Death Highway

by J C Walsh

  I am sad, but not surprised to find, as I draw closer to my own neighborhood, the houses there don’t look any better. I fought the urge to look in these homes, these pallid faces glaring at me so malevolently. The paint, peeled away long ago, reminded me of shredded skin revealing the rawness beneath. The windows are boarded up with two by fours that go across each other in the shape of an X, dead eyes. I don’t care for the stares; I don’t need to know the secrets the faces want to share with me.

  I have my own to deal with.

  So, I keep walking; it’s hard to bear witness to what I’ve felt settle inside me during the time I’ve spent in prison. Now I am questioning if that was real at all.

  My house sways back and forth. I can’t move my feet. All the Nazi Occultists in the world cannot instill the sweltering fear I am enduring when I see my own home, once a sanctuary Laura and I worked so hard to build, is now a living, breathing organism of this nightmarish world. I see the Red Plane laughing in the pale sky over head.

  I’m having an out of body experience when I finally start walking toward the front steps. My mind is collapsing. Laura is with me, holding my hand, smiling, her green eyes standing out against the opaqueness of crimson slowly shadowing above. She’s pulling me up the front steps, too fast. I want to tell her to slow down, stop, just give me a minute.

  The old wooden steps groan underneath each step; I nearly cry out when she opens the door. The hinges screech at me like a banshee.

  I stand in the doorway. Alone. Laura is gone, was never here in the first place, not on this plane at least. My mind is colliding with the images drilled into it, images I dare not wish for. I will not fall for bullshit trickery. I know the Red Plane wants me to focus on those lost desires, wants me to choose between there and here. What person, in their right mind, wouldn’t choose to be with the person they love, smiling and laughing?

  Somewhere, deep in the catacombs of my home, a baby cries.

  I almost go to it, thinking someone has left their child in my house. I take a deep breath. Why am I doing this to myself? To test myself, that is why. Besides shoving opioids down my throat to fight pain, and antidepressants to fight my anxiety, my mind was clear when I was in prison. The ceiling was blank. My head is heavy, while traveling the outside world, muddy with the possibilities of other lives. Reluctantly, I step over the threshold, right foot first, then follows the left. I prepare myself before jumping into the sea of memories; I don’t want to drown in their undertow. I am in the living room; the furniture floats in the imaginary waves like bloated corpses. I run my hand along the cushions, recoiling in disgust at its damp moldiness. Immediately upon touching the ruined furniture, a smell like a dead, wet dog overwhelms my senses, causing my eyes to water.

  It’s funny how the sight of these materialistic items instills an exhausting sadness within me. Within that slither of a moment, I don’t want to move on. The house shudders, voices crawl within the walls of my old home. I hear Laura and, suddenly, I am holding her in my arms. She’s looking up into my face with those emerald green eyes I love so much; her smile is beaming like the sun soaking in through the windows.

  “So? What do you think?”

  I’m so lost in her I have no idea what she’s talking about. “Huh?”

  “The couches, silly!”

  I turn around. A large couch, material a charcoal grey, is up against the wall. On the other side, closest to the front, is a smaller couch, with matching color and material.

  “They’re nice,” I say to her.

  “Nice?” she asks, her voice heavenly. I feel like I haven’t heard it in years. I haven’t. “That’s all you got to say?”

  “Well, I mean I did live with my Grandparents most of my life, and they had the same furniture since I was a kid.”

  She laughs at that. I find myself laughing with her.

  She plants a kiss on my lips, and then pulls herself out of my arms. I’m standing there with my arms still open. I feel like a part of me has been torn away. I almost pull her back so I can stay in this memory just a little while longer.

  “Come on! Let’s get this plastic off and enjoy our new couches!”

  I turn around. The couches are not new anymore; they are in the moldy ruin of decay and despair I had found them in. The sun is gone; the coldness inside is just as ominous as the living grayness outside. The sky flashes, grey turns red, then back to grey.

  I need to move on. I don’t have much time. The Red Plane is devouring my home and everything around it very slowly. The dying feeling is stronger now, settling in like rigor mortis. The Red Plane will use every form of trickery to keep me here. Before I cross the threshold into the dining room, I hear something stir behind me. When I turn around, I see a young man lying on the soggy couch; it squelches under his movement. The right side of his face is badly scarred just like mine. It’s almost a mirror image but then I realize I am staring at a younger me; another memory makes itself known. I don’t like the look on his face; it’s full of such disdain I’m afraid it’s as infectious as the merging of the worlds. His left arm hangs off the couch, in his hand an open bottle of whiskey. He takes a big pull from it, his eyes never leaving me. When he’s done drinking the bottle, he holds it up. I can smell it from here, my mouth waters.

  “Want some?”

  “I’m good.” I turn from him, wanting to continue forward. I had left this version of me behind years ago.

  “You think you’re so much better than me, don’t you?”

  I don’t turn back to him when I simply answer, “Yes.”

  Once I was cleared to come home, after spending months healing in the hospital, I had immediately descended into a tunnel of anger and self-pity. that I spent more time drinking on the couch than going to physical therapy and having more skin graft surgeries. I took the pain killers at least; they went down easily with the whiskey. It was a burn I relished, more than the ones I had to live with.

  Laura had had enough; she had left the house crying and had gone to my grandfather for help. He had come by that day and given me a good heart to heart talk. Not one full of kittens and rainbows either. The entire time he laid into me about how I was lucky to have a girl like Laura to take care of me when it was my fault all of this had happened. I could see his fingers knotted in each other. He had desperately fought taking his giant hands and wrapping them around my throat. I would’ve deserved it, trust me.

  So yeah, I am better than that piece of shit glaring at me from his decayed couch. I ignore anything else he spits, and finally move into the dining room. Doing so, I assume he’s gone, vanished back into the catacombs of a distant time. I hear the baby again; its cries echo from upstairs. I look warily at those stairs. There’s nothing up there for me. I can see the small hallway in my head; the bathroom is the first door on the right, and then our bedroom. The room across from ours was supposed to be the nursery. Laura comes into my mind again. Our times spent in that bedroom, her pale skin on top of me, her fiery red hair in my face as we made love,; I can smell her sweet perfume, almost taste the sweat on her skin.

  Where are you, Laura?

  The walls are moving, forming shapes as they push outward. The yellow wall is a hand, outstretched and reaching for me. I almost dare to reach out, allow my finger tips to touch the fingers of the thing. It whispers to me, but I don’t understand it’s frantic babbling. I move away from it and make my way to the kitchen.

  Thankfully, there aren’t any illusions taunting me. The only thing I keep my eyes on a little bit longer is the patio table we had used as a kitchen table. It had belonged to Laura,; she’s had it since her old apartment, bought it off a friend. It’s one of those square tables with a glass center, an entry for the umbrella pole to go into. It added a nice little bit of charm to the kitchen, and besides it had saved us some money, so we hadn’t had to buy a new one right away.

  I walk over to the basement door; its pushing from its frame, rhythmically, like a heartbeat. It stops once I touch the door ha
ndle. My hand feels the energy in the door handle. This is where I need to go, the basement. I will get my answers there; I don’t know why. I just do. I just have that feeling.

  I turn the knob and pull open the door to darkness, the spiral of old rotted stairs comes out of the blackness once my eyes adjust. I flick the switch. Of course, it doesn’t work. I don’t think anything has worked in this house for a while, however long a while was here.

  Taking my time, I go down the steps one by one, careful not to trip over the last couple of steps as darkness takes me. I stand there for a few moments, so my eyes can adjust. I see the outline of the washer and dryer in the back; the little bit of grey light sneaking through the dirty basement windows shows the touch of rust on the machines. I walk in that area, only to take a right into a smaller room.

  All four walls are brick. Across from me, stacked upon each other, are numerous totes filled with stuff we couldn’t fit into our home, and other totes full of holiday decorations. Ahead of me is where I want to go. The brick wall shimmers, the same mirage I had seen at the prison. This time when I reach into it, the fabric of reality does not tear. Instead, it falls open, brick by brick. My fingers rake against the wall and more bricks fall, revealing an open space. I continue to pull more bricks from the foundation. The shimmering is still there, but much stronger. It makes my vison seem blurrier. I pull it open; the tear fills with red. I step in, foot first, without even thinking about what could be on the other end. When I entered the Red Plane from the Prison, I was able to see where I would end up, and, even then, I didn’t want to stay long because of the huge things that own the sky.

  I have a strong urge to follow my gut. I just go through; I somehow know I will be fine. It’s better than dealing with my memories haunting me on the floor above. Something is telling me I’ll get answers here. Once I am through the fissure, I am in a cave. The rock is the color of molten lava. I smell sulfur but it’s not cloying; it just exists. I see a duffel bag up ahead and go over to it; it is familiar to me. I remember hiding this, some time ago, in another life.

  In that life, it was right before the accident. Things had been heating up, even though we rid ourselves of our enemies, the other racing gangs, by joining the Dead One’s world. It had been Chris’s idea, someone who was our bookie and I had thought was a friend, at the time. He said the crew and I would be wheelmen for him, doing small jobs, mainly picking up items that were owed, money, guns, etc. This is where Laura wanted out, and, while she understood why I needed to stay a little longer, she didn’t judge me, until the bullets flew way more than often, and the battle had hit home.

  I unzipped the bag. Just as I had expected, guns. Lots of them. I had stolen them from another racing gang’s safe house. I remember the bullets flying because I was the one that had shot first. They had the balls to send one of their guys to my house, with Laura home. At that point, we were engaged and had just found out she was pregnant.

  They fired on the house. Laura was hurt. I went after them.

  “Randy Jones.”

  The voice is powerful, the entire interior of the massive cave shook from whomever was able to project it. I look up from the bag and gasp. To my amazement, the wall in front of me has formed a shape; the thing is a writhing mass of appendages and insectile legs and claws. Its body seems to stretch out amongst most of the wall in this area of the cave.

  “What are you?”

  “I am The Eye of Beholder of The Red Plane.”

  3.

  I am in awe of this god like creature spread out before and all around me. It’s one eye is the size of an automobile. I am staring at multiple rows of teeth because it has multiple mouths. When it spoke, all the mouths spoke at once, sounding like a loud and powerful echo. The tentacles have pulled from the rock, and now its black and red flesh surrounds me, but not in a threatening way. I see it as being curious, as in an eye of the beholder kind of way.

  “I thought the eye of the beholder was supposed to represent some kind of beauty?” I know it’s not the best of ideas to start out being a smart ass, but I have never really stopped before, so why should I start now. Giant tentacle cave god be damned.

  “There’s beauty in the chaos of the universe, is there not,” the many mouths answer.

  “Ok. Good point,” I say, “What the fuck are you doing in my basement, or part of it?”

  “You asked for me.”

  I scoff. “Not by name.”

  “You’re looking for answers, are you not?” it responds.

  Now it’s got me. “Yes. That is true. And you’ll have them for me? No offense, Mr. Beholder, but there are things out there that want me dead and my own home tried attacking me with my memories. So, a creature with many mouths and tentacles claiming to hold beauty that has answers to my questions leads me to be a little skeptical.”

  The mouths laugh. I guess you could call it a deep belly laugh; the ground shook beneath my feet.

  “I could consume you within seconds and your soul would be lost within the abyss.” The mouths threaten all at once.

  “Then why don’t you?”

  “Because you are the merger of all things. You have to go to Death Highway.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “But not just for the reasons you seek.”

  I couldn’t find the words I wanted to speak. I mean, why wouldn’t I go to Death Highway for what I seek, isn’t that the point?

  “Selfishness will not truly close all the doors and keep them locked. You can never truly destroy or stop the Red Plane from existing, but you can lock away a version of it. The most threating one of them all.”

  “The one we are all in,” I say.

  “Yessss,” the many mouths hiss.

  “Why are you helping? Aren’t you a part of this world?”

  “I am. But I do not wish for our world to consume another. I do not share the jealousy of many of this plane. The moment The Wayfarer introduced waging bets, the door was opened, and many have lost their way.”

  “Wayfarer? You mean the Dead One.”

  “Eyeless.” The many mouths hiss again.

  “Stop that; that’s creepy.”

  “Reach into the bag,” it says, ignoring my comment.

  I do as it asks. My hand shuffles through the numerous guns, small and large, also boxes of ammo for those guns. My hand wraps around something that does not feel like a handgun or an automatic rifle. It’s thick in diameter and has a chiseled shape to it. I pull out the statue and hold it up.

  “I have seen this before,” I say.

  “It is the true form of the Dead One. It’s used as a challenge to his human form. You can bend the rules of Death Highway with such a powerful thing, but you can’t do this alone.”

  “That I know. I am looking for my friends. I am looking for Laura.”

  “Keep that statue with you; it’s power will help the one you have insight. You can’t just open fissures into the Red Plane, you also can hop to different realities.”

  “Really? That’s cool.”

  “The statue will help you pinpoint your destination, and that way you won’t get lost.”

  I observe the ugly thing before placing it back into the bag. It’s got a tusk for a head; the pointed end reaches to the middle of its back, where there are wings not spread, but folded. It perches on a mound of skulls. But’s that is all I could truly make out of this creature that is supposed the Dead One, which I only seen in his human form, this thing is much more frightening than the mass before me.

  “So where do I start?”

  “Once you find your entrance, it will take you where you need to go. There are others who have been in your presence when you were burning in between worlds.”

  I swallow hard; memories of being on my hospital bed, delirious from the pain, then completely wacked out from the morphine push into my head. While I fought through that and the intense shivering, I kept blanking out. Each time I would see a different face. Laura’s. My Grandparent’s. The faces of
my crew, minus Cody. As time passed, I could’ve sworn there was something strange about those days in the hospital. While I was in prison, I chalked it up to possibly The Red Plane slowly converging around that time, or that I was just too hopped up on pain and drugs to fully grasp what was going on.

  “First,” the beholder continues, “you must seek out the Place of Chariots. After that is located, your ability will strengthen. It will be easier to locate the rest of your chosen ones. You will have to go to the land of the Contaminated. That part of your world has almost completely merged with the Red Plane, where your home is will shortly follow.”

  “Lovely,” I say, “Then what?”

  “Then the Testimony of Truth. After your circle is complete, you will be able to face the deceiver. Until then, I strongly advise not doing so until your group is assembled. There is one you have to watch out for though; he is the worst.”

  “Who is that?”

  “Alter Inhorruit.”

  “What the hell? Come on Beholder, you been speaking English just fine, and you throw that at me. What is that, Latin?”

  “Yes. It’s what he calls himself.”

  “Ok. And it means what?”

  “The Scarred One.”

  I sigh. That doesn’t sound good.

  “Once you reach Death Highway, you will all find your fates. Now go, Randy Jones. I grow weak and your worlds above are colliding. You need to get to the first passageway before it takes you within its grasps. You have enemies waiting, so be careful.”

  “Thank you. I hope I can make things right.”

  “As do I.”

  The Beholder melds back into the rocky cavern it had grown from. The spot where the mass was is now just black and red fissures across rock. I turn to find the fissure hasn’t closed. I walk through, my feet find purchase on my basement floor, back in the small room. I hurry upstairs. Once in the kitchen, I find the house is shuddering. The walls are breaking apart, arms reach out, bloodied. I see the faces of many people from my life, all looking to get a hold of me. I see other versions of me, ready to collide and collapse and change into what this place breeds. I take the .38 I took out of the bag from my jeans and fire a couple of shots at the other versions of me; they drop with bullets in their heads. Their heads break open; something insect-like, hissing madly, climbs out from the tops of the heads. I stomp on the disgusting things. Another version of me is all scars; he smiles like a madman. I leave out the side door, hurry down the steps, and run across the yard to stand on the driveway.