already lost.
Blake looked over to Michael. “Take care of them, okay? Hopefully, we aren’t gone more than a few hours.”
Michael nodded and turned his attention back to his weeping girlfriend. Her crying cut through the dead air and I only hoped that she would calm down sooner rather than later.
Then Blake took my hand. He wrapped his arms around me and I clutched his neck. He pulled away from me, then leaned in and kissed me. I put my palm on his cheek and stroked his stubble as our warm lips danced. When he pulled away, he brought the back of his hand to my face and wiped the tears away from my eyes.
“I love you,” he said.
“I love you, too.”
And then I watched as he and Rob became a mirage in the sweltering Mississippi heat, their shapes becoming smaller and smaller in the horizon, down the flat, dirt road, toward the direction Don had told us to go.
6
Hours passed by and the sun had long since gone to rest behind the miles of open pasture. I sat in the front seat with my knees at my chest, tapping my fingers rapidly on the dashboard.
Allie had stopped crying an hour earlier and fallen asleep on Michael’s chest. He kept his eyes open, looking at the road ahead, waiting like I was for Blake and Rob to return.
I straightened in my chair, coming out of my ball, when I saw headlights glare off of all three of the car’s mirrors. Michael stirred, which woke Allie up. She yelped when she opened her eyes, as if she’d come straight out of a horrifying nightmare. I thought about locking the door, not sure whether to be worried that we were in danger or relieved that help might have finally arrived.
“Just stay calm, guys,” Michael said, looking out the back window as the truck came to a stop. The headlights’ beams remained focused on us as we heard the door slam and the kicking of rocks across the dirt road.
I looked over and saw a body appear at the driver’s side door. There was a tap on the glass and then I saw a familiar face.
It was Don, the strange gas station attendant. He smiled and signaled for me to lower the window. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Allie shivering and shaking her head at me not to do it. Against her wishes, I reached over and used the handle to roll the window down.
“Well, what happened here?”
Michael answered before I could. “Car trouble.”
Don nodded. “I see that.” He looked at the empty driver’s seat and the extra space in the back seat. He pointed back and forth between the two seats. “Where are your friends? Off looking for help?”
I nodded.
“Which way did they go?”
I pointed down the road ahead of us.
He turned his head and looked down the narrow, dirt path, before looking my way and opening his mouth again.
“How long they been gone?”
“Are you just going to ask a bunch of questions or are you going to help us?”
Don looked in the back seat at Allie. He leaned in through the window and I backed up against the passenger door. His rotten tobacco stench filled the inside of the car and I worried that it might stain the interior.
“I don’t think that I really care for your attitude, young lady.”
Allie began to cry again and Michael held her, putting her head to head to his chest.
“Just leave us alone, man,” Michael told him.
Don held a glare at Michael for a few moments before he shrugged and began to lean back out of the car.
“Alright, then. There’s a gas station and a little country restaurant just a few miles down the road. I was gonna give y’all
a lift but, seeings how you think you can handle…”
“Wait,” I said.
He leaned back into the car and raised his eyebrows at me.
“We’d love a ride.”
Michael leaned between the seats. “Rebecca, we don’t know…”
“Alright then,” Don said. “Go ahead and come saddle up in my truck.”
He beat out a short drum fill on the edge of the door before turning around and heading back to his truck. Michael grabbed my shoulder.
“Let’s just stay here and wait on them to come back.”
I continued to get out of my seat.
“Come on, Becky,” Michael said, working hard to change my mind.
“It’s been hours, Michael. They aren’t back. Now look, you two can either come with me or stay. Either way, I’m letting him take me to that gas station.”
I opened the door and walked to the back of the car to grab my bag out of the rear compartment. For a moment, Michael and Allie remained in the back seat, not sure of what they should do. Allie’s fear had long since turned to a state of shock. I really thought that she was legitimately concerned we’d be stranded out there on that road. And Michael had all the best intentions of protecting me, as Blake had asked. But I couldn’t bring myself to pass up the ride and the chance to make sure that Blake was okay.
Reluctantly, Michael took Allie’s hand and they joined me at the back of the Bronco to grab their things.
***
I wanted so badly to cover my face, but fought the urge, knowing how rudely it would have come off. I imagined that if a man ran a mortuary in the middle of the woods by himself, and he suddenly died from a heart attack, leaving the dead bodies behind to rot, that it might almost match the smell of the inside of Don’s truck. I managed to hold in my lunch, especially focusing on the task since I couldn’t remember how many hours it had been since we’d eaten. Emptying my stomach would only further the hunger pangs.
I rode in the cab of the truck with Allie while lucky Michael got to ride in the bed of the truck and breathe in the fresh summer air.
“How much further?” Allie asked.
Don blew the smoke from his cigarette out the window, a smell that I almost embraced, and said, “Not far.”
The Witness: A Slasher Horror Novel Page 3