In the heart of Moyer’s business district, Alice Tippin, a retired bookkeeper, left the Sweet Town Bakery and walked along the westbound side of Central Avenue, carrying a box of cupcakes for her niece’s birthday party in her left hand, keys in her right. Since her retirement, she walked at least five miles a day, often with no destination in mind. Sometimes, however, she’d walk along the main strip of businesses for a little retail therapy. Mostly, she window-shopped. Because she lived less than a mile from the stores, she left her car at home. This day was no different. Out of habit and warnings from self-defense classes for women, she held her keys in her hand, apartment key clutched between her thumb and index finger. As she passed in front of a hair salon, she turned toward the window and stumbled when she saw only blackness.
Alice regained her balance and her head turned toward the curb. She veered toward the row of cars parked in all the metered spaces and her white-knuckled hand stretched out, key poking from her hand like a metal claw. One by one, she walked by the cars, minivans and SUVs and pressed the tip of the key into their paint, scraping a continuous line interrupted only by the spaces between the front and rear bumpers of each vehicle.
At the intersection, she paused beside a trashcan and dropped her keys to the sidewalk. She reached into the bakery bag and removed the box of cupcakes, untied the string wrapped around the box and proceeded to eat the cupcakes. She shoved the first one in her mouth, as if to eat the whole thing in one bite, smearing swirled icing on her lips and the tip of her nose. She tossed aside the liner and ate the next one in the same manner.
People walking past her on Central Avenue stared first in curiosity, then in apprehension, giving her a wide berth as she ate a half-dozen cupcakes with increasing messiness. Bored—or simply full—she dropped the uneaten cupcakes to the ground and heedlessly stepped on them as she made her way to the trashcan.
She looked down into the jumbled mound of debris for a moment, then reached into it, pushing aside fast food wrappers and cartons, empty soda cans and plastic bottles until her fingers curled around the neck of a whiskey bottle with a red “Paid” sticker from the Moyer Liquor Shoppe. Only a few amber drops remained. Nevertheless, she upended the bottle over her icing-coated lips and waited for them to drip onto her tongue.
When nothing remained of the liquor, she raised the bottle over her head again, but this time hurled it toward the windshield of the nearest car, a midnight-blue hatchback. The bottle shattered, leaving a starburst and one long crack in the windshield.
“Hey!” a man shouted behind her. “What the hell, lady!”
Alice staggered, suddenly aware that a gray-haired man had shoved her and was about to do so again. “Stop it!” she yelled at the man. “What are you—?”
She became aware of the cake and icing smeared all over her face, the crushed box of cupcakes at her feet near her discarded keys, and a slight feeling of nausea.
“What happened?”
* * *
Across the street, a few blocks away, one teenaged boy chased another, leaping from one parked car to the next. Each would land on the trunk of a car, bound over the roof across the hood and jump to the next car in a variation of the-floor-is-lava game. Hatchbacks and SUVs presented more of a challenge. If the pursued failed to make a jump or fell to the street, the roles and direction of the game reversed. Both teens laughed breathlessly, seemingly oblivious to cuts, scrapes and bruises.
After two reversals and extensive damage to two dozen cars, including a cracked windshield and several busted headlights and taillights, a good Samaritan rushed between two cars and tackled the lead teen in mid-air. They both collapsed in the street. One moment the teen was tense as a board, then he sagged, grumbling in pain.
The chasing teen, who had suffered a lacerated scalp during a previous fall, stopped on the hood of an old station wagon, kicked at the hood ornament, missed and fell on his rear with a metallic thump. Disappointed, he shook his head, flinging droplets of blood to either side. Then he too seemed to deflate, falling onto his side, moaning as he clutched the gash on his brow.
* * *
Miles away, Hal Greener, a Moyer mail carrier for almost ten years, drove his truck along the route he knew like the back of his hand. Minute by minute, he made stuttered progress, stopping at each mailbox along the sun-dappled streets to drop off letters and mailers, shifting into park when he had a box to run up to a welcome mat. Except for Christmastime, when the number of boxes increased significantly, requiring longer stops, he made his rounds like clockwork, starting and finishing within a few minutes of the same time every day.
Hal was less than thirty minutes into the day’s route, in the shade of a maple tree, when his hand paused next to the slot of the Gallaghers’ mailbox. Between his fingers he held several bills, a postcard advertisement and what looked like a birthday card for Susan, the Gallaghers’ youngest child. They had five kids. Susan was the only girl.
The shade seemed darker than usual, obscuring Hal’s vision. He tried to blink it away. His body trembled briefly and, convulsively, his hand crimped the letters and card. Then, instead of stuffing them in the mail slot, he tossed them high in the air. They fluttered to the ground like crude confetti.
The mail truck jerked forward, as if Hal had forgotten how to drive it. He weaved back and forth across the quiet street, never coming quite close enough to put any mail in a single mailbox. Instead, he grabbed each packet of mail in the tote on the front seat, yanked off the rubber band that bundled them, and flung them out the window, laughing hysterically as he left a scattered trail of undelivered bills, catalogs, magazines and advertisements. After a while, he started to toss the boxes, big and small, out the driver side window, making wide U-turns up driveways and onto lawns as he steered the wheels of his truck over each package.
When the last package had been delivered—somewhere on some street—he drove onto the state road, steered the mail truck into a drainage ditch and slumped over the wheel.
A moment later, with the truck listing at a forty-five-degree angle, he pushed himself back and fell sideways against the opposite door, wondering what trick gravity was playing on him. Nobody heard him mutter, “Where am I?”
* * *
The lunch crowd had thinned at Giogini’s Ristorante by the time the Scheidecker party of six pushed back their chairs, gathered their belongings and left. They had run their server, Savannah Barnes, ragged with all their sides, add-on orders, drink refills and desserts, pushing their check well north of two hundred bucks, but she had smiled and stayed pleasant throughout, despite the rush and numerous distractions, especially after Jordan had called in sick at the last minute, nearly doubling the number of tables she had to cover. They’d hurried out while she’d been preoccupied. And she discovered why when she swung by their table with a serving tray under her arm and opened the check presenter. Above George Scheidecker’s crimped signature, he’d brought down the total as-is, with a line drawn through the tip section of the check. Then she noticed some loose change by the candle holder, totaling $1.13 if she subtracted for the Canadian dime, not to mention the roach-sized blob of pocket lint he’d left behind for her.
By design, Giogini’s ambient lighting was dim, even in the morning, but Savannah felt a darkness blot out her vision. She squeezed her eyes shut, frozen where she stood for a moment. The serving tray slipped from under her arm and crashed to the floor, startling the remaining diners.
Turning on her heels, she stormed over to a nearby table and grabbed a plate of spaghetti and meatballs as an elderly woman was about to sprinkle parmesan cheese on the mound of pasta. As she left with the plate, knocking a fork on the floor in the process, the woman called out to her.
“Miss, why are you taking my lunch?”
By the time the woman struggled her way out of the booth to follow her or flag down the manager, Savannah had shoved open the doors to the waiting area and exited the restaurant.
Savannah crossed the parking lot, the steamin
g plate of spaghetti and meatballs held aloft, and spotted the elder Scheidecker behind the wheel of a white SUV that looked as if it hadn’t been washed in months. When he saw her, his eyes opened wide and he gunned the engine, rumbling toward the exit. She darted in front of him and hurled the plate at his windshield.
Pasta and marinara sauce splattered and clung to the glass, blocking the driver’s side. Meatballs slid down to the hood, rolling along the windshield wipers until Scheidecker flicked them on to clear the mess from his field of vision. But he never slowed, and Savannah jumped back to avoid a collision. The SUV surged into traffic, eliciting a barrage of horns and squealing brakes, before jumping the median and the opposite curb, clipping a bench and bowling over a trashcan.
Savannah waited for Scheidecker to come back, either to berate her, threaten to sue or lodge a complaint with her boss. She stood there waiting, a steak knife taken from his table clutched in her right fist, but he continued to put distance between his damaged SUV and Giogini’s parking lot, driving well over the posted speed limit.
She blinked at a flash of light, looked down at the knife in her hand and followed the trail of spaghetti and meatballs leading out to Queen’s Lane. Behind her, she heard her manager, barking her name repeatedly.
Finally, exasperated, she called, “Savannah! What’s gotten into you?”
Savannah turned to face her. “Dina… what just happened?”
* * *
Gabe Longley, local barber, turned into the produce aisle of Moyer Market holding a plastic basket by the wire handle as he made his way to the organic section, stopping first at the peaches. A contingent of appreciative gnats hovering over the display elicited a frown of distaste while Gabe decided whether to move on to other offerings.
The overhead lights buzzed and flickered suddenly.
Gabe blinked at the sudden darkness.
He cast aside his empty wire basket, leaned forward and gathered as many peaches as he could within the embrace of both arms and pulled them all down to the floor. It looked as if someone had overturned a ball pit in a children’s restaurant but, unlike balls, the peaches didn’t bounce.
Unperturbed, Gabe whistled an improvised tune and skipped along the produce aisle, pausing to topple mounds of apples, oranges, cantaloupes and anything else round with the potential to roll.
* * *
Half a mile away, Chuck Wakely, a retired plumber, dropped the leash of his bulldog, Digby, and stared at the half open window of an old van with a faded mural on the side depicting a dragon or possibly a sea serpent.
Sensing something different about his owner, Digby whined and shuffled backward.
Unlocking the door, Chuck climbed into the van and proceeded to hotwire it, a criminal skill he’d neither acquired nor perpetrated in his entire life. He drove away, leaving a confused Digby behind. For the next five minutes, he veered into parked cars on both sides of the street with the apparent goal of ripping off as many sideview mirrors as possible, bonus points for every car alarm he tripped.
His earlier misgivings gone, Digby padded along the sidewalk, attempting to keep the receding van in his line of sight. When the van turned a corner, Digby barked nervously. Trailing his leash, the bulldog faithfully jogged through the carnage.
EIGHT
Sam and Dean stepped off the elevator at the ground floor of the county hospital and proceeded toward the exit. Dean had been quiet since they left Nancy’s room. Probably trying to decide if her experience invalidated his hex bag theory. On the one hand, she seemed to have had no control over her actions from the time she parked her car until after she jumped off the overpass. Of course, Sam had to allow for the possibility she was in denial about a suicide attempt. He never claimed to be a psychiatrist, but his gut told him she hadn’t tried to end her life. On the other hand, she had no apparent enemies, nobody in her life personally or professionally who might wish her harm let alone a brutal death. And of all the people who claimed to have no memory or control of their uncharacteristic actions, Nancy’s incident had been severe enough to suggest she would have been a clear—and perhaps primary—target on any sort of hit list which employed the other pranks, indiscretions and acts of vandalism as a culpability smokescreen.
Of interest to Sam was the apparent ability of pain to pierce the veil of amnesia affecting all the victims. Dean had noticed that with the diner head-banger. And now the same thing had happened with Nancy. Initially, she had a complete gap in her memory, but a flare-up of pain from her cracked ribs unlocked a visual record of what happened.
Nancy had also told them she experienced no sensory or emotional connection to the event, from the time she parked her car on the shoulder until she leapt from the overpass fence. As if someone or something had hijacked the experience from her, leaving her with only the suppressed visual memory, like a subconscious record. She had referenced the common phenomenon of zoning out on the expected, ordinary details of a daily commute. The brain must register the details, even when someone can’t recall passing a building or intersection they drive past each day. Visual white noise, cast aside as nonessential.
The memory suppression could be deliberate, Sam thought. Or the natural result of having the immediacy of the peculiar actions blocked from our consciousness.
“Dean, what if these people can’t remember committing these acts because they weren’t the ones committing them?”
“What?” Dean stopped and looked at him. “Somebody took their place? Body doubles? Or is angel possession back on the table?”
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
“Good, because last time I checked, angels need permission to take over,” Dean said. “And, according to Cass, it’s not easy for an angel to find a vessel strong enough to survive. They break down fast or die immediately. That’s a lot of time and effort for a bunch of angels to pull off some pranks.”
“You’re right, Dean,” Sam said. “I don’t get an angel vibe from any of this.”
“So, what are you saying?”
“A different kind of possession,” Sam replied. “What if something hijacked the experience from each, well, host. So, that in their minds—”
“The hosts’ minds?” Dean asked, resuming his path to the exit.
Sam heard the wail of approaching sirens.
“Yes,” he said. “The hosts don’t have access to the memory because it wasn’t their memory in the first place.”
“So, something took their body for a psychic joyride?”
“I don’t know,” Sam said. “Maybe.”
“Are we missing something?” Dean wondered. “Could it be demons?”
Sam shook his head. “Still not getting that vibe either. Streakers? Graffiti? Pranks? Demons have a much darker agenda. And when they grab a meat suit, they tend to be squatters. In it for the long haul. Besides, they’re all about stealth, not drawing attention to themselves.”
The automatic doors slid open with a whoosh.
“Doesn’t rule out the possibility of a hit list.”
“No.”
The sirens were getting louder.
“Because, as far as experiences go—”
Two ambulances, red lights flashing, turned into the parking lot and followed the curved driveway up to the emergency room entrance. Several cars, minivans and SUVs followed in their wake, roaring up the ramp into the parking lot, front and rear bumpers perilously close to one another. Before they reached the parked ambulances, they split up in search of the nearest parking spaces.
Dean frowned. “This can’t be good.”
“Could be us,” Sam said. “More weirdness.”
Dean sighed. “I’m never getting out of this suit.”
Paramedics had pulled open the double doors on both ambulances. Within moments, they helped several blood-spattered high-school-aged girls in team uniforms out of the back before unloading the gurneys carrying the more seriously injured. A few of the walking girls clung to lacrosse sticks, but most pressed bandages to
bleeding foreheads, noses and ears, while others cradled injured shoulders and elbows. Tears streamed down some of their faces. One girl with a broken nose and a bludgeoned ear quietly sobbed as emergency room nurses and the paramedics guided them inside.
Sam and Dean hurried toward the ambulances.
Close behind them, the passengers from the cars that had followed the ambulances to the hospital made a beeline for the same entrance. Sam scanned the group. More injured lacrosse players, with less severe injuries, accompanied by concerned teachers and anxious parents.
Sam caught the shoulder of the last EMT out of the ambulance as he helped guide a gurney through the automatic doors. His patient writhed in pain with what looked like an orbital fracture of her right eye, a broken nose and a split lip.
“What happened?” Sam asked.
Without slowing, the paramedic appraised them in the blink of an eye. The Fed suits probably saved them from a cursory dismissal. “Who are you?”
“FBI,” Sam said, not bothering to dig out his fake ID.
“FBI?” he asked. “What’s the—Never mind. All I know is, team’s coach grabbed one of their lacrosse sticks and started beating them with it.”
Dean scanned the area. “Where’s the coach?”
“Bus driver and the assistant coach held her down until the police came and took her away.”
As the late arrivals flowed past the Winchesters, Sam heard a girl with a bleeding ear tell her mother, “Coach McDermitt said we weren’t practicing hard enough. Called us losers.”
Another girl, cupping her left elbow with her right hand, said, “She, like, literally had fire in her eyes.”
Sam and Dean followed them into the crowded emergency room, now made more claustrophobic with the influx of new patients. Benches and chairs were scattered around the long U-shaped room, all occupied. A short hallway led back to curtained enclosures on either side, with a row of private offices at the far end.
The paramedics took the girls on the gurneys back to the curtained section. Other girls and their guardians lined up at four clerical stations and were rewarded with clipboards, pens and pages of forms to complete before their treatment. Emergency, the uninitiated soon discovered, was a relative term.
Supernatural--Joyride Page 7