Falling into Forever

by Tammy Turner

  He pushed her chin upwards. “Don’t be afraid, Alexandra. Your powers are awakening.”

  The echo of a distant thunderstorm rumbled above them in the night sky. She shivered and wrapped her arms around her chest as she spied a large pair of headlights chugging closer toward them.

  17

  Howl

  The tow truck arrived in a cloud of diesel fumes, and a substantial man with a graying beard and grease-stained jean shorts climbed down from the truck’s cab. “It’ll be fifty dollars cash; seventy-five if you need to haul it more than thirty miles,” he said, spitting a wad of chewing tobacco to the road.

  “Good evening, sir,” said Callahan, offering his hand.

  The grizzled, bearded driver eyed Callahan’s cape.

  “Where do you want to take it, man? You ain’t the only call tonight I gotta get to.”

  “My driveway is fine,” Callahan explained. “It’s just up this road, in fact, not too far from here.”

  “Where’s the cash?” asked the driver, holding out his hand.

  “It’s my Jeep,” Alexandra said, nudging Callahan aside and stepping into the bright beams of the tow truck’s headlights. “I don’t have that much money with me.”

  “No deal, then,” grunted the man, placing his foot on the step below his door.

  “Payment is not a problem, sir,” Callahan shouted over the roaring engine of the idling tow truck.

  Leaning into Callahan’s ear, Alexandra whispered, “I’ve only got twenty dollars, Callahan, and my mom just flew out of town. Let him leave. I’ll figure something out.”

  Ignoring her protests, Callahan waved his arm in the air, metal glinting on his wrist as a pale street light lit the sallow scene. “Look here, sir,” he said, holding his arm out above his head. “This is a gold Rolex watch. Here. Hold it,” he urged, unhooking the watch from his wrist and shoving it in the hands of the driver. “If you tow the car to my driveway and I do not pay you cash, then you may keep it and drive away, considering yourself paid in full.”

  The driver snatched the watch from Callahan’s hand and shoved it into his shirt pocket. “Looks real enough,” he said gruffly.

  “I assure you, sir, it is quite authentic,” Callahan testified. “Now what say you pull this young lady’s vehicle up onto the back of your tow truck here, before it begins to rain?”

  Alexandra grabbed her book bag from her crippled Jeep, while the driver hooked a chain underneath the front bumper and jerked it up onto his truck’s flatbed platform. She searched frantically at the bottom of the bag for her cell phone, lost between books and empty toaster-pastry wrappers. Just as she felt her fingers on the smooth plastic case, the phone rang.

  Glancing over her shoulder, Callahan read the name Taylor on the bright screen, and he gave an amused sigh.

  “What’s so funny?” Alexandra scowled.

  “The night is young still, Miss Peyton,” he replied. “I wonder what further madness we could possibly stir into this pot of mayhem in which we find ourselves.”

  She did not care to speculate. She took a deep breath and tapped the phone. “What’s up, Taylor?” Alexandra asked as nonchalantly as she could muster, but Taylor heard the tense mood in her voice.

  “What’s wrong?” she screeched.

  Geez, that girl doesn’t miss much, Alexandra thought.

  “Nothing,” Alexandra fibbed. “How’s Ben?”

  “I can’t hear you, Alex. Something is wrong with the connection,” Taylor said.

  “Hello? Hello?” Alexandra repeated, shaking the phone furiously in her fist.

  “Why haven’t you been answering your phone?” Taylor inquired calmly, but Alexandra knew that Taylor was freaked that she might be in genuine danger. “Where are you?” Taylor demanded.

  “I’m on my way to Callahan’s house,” Alexandra answered smugly, knowing for once that she had caught Taylor completely off guard. “My Jeep broke down,” she managed to explain before the call totally dropped.

  From the beanbag on the floor of Benjamin’s bedroom, Taylor repeated to him what Alexandra said over the phone.

  “I don’t like this, Ben,” she confided to him.

  He’d been focused on a website dedicated to the inner workings of Jeep engines. “What else can you do with that thing?” she asked, pointing her long, pink fingernail at the laptop. “I have an idea. Alexandra said she was going to Callahan’s house. So you need to find out exactly where that is. Got it?”

  Whirling around in his desk chair, Benjamin grinned widely. “I happened to have spent last summer at a computer camp in Silicon Valley. And I’m not ashamed to admit that even Mr. Bill Gates was impressed with a few of my tricks.”

  “Whatever, Ben. I had no idea you were such a nerd,” Taylor said, struggling to push herself up from the beanbag. “Do you think that we could get some room service up here? I am dying for a Vitamin Water,” she said, grasping a hold of Benjamin’s muscular arm as he helped her up from the floor.

  At Alexandra’s end of the conversation, she was still fuming at her dead cell, swearing that she’d switch cell carriers the next day. She shoved the useless thing back into her book bag.

  “All right, folks,” said the tow driver, climbing into the cab of his truck. “We’re good to go. I ain’t got all night, so the two of ya’ll squeeze in so we can get this show on the road.” Throwing the truck into gear, he revved the engine.

  “Your carriage awaits my dear,” said Callahan, smiling smugly as he held the door of the tow truck open for Alexandra. “Ladies first,” he said, grinning.

  “Always the gentleman,” she mumbled, stepping carefully on the stepladder. Grasping a hand grip mounted by the door, she heaved herself up grudgingly into the cabin. Callahan and his cape flew into the seat beside Alexandra, pushing her so close to the driver that she nearly sat in his lap.

  “Hang on, darlin’,” the driver advised her. When he slammed his foot against the accelerator, they flew forward in a hazy cloud of diesel fumes and burning rubber.

  A strand of black rosary beads dangled from the rearview mirror. The necklace swung violently in front of Alexandra’s face. The driver reached for the beads with his right hand and unhooked them gently from the mirror.

  “Can’t hurt,” he said, winking at her and hanging them around his neck. “You never know what might be lurking in the shadows.” He nudged her shoulder and threw his thumb in Callahan’s direction. “Where you from anyway, mister?”

  “Transylvania,” Callahan answered, folding his arms dramatically across his broad chest.

  “Humph. Figures,” muttered the driver.

  His cell phone began to vibrate and subsequently shuddered itself all the way across the top of the plastic dashboard until it wedged itself up against the windshield. He extracted it deftly and answered, “Yo, Billy Joe, how boutcha?”

  “Miss Peyton,” Callahan whispered discreetly into her ear as he tapped her shoulder. “Why don’t you give your newfound talent a test?” He pointed toward the driver’s right hand on the gearshift.

  “No thank you,” she drawled. “I’ve already seen enough tonight. I won’t cap it off with an eyeful of sweaty banjo players drinking moonshine.”

  “Sounds rather amusing to me,” Callahan said, chuckling mischievously. “All the doom and gloom does sometimes make me weary.”

  “You talk about it like it’s a reality TV show,” Alexandra chided.

  “I would be a liar not to confess that on occasion my ability does provide some profound amusement,” he offered. “But you are not just a voyeur, Miss Peyton. You have a gift that sets you uniquely apart from Mr. Banjo over there; in fact, from most everyone you will ever encounter in this world. Embrace it. Learn to use it, or it will devour you.”

  “Tell Roscoe them pigs ain’t for sale,” the driver guffawed beside her. “I’ll holler at you later, Billy Joe,” he said, ending the call and throwing the cell back to the dashboard. “How much farther we got, sweetheart?”

&nbs
p; Callahan pointed a finger toward the street ahead. “You have only a bit farther, sir. Turn right at that stop sign. Then stop at the third house on the right.”

  While the tow truck chugged to Callahan’s street, the Jeep bounced violently up and down on the flatbed.

  Alexandra’s eyes traced the top of a low, stone wall. “Collinsworth,” she muttered low to herself, recognizing the cemetery on the other side.

  The truck abruptly halted at the curb in front of an immense old Victorian house. Its wooden frame climbed three stories into the air. At the top there was a brick chimney perched between the steep peaks of the weathered roof. Down the sides, ivy had taken over, interrupted by patches of peeling, dark-blue paint. At the bottom, a wide wooden porch surrounded the red front door, while white, broken, lattice-work panels dangled from the leaning railing posts. Draped windows loomed from either side of the door like black eyeballs staring at them.

  “Headquarters,” Callahan said eagerly as he threw open the passenger door for her. “Isn’t she grand, Miss Peyton?”

  “I guess,” she offered, thinking of the sleek, modern apartment building that she lived in, only a few miles away.

  With chains dragging and gears grinding, the driver wasted no time unloading the pitiful Jeep down to the street curb. “I’ll be right back,” Callahan told the driver as the man approached, holding out an empty palm.

  With his cape flapping in the breeze, Callahan ran to the front door and left Alexandra biting her nails. It was an uncomfortable silence. Behind her, the driver spit another wad of chewing tobacco to the sidewalk.

  Disgusting, she thought, refusing to look at him.

  “By the way, I don’t play the banjo,” he said, calmly wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “But I do play a mean fiddle.”

  Her cheeks burned with embarrassment as Callahan reappeared in the doorway on the porch.

  “Payment in full,” Callahan said, handing the driver a single hundred dollar bill. The driver held it up to the street light. “No need for that, my good man, I assure you. Please keep the change.”

  “I was planning on it, mister,” the driver said, handing Callahan back his gold Rolex before turning abruptly back to his truck. Firing up the engine, he flew away from the curb with a hasty U-turn and disappeared down the street in the direction from which they had driven. A cloud of fumes trailed his jolting bumper.

  Across the street, the cemetery pulled Alexandra like a magnet to the low, stone wall hedging the sidewalk. Skipping across the street, she peered into the quiet darkness.

  “Wait,” Callahan yelled. “Come back here, Miss Peyton.”

  Ignoring his plea, she shimmied up the wall in the dim moonlight. Standing atop the ragged stones, she swore a challenge. “Come and get me now, you stupid dog.”

  From behind a cement mausoleum in the center of the cemetery, the girl’s scent crawled into the nose of a growling mongrel. Raising his muzzle to the air, saliva poured from his gritted teeth and a wild howl broke from his throat.

  “Have you gone mad? Get down from there, or I will pull you down myself,” Callahan scolded as he grasped hold of her legs.

  “Let me go,” Alexandra demanded, struggling to break free of Callahan’s firm grip. “I have to get in there. He’s waiting for me.”

  Callahan wrapped his arms around Alexandra, her hands flailing in the air. She failed to push him away from her.

  “Calm down,” he whispered in her ear. “Calm down and be quiet for a moment.”

  She obeyed, listening to her heart thump wildly. “I’m sorry,” she stammered. “I don’t know what came over me.”

  He released her.

  “Who is waiting for you?” he asked, studying her pale, sweaty face. His eyes turned to the cemetery. “Is someone in there?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, confused.

  “Let’s go up to the porch, then,” he coaxed, holding her hand while she climbed down from the wall.

  Alexandra grabbed her book bag from the sidewalk by the Jeep. She followed Callahan through the front yard, over a path of cement stepping stones, to the porch.

  “You never did say where you were headed this evening when you nearly ran me down in the street,” he said, pausing on the porch steps.

  “I was trying to go home when you jumped in front of me,” she said. “Or don’t you remember?”

  “Well, fate has brought us together at this hour, it seems, for a reason. But a teenaged girl should not be driving certain neighborhoods by herself at night.”

  “I made a wrong turn on my way home from the airport,” she explained. “My mom is flying to Miami as we speak.”

  Her eyes turned upward as storm clouds gathered around the moon. “She’s an epidemiologist for the Centers for Disease Control.”

  “Interesting,” offered Callahan, scratching his chin. “I would like to meet her. When does she return?”

  “We don’t know yet.”

  “She trusts you to stay home alone?”

  “I’ve never done anything for her to distrust me.”

  “You’re not afraid? It’s a big city.”

  “I wasn’t, but I might have to reconsider the matter, after the way this day has gone.”

  Thunder slapped their ears, and sprinkles of cool rain pelted Alexandra’s blazer and soaked her hair.

  “Could I borrow a towel?” she asked, running her fingers through the damp auburn tresses.

  “Wait right here. Do not go anywhere,” he said, glancing at the cemetery across the street. Then he disappeared through the front door.

  Alone on the porch, she approached a wooden swing swaying in the gathering breeze. She flung her tired bones down on the seat. Pushing the swing back and forth with her legs, Alexandra listened to the rain falling on the porch roof.

  Are you in there? She stared across the street. Are you following me?

  Alexandra gripped the medallion in her palm. I know what I saw in that tree, and I know what I heard. Someone or something is out there.

  “What do you want?” she calmly said aloud as a hot bolt of lightning shot from the sky into the cemetery.

  In the flash of white light, she saw a four-legged figure walking on the top of the stone wall. A clap of thunder rattled the porch and shook the window behind her. Then a second bolt of lighting struck the middle of the cemetery and illuminated the sky. The creature was watching her, its muzzle frothing at her scent.

  Alexandra heard Callahan’s front door creak open. Bits of hail began to fall across the front yard. The crash of the icy stones pinged against the hood of her broken-down Jeep, dead at the curb.

  “This din is enough to wake the dead,” said Callahan loudly, handing Alexandra a warm, dry towel. When his hand brushed against her fingers, she grabbed his forearm anxiously.

  “Look,” she demanded when he sat down beside her.

  “Look where?” he asked, his arm growing tense beneath her firm grasp.

  “Look at the wall, Callahan, and tell me you see it.”

  “There is no one there,” he replied, standing up when her grip slackened. “Perhaps I should have a look, though.”

  “No. Don’t go.” She pulled at his cape while he stood at the porch banister.

  Lightning streaked across the heavens long enough for Callahan to see the creature arch his back, the fur bristling across his spine. The creature jumped off the wall, running back into the cemetery.

  Callahan stumbled backward from the porch banister. “Inside!” he ordered, slamming the wooden door behind them.

  Bolting the lock, he pushed her into a cramped foyer flanked on either side by an empty dining room and a sparsely furnished living room.

  “Don’t move,” he whispered to Alexandra. He didn’t have to tell her, as she already stood motionless on a parquet square at the foot of a steep staircase. Walking into the living room, Callahan peeked through the heavy, drawn curtains.

  “Can you see anything?” Alexandra called to him, sitting dow
n on the bottom step of the staircase.

  “The rain is too heavy,” he replied over his shoulder.

  Her empty stomach turned sour. “Do you have a bathroom?” she asked, falling forward on her knees.

  “Under the staircase,” Callahan said, pointing to a door in the hallway behind the foyer.

  Crawling inside, Alexandra flipped the light switch, to no avail. “There’s no power,” she called to him, her voice muffled by the closed door.

  “No worries,” Callahan said, shutting the curtain.

  Behind him there was a carved wooden mantel, framing a soot-stained fireplace. “Perhaps I’ll start a fire,” he called toward the bathroom. “You were shivering.”

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” she told him. “I really don’t feel well.” Her body slumped to the cold tile, while her fingers fumbled in the dark for the toilet lid.

  “I’ll get some candles from the attic,” he announced calmly. “Stay in there, Alexandra. I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere.”

  “Where am I going to go?” she mumbled, hovering over the toilet.

  “What did you say, Miss Peyton? Should I come in there?”

  “No, Callahan. Just go find the candles,” she insisted. “I’ll be okay.”

  “Your book bag is just outside the door here in the hallway, by the way,” he said, stepping on the bottom stair in the foyer. “It’s been beeping at me since you crawled in there.”

  “Please hurry, Callahan,” Alexandra pleaded. “I’m scared.” Dragging her body across the cold ceramic bathroom tile, she slumped sideways against the closed door. Outside in the storm, thunderbolts rumbled through the sky, violently shaking the beams of the old house. Above her, Callahan’s hurried steps pounded on the staircase.

  Cracking open the door, Alexandra reached for the bag and raked it inside the bathroom. Twisting the door lock, she read the bright call screen, its light illuminating the cramped bathroom enough for her to notice no sign of any toilet paper.