Tales From the Gas Station 2

by Jack Townsend

  The door swung open, revealing that he was still there, slumped forward and duct taped to the chair in the dark. We breathed a collective sigh of relief, a short-lived and premature celebration. Only when we heard the soft, pained sound emanating from deep within the lungs of our prisoner did we realize our mistake.

  It was a growl at first, coming in short, muted bursts, like an old car engine struggling to turn over. He stirred awake, his head rolled, and the mutterings fused together into one long, loud crack of devious laughter.

  Spencer slowly raised his head as the final oddments of noise escaped through a sly smile. “Fuck,” he said, taking in his surroundings with wild eyes. “Guess we’re all still alive, huh? Now, which one of you wants to let me out of this chair?”

  “Spencer Middleton,” said O’Brien, “You are under arrest. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say—”

  “Christ, O’Brien, are we really going to do this again? Just set me free and give me a weapon. You clearly have no idea what’s out there right now. You think I did this to myself? Trust me. You’re going to need all the help you can get if you want any chance of surviving the night.”

  We probably should have gone with the stake.

  Spencer was still screaming at us as O’Brien reclosed the door.

  As we returned to our space at the front of the store, Rosa stayed close to my side. Her eyes kept pulling back to the door of the supply closet. I tried to warn her about Spencer, but maybe I should have put more emphasis on the mind games. He was good. So good, even I was beginning to wonder if there was any truth to what he was saying.

  O’Brien’s voice was a welcome distraction. Her words, not so much. “We need to check out what that noise was.”

  “No,” I responded, “We really don’t.”

  Rosa grabbed me by the arm for some reason. “You can’t leave us alone with that guy!”

  Jerry announced, “I’ll go check out the noise. If I’m not back in five minutes, assume the worst.”

  “You’re not going by yourself,” snapped O’Brien.

  “Fine,” he said. “Then we’ll all go together.”

  Rosa squeezed my arm tighter. “I’d rather take my chances in here.”

  “Okay!” O’Brien was near her wit’s end. “Then we split up.”

  “Are you kidding me?!” I said. “Are we really going to Scooby do this?”

  Apparently, we Scooby were. And after a few more rounds of discussion, we Scooby did. The plan went back and forth until finally we found the least worst version of it that everybody could live with. In the end, it was decided that Jerry and I would go check out the noise while O’Brien and Rosa stayed behind and kept an eye on the prisoner.

  I wasn’t particularly thrilled, but the knowledge that Spencer was tied up in our supply closet gave me some degree of comfort. As we prepared ourselves for this wholly unnecessary side quest, O’Brien walked up to me and whispered, “I can handle Floaty girl and Duct tape boy on my own, but you should take this. Just in case.” With that, she pulled the weapon from its holster.

  Why are people always trying to give me guns?

  “I told you; I’m not a gun guy. The last time I had a gun—” I caught myself. “You know what? Don’t even worry about the last time I had a gun.”

  “I’ll take it.” We turned to see Jerry walking over.

  She pulled the pistol back right as he reached for it. “Have you ever fired a gun before?”

  “That depends,” he answered, folding his arms over his chest and raising an eyebrow. “Are you a cop?”

  She let out a defeated sigh, then handed over her pistol. “Just please try not to die, guys.”

  Rosa looked at us nervously and offered some parting words of support. “Be careful. I’d hate for this night to turn into a… what’s the opposite of a sausage fest?”

  Jerry answered, “A clamboree.”

  “Right. I’d hate for this to turn into a clamboree.” That felt like a good enough note to end on, so without any more discussion, we set off.

  Jerry pushed open the door and led the way with his two perfectly functioning legs, pointing the gun and flashlight in front of him and kicking a trail through the knee-deep snow while I followed a few steps behind.

  We trudged through the frozen icescape until we were safely under the vehicle overhang next to the fuel pumps. It had only been a few yards, but the trek felt like a marathon. Once we were in the concrete clearing, I scanned the area around us with my flashlight, revealing dozens of small holes in the fresh snow, like baseball-sized craters. From here, we could see the roof of the gas station, as well as the piles of tiny, winged creatures caught up in the gutters and slowly being swallowed by snow.

  I inched closer to the edge of the overhang, where I found the bodies of several dead birds, confirming my suspicions. I hated the fact that I knew exactly what I was looking at, but it wasn’t the first time I’d seen something like this.

  Every once in a while, migratory birds passing through our town get confused and forget which way is up. On seemingly random occasions, hundreds of them will plummet into the ground en masse. Most of the time, it simply leaves an enormous mess in the woods for lucky scavengers or confused passersby. On the odd occasion, they pick a more inconvenient place to die, like the middle of main street traffic at rush hour, a high school football game, or even a backyard wedding.

  Locals have blamed everything from fireworks to pesticides, but it’s all speculation, and if any scientists have bothered looking into it, they’ve kept the results to themselves. Much like the piles of dead fish that inexplicably pile up on the edges of the creek once every year or so, the cause of the bird disruption is officially unknown.

  “Hey, check this out.”

  I turned to see that Jerry had plucked one of the creatures out of the snow and was holding it about a foot away from his face.

  “Dude, don’t touch that, it might have herpes.”

  “Whoa. Look at this,” he said as he pulled a long coil of thin copper wire out of the bird’s corpse and inspected it under the flashlight. Unwound, the metal string was nearly long enough to jump rope with. "You think he ate this thing?"

  I shrugged. “Can’t blame him. Times are tough.”

  He threw the bird back into the snow and wiped his hands on his pants. “Case closed, I guess. Should we go back inside?”

  “Yeah, in just a minute. But first, we need to talk.” I really didn’t want to do this part, but I didn’t have much of a choice. We weren’t going to get a better chance away from the others tonight, and this was a conversation that needed to be held in private.

  Jerry read my face and knew I was on to him. “Fine. I’ll come clean,” he said. “The closet mice were mine. To be fair, though, they were already dead when I bought them! I was using them for snake food, and I didn’t know—”

  “That’s not what this is about.”

  “Oh?”

  “You said two people were dead already.”

  He shrugged. “Yeah? So what?”

  “O’Brien said only one person died from the storm.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Yeah? So?”

  “I’m inclined to believe that she, a member of the law enforcement community, would have information as soon as it became available. So I’m wondering how you knew who was dead before she did? Maybe you knew information that wasn’t available yet?” He pressed his lips together. It wasn’t an agreement, but it wasn’t a rebuttal either. “The Russian radio. You put it back together, didn’t you?”

  He blinked a couple times, slowly pulled out his pack of Marlboros, slowly put one in his mouth, slowly lit it and took a long drag, then exhaled a stream of smoke over my head and said, “Yeah. So?”

  I didn’t really have anything planned for this part. So I let his question hang there while he took another pull on his cigarette.

  “Did it say anything else?” I asked.

  “Not much. Mostly about the snowstorm. And�
�” He trailed off.

  “And?” I asked.

  “And it said that Sagoth has risen.”

  I let that phrase work its way through my subconscious, searching for any sign of recognition and failing.

  “Sagoth has risen?” I repeated. “Does that mean anything to you?”

  “No, but… He kept saying it, over and over. Sagoth has risen... Sagoth has risen... You get the point. Sagoth has risen… et cetera. I thought it was kinda weird because I’d never heard him repeat anything before.”

  “What else did he say?”

  “Nothing. That’s it. The radio is busted. All he says now is that same three words over and over. Started up a couple hours back. I got sick of listening to it, so I came here for a drink.”

  We stood there in silence until he had finished his cigarette, then he looked back up at me. “Are we cool?”

  We both heard the sneeze at the same time. It came from somewhere down the road leading into the forest.

  “The hell was that?!” I whispered.

  “Sounded like a sneeze.”

  “Where’s the gun?”

  Jerry looked at the ground. I followed his eyes and pointed the flashlight at the blank spot in the snow next to the set of oversized raccoon-feet shaped prints leading off into the forest.

  I repeated the question. “Jerry. Where. Is. The. Gun?”

  “I set it down to pick up the dead bird. You don’t think Rocco made off with it, do you?”

  “I highly, highly doubt that Rocco didn’t steal it.”

  We both looked at one another with that what-do-we-do-now look, and then Jerry yelled out, “Bless you!”

  A voice called back from somewhere deep inside the blizzard.

  “Hello? Is somebody there?”

  “No!” I yelled back.

  “It sure sounds like somebody to me.”

  A figure started to emerge in the snowstorm. A man-shaped figure. As it got closer, the details came into focus. Hands in his pockets, snow covering his hooded blue coat. Before long, the man was underneath the awning with us, casually walking towards me. He stopped just in front of us, shivering but smiling, looked at Jerry, and asked, “Mind if I bum one of those off of you?”

  Jerry handed over a cigarette, which the guy took with a quick thanks. I watched as Jerry lit it for him, but couldn’t shake the eerie feeling that something about this guy was way too familiar. He was about five foot ten, early thirties, with dark brown eyes and a short and well-maintained beard, thin but in good shape. He looked almost like…

  After he got a couple puffs out of the smoke, he looked up at me and asked, “You guys know if the gas station is open?” His voice was so tip-of-my-tongue familiar.

  “There’s no power,” I answered, “but the phone still works if you pay in advance.”

  “Who are you guys?” he asked. That voice… I knew it sounded just like... “You part of the emergency services crew or something?”

  “No,” I said. “We work here and got snowed in.”

  “No shit? I was driving through and got stuck. Been waiting in my car a mile down the road for the last couple hours. I was trying to wait it out, but the engine just died. Thought I was going to freeze to death out here. I’m Donald.”

  He shook our hands and we introduced ourselves, then Jerry finally asked the question that was on my mind since we first saw this guy.

  “Hey, don’t take this the wrong way, but aren’t you Donald Glover?”

  He laughed. “Yeah, I am.”

  I knew it! We were standing outside talking to famous actor slash director Donald Glover! At my gas station!

  “Holy shit!” I said. “What are you doing here?”

  “I was just passing by,” answered Grammy-award winning musical performer Donald Glover.

  “You were just passing by? Our shitty little town?” I asked. “Why?”

  He gave a nonchalant shrug. “I got lost.”

  I looked over at Jerry, then back at Primetime-Emmy awardee Donald Glover, who asked, “So, is it cool if I come inside and get warmed up?”

  “Of course!” yelled Jerry before handing a spare flashlight to multiple Golden-Globe winning writer slash comedian Donald Glover and leading the way to the front door.

  Once we were back inside, we introduced O’Brien and Rosa to five-time WGA Award recipient Donald Glover. This was incredible. He was the second most famous person to ever step foot into the store (assuming that really was Elvis that one time), but the girls were not nearly as impressed as I felt like they should have been. It was almost like they didn’t care about musical genius Donald Glover. In fact, they seemed much more concerned about why we were returning without O’Brien’s pistol.

  Jerry explained that we were attacked by a herd of ninjas, but O’Brien wasn’t buying it. Before I could tell them about the birds, the store phone started ringing again. I was the closest, so I picked up while O’Brien gave Hollywood superstar Donald Glover a packing blanket to wrap up in.

  “Hello?” I said.

  The man on the other end of the call let out an annoyed growl before he bothered with any words. “Jack, it’s me.”

  I leaned away from the others and whispered, “Benjamin?”

  “How many times have I told you not to use my name over the phone?”

  “Sorry.”

  The last time I saw Benjamin in person, he had just finished blowing up the brain tree of the dark god below the gas station. Since then, he’d played a minor role in a few of the more mundane supernatural occurrences around here. He called every now and then for “status reports,” and to offer his expert advice, although his help was rarely useful and never necessary.

  When I described the encounter with the bipedal deer, he recommended I buy a shotgun and keep it handy. When we found the crawling human tongue in the bathroom that kept escaping from whatever cage we put it in, Benjamin instructed me to bury it in salt and drop it into the ocean. When I told him about the black sludge in the faucets, he told me my only option was to burn the whole place down. In every case, I ignored his advice and things shook out fine on their own. The deer never bothered anyone, the tongue got carried off by raccoons, and a plumber from out of town snaked the drains and removed an old cross necklace that had fallen into the sink.

  “What’s going on over there?” he asked. “I’m reading weather reports right now and the gas station looks like someone opened up a portal to the center of the ninth circle of hell.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It’s pretty bad. Thanks for checking on us. Are you going to be showing up this time?”

  “Negatory. I’m in Greece right now, just looking for a status report.”

  “Evidently, Spencer Middleton died again, but then he came back to life again, but then something beat the shit out of him, and we lost power again.”

  “Hmm,” he grunted.

  “By the way, does ‘Sagoth has risen’ mean anything to you?”

  “Sagoth?!” The name exploded out of his mouth. “Yeah, Sagoth is an ancient evil. A shapeshifting demon that leaves his victims stripped of all their skin. If he’s anywhere near the gas station, you boys need to hunker down and pray, because that son of a bitch can look like anyone, and he’ll take whatever form you’re most likely to trust. He’s an agony-parasite and empath. You understand? That means he feeds off of pain.”

  “Oh damn,” I said, “That must be what beat up Spencer. It’s a good thing we found Donald Glover when we did.”

  What followed was an agonizingly long pause.

  “Hello?” I said, “Did I lose you?”

  “Who the hell is Donald Glover?”

  “You know, the critically-acclaimed actor and musician? You might know him by his rapper pseudonym Childish Gambino. He’s a rapper. He raps.”

  “Yeah, and I bet he’s a great kisser, too. Jack, did you somehow become dumber since the last time I saw you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Motherfucker, I just Googled him! Don
ald Glover is at home with his family in Atlanta right now. You’re in the presence of a shapeshifting demon.”

  “Okay, or maybe the one in Atlanta is the shapeshifter, and the real one is in the gas station.”

  He made that growling noise again and said, “The only way to kill a demon like this is to take off his head. Goodbye, dumbass.”

  The line went dead.

  Jerry walked over, sat on the counter, and said, “Alright, I’m not making any offers or anything. I just want to get your honest opinion. Do you think we’re more likely or less likely to have an orgy now that Donald Glover is here?”

  “Jerry, listen closely.” I kept my voice low. “We have to kill Donald Glover.”

  “Okay!” he said, hopping back to his feet. “Let’s do this. How?”

  Jesus, he doesn’t even need an explanation or anything.

  “We need to cut off his head.”

  “Nice.”

  Just like that, I had one ally on board, but I knew that convincing two more people to help us cover up yet another brutal murder at the gas station might prove more difficult, assuming we could even figure out a way to kill not-Donald-Glover, and also assuming that he really was a demon, and also assuming demons were even real, Benjamin was feeding me correct information, and none of this was just a vivid hallucination caused by my rapidly-deteriorating mental state.

  Man, when I lay it all out like that, it sure is a lot to take on faith before committing decapitation.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I’m not sure how differently the night would have gone if Spencer’s phone hadn’t picked that moment to start ringing, just like I’m not sure how I kept forgetting that he has the only private cellular network on the planet that reliably gets service out at the gas station.

  O’Brien and I connected eyes and shared the same thought. We forgot to take his phone?!