by Blake Crouch
We sped along a primitive dirt road, a ribbon of dust trailing behind us like the contrail of a jet. Orson hadn’t spoken since we’d left the cabin. I rolled my window down, and the evening air cooled my sun-scorched face.
Orson jammed his foot into the brake pedal, and the car slid to a stop. There was an empty highway several hundred feet ahead, the same I’d seen from the bluffs. He reached down to the floorboard at his feet, grabbed a pair of handcuffs, and dropped them in my lap.
"Put one cuff on your right wrist and attach the other cuff to the door."
I put the handcuffs on as instructed. "What are we doing here?" I asked.
He leaned over and tested the security of the handcuffs, and turned off the engine. It became instantly silent, for the wind had died at dusk. I watched Orson as he stared ahead. He wore another blue mechanic’s suit and those snakeskin boots. I wore a brown one, identical to his. One of the four closets in the hallway that connected the bedrooms and the living room was filled with them.
Orson’s beard had begun to fill in, painting a shadow across his face in the same pattern it spread across mine. Such subtleties create the strongest bond between twins, and as I watched Orson, I felt a glimmer of intimacy in a vessel that had long since died to that sort of love. But this was not the man I had known. You are a monster. Losing my brother had been like losing an appendage, but as I looked at him now, I felt like an amputee having a nightmare that the limb had grown back — demonic, independent of my will.
"You see Mom much?" Orson asked, his eyes fixed on the highway.
"I drive up to Winston twice a month. We go to lunch and visit Dad’s grave."
"What does she wear?" he asked, still watching the road, his eyes never diverting to mine.
"I don’t under —"
"Her clothes. What clothes does she wear?"
"Dresses, mostly. Like she used to."
"She ever wear that blue one with the sunflowers on it?"
"I don’t know."
"When I dream about her, that’s what she wears. I went to see her once," he said. "Drove up and down Race Street, watching the house, seeing if I could catch a glimpse of her in the front yard or through the windows. Never saw her, though."
"Why didn’t you go through with it?"
"What would I say to her?" He paused, swallowing. "She ever ask about me?"
I considered lying but could find no reason to spare his feelings. "No."
"You ever talk to her about me?"
"If I do, it’s just about when we were kids. But I don’t think she even likes those stories anymore." Down the highway, northbound headlights appeared, so far off, I couldn’t distinguish the separate bulbs.
"That car won’t pass this spot for ten minutes," he said. "It’s still miles away. These roads are so long and straight, the distance is deceiving."
My right hand throbbed in the grip of the metal cuff. Blood wasn’t reaching my fingers, but I didn’t complain. I massaged them until the tingling went away.
"What do you really want with me?" I asked, but Orson just eyed those approaching headlights like I hadn’t said a word. "Orson," I said. "What do you —"
"I told you the first day. I’m giving you an education."
"You think reading boring fucking books all day constitutes an education?"
He looked me dead in the eyes. "The books have nothing to do with it. Surely you realized that by now."
He cranked the engine and we rolled toward the highway. Dark now, the sky completely drained of light, we crossed the pavement and pulled onto the shoulder. I watched the headlights through the windshield, and for the first time, they seemed closer. Confused, I looked at Orson.
"Sit tight," he said. Turning off the car, he opened his door and stepped out. He withdrew a white handkerchief from his pocket and tied it to the antenna. Then he shut the door and stuck his head through the open window. "Andy," he warned, "not a word."
He sat with his arms crossed on the edge of the hood. Rolling my window up, I tried to assuage my apprehension, but I just stared ahead, praying the car would pass. After awhile, I heard its engine. Then the headlights closed in, seconds away.
A minivan rushed by. I watched its brake lights flush in the rearview mirror. The van turned around, glided slowly back toward us, and stopped on the opposite shoulder. The driver’s door opened and the interior lights came on. Children in the backseat. A man our age climbed out, said something to his wife, and walked confidently toward Orson. His kids watched through the tinted glass.
The man wore khaki shorts, loafers, and a red short-sleeved polo shirt. He looked like a lawyer taking his family on a cross-country vacation.
"Car trouble?" he asked, crossing the dotted yellow line and stopping at the shoulder’s edge.
My brother smiled. "Yeah, she’s thirsty for oil."
Through the windshield, I noticed another set of northbound headlights.
"Can I give you a lift or let you use my cell phone?" the man offered.
"Actually, we’ve got someone on the way," Orson said. "Wouldn’t want to trouble you."
Thank you, God.
"Well, just wanted to make the offer. Bad spot to break down."
"Sure is." Orson extended his hand. "But thank you anyway."
The man smiled and took my brother’s hand. "I guess we’ll be heading on, then. Hoping to make Yellowstone before midnight. The kids are just wild about that damn geyser."
"Have a safe trip," Orson said. The man crossed the road and climbed back into his van. My brother waved to the kids in the backseat, and they giggled and waved back, delighted. As the van drove away, I watched its taillights begin to fade in the rearview mirror.
The next car was close now. It slowed down before it passed us, then pulled over onto the shoulder on our side of the road, stopping just ten feet from the front bumper of Orson’s Buick. From a black Ford pickup truck, one of the enormous new models with a rack of blinding KC lights mounted above the cab, a large man with a substantial beer gut hopped down from behind the wheel. He left the truck running, and the headlights fried my eyes. A country ballad blared from the speakers, and as the driver walked unsteadily toward Orson, I could tell he was drunk. Two other men climbed down out of the passenger side and approached my brother, too.
"Hello, gentlemen," Orson said as they surrounded him. Each man nursed a pinch of dip crammed between his teeth and bottom lip. The two passengers wore cowboy hats, and the driver held a ragged Redskins cap, his long hair, tangled and greasy, hanging in his face.
"Something wrong with your car?" the driver asked. He spat into the road, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and wiped his hand across his black tank top, which had a blue-and-silver Ford emblem across the front. He hadn’t shaved recently.
"Don’t know," Orson said. "I was hoping someone would stop who had a little mechanical expertise." The two passengers dissolved into a drunken giggle, and the driver glanced over at them and smiled. Their teeth were gray and orange from excessive dipping, but regardless of the men’s deficient hygiene, not a one looked older than thirty.
"Where you from, boy?" one of the passengers asked.
Orson assessed the tall, skinny man on the far left and smiled. "Missouri."
"You a long way from home, ain’t ye?" he said, then took a sip from his beer can.
"Yes, I am," Orson said, "and I’d appreciate your help."
"It might cost you something," the driver said. "It might cost you a whole lot." He looked at his buddies again, and they all laughed.
"I don’t want any trouble, now."
"How much money you got?" asked the heavyset man standing in the middle. With dark, bushy sideburns and a hairy belly poking out between his black jeans and white grease-stained T-shirt, he looked so hideously disheveled, I imagined I could smell him through the windshield.
"I don’t know," Orson said. "I’ll have to go get my wallet and see."
Orson stepped cautiously by the driver and headed
for the trunk, smiling and winking at me as he passed my window. I heard the trunk open, followed by the sound of rustling plastic.
The driver caught me looking at him through the windshield.
"What in the goddamn hell you looking at, boy?" he said. Orson walked by my door again and stopped on the right side of the hood. The three men stared at him suspiciously, though too drunk to notice that he now wore black gloves.
"Your friend’s gonna get his ass whupped if he keeps staring at me."
"He’s harmless," Orson said. "Look, I could give you twenty dollars. Would that be sufficient?"
The driver glared at him, dumbfounded. "Let me see your wallet," he said finally.
"Why?"
"Motherfucker, I said give me your wallet." Orson hesitated. "You stupid, boy? Wanna get your ass kicked?"
"Look, guys, I said I don’t want any trouble." Orson let the fear ooze from his voice.
"Then cough up your wallet, you dumb shit," said the obese middle passenger. "We need more beer."
"Will you fix my car?" The men broke into laughter. "I have more than twenty dollars," Orson pleaded. "At least look under the hood and see if you can tell what’s wrong."
Orson moved to the front of the Buick. Reaching through the grille, he pulled a lever and lifted the massive hood. Then he returned to where he’d been standing, on the right side of the car, near me. I could see nothing now but my brother, still talking to the men.
"Just take a look," Orson prodded. "Now if you guys don’t know anything about cars…"
"I know cars," a voice said. "Stupid city fuck. Don’t know shit about shit, do you?"
The Buick squeaked and sank as if someone had knelt against the bumper.
"Check the radiator," Orson said. "Something’s causing the engine to overheat."
The car shifted again. "No, on the inside," Orson said. "I think something melted. You have to get closer to see. Move, guys. You’re in his light."
A muffled voice said, "I don’t know what in the fuck —"
Orson slammed the hood. The two passengers shrieked and jumped back in horror. Blood speckled the windshield. Orson lifted the hood once more and slammed it home. The driver sprawled momentarily against the hood, squirting the windshield as he sank down into the dirt.
"Get the shotgun!" the fat one yelled, but no one moved.
"Don’t worry about it, boys," Orson said in that same timorous voice. "I have a gun." He pointed my .357 at the two men. "I hope you aren’t too fucked up to know what this is. You," he told the slender man, "pick up your buddy’s head." The man dropped his beer can. "Go on, he won’t bite you." The man lifted it off the ground by its long, grimy hair. "Right this way, boys," Orson said. "Walk around the side of the car. That’s it." The men walked by the driver’s door, and Orson walked by mine. I turned to look through the back window, but the trunk was open. He’d never shut it.
"I’m sorry about the wallet…."
"In you go," Orson said. The car didn’t move. "Do I have to shoot you both in the kneecaps and drag you in there myself? I’d rather you not bleed all over my car if it can be helped." When the hammer cocked, the car suddenly shook as the men climbed clumsily into the trunk.
"Stupid, stupid boys," Orson said. "It’d have been better for you if you’d all three looked under that hood." He closed the trunk.
As Orson walked back toward the truck, I heard the boys begin to sob. Then they screamed, pounding and kicking the inside of the trunk. As Orson climbed into the truck and turned off the headlights and KC lights, I noticed the laboriously slow ballad still pouring from the black Ford, the steel guitar solo twanging into the desert. As my eyes readjusted to the darkness, the music stopped. The driver’s door of the Buick opened, and Orson reached into the backseat and picked up a two-by-four and a length of rope.
He shut the door and said, "If they keep carrying on, tell them you’re gonna kill them."
"Look." I pointed down the road at a pair of headlights just coming into view.
Orson untied the handkerchief from the antenna and ran back to the truck. He climbed into the cab again, put the truck in gear, and let it roll forward several feet until it pointed east into the desert. For several minutes, Orson worked on something inside the cab. The men continued to moan, their intoxication intensifying their fear, making their pleadings more desperate. I didn’t say a word to them, and still the headlights approached.
The Ford sped off into the desert. I watched it through the windshield and then through the windows on the driver’s side. In ten seconds, it had disappeared into the night. Orson came running up to the car, breathless. He gave me a thumbs-up and dragged the driver to the back of the car. Then he was at my window.
"I need your help," he said, opening the door. He unlocked the handcuffs and handed me the car keys. As we walked to the back of the Buick, I could hear the approaching car in the distance and see the taillights of the minivan, which had yet to fully disappear — a glowing red eye dwindling into darkness. I clung to that happy family. We let them go. We let them go. I looked down, but there was still no license plate on the Buick.
Orson pointed at the driver on the ground and said, "When I tell you, unlock the trunk and throw him in there. Can you do it?" I nodded.
"Gentlemen!" Orson yelled: "The trunk is being opened, and I’ll be pointing a three-fifty-seven at you. Breathe and I start squeezing."
Orson looked at me and nodded. I opened the trunk without looking inside at the men or the body I had to lift. Heaving the driver from the ground, I shoved his limp, heavy frame on top of the two men. Then I slammed the trunk, and we got back into the car.
Orson started the Buick after the oncoming car passed us. The interior lights came on, and I gasped when I looked down at my brown suit, doused in blood, which had pooled and run down the coarse cloth into my boots. I screamed at Orson to stop the car. Stumbling outside, I fell to my knees and rolled around, scrubbing my hands with dirt until the blood turned granular.
From inside the car, Orson’s voice reached me. He was slapping the steering wheel, his great bellows of laughter erupting into the night air.
12
HEADING back to the cabin, the men continued to pound against the inside of the trunk. Orson relished their noisy fear. Whenever they screamed, he mocked and mimicked their voices, often surpassing their pleas.
Watching the dirt road illuminated by the headlights, I asked Orson what he’d done to the truck. He grinned. "I secured the steering wheel with that rope so the truck would stay straight, and I shoved that two-by-four between the front seat and the gas pedal." Orson glanced at his luminescent watch. "For the next half hour, it’ll roll through twenty-five miles of empty desert. Then it’ll run into the mountains, and that’s where it’ll stop, unless it hits a mule deer along the way. But it’d have to be a big buck to stop that monster truck.
"Eventually, someone will find it. Maybe in a few days, maybe in several weeks. But by then it won’t matter, ’cause these boys’ll be pushing up sagebrush. Local law enforcement will probably find out where they were coming from and where they were headed. They’ll realize something happened on that road back there, but so what? It’s gonna rain tomorrow for the first time in weeks and rinse all the blood from the ground. Only two cars saw us, and they both had out-of-state tags, so they were just passing through. This’ll be an unsolved disappearance, and judging from the rude dispositions of these young men, I have a hard time believing anyone will give much of a shit."
Upon reaching the cabin, Orson pulled up to the shed. When we got out, he called to me from the front of the Buick, popped the hood, and motioned for me to look inside. Floodlights mounted to the shed illuminated the metallic cavity as I peered in.
"What?" I asked, staring at the corroded engine.
"You’d have fallen for it, too. Look." A few inches in, a piece of metal three feet long had been welded to the underside of the hood. "It’s an old lawn mower blade," Orson said. "Razor-sharp. Esp
ecially in the middle. If his head had been a little farther to the right, it would’ve come clean off the first slam." Gingerly, I touched the blade with my index finger. It was scratchy sharp, and there was blood on it, sprayed all over the engine, too.
"Have you done this hood trick before?" I asked.
"On occasion."
One of the men yelled from inside the trunk, "Let me out, motherfucker!"
Orson laughed. "Since he asked politely. Come open it up." He tossed me the keys. "You hear that, boys?" he yelled, moving toward the trunk. "I’m opening it up. No movement."
I raised the trunk while Orson stood with the gun pointed at the men. As I backed away, he whispered, "Go get the handcuffs."
I glanced into the plastic-lined trunk, a gruesome spectacle. The driver had been shoved to the back of the roomy compartment, but not before his blood had soaked his friends. They looked at me as I walked by, their eyes pleading for mercy that wasn’t mine to give. I grabbed the handcuffs from the floorboard on the passenger’s side and returned to Orson.
"Throw them the handcuffs," he said. "Boys, lock yourselves together."
"Go fuck yourself," said the heavy man. Orson cocked the hammer and shot a hole in his leg. As the man howled and screamed obscenities, Orson turned the gun on the other man.
"Your name, please," he said.
"Jeff." The man trembled, his hands in front of his face, as if they could stop bullets. His friend grunted and squealed through his teeth as he grasped his thigh.
"Jeff," Orson said. "I suggest you take the initiative and handcuff yourself to your pal."
"Yes sir," Jeff said, and as he cuffed his own hand, Orson spoke to the wounded man, who was now grinding his teeth together, trying not to scream.
"What’s your name?" Orson said.
Through clenched teeth, the man responded, "Wilbur."
"Wilbur, I know you’re in agonizing pain, and I wish I could tell you it’s all gonna be over soon. But it’s not." Orson patted him tenderly on the shoulder. "I just wanted to assure you that this night has only begun, and the more you buck me, the worse it’s gonna be for you."