“By what?”
“A black Camaro.” He handed over his license and the registration they found in the glove compartment.
The officer took it from him and considered his explanation. He seemed somewhat satisfied. “How long ago?”
“Couple hours,” Ian lied again.
“You report it?”
“The guy took off; we kept going. We’re just trying to get home for Christmas.”
“Where’s home?”
“Maryland.”
“You got quite a trip in front of you.”
“I know.”
“Storm’s coming.” The cop looked up at the sky. “They’re saying it could be a bad one. I’d think about holing up somewhere. You don’t wanna be stranded out here on the road all night.”
Ashley leaned forward. “It’s that bad?”
He turned and acknowledged her in the backseat. “With all this Christmas traffic?” He smiled. “Well, not here, but down south a ways you’ll find plenty of heavy traffic. All it takes is one big accident in severe conditions and they’ll need the National Guard to get ’em all out. In ’07, people were stranded overnight. Guard had to helicopter people out before they froze to death. Nemo, too.”
A burst of static followed by a crackled voice traveled over his radio. He bent his head into it and pressed the transmit button. He turned his head away from them when he talked, and Ashley couldn’t catch what he said. When he turned back to them, he rested a hand on the car door and looked them over with a skeptic’s eye. But he had to go, no matter what he suspected here.
“You folks drive safe, you hear? And think about getting off the road soon. When you get home, get your license plate dealt with. It must’ve fallen off when you were rear-ended.” He handed back the driver’s license and registration without even looking at it and jogged back to his car. Before Marcus even had the Saab in drive, the police car’s siren was sounding, lights flashing, and it was screeching back onto the road, crossing over the snowy median and taking off north.
Ashley watched the red and blue lights diminish as Marcus pulled the Saab back onto the interstate. Any relief she’d had seemed to be heading north too, riding captive in the back seat of the police car. A sense that something was still very wrong, that this nightmare was not yet over, was refortifying somewhere in her conscious mind. Built upon it was the conviction that they would never be safe from that dark man, whether they had the ring or not. Joyce hadn’t had the ring and neither did George when the freak slaughtered them. But there was something else there too, something hiding behind the umbrella of that fear, its face leaving an ever-so-slight impression on the outer fringes of her comprehension. Though she couldn’t put her finger on it, it left her with the feeling of something grand, the world on the verge of some epic act that would forever alter it. And with that feeling realized, a cloud of apocalyptic doom settled over her. It forced her eyes to the horizon almost as if indicating that forces not of this world would be the main culprits of whatever horror was set to invade.
“He didn’t even look at your driver’s license,” Heather muttered.
“The plate’s missing,” Ian wondered aloud. “I think that just bought us some more time.”
There was an aftertaste of the miraculous in Ashley’s thinking. Joyce’s plate falling off? Perhaps there was a greater force at work, mysterious ways and all that. Still, taking a ride in the back of a cruiser might have been the safer bet with a demon out for their blood. And so she prayed—yes, she actually let a soft prayer slip through her untrained lips—that this miracle of averting a jail cell might be the work of angels. Though why God would dispense His holy agents to help
them
on Christmas Eve, she couldn’t be certain. Perhaps it could be explained by whatever this imposing incident was that she felt looming. Something…galactic.
She still had her eyes on the northern skies, her thoughts marching along in a forest of shadows, when the gray clouds began to split. They spread apart like curtains announcing the next act on an otherworldly stage, and she narrowed her eyes, doubting what they were beholding. From behind the spreading clouds came a black claw clothed in flame. Its talons reached forth out of nowhere and grasped the ethereal wisps as if they weren’t clouds at all but rather the sides of a mountain tomb the hellish creature was intent on freeing itself from. Another clawed, bony hand, dark and shiny like coal, took hold of the opposite sky, and the creature pulled itself from the womb of some other dimension, poking its head into this world and breathing its air for the first time.
Ashley started to shake, her face numb. Fright gripped her so tightly that she thought it might crush her bones to powder.
The creature’s head was oblong in shape, a glistening, black watermelon. Its eyes were burning coals, and horns protruded from its skull at a downward angle. It had no nose, and its mouth was oriented where a chin might be expected. It was opening and closing, speaking, its forked tongue flickering in and out like a blazing whip.
Charlie Brown’s friend, Lionel, had his piano going, pounding out his Christmas song in the Saab, but Ashley didn’t hear it. She didn’t hear anything. She couldn’t breathe. She could only stare at this mysterious manipulation of time and space, occult dimensions converging in unnatural symphony, its crescendo a black hole giving birth to something from hell itself. The dragon slipped out of whatever plane it had come from, gliding through the clouds and slithering through the sky like a serpent lubricated by psychic fluids borrowed from its former home. Then it spread its bat-like wings and flew. Flew down. Down. Down. She felt vulnerable, violated…the images of that night plaguing her, mocking her, as if the creature had not only been present then, but was now taking responsibility for the crime…and that there was more where it had come from. That there was an
eternity
of it waiting just beyond the breached curtain, through the portal to endlessness.
And then it was gone, flew through a cloud and disappeared, its pointed tail swallowed last by white, shapeless mountains.
She tried to turn, to talk, to warn them of the danger coming, but she couldn’t do a damn thing. Her consciousness was prisoner to impotence, the link between spirit and brain, will and computer, severed. All she could do was feel, feel the indescribable torment of being abused, not by the piece of garbage that had stolen from her before, but by Satan himself…and that forever.
The flashing lights of the police car were just about to disappear beyond the horizon when, all of a sudden, they came to an abrupt stop, smoke spilling into the air behind them. It was turning around. It was coming back.
Without realizing she was doing it, Ashley’s right arm began nudging Heather.
“What?” Heather noticed the far-away look in Ashley’s eyes, the pale fear twisting her face. Turning to see what had her sister’s expression paused like a piece of morbid art, she saw the police car screaming down the highway toward them, speeding south on the northbound side of the icy median. “Marcus,” she whispered.
Marcus looked up into the rearview mirror, saw both girls staring out the back, and let his gaze drift down to the side-view mirror. “Uh oh.”
Ian swore when he saw it, too. “Get off at the next exit.”
Marcus nodded.
Ashley heard what was being spoken even though she couldn’t react to it. Her gaze remained locked on the police cruiser. Perhaps the angels weren’t helping them after all. Perhaps it was something else that was working in mysterious ways.
The cruiser, in an insane maneuver at top speed, attempted to cross the median. But when it hit the ice, the driver, a man that had seemed warm, friendly, and relatively rational just minutes ago, lost control of the vehicle. Striking a large rock of ice, the cruiser went spinning in circles across the southbound lanes, going straight off the shoulder and crashing nose-first into the steep slope of rocky earth that stood embracing that portion of the highway. Like a missile, the officer went through the windshield and into the granite.
Heather swore and turned away from the sight while Marcus fought the urge to go back for the officer. But the way the cruiser had been operated, the insane way it had come back after them, told him all he needed to know about what had sent the car into the rock wall, no doubt killing the officer instantly. It was not his God that had done that, but something from the other side. And why the Darkness would want them to remain free was a mystery that sat terribly uncomfortable in the pit of his stomach.
Ashley’s paralysis snapped, and she crumpled to the seat in tears, trying to catch her breath, to rid herself of that
feeling
…
Marcus took the exit.
It was Christmas Eve indeed, and as Marcus turned the Saab into a gas station just off the exit ramp, they all couldn’t help but wonder if their last Christmas might have already come and gone three hundred and sixty-four days before. The babe in the manger, the angels pronouncing His birth, the prophecies that promised joy to the world… It seemed like a bad joke in a world that was clearly controlled by Darkness. Peace on earth and goodwill toward men? Maybe someday. But certainly not now.
As they all sat motionless, each of them trying to grapple the impossible in some wrestling ring positioned within the privacy of their own fractured minds, John Lennon sang about war and Christmas, hoping they would have fun.
Twenty-seven
Refueled, the Saab rolled down Route 11 through Binghamton. The city was lit for Christmas, but all the festive dressings proved unable to fully distract from the ominous sky that was almost now upon them. Reindeer would be pulling the fat man through a blizzard tonight.
Ian poked at the GPS on the center console. “It wants us to get back on 81. We can either take it all the way, or in fifty miles we can hop on 476 and take it to 95.”
“You don’t think we should hole up somewhere for the night?” Marcus asked.
Ian shook his head. “If this blizzard is anything like they’re saying it’s gonna be, we’ll be snowed in for a week.” He glanced back at Heather. “I’d like to be home a lot sooner than that.”
Marcus didn’t want to spend another second away from the normal parameters of what he knew to be his life, and when he looked into the back seat, both girls nodded their approval, too.
So they were either going to outrun the storm or be swallowed up trying.
Marcus could see the strain pulling awkwardly at Ashley’s face, the far-away look in her eyes. She needed to get away from all this as soon as possible, before she retreated to a place from which there would be no coming back. He didn’t know if she’d seen something back there on 81, right before the cop turned after them, or if that’s just when all of it finally hit her, but that’s when she’d gone internal. Her psyche was fracturing, and in order to preserve it, her mind had slipped away into a hidden sanctuary—one Marcus hoped wasn’t buried too deep.
Once more, snow began fluttering to the earth as the day gave way to night. The Saab’s headlights switched on while Marcus followed signs back to 81. They would be in Pennsylvania in half an hour.
Thoughts of the people slain began to fizz in Marcus’ brain, and he couldn’t help wonder about the cop’s family—if they were going to be spending tomorrow in mourning, the presents from Dad left unwrapped. Or maybe his wife would try to get Christmas in first, saving the life-altering news for the next day, once the kids had their new toys to distract them from the full sting of the truth. The truck drivers, the person behind the wheel of the SUV, Joyce and George… He wanted to stop thinking about it. It was too much to bear. But he couldn’t, and soon he found himself wondering if it might be inevitable that they’d need to add Ashley’s parents to the list. He closed his eyes as if the thought was something visible and able to be ignored simply by looking away. Maybe the ring had prevented their calls, texts, and emails from going through, but the ring was gone now and they still couldn’t be reached. He prayed that there was some other explanation, that Ashley and Heather’s parents were only sick with worry and not a pair of corpses dangling like some grotesque mobile from a ceiling fan in their house.
The snow fell harder.
****
The clock on the console glowed 6:47 p.m. As they had gotten further south, the snow gave way to rain, and by the time they crossed into Pennsylvania, the night’s dropping temperatures were converting most wet surfaces to ice. They were moving along a two-lane section of 81 at five miles an hour, trapped in rows of dense traffic. The next exit was still miles ahead.
Ian leaned over and turned the radio up when a local news report put a sudden stop to Madonna’s “Santa Baby.”
“
…Just as was feared, the storm is beginning to follow the pattern of the February 2007 North America Winter Storm, otherwise called, ‘The Valentine’s Day Blizzard.’”
Ian didn’t care about the pressures and fronts and all the meteorological rhetoric. It didn’t mean anything to him. He wanted to know feet and inches, timeframes, and traffic delays. The smell in the car seemed to be growing worse, and the thought of being stuck in it overnight was enough to send one walking, blizzard or not. The aroma wafted from a mixed drink of sour milk, pickles, and cat piss topped with some whipped poop.
“
…The 2007 blizzard that claimed thirty-seven lives and inflicted fifty million dollars in damages across thirteen US states as well as New Brunswick, Ontario, and Quebec, saw heavy snowfall across the Midwest, parts of the Northeast and into Canada. And now we’re beginning to see the same thing taking shape again. The areas that saw warmer temperatures this afternoon, from northern Pennsylvania all the way to Maryland, are facing a major problem with all that rain and sleet now freezing in the plunging temperatures. Remember Winter Storm Nemo? If that was Nemo, think of this one as Jaws…
”
“Great,” Marcus mumbled from the driver’s seat. He had one hand on the wheel, the other holding up his head. A new voice came over the radio, this one seemingly giddy with the details of the 2007 blizzard. A great many motorists, however, were not so excited by the history lesson.