by Bob McGough
I was on a dirt road, a small one, narrow and thin. I didn’t need to go down the full length of it though; in fact, the way the trees that lined the road were swaying and sorta reaching for me, I decided it might be best to just stop where I was. Cutting the car off, I sat there, settling down as best as I could for things to simmer down.
I could feel the Pooka stirring beside me. Nothing was actually moving of course, it was more of a general feeling I had. I turned in my seat, looking over at my erstwhile passenger.
For the first time, I was able to really take a good look at it. It had been painted black, then someone had gone over bits of it with a dark yellow spray paint. To call it gold would be a lie - it was too dinghy for that, too...idle. The tips of each antler were yellow, and the bottom of its long face was as well. They’d then painted a looping spiral in almost that exact same yellow color smack dab in the middle of the skull.
I knew the spiral. What it meant.
I could see the hint of that spirit lurking inside that skull, a faint glow that curled at the edge of my vision, like smoke in the wind. While all other colors seemed open to interpretation at that moment, thanks to the coursing hallucinations, the skull itself was rock solid. It was, ironically, an anchor of reality in that moment, a grounding in the world of the spirits.
The bits of rough string that hung from the antlers rustled and shook slightly. Each ended in some sort of trinket, be it a small crystal, a key, or things pertaining to that size. They rattled as the Pooka slowly roused itself up from where I had stunned it. I was a little worried, but I knew I had it out from its “home turf” now, out of that garden. It was less powerful separated from the earth like that.
“Look here now,” I said. I let my eyes focus on the skull, helping me keep it together. “We can do this the hard way, or the easy way. If you behave yourself, I’ll make sure you get some blackberries. They’re good and ruined, just like you like ‘em.”
I swear that thing hissed at me.
“It’s like that then is it,” I said, cracking my knuckles in what I hoped was an ominous manner. I was about to thump that sucker once more ‘gain, when something struck my window. I let out a little scream, about jumping out of my skin, much less my seat.
“Mighty jumpy there, son. You aight?” said a wrinkled face standing at my door.
“I...uh…”
The man’s eyes narrowed. “You look aight, so fuck are you doing in my driveway? You drunk?” He looked past me into the van, his eyes locking on to the skull. “You doing some sort of voodoo shit in my yard, son?”
“No, sir,” I started. I was on tilt, and way too high to be dealing with this. Had I pulled into a driveway instead of a dirt road? That would explain why it was so narrow. “I was just stopping for a second, I was getting sleepy.” I was pleased by my quick thinking.
“Well, how about you go sleep it off some’ere else and quit scaring my wife half to death.” He tapped the glass again, and I saw he was doing it with the barrel of a small pistol.
“Fair enough,” I said. In a lower voice, I muttered, “Mighty Christian of you.”
I fumbled a moment or two in the darkness before I was able to get the van running again. That old bastard just stood there in his bathrobe and flannels, giving me the mother of all stink-eyes. I had half a mind to slip it into drive and give him a scare, but being this high, and knowing my luck, I’d run the old bastard over. I’m a lot of things, but I have never killed anybody, and I didn’t aim to start now.
Looking in the rearview mirror, I knew there was no possible way I was going to be able to back down that driveway. So seeing a gap, I hauled off and did a fairly admirable three-point turn in that prick’s yard. I heard some sort of thunk along the way, and I was fair certain from his yelling that I’d damaged something. Well, I figured it served him right for bothering me like that.
Beside me, the skull was just quivering. It was sure enough rousing itself up to try something, but unless I wanted a few shots popped off in the van, I needed to get elsewhere. Worse, the old man might call the cops on me. They’d sure enough be in the area, what with the fire, I reckoned.
“Be easy now,” I said to the Pooka as I reached the paved road once more. I had to wait for a car to pass, but luckily, it was headed in the same direction I wanted to go. I figured it would be easier to follow it than to just wing it. But I took so long to get good and going that it had disappeared around a curve before I could roll along behind it. If it had ever been there in the first place.
As best as I could, I kept my eyes peeled for the brilliant green of my headlights shining off a street sign. Jubal County had been eaten up with little side roads, and thanks to that E-911 deal they put in a few years back, they all had names and signs now. So long as some kids hadn’t come along and stolen them, that is.
Somewhere between a mile and an eternity, I spotted a blessed snippet of green that read...something. The letters had sorta all melted and ran together, at least that was how it looked in my almost dead eyes. It damn sure wasn’t a driveway though. I grinned as I turned onto its broad dirt expanse.
My grin shattered as the passenger window cracked. A spider web spread across it, dozens of small cracks threatening to shatter it. I felt the Pooka as it did it, a sort of electric whoosh that filled the air a split second beforehand. The damn thing was trying to break out.
Slamming on the breaks, I threw the van in park, then called up the Power. A glowing electric buzz filled my soul, and I thumped my hand down on the skull. The damn thing should have been turned into powder. Instead, my hand came away red and stinging. Whatever Granny had spelled into that skull was damn solid.
The Pooka slumped back into whatever spirits did when you effectively knocked them out. I’d put a good bit more power into this blow, which would keep it settled long enough for me to sober up. At least sober enough to drive safe. Well, safer.
Using the Power like that, it burned up a chunk of my high, so to speak. I had to dance a fine line though. I could easily just cast a bunch of stupid spells, and then burn myself clean and sober. But then I’d be toothless if the Pooka woke up before I could get it to Granny’s. So I got the van pulled a bit more out of the way than it had been, and settled down for my brain to settle down.
Then it started raining.
Pitter Patter, Let’s Get At Her
Time had a funny way of moving, but the clock told me that about an hour had passed by the time I felt able to take on the world. I had no doubt there would be moments of flashback and skullfuckery, but I was cooking along on a fairly even keel finally. Reality had taken on a sort of firmness to it that I found simultaneously pleasing and disappointing.
I was pretty sure the Pooka was awake, but it was minding itself, and not causing any sort of ruckus. I guess that last smack had done the job and it was set to behave now. If not, well, I could always just swat it again, I figured.
At some point, I couldn’t now recall I had buckled up the deer skull, threading the seatbelt across its horns. Whether that had something to do with its current quiet state I couldn’t guess, but it seemed best to just leave things as they were. Glancing at the cracked window, I figured at least this way it couldn’t go leaping out if the window finished shattering. I looked close to see if any rain was leaking in, and so far at least there was none.
This was the surest sign that I had set things right, I supposed, the fact that it was now raining inside the area that had been a drought zone. I reckoned if I could have been watching a weather radar it would have shown that the storm had stopped flowing around that circle and started flowing right over it. It tickled me to no end, as I imagined the money I was soon to be receiving. Rutherford would be happy, I assumed, if the man was capable of an emotion other than “prick.”
I was less pleased to find that my uncle had gone quite some time without replacing his windshield wipers. They were barely able to keep up with the falling rain, and did a better job of smearing the water rather th
an actually slinging it off the glass. If it started coming down way harder, I was gonna be pissed.
I had gotten my bearing, and knew my whereabouts. I could just follow down the dirt road I was parked on, and in a few miles it would come out on highway 98. That would have me good and on my way.
The thirsty dirt of the road was quickly soaking up the rain. The occasional burst of lightning came on now, fighting my headlights for the task of lighting my way. There were mostly just cow pastures on either side of this little road, and in my few glances left and right I could see the cattle hunkered down, small black mounds dotting the cleared land. I was sure glad not to be in their shoes.
I had made it to the end of the road where it T’d into 98 when that skull gave a crackle of activity. I stopped, looking at it hard, even as I started to call up a flicker of power. Before I could act, however, the totem pulsed green, bright enough that it partially blinded me for a moment. Then it happened.
A torrent of filth spewed from where the deer’s mouth would have been. It was a river of rotted vegetables and fruit, runny with sour decay. It fountained out, striking the dash before cascading into the floorboard. Chunks of putrid plant matter splattered everywhere.
The smell was something that will always haunt me. I have never smelled anything so foul, so withering. The stench of death was entwined with the reek of decomposition, filling my nose and leaving me gasping for breath. It was so noxious I swear it was actually roasting the hairs inside my nose.
Desperately, I rolled down the windows, not giving a flying fuck about the rain. I gasped hungrily at the rain-tossed air that flowed in, desperate for something actually breathable. I was so caught up trying to remain alive that I almost didn’t hear it.
*click*
I wheeled to see the seatbelt coming unfastened. The soiled mess had thankfully stopped flowing from the totem’s mouth, though a huge puddle several inches deep now filled the floorboard on that side. Lunging, I reached across and snapped the buckle back together with one hand, as with my other I rolled up the passenger side window. I had to hold my breath as I did so: so acrid was the air.
Soon as that was done, I leaned my head out of the window, letting the rain pelt my face as I breathed deeply. From the corner of my eye, I watched the damned thing, but it just sat there. Clearly, its plan now was to drive me out of the van so it could escape. Well, the joke was on it. While this was easily the most disgusting smell I had ever encountered, I typically lived in a general state of filth. It was going to take more than a bad smell to run me off.
Carefully reaching out, I wrapped my hand around the seat belt clasp, and with a few words I melted it beneath my hand. Not much, mind you, just enough that it could no longer unclasp, at least not without some serious work.
It suddenly occurred to me that H.D. would probably not be well pleased with the state of his van when I got around to returning it. I’d transcended beyond the usual “leaving it on empty,” and had perpetrated a bit of real damage to the thing. I had some vague memories of having perhaps struck a few things while in my higher state, but decided to ignore that for now. The puke was a bigger issue really.
As I stared, I saw a fist-sized fragment of what looked like watermelon rind bubble to the surface, breach for a moment, before being sucked back down into the slimy green sludge. The smell coming from it was still terrible, but with the window down, it was gradually becoming bearable. At least my nose hairs had stopped burning.
I decided against trying to clean it up, at least at that point. I had no doubt Hubert Dale would make some attempt at getting me to clean it later, but for now I concluded that there was no point. What if I went to the trouble of shoveling the bulk of it from the floorboard for it to just repeat itself? Clearly, the size of the skull had zero relevance to the amount of bile that it could produce. No point in tempting fate.
I cracked the passenger window a bit, and with my head mostly out my own window, I resumed my travels.
A Minor Hiccup
I figured that I was maybe a twenty-minute drive away from Granny’s, assuming the weather didn’t get much worse. I ended up having to pull my head in as the raindrops began to sting once I picked up speed. But with that speed came wind, which made having my head inside the van tolerable. I was almost getting used to the smell, at least as used to it as you could get. The roiling in my gut had faded, and the urge to vomit had passed. I could feel that skull just steamin’ mad, but it was making no more moves, so I let it be.
The rain was holding steady, my level of high was within the limits, and the van was still running. I had three grand waiting on me, more money than I could ever remember having at one time by far. I’d even gotten laid out of this whole affair. Life was shaping up to be damn fine.
Then I topped the hill I’d been passing up, and my heart stopped.
Up ahead was a roadblock. Through the rain splatter, my eyes filled with a torrent of reds and blues. For a moment, the light was a riot of prismatic color, filling my vision like an avalanche of living blue raspberry slushie. After a second it passed, leaving an echo of that wonder on my retinas to go along with the horrible sinking feeling in my gut.
There was a trio of cop cars, parked along and across the road, leaving a gap big enough for one car to pass through at a time. I’d seen these often enough as a passenger, but had never hit one as a driver. It was a simple license and insurance check. The only problem was I hadn’t had a license in years, and if this van was properly insured I would shit gold, not to mention the large quantity of drugs I had on deck.
Or the fucking Pooka.
Without a conscious thought, I whipped the van around, killing the headlights as I did so. I just had to hope they didn’t see me. Maybe the rain would do me this one favor, just this once maybe my luck would not fuck me over. I punched the gas as hard as I could and the van lurched forward, getting me behind the crest of the hill so I could cut the lights back on.
My heart was pounding, the wind screaming in my ear through the open window. Or maybe that was me. Maybe it was the Pooka. Things had gotten real out of sorts all of a sudden. It was a hell of a time for lingering snippets of hallucinogens to start firing in my brain. So when the police lights cut on just in front and slightly to the side of me, I prayed for a moment that it was just my drug addled brain messing with me.
This was not the case.
The cop car had been hiding, lying in wait for folks like me who didn’t feel like going through the block. Sitting in some driveway, or behind some tree. I don’t know where exactly, but as it whipped out into the road behind me I knew all too well just where it was. I thought about trying to outrun the bastard, but then I remembered I was in an aged Astrovan, not a Mustang.
It took me a few moments to convince myself not to try it anyway. In that time, the cop got so close on my bumper I could damn near feel their breath on my neck. Lights were flashing, siren wailing, and speaker blaring. Between the wind, rain, and panic rising up in me, the voice sounded more like the teacher voice from Charlie Brown than anything really human. I knew what they would be saying though, this wasn’t my first rodeo.
I pulled off onto what may have been a dirt road, or may have just been a really long driveway. It was hard to tell in the dark, and although it was certainly dirt, it seemed a bit too maintained to be any sort of road left in the care of the county. Trees grew up close to one side, the side I pulled over onto, while the other looked to be open with what might have been a hay field.
The cop car pulled in behind me, squatting ominously. Nothing moved that I could see, and I could only assume whoever it was was running the plates to check for warrants. What it did was drive me almost to the breaking point. I was scared in a way the Pooka had not been able to manage. It was strange; I knew any other day, at any other time, I’d have been running my mouth, flipping the bird, and being a troublesome ass. What was some jail time? I basically had a standing room reservation there.
But in that dark...there
was a wildness in me that made me want to run. To dive out the side passenger door and take off running into the woods. To tear off my clothes and run naked beneath the moonlight…what?
I swatted the skull and the rising terror lessened. “Would you fucking stop? I got enough shit to deal with without you riling things up for fuck’s sake.”
Hearing a car door open, I looked in the side mirror. Out shuffled one of the local sheriff's deputies, pulling on an orange raincoat over their uniform. It was hard to tell, but I thought it was a woman, and as she neared, I saw that was the case. Her skin was dark, so unless the force had gotten some new recruits, I knew it had to be…
“Deputy Williams, evening,” I said, putting on my most charming smile. Latoya Williams didn’t have the full-on hate for me that most cops seemed to have. She certainly didn’t like me, but then I could count the number of folks who did on one hand pretty much. We’d gone to school together from kindergarten till I dropped out. We had even been friends back then for a bit, the way the smart kids would sorta stick together. Those days were long gone, but enough memory lingered with her that she’d sometimes talk first and taze later.
She swore as she stepped towards the window, her boots squelching through the mud. “You didn’t hear me telling you to pull over, Marsh?”
“I did, but see, this ain’t my van. It’s H.D.’s. I didn’t want to risk getting it stuck in the rain.” The stink of the vomit was rising.
Stepping up, she almost instantly reeled back. “What the hell? What’s that smell, Marsh?” She put a hand to her face, covering her mouth and nose. She held up her flashlight, clicking it on. It was one of those long silver Maglites, the kind that could double as a club. Still holding her nose, she shone it inside.
