Then there was nothing but darkness, and silence.
…d…
…addy…
“Daddy?”
A tiny voice. A young voice. Maybe two? A little girl’s voice, and maybe… a young boy’s? They were distant.
“Are you okay?”
Tobe tried to lift his head, turn it around. Light, bright in his eyes, so bright…
…o…
…kay…
“…okay?”
Tobe lifted his head from the steering wheel. His skull throbbed with the effort, his vision greying. A ringing in his ears engulfed the voice—adult, male—that had roused him. He tasted blood, and his ribs burned. Gingerly, he craned his head, looked around.
The van was still; he noted through a mounting haze it had come to rest in a ditch at the side of the road. Of the truck, strangely, there was no sign. He felt the haze thicken, fought it, and as he did his hearing returned with a wave-like whoosh. The tick of settling metal filled the van, and a louder hiss of escaping steam, and over that, a jumble of voices.
“Everyone okay?” It was Scottie.
“Fucking broke my beers! Shit!”
“I said are you okay?!”
“Yeah, yeah, we’re good,” Rachel said. She sounded dazed.
Forcing his eyes wide, Tobe glanced at Scottie. His friend appeared uninjured. “Thanks,” he said with a swallow, his throat dry. It was Scottie who had reached across and grabbed the wheel. “You saved us.” His voice trembled, and he coughed. “I just… froze. Sorry.”
Scottie smiled faintly. He was shaking. “Don’t sweat it,” he said. “We’re all okay. You were out of it for a second or two, unconscious, but then you came back. You were mumbling something, words. To be honest, it was a little odd.”
“Words? Like what?” Tobe said. He felt vague and heavy, as though he’d been pulled from a deep slumber. He recalled the tiny voices, but barely; he was pulling from the memory just as he had pulled from Ethan and Tory that first time out on the road, the voices in his dream diminishing the way Ethan and Tory had receded in the rearview when he had lifted his foot from the brake and sped down the road.
“I don’t know. I think you were… hallucinating.”
That was likely. But then, there’d been no vision, just the voices. Does that count? Was there such a thing as an auditory hallucination? He supposed there was. Tobe’s head swum and he tried to go back to the dream or hallucination or whatever it was, but the voices were gone. Tobe suspected that what he’d heard, or thought he’d heard, was the result of a concussion, maybe misfiring synapses triggered by the blow to his skull when he hit the steering wheel or the doorpost because when you thought about it, how could it have been anything but that?
“Let’s have a look at the van.”
The girls clambered out the back, Brad not far behind. Ethan and Tory exited next, dragging their packs out with them. Unable to open his door, Tobe had to crawl out the window. When he dropped to the ground, turning at the same time, his jaw fell in shock.
The van was a write-off.
Tobe’s heart sunk. Man, Dale was going to be pissed. The light blue Kombi was his brother’s pride and joy. Sure, it was far from pristine—Dale was more about catching tubes than automobile maintenance—but it was a reliable ride, and his brother loved it. Now, wedged in a deep ditch, it was as far from pristine as it had ever been.
Tobe’s shoulders slumped.
Damn it.
There was no driving it out. The ditch was at least four feet deep. The van may well have been dropped there by a crane.
How was he going to explain this?
Scottie extricated himself from the van, and he and Brad helped the girls out of the ditch and onto the road’s shoulder, which was overgrown with waist-high grass. Sarah limped, favouring her left leg. Her yellow summer dress—a perfect choice for a pool party—was flecked with mud.
A cut above Rachel’s eye, above the arch of her eyebrow, looked deep. Sarah inspected it.
“I’m okay,” Rachel said, ever the pragmatist.
“There may be a First-Aid kit in the van,” Sarah said. “I’ll check.”
“No need, we’ve got one,” Ethan said to her. “You need to sit down.”
“He’s right, babe,” Brad said. “Let me wrap your ankle.”
“I can do it,” Sarah said.
Tobe scanned the group. No serious injuries. A few superficial cuts, lots of bruises—he suspected a doctor may need to look at the bump to his head, and probably Rachel’s cut and Sarah’s ankle—but nothing of major concern. Certainly nothing life-threatening, thank God. On an emotional front, everyone seemed to be holding up—for now, anyway. Once the shock subsided, that might change. The psychological stuff would come later.
While Ethan searched his pack for the First-Aid kit, Tobe turned back to the van.
Reluctantly, Brad left Sarah and leapt into the drainage channel. Mud splashed on his tight-fitting designer jeans. He paused, put an arm around Tobe’s shoulders. “We’ll need a tow-truck.”
“You don’t say.”
“I can’t believe you drive for a living.”
“Forklifts handle better.”
“Hey,” Scottie said, “check this out.” He, too, was back in the ditch, having eased from Rachel’s arms to leave her in Sarah’s capable care. On his haunches, crouched at the driver’s side door, he waved for Tobe and Brad to join him. “Can you believe it?” he said. He pointed to the spot where—now bare save for a couple of wiry entrails—the wing-mirror had once protruded.
The mirror had been sheared clear.
Tobe shivered. That would explain the loud slapping sound he had heard. The huge truck had side-swiped them. They’d been lucky, to say the least.
The smell of petrol was intense here. He hadn’t noticed it a moment ago. The van was leaking fuel.
“Fuck me—what was that guy’s problem, anyway?” Brad said. “Fucking lunatic nearly got us killed! Kept on driving, too!”
Tobe maintained focus. The van was insured, they were all okay—nothing else mattered. He reached for his phone, his only thought to call the police and get help. He punched two numbers… and then looked at the top left corner of his screen. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he murmured. He turned to the group. “Hey—anyone got reception?”
No-one had service. They were stuck in a dead zone.
Typical. I can’t call Lisa, either.
Even so, he tried to send her a short text. Predictably, it came back undelivered.
“We had reception earlier; we should give it a go down the road,” Rachel called from up on the shoulder. Using the contents of Ethan’s kit, Sarah had flushed and plastered Rachel’s cut, and now, the two girls stood huddled as though sharing warmth. In this humidity, Tobe doubted they were cold.
“I agree,” Sarah said. “We’re still on Day Dawn, right?”
Of that, Tobe was certain. He went to the van, forced open the rear door. Inside the well was a flashlight, but the snatching fingers of another hand beat him to it.
Ethan raised the Eveready. “I’ll go,” he said.
Tobe glanced up at Ethan, but in the darkness, his face was featureless. Uncertain, Tobe transferred his gaze to Scottie.
“I’ll go with you,” Scottie said to Ethan. “If we can’t get a signal down the road, we’ll look for a house.” To Tobe, he said, “It should be me. I’m faster than you.”
Tobe shook his head. Sure, Scottie was faster, and he had no problem with trying to source a signal. But beyond that, the plan was futile. “You won’t find a house. We’re still deep in the forest.”
“No, we’re almost out of it. And we have to try.”
Tobe looked up at the towering trees. They blotted the sky. He turned back to Scottie and Ethan. “Beyond this subdivision,” he said, “the forest gives way on the eastern side, but it’s all vacant public land for some distance, and beyond that, acreage. On the western side, more forest again. In the dark, with
no moon, no streetlights, you won’t find a driveway until you’re right upon it. You may not find one at all.”
“We’ll split up,” Ethan said to Scottie, and handed him the flashlight. “I’ve got a Maglite in my pack.”
“Good idea,” Scottie said. “Splitting up, I mean. We’ll increase our chances.”
“I’ll head north, in the direction we were driving,” Ethan said. “You go south.”
“There’s nothing to the south,” Tobe said.
“We may have missed something.”
Scottie said to Tobe, “Ethan’s right. You stay with the others, keep an eye out for any cars that happen along.”
Tobe didn’t like it, but there was no alternative. He nodded, and as the others scrambled out of the ditch to join the girls, Tobe pulled out his phone once more. Figuring the insurance company might need them, he snapped photos of the van from various angles.
Dale’s gonna kill me.
Feeling sick to his stomach, Tobe jumped out of the ditch.
“We won’t be long,” Scottie said to him, and made to move.
Rachel, however, grasped her boyfriend’s arm, halting him. “Scottie… guys… look at the sky.”
With the others, Tobe followed her gaze upwards—and his breath caught in his throat. What the…? They’d been so fixated on their various bumps and bruises and the van stuck in the gully below that none of them had noticed what lay overhead, in the sky above the darkened treetops. Looking up now, he struggled to make sense of the sight.
Instead of their usual dot-like appearance, the stars, inexplicably, were long streaks—star-trails smeared across the deep-indigo dome. The sky was hazy, blurred, as though he were looking at a photograph that had been snapped from a moving vehicle.
“Weird,” Brad said. There was a bottle of Corona in his hand—obviously salvaged from amongst the broken ones.
“Gotta be some rare weather condition,” Rachel said. “An anomaly of some kind.”
Tobe noted that the sky was cloudless. Nothing obstructed or affected the view—equally, nothing could possibly explain it. “It must be causing the interference with our phones, the reason why—”
“Hey, quiet!” Sarah said, so abruptly it caused him to jump. “You hear that?”
Brad spun on her. He seemed anxious, edgy. “Hear what?”
“That sound?”
They fell quiet. Sarah was right—there was a sound, a faint popping in the air around them. It was almost the same as the tick of the van’s cooling engine, only louder, and coming from all directions. No-one moved, simply listened.
“It’s sort of like—a straining sound,” Rachel said at last, head-cocked. She had her phone out now, recording. “Like something stretching.”
Tobe was hit by the absurd mental image of a car that had screeched to a halt at the edge of a cliff, the metal groaning, straining in protest as the vehicle teetered back and forth. It unnerved him.
His attention was drawn to Ethan and Tory, who were engaged in hushed conversation. He couldn’t hear what they were saying, their voices low and sibilant. Tory seemed agitated; maybe she was upset that Ethan was leaving her behind. He seemed to be calming her.
To Ethan, Scottie said, “We need to get moving.”
Ethan and Tory separated, Tory remaining in the middle of the road with her arms folded across her chest. Ethan jogged ahead, ponytail swinging. Rachel pocketed her phone and kissed Scottie, who turned and headed back the way they had come. A few moments after both their forms had vanished, their footfalls also diminished, and other than the strange popping sound, there was silence.
Once they’d gone, Rachel whispered, “I don’t like this, something’s not right.” With a shiver that could not have been caused by the temperature, she eased closer to Tobe, pressing against him.
Tobe tensed. Though she was perhaps wholly unaware of the contact—pressed only lightly against his chest, mostly the curve of her shoulder-blades and part of her upper arm—he was all too aware of her closeness. Rachel’s body radiated warmth, and then she moved even closer, the dark, sweetly fragrant curls of her hair soft against his cheek. She had to be aware, he thought. He considered pulling back, but wanted her to feel safe—that was what she needed from him—so he slid a protective arm around her waist. He shifted it up to her shoulder, which seemed a more appropriate place, tensing for a reaction, hoping there’d be none—he was only trying to comfort her—and when he sensed her relax, he was relieved. Still, he felt awkward. He was far from relaxed himself.
The five of them huddled closely, alert to their surroundings. Brad and Sarah stood slightly in front and to the right of Tobe and Rachel. On the other side, behind Tobe, was Tory. Sensing a gaze upon him, Tobe turned. Tory looked at him oddly, intensely, though in the darkness, he couldn’t read her expression.
“I hope they find a house,” he said to her. His voice sounded low, cracked. She said nothing. He thought he saw her shake her head, maybe roll her eyes. He decided he had imagined the latter.
They waited for Scottie and Ethan to return. For several minutes, there was no sign of them. Tobe grew ever more uneasy. He sensed in the others, too, a building restlessness. As though needing to occupy herself, Sarah eased from Brad’s embrace. Sitting down, she adjusted the bandage on her ankle. Tobe hadn’t realised she’d already wrapped it.
“Damn,” Brad said. He was staring at his wrist. “I think my watch is busted. Babe, what time have you got?”
Sarah reached for Brad’s hand, and he helped her up. She wasn’t wearing a watch, and standing again, she pulled her phone from her bag. She paused.
“Babe?” Brad said.
“Tell me,” Sarah said. “What time does your watch show?”
“It stopped at 8:08.”
Another pause, then, “I didn’t notice this when I looked before, when I was checking for service.” Sarah held out her phone. “I kinda assumed it was working fine—but the time… it hasn’t changed.”
The time on Sarah’s phone showed 20:08, the same as that revealed by the luminous dial of Tobe’s watch.
What the…?
A beam of light bounced up the road towards them, from the north—Ethan, returning.
“Babe—any luck?” Tory said.
“No signal, no other roads,” Ethan said as he reached them, panting. “No houses, either.” He shrugged.
“So… what now?” Brad asked.
Just then, the light from Scottie’s torch flitted up the road from the south, jolting heavily, as though he was running. He was, and he drew up, short of breath. “You gotta come see this,” he said.
3
“Scottie… what is it?” Tobe said.
“Just follow me.”
“We can’t,” Rachel said. “Sarah’s ankle’s busted. She can’t walk.”
“It’s not busted… I can walk,” Sarah said.
“You sure, babe?” Brad said.
“I’m sure.”
“It’s not far,” Scottie said, still panting. He signalled for them to follow and took off down the road.
As a group, they trailed Scottie in a brisk canter, heading south, back the way they had come. Sarah favoured her left leg but with Brad’s help was able to keep up, adopting a kind of half-hopping, half-jogging shuffle. Ahead, the road arced to the left, the tree-lined asphalt disappearing beyond the curve. Following it, they reached the top of the bend and rounded it.
A few hundred metres away, its headlights spearing into the gloom, was the truck.
“Oh man…”
It had left the road.
“I thought he’d kept driving, fled the scene,” Brad said.
“I haven’t been down there yet. He could be hurt,” Scottie said. “I came back to get you, Sarah. If he’s injured, we’ll need you.” With that, he broke into a run, the rest of them close on his heels.
Evidently, they weren’t far from where the initial impact had occurred—the air here was thick with the smell of burnt rubber—and perhaps a
hundred metres or more from where they had themselves left the road, they found the point where the truck had started its own inexorable slide. Skid marks veered towards the shoulder, visible even in the dark. As a group they followed the twin tracks towards the escarpment running parallel to the blacktop.
“Man, will you look at that…” Ethan said.
The truck lay in a pitched field of low grass. Despite crashing headlong down the slope, the cab remained upright, its powerful headlights scorching the neat rows of the surrounding pines. The trailer, however, lay on its side, like a snake with a broken neck. The chains strapping the load had snapped also, and sawlogs covered the surrounding field like an upended box of matches.
“HELLO?! You okay down there?” Rachel called.
There was no answer. Both doors to the cab were wide open.
Scottie was first down the slope, Tobe and Rachel next, and the remainder not far behind. After leaving the road, the rig had continued in a straight line, so that its angle to the road was shallow. Most of the field, and the surrounding pines, spread beyond the range of its lights.
Ahead of the pack, reaching the truck first, Scottie leapt onto the step at the base of the driver’s door.
“Is he okay?” Sarah called out. She was wearing flats, better for running than heels, but still no good with a sprained ankle. She had fallen a long way behind, and along with Brad, had in fact given up and stopped. Realising this, Rachel, too, halted, and headed back up the slope to her friend.
Tobe ran ahead and joined Scottie on the step.
The cabin was empty.
“He’s not here!” Tobe shouted back to Sarah.
Tory joined Rachel and Sarah. The girls seemed content to stay put halfway down the slope. Separating from them, Brad and Ethan continued down to the truck.
Before they arrived, Tobe jumped from the step and headed for the passenger-side door. As he swept past the front of the truck, careful to avoid looking directly at the powerful headlights, he noticed a bumper sticker pasted across the grille that read ‘The Bug Stops Here’. Funny. Well, sort of funny. Continuing around to the passenger side, he found no sign of the driver. “Where do you think he is?” he said.
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