Shadows Bend

by David Barbour

  Howard glanced back and forth between Glory’s piercing green eyes and Lovecraft’s somewhat smug expression. Lovecraft took it as some sort of signal and walked over to the ice box again to talk to the fat mechanic. It took a moment more for Howard to summon his resolve. “I’m-I want to apologize for my behavior today,” he said finally. “I know it ain’t my place to pass judgment…”

  “Well, damned if you aren’t right about that.”

  Howard left his sentence incomplete and paid the attendant’

  Lovecraft returned with another round of sodas and passed them out. He sensed the remaining tension between Howard and Glory and decided to divert attention from it. “I’m given to understand from that rather loquacious gentleman in overalls that there is an establishment called Tandy’s Diner approximately two miles down the road. He claimed this establishment offers the ‘meanest chili east or west of the Pecos,’ and from his tone, I took it to be a rather meaningful boast.”,

  Rising immediately to the backhanded slap at his home state as Lovecraft had anticipated, Howard started the car.

  “Well, chili was invented where I come from,” said Howard. “And I sincerely doubt anybody from California can make a chili meaner than the one I had in San Antonio. I say I’ll just have to settle this for myself.” He tossed his empty Dr Pepper into a garbage can and opened the driver’s side door. “Anyone else hungry?” he asked, almost as an afterthought.

  Lovecraft and Glory had been famished for the past several hours during their nonstop drive through the Central Valley. They both answered “Yes” in derisive unison as they got into the Chevy.

  BY THE TIME they passed Barstow and rejoined Route 66, with dusk approaching and the sky a bright orange, Howard was suffering silently again; this time it was from the Tandy’s chili, which he had stubbornly insisted was not hot by Texas standards. His discomfort helped him stay awake as they crossed into Arizona, but as they turned south on Highway 89 toward Phoenix, he found himself beginning to drift off. He tried breathing more rapidly, blinking his eyes hard to clear the fog, biting the insides of his cheeks, even pinching himself, but as he grew more and more tired even the self-inflicted pain felt as distant as something happening to someone in a movie he was watching through the windshield of the car. By the time they passed Prescott, the faded white lines of the road, barely visible in the headlights, seemed like the flashing trails of arrows shot ,directly at his eyes, and he began to close them briefly to enjoy the relief.

  “Bob?”

  Howard eased the wheel slightly to make himself more comfortable. He could hear Lovecraft snoring quietly at his side. It was warm and pleasant.

  “Bob?”

  He mumbled as that pleasant sense of falling came over him. “Bob!”

  Howard jolted awake and jerked the wheel, just avoiding the deep trench along the shoulder of the road.

  “Uh, excuse me, Bob,” said Glory, “but did you see the ditch there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why the hell were you driving into it!”

  Howard jerked his head angrily around to look at Glory, whose eyes grew suddenly wide with fear. Her face lit up with a sudden bright light, which Howard found shocking. For a split second, he thought some demonic force was taking her again, but then he realized the light was coming from outside, and he turned instantly back to face the road, just in time to swerve and miss the oncoming truck.

  The loud blare of the horn and the violent jerk of the car jolted Lovecraft out of his sleep.

  “That’s it!” said Glory. “I don’t care what you think about women behind the wheel! Pull over now before you get us all killed!”

  Lovecraft blinked himself awake enough to concur with her, though he didn’t like the idea of a woman driving any more than Howard did.

  “I’m sorry,” said Howard. “I’m awake now.”

  “Yeah, nothing like the threat of instant death to perk you up,” said Glory. “Look, you’ve been nodding for a long time.”

  “I said I’m awake now.”

  Lovecraft interjected more for the sake of his own sleep than to be Glory’s ally. “Let her take the wheel while the road is good,” he said. “I suggest you take over when things are more challenging.”

  They could nearly hear the sound of Howard seething, but he relented and pulled over. He got out, flooding the interior of the car with cool air, and stalked off into the night for a few moments before he returned and changed seats with Glory.

  Soon, with a cigarette in her mouth and singing Billie Holiday’s “I Wished on the Moon,” Glory was driving. Howard had curled up in the backseat and fallen instantly asleep.

  “Thank you,” said Lovecraft. “It would have been a shame to meet our doom through sheer carelessness when there are far more noble means of attaining the same goal.”

  “I was just trying to save my own skin,” said Glory.

  “You are, no doubt, aware of Bob’s intense jealousy regarding your behavior with Clark?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I shall not trouble you with references to it in the future.”

  Lovecraft hunched back into the most comfortable position he could manage, and for the next half an hour he remained half-awake, warily monitoring Glory at the wheel before once more succumbing to a troubled sleep.

  HE DID NOT KNOW how long he had been asleep when he awakened and rubbed his eyes free of grit. He sat up to see the blurred white lines on the desert road drifting beneath the car. He glanced at Glory, who sat confidently behind the wheel, a fresh cigarette between her lips. A loose lock of her red hair obscured her face. He looked back at Howard, who was still sleep in the backseat, fetally curled like a giant prawn, mumbling something that sounded like it might be his mother’s name. He removed his watch from his breast pocket and squinted in the darkness to make out the time. Impossible, until the Artifact emitted a faint glow: 1:08. He winced at the pain that followed the Artifact’s next pulse of light and then he grimaced as he endured a series of sharp pains in his stomach. He reached into his watch pocket to pluck the Artifact out, to offer himself some relief, but what he drew out was not metal; it was pale and fleshy, and touching it caused a disquieting sensation in his bowels. Still, he pulled on the thing and produced something long and tubelike, like the siphon of a mammoth clam. It was textured like pink flesh and it was smooth. He pulled some more, and now an arm’s length stretched from his pocket. It caught for a moment, and then a mass of discolored stuff like rotting meat dangled from the long tube. He realized what he held before him was a length of his own intestine, and the hideous thing at the base was a cancer. He screamed before he could stop himself, shouting at Glory to pull over immediately, but she ignored him. He reached over, agonized by the pain, and tapped her shoulder. She turned, revealing her face to him, and now he realized that the red glow he had taken to be the tip of her cigarette was actually in her eyes. He wanted to say something, but she opened her mouth first, revealing long white teeth that grew longer as her mouth gaped wider. Her teeth were moving, swaying, growing into segmented tentacles that looked like elongated maggots. Lovecraft felt his gorge begin to rise; his voice caught in his throat as he tried to cry out to warn Howard. Glory laughed, a deep guttural laugh, as he recoiled in fear and tried to alert his friend by pounding his hand against the back of the seat. But his arm was all tangled in the coils of his own gut. No avail. They were approaching a sharp right-hand curve. To the sound of her own. hideous laughter, Glory spun the wheel, swerving off the road, crashing through a wooden guardrail, straight over a cliff into the black night. Lovecraft opened his mouth to scream again, but he felt himself choking.

  WITH A Loud, coughing gasp, Lovecraft sat bolt upright in his seat, sweat-drenched and trembling. An odd noise issued from his throat, and he flailed his arms in front of himself as if to ward off an imminent collision.

  Glory was so startled she impulsively jerked the steering wheel and swerved all the way to the opposite shoulder before unsteadil
y pulling the Chevy straight. Howard raised his annoyed, sleepy head from the backseat. “What in the Sam Hill—” His voice was cut short by the sight of approaching headlights and the loud blaring of a truck’s horn.

  For a moment their three heads were all in a line: Glory’s, Howard’s, and Lovecraft’s, all screaming in unison in an unexpectedly harmonious pitch against the background of the truck horn. Their eyes wide in the headlights, their mouths agape, they might have been the trophies of some ghastly headhunt. But Glory regained her senses just in time to swerve back into her lane and the truck whizzed past them, buffeting the side of the car with gravel.

  “W—Whereabouts are we?” said Howard. He tried to sound casual, but his voice cracked.

  Glory answered with equally feigned casualness. “Just passed through some town called Solomonsville…” She gulped air before she finished, “…New Mexico?”

  “Already?” Wiping his damp brow with his handkerchief, Howard leaned back in his seat and reached under his right arm to unstick his shirt from his armpit. “Makin’ good time.”

  Lovecraft stared ahead blankly, unconsciously licking the sweat on his upper lip.

  Howard continued in a feigned nonchalance as he looked out toward the southeast, “Damn shame we ain’t got time to pay a visit to Tombstone.”

  Lovecraft pulled his watch out of his breast pocket. He was still staring blankly into the darkness ahead, and his voice came out in a soft monotone. “Don’t fret, Bob. I believe there’s an OK Corral of our very own awaiting us.”

  Now Howard was gazing into the same sea of black just beyond the shivering beams of the headlights. “You’re right, HP, but I’d damn well rather shoot it out alone with the whole Clanton Gang than face whatever the hell’s waitin’ for us at Shadows Bend, that’s for sure. What about you, Glory?”

  There was no reply.

  Lovecraft clicked open his timepiece, and straining his eyes in the darkness to read the time, he was able to make out 1 :07. He looked at Glory, sitting rigid behind the wheel, her face oddly frozen in the dim light of the dashboard, and suddenly, the memory of his nightmare flashed in his mind, turning his face white with fear. “Glory,” he said. “Glory, stop the car this instant!”

  Glory’s eyes fluttered.

  “NOW!”

  Glory shook her head quickly; as if she were trying to stay awake.

  “What?” she said.

  “Just do what I say, woman!” In his panic, Lovecraft leaned over to grab the wheel from her hands.

  From the backseat, Howard sat up and put his hand on Lovecraft’s shoulder, restraining him. “What the hell’s gotten into you, HP?”

  Lovecraft jerked away from Howard’s hand and lunged across the front seat, trying to wrest control of the vehicle from Glory. He pulled at her rigid hands and put his foot over hers on the brake, but it was too late. With Howard pulling him back, he had failed, and now, in what seemed a single blink, the color in Glory’s eyes changed from a , bluish green to a glowing red, and a guttural voice echoed from deep in her throat in a barely intelligible whisper. “Ia! Cthulhu! Ia!” Suddenly Lovecraft saw it just ahead, the image from the dream, the right-hand curve in the road, the guardrail, the blackness above the cliff.

  “Eh! S’yas!” said Glory. “Eh! K’neros mi a oloruc retwa isnat!” Her lips did not move. The voice came fully formed from inside.

  Now Howard realized he had misread Lovecraft’s intent. He grabbed Glory by the shoulders from behind and tried to pull her , away from the wheel. The car swerved, swerved again, and she did not budge from her frozen posture. “Eh! S’yas inur!” she whispered. “Nad h’net inur f’mor ihm! Nad h’net inur!”

  Lovecraft frantically tried to pry Glory’s rigid fingers. from the wheel. His own strength was amplified with fear, but it was futile against Glory’s demonic strength.

  “Bob! Help me!”

  A low laugh issued from Glory’s throat. “Eh! Nidd’t eees’m tchwa n’ig!” she said. Her head turned in a bizarrely smooth motion and her eyes glowed brighter. “Eh! P’wi eda r’tea!” With all his might, Howard reached under Glory’s armpits and tried to pull her up, but he didn’t have enough leverage from his position behind her. It was no use. WIth Glory petrified like the victim of a Gorgon, the car swerved just as it had in Lovecraft’s nightmare.

  Glory’s mouth opened wider, into a circle. “Gnish’ton nog’na p’sto r’fomem olat f’gni!”

  The cliff looming ahead of them, rapidly and relentlessly approaching, Lovecraft and Howard released their grips and slid to the right side of the car. They glanced at each other, then at Glory, their eyes frantic.

  “It’s too late, HP! Jump for it!”

  They opened their doors simultaneously, but just then Glory hit the brakes and the car skidded, fishtailing left and right on the gravelly earth until it came to a rough halt at the very edge of the cliff, stopping with a jolt as the two front wheels left the edge and crashed the car’s frame against the rock.

  17

  A THICK CLOUD of dust swirled around the Chevy. Lovecraft couldn’t see it, but he could taste dirt, and he spat to clear his mouth. There was no sound-not even the wind-until Howard heaved a sigh of relief that ended up as a sneeze. And now they could feel the gentle night breeze. It made the open doors swing subtly, and from the back,

  Howard heard a dry sandy rasp in the hinges.

  Suddenly Glory lost her rigid posture all in an instant. She slumped over, unconscious, onto the steering wheel, and the horn blasted so loudly that Lovecraft nearly leaped from the car in sheer reflex. When he cringed involuntarily, then tried to reach out to move Glory, he felt the car shift. The front seemed to be tilting down, then coming back up, but he wasn’t sure if it was real motion or simply his disoriented imagination. “Bob?” he said.

  Howard couldn’t hear him. He grabbed Glory by the shoulders and pulled her head away from the steering wheel. She slumped against the back of the seat, her head flopped backwards, her mouth open, her neck bent at an alarming angle. The horn stopped, just as abruptly, and in the ringing silence, the world moved, gently, up and down, up and down, as if they were bobbing in a boat. Suddenly, there was a jolt, a grating noise, and the nose of the car slipped a bit farther over the edge before it stopped.

  “Damn it, HP! Sit still or we’re done for!”

  “I am not moving, Bob. I was attempting to warn you not to make any sudden movements, but you were apparently deafened by the horn.” He lay there on the floor with his hands clasped over his chest like a man in a coffin. “My sincerest apologies if I have failed to intervene in time. What do you propose we do next?”

  “Let’s hope she don’t wake up.”

  “How is she? I can’t see from down here.”

  “Looks like her damn neck’s broke, but I don’t think it is. Maybe it’d be better if it was.”

  “How far have are we extended beyond the lip of the precipice?”

  “What?”

  “To what degree is the car’s balance precarious?”

  “What the hell are you sayin’, HP?”

  “How far over the cliff are we?”

  “I can’t tell, and I sure as hell ain’t gonna try movin’ to find out. Can ya look out your door without movin’ too much?”

  “I can’t quite determine the degree of our predicament. The front tires are certainly over.”

  “See if there any rocks on the ground ya can pick up without actually gettin’ out of the car,” said Howard. From his position, pressed as far as possible against the backseat, he carefully looked behind himself and thought through the possibility of kicking out the back window. It only took him a moment to realize that if he failed in the first attempt, the recoil would drive him toward the front of the car and possibly tip the balance. He was wondering if he could lie sideways and kick with one leg instead of bracing himself against the front seat and kicking with both when he heard Lovecraft’s reply.

  “Yes, there are many rocks of various sizes wit
hin arm’s length.”

  “Good. Hand me the biggest one ya can reach.”

  Lovecraft strained himself as he contorted his body to reach outside without shifting his body. He picked up a stone about the size of a golf ball and handed it back to Howard.

  “Ya got anything a little bigger out there? This is gonna take a while at this rate.”

  The next stone was a bit larger.

  “Bigger!”

  The next one was the size of a large grapefruit.

  “Bigger, dammit!”

  “Bob, how large a stone does it require to-ah! I see. Your plan is to compensate for our weight so that we may exit the vehicle and pull it back to safety. Very clever. Very clever, indeed. Given your pugilistic impulses, I assumed you would smash the rear window and climb out.”

  “Thanks. I ain’t plannin’ to wreck my car any more than I need to. How much do ya weigh?”

  Lovecraft struggled to pull a large rock in and hand it back. “Oh, I’d venture eleven stone, eleven stone and six.”

  Howard grabbed the rock impatiently. “That’s good, HP. That’s good that you can keep your sense of humor at a time like this.”

  “Bob, I can assure you that I find absolutely nothing about our current predicament the least bit amusing.” ,

  “In pounds. How much do you weigh in pounds? You know, the way we weigh things in America.”

  “I’m sorry if my affinity for things English offends you. Approximately one hundred sixty pounds.”

  “A middleweight, huh? That’s lighter than I thought ya’d be, seein’ the set of your jaw and all.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that my facial disfigurement gives you the wrong impression,” Lovecraft replied with no small measure of sarcasm. He continued to bring in as many large rocks as he could with the minimum of bodily motion. It wasn’t long before his arm was trembling from exhaustion, the muscle thick and limp.

  In the back, Howard mentally weighed each rock before stacking them as far back as possible, jamming as many as he could between the lower and back cushions of the seat.