Slithers

by Mortensen, WW

  “I don’t know,” Scottie said. “Windshield’s intact. Doesn’t look like he was thrown clear.”

  Ethan joined them. “Given the way he was driving, he must be off his face, probably doesn’t even know he’s crashed. I bet he’s in the bushes somewhere, sleeping it off.”

  “I say we leave him to it,” Brad said, leaping onto the same crowded step as Scottie.

  “We can’t do that,” Tobe said. “He might be injured.” Motioning for Scottie’s flashlight, he took it and combed the endless pine rows. The trees stood as silent and still as sentinels, but amongst them, angular shapes bounded.

  Just the interplay of light and shadow, Tobe told himself.

  Still, something about the forest didn’t feel right.

  Brad shook his head. “Man, he could be anywhere,” he said. “In any case, he’s done a runner. There’s no blood, so I doubt he’s hurt. Let’s just get to the station, call the cops. Let them find him.”

  While Brad was talking, Scottie hauled himself into the cab.

  Tobe turned back from the trees. “You think that’s wise?”

  Scottie settled into the driver’s seat, in the full glare of the interior lights. “Just having a look,” he said. He started rummaging about.

  Though uncomfortable with this blatant invasion of privacy, Tobe said nothing more. Discreetly, he turned his own attention to the cab. The vehicle’s interior was surprisingly plush: pewter-grey trim, leather seats, roomy, pleasant. Scottie’s fingers worked various buttons on the dash, and when he flipped open the unlocked glove compartment, a couple of girlie mags tumbled out.

  “Reckon Rach will let me keep them?” Scottie asked with a smile, glancing back over his shoulder to where the girls had stopped halfway down the slope.

  “Shove over,” Brad said, leaping inside and snatching one of the mags. Chuckling, Scottie let him have both.

  Tobe wasn’t nearly as flippant. He pointed at the dash. “Scottie, try the radio.”

  Reaching across, Scottie plucked the CB from its cradle, depressed the talk button. “Hello? Anyone out there?”

  Nothing but static. Scottie tried various channels before returning the mouthpiece to its home.

  Tobe bit his lip. Bizarre streaks in the sky, a strange creaking sound in the air, phones and watches on the blink—and now a missing truck driver. What the hell was going on?

  Brad reached over and flicked off the truck’s headlights, the sudden darkness causing Tobe to jump. Brad turned them back on—then off again. The forest plunged once more into inky blackness.

  “Brad, for Christ’s sake,” Sarah shouted. “Turn them back on!”

  We shouldn’t be mucking around like this, Tobe thought.

  Brad chuckled, and the headlights glowed bright again.

  Scottie stared over Tobe’s shoulder, towards the treeline. “What the…” he whispered. His jaw dropped, as if he wasn’t sure what he was seeing.

  Tobe turned and followed Scottie’s gaze down the grassy slope to the point where the neatly-rowed conifers began. The truck’s headlights didn’t reach that far, but suffused light seeped into the forest, as though a ghostly mist had settled there and washed it in pale indigo.

  “What’s up?’ he asked Scottie. He scanned the treeline. Even in the saturating light, the trees were unremarkable, for the most part arrow-straight lines of slate-grey.

  With a shake of his head, Scottie blinked, returning fully to the present. “I thought I saw a couple of lights down there, behind the front row of pines.”

  “Lights? Like flashlights, you mean?” More intently, Tobe searched the area. The front row of pines formed a kind of natural fence-line, a boundary separating the grassy field and the vast plantation. He saw no lights.

  “Yeah, kind of,” Scottie said thoughtfully. “They could have been flashlights, I suppose.”

  “You think the driver is down there?” Tobe asked.

  Scottie squinted. “Maybe, but if he is down there, he has someone with him. There were two lights, and they were bobbing up and down.”

  Tobe wondered what business anyone might have down there. If the driver—and, it appeared likely a passenger, too—needed help, logically, they’d head up to the road, not away from it. Were they searching for something?

  Brad’s eyes darted. “I was looking down there myself, but I didn’t notice any lights.” He tried to sound indifferent, but Tobe detected uncertainty. Maybe even fear.

  Ethan made a snorting, dismissive noise. “You’re seeing things,” he said to Scottie.

  Scottie was thoughtful, absent. “Maybe,” he said.

  Tobe knew his friend well enough to realise Scottie wasn’t admitting a mistake. As far as Scottie was concerned he’d seen something, but didn’t want to argue about it.

  Tearing his gaze from the treeline, Tobe scanned the field with creeping alarm. If someone was down there, lurking in the shadows, they’d killed their lights, and were hiding. And if they were hiding, they were likely spying, too, because Tobe and his companions, bathed in the interior lights of the truck’s cabin, were exposed and in full view. Vulnerable.

  “There’s nothing of any use here,” Tobe said. “The driver’s gone, likely uninjured, like Brad said. Let’s get back to the girls.”

  Ethan paused, as though having second thoughts. “What if Scottie’s right? What if there is someone walking around down there? They may have phone reception. We’d be crazy not to ask.”

  “There’s no-one down there,” Brad said.

  “We need to make sure,” Ethan said, leaping from the cab and proceeding down the slope. A few feet beyond the range of the cabin’s sphere of light, he stopped and turned on his flashlight. “Hello?” he called, “Anyone there?”

  A hush fell over the group. The forest, too, was quiet. The strange popping sound, which Tobe realised hadn’t let up since the crash but had simply slipped into the background, grew more apparent. Groaning, straining, as if the trees were stretching.

  “This is not a good idea,” Tobe said to the others. In itself, Ethan’s brazenness didn’t concern him. Tobe figured that, like the rest of them, he was only trying to resolve the situation. What did concern him was the attention he was drawing. Again, Tobe sensed eyes upon them.

  Projecting down the slope, the beam of Ethan’s flashlight entered the first row of conifers. It highlighted boughs heavy with needles and threw harsh abstract shadows deeper into the forest. Ethan combed the beam back and forth for several seconds. Nothing. Still, Tobe remained uneasy.

  “There’s no-one down there, Ethan,” Scottie said, sensing Tobe’s disquiet and perhaps feeling it himself. “I was mistaken. I got a bump to the head in the accident, and guess I was seeing stars or something, an after-image. Let’s get back to the girls. We don’t want to alarm them.”

  “They’re big girls,” Ethan called from the darkness. “I’m sure they’re fine. But, hey, whatever you say.”

  He emerged from the gloom and they abandoned the truck, but not before Tobe snapped a photo of the licence plate, again for insurance purposes.

  They reconvened as a group of seven at the top of the slope, back on Day Dawn.

  “What now?” Sarah said. “We’re kinda stuck between a rock and a hard place.”

  Ethan glanced at Tory and the two of them appeared to engage in a wordless conversation. Tory nodded.

  Turning to the rest of them, Ethan said, “I don’t know about you guys, but Tory and I are sticking with the plan. We’re heading to the service station. Our car is too far south, and out of fuel in any case.”

  “We could siphon fuel from the van, and fill your car with that,” Rachel said.

  “We don’t have a hose, or a can.”

  “We could improvise.”

  “The van was leaking fuel,” Tobe said. “The tank had ruptured. It would have drained by now.”

  “What about the truck?”

  “It’s diesel,” Ethan said. “My car is petrol. We could dump it in there, but th
e engine would never start.”

  Sarah sighed. “No point heading south, then,” she said.

  Rachel agreed. “It seems our only option is to head to the station. There’ll be a phone there, at least.”

  Tobe bit his lip again. Earlier tonight, he’d been critical of Ethan and Tory for abandoning their vehicle and going for help. The irony wasn’t lost on him. “We should return to the van,” he said. “You know what they say about staying put, waiting for help to come to you.”

  “That’s only in survival situations,” Ethan said, “when they know you’re missing and send out search parties. No-one knows we’ve had an accident. We’re not missing.”

  “Even so,” Tobe said, “There’ll be another car along soon. We’ll flag one down.”

  “Who says they’ll stop?” Tory said. Her voice was thick with sarcasm, and again, this wasn’t lost on Tobe.

  “It doesn’t matter if they stop or not,” Sarah said. “There hasn’t been a single car yet. I agree with Rachel.”

  “Me too,” Brad said.

  Tobe turned to Sarah. “What about your ankle? It’s a long walk to the station. The van’s close.”

  “I can make it to the station,” Sarah said.

  “I can wait at the van with you, while the others go.”

  “We need to stick together,” Sarah insisted. “And I don’t want to wait.”

  Tobe looked at Scottie. He’d disconnected again.

  “Wakey-wakey,” Tobe said in a low voice.

  Scottie blinked myopically, pushed his glasses up his nose. “If Sarah’s okay with it, I suggest we walk north, to the station. If someone happens along, they’ve no option but to pass us. When they do, we’ll flag them down. Otherwise, we’ll use the station’s landline.”

  It made sense, and it seemed Tobe was outvoted six-to-one, in any case. Trusting Scottie as always, and not keen on hanging around by himself, Tobe nodded, and they set off without further discussion, moving back the way they had come. They stuck to the shoulder of the road, clustered together, each couple either holding hands or with protective arms around each other. Brad had looped Sarah’s arm around his neck, and she leaned on him as she walked, her face strained.

  They reached the van, salvaged what few possessions they had: overnight bags, some snack food, drinks they’d brought for the party. Tobe considered joining Brad in a Corona, figuring he could have a beer now that he wasn’t driving. He abstained. By force of habit, he locked the van, and they hit the road, heading north.

  The pace was as brisk as Sarah could manage. With every step, the beam of Scottie’s flashlight jerked up and down.

  “Save the battery,” Ethan said. His flashlight was already off, tucked into the waistband of his jeans.

  Reconsidering, Scottie followed suit. Plunged into darkness, Tobe blinked a few times before his eyes adjusted to the gloom.

  They kept moving. All around, the trees groaned and strained. Tobe tried to block it out. What the hell was causing the peculiar sound? He wanted to shrink from it, and sensed in the others a similar feeling of claustrophobia.

  Soon, Tobe found himself out front, leading. The others spread out behind, at varying intervals. Scottie eased up beside him.

  “There were lights,” Scottie whispered.

  “I know.”

  “You’ve heard of Min-Min lights, right?”

  “You think that’s what you saw? Min-Min lights?” Tobe asked. He knew about the phenomena, the mysterious, unexplained balls of light sometimes observed in remote areas. His grandparents lived on a farm and his grandmother had told him about the ‘spooklights’ she’d sometimes seen out there. She was a firm believer in them. According to her, the strange lights appeared all around the world. Some people called them Earthlights, or Will-o'-the-wisps, or Jack-o'-lanterns.

  “I don’t know what I saw,” Scottie said. “But Min-Min lights spring to mind. The Aborigines believe they’re spirits of the dead. Sceptics suggest they’re pockets of gas, like swamp gas, or geomagnetic anomalies. But yeah, the lights I saw looked more like glowing spheres than the beams of flashlights.”

  Tobe glanced at Scottie, who was staring into the forest as he walked, perhaps waiting for something. It was odd that only Scottie had seen these lights. For certain, Brad had been looking in the same direction, and hadn’t seen anything. Tobe had never doubted Scottie before, and was struck by a sense that everything was out of kilter here, even his best friend.

  As they walked, Tobe grew more attuned to his surroundings. Not unlike an animal surveying new and unfamiliar, potentially dangerous territory, he scanned the shadows continually. There was little to see; he could discern almost nothing beyond the towering trees. His other senses, heightened now, attempted to bridge this shortfall. He detected an unpleasant smell, not thick in the air but more of a subtle undercurrent, suggestive of mud and stagnant water. It was the stench of a bog, or marsh. He thought about the lights, and what Scottie had said about swamp gas. That fit, although he was unaware of any swamps in the area and considered it unlikely there’d be one so near the plantation. More likely, the smell was rising from the ditch running along the road. The trough was a drainage channel, and back where the van had come to rest had been a shallow film of mud.

  To escape the stench, Tobe veered to the middle of the road. The others followed. Positioned so, they’d have to keep an even sharper eye out for cars. Again, Tobe was reminded of what a jerk he’d been to Ethan and Tory for walking so far over, for taking up too much room. He’d been unfairly critical of many things tonight. Still, up here, away from both the ditch and the treeline, he felt more at ease.

  Minutes passed and no cars approached from either direction. Even for Mountain View, it seemed strangely deserted.

  They had fallen into a loose formation; Scottie and Rachel up front, with him, Brad and Sarah a little way back, sharing a beer, Tory and Ethan, loaded with their packs, trailing. There was no talk, only the sound of boot and sneaker scuffing the blacktop, the occasional footstep missing the beat and scraping harder.

  In the background, the air creaked and popped, the trees strained.

  The trees looked different.

  In what way, Tobe couldn’t be sure. Still the neat array of pines, each a copy of the one beside it, the one behind it.

  Were the trees more crowded?

  Perhaps that was it. The trees here seemed to be denser, more tightly pressed. Before, he’d thought the lower branches of the pines had been pruned, and some of the smaller trees thinned. He didn’t think that now. The forest seemed darker, denser, the trees taller. He supposed this was a different section of the plantation, the trees in this sector grown for a specific timber quality or a higher yield.

  “The sound has stopped.”

  “What?”

  “The sound,” Sarah said. “The straining, popping sound—it’s gone.”

  Tobe listened. She was right. The stretching sound had ceased.

  “And the sky,” Rachel added. “See that?” She jabbed a finger skyward. “The star-trails—they’re gone, too. The stars are normal again.”

  Indeed, the sky had reverted to its original state—snapping back into focus somehow. The heavens looked as they should.

  The strange weather anomaly—if that was what it had been—had vanished.

  “My watch is ticking again,” Ethan said.

  “The clock on my phone is working, too,” Brad said. “But my phone… and my watch… the times are way out of whack. They don’t match.”

  “Same here,” Tory said. “They’re working, but they’re seriously fucked up.”

  Despite this, Tobe’s hopes rose. “Forget the time. Check your phones for a signal!” Yet even as he said this, he noted an absence of bars on his own phone, and cursed.

  Rachel confirmed it. “Still a dead zone.”

  The sense of disappointment was like a physical blow to the chest.

  What the fuck is going on?

  “I was thinking before th
at it could be a solar flare,” Brad said. “They fuck up the magnetosphere, fuck up communications—fuck up all sorts of shit. Might explain our watches, too.”

  “And you reckon Scottie’s a bookworm?” Rachel said.

  “Guess I saw it on TV.”

  Tobe doubted the anomaly was—or had been—the result of a solar flare. Searching for an answer, for some kind of meaning, he scanned the area again, and listened. It dawned on him that the insects had fallen silent. Surrounded by forest, the buzz of cicadas should have been deafening. He hadn’t previously noticed this absence—if indeed there had been an absence—because of the weird straining noise. The noise would have masked either scenario: either the presence of insects, or the lack thereof.

  For now, they were quiet.

  Still a dead zone.

  Except that wasn’t right, either.

  He could hear something.

  A brief, scurrying sound emanated from high in the trees. He thought he heard a shiver of pine needles, and the single crack of a branch under duress. Then there was silence, but only momentarily, because from deeper in the forest came a kind of gurgling, slurping noise, as though something moved through a sludgy bog.

  There’s no swamp out here.

  Maybe so, but something was moving. He did not hear footfalls; the sound suggested a sliding, slithering form of movement. Whatever it was, it sounded large.

  Unpleasant.

  A mental image came to him, one of slugs, big fat ones—the kind that clustered on his grandmother’s strawberries early in the morning before the sun reached above the roofline of the farmhouse. As an eight-year-old he’d watch her pluck them off with tweezers and drop them in a plastic cup. He’d found it fascinating.

  He wasn’t fascinated now. He was alarmed.

  If these were slugs, they were much larger than normal, and more active than normal, too. He imagined them entwined in a large knot, slipping and sliding and rolling through stinking muck.

  Ridiculous.

  Was it?

  Yes, it was. It was impossible. There was no marsh out here, no bog, no swamp—nothing of the sort. And definitely no slugs.