by Steve Harris
The answer, Martin assumed, was because he could not. Reality, presumably, had been up and rolling for a good long time before Peter Perfect arrived on the scene, and it had achieved a momentum which he could not overcome. He might be able to patch into reality as it arrived and alter bits of it before it went by, but he surely wasn’t powerful enough to, say, completely remove a person. Or even to rewrite them so that they acted as he wished. If he could have, he would have. That much was obvious.
It didn’t explain why he was so determined to keep Martin away though. Surely not because you’re an editor? Martin wondered as he put the key into the ignition. He can’t possibly be frightened of you because of that! Does he think that you’re going to tell him his plotting is faulty and his characterization is weak?
He doubted it. It was going to turn out to be a lot more complicated than that, and something to do with Essenjay, whom Peter Perfect had apparently earmarked as his perfect woman.
Or his perfect sacrifice, Martin thought, and twisted the ignition key.
The Dino burst into life and idled roughly, missing a little on one cylinder.
Put that in your pipe and suck on it, Peter Perfect! he thought defiantly. Martin Louis Dinsey is coming to get you and he’s real pissed off!
And the Dino cut out.
‘You shithouse,’ he yelled.
‘Try it again,’ Harold advised from outside.
Martin keyed the ignition. The Dino fired up… and died before the engine caught. When he looked out again, Harold was shaking his head. ‘It isn’t going to go,’ Harold predicted.
Martin turned the key again. This time nothing happened at all. No warning lights lit, no starter motor turned, no dials moved.
‘The battery cannot have gone dead that quickly!’ he shouted.
‘Wasn’t my fault,’ Harold said, backing off a pace.
Martin got out of the car. ‘Who said it was?’ he demanded, advancing on Harold. ‘WHO SAID IT WAS?’
Harold held up his hands. They were trembling. ‘Steady on,’ he said mildly. ‘I’m on your side.’
‘I’ve got to get back down to Bude,’ Martin moaned, ‘it’s a matter of life and death. Literally.’ His eyes lit on Harold’s car. It was a worn-out powder-blue Vauxhall Victor. Ancient and rusting.
‘Lend me your car,’ he said. He had aimed the tone of his voice towards a request and missed by a mile. Even to his own ears, he sounded more like the school bully demanding the little kid’s packed lunch. To Harold, he apparently sounded demented.
Harold shook his head. ‘Can’t,’ he said, looking ready to take a speedy hike in the opposite direction. ‘The car’s not taxed. The two back tyres are bald and there’s a big oil leak.
It’d die before it got back to York. Or you’d kill yourself. And anyway, it’s all the transport I’ve got.’
I will buy it!’ Martin informed him. ‘You’ve got my Visa number. Put it on my bill. I’ll pay whatever you ask. It can’t be worth more than two hundred, but I’m stuck and I’ll pay over the odds. A grand. Let me buy it for a thousand pounds!’
Harold shook his head once more.
‘Two grand!’ Martin shouted.
‘No,’ Harold said in a small voice.
Martin suddenly found himself with two handfuls of yellow rubber cape. He yanked them towards him and snarled into Harold’s face. I’m getting sick of this. Can’t you understand me, you stupid little man? I’m offering you two thousand pounds for a pile of junk on four wheels. How much more can you possibly want?
‘Let me go!’ Harold pleaded, presumably wondering how his quiet night had degenerated into a face-to-face confrontation with a maniac. He looked as if he expected to die.
Martin did something he’d been wanting to do since he’d first climbed into the man’s clapped-out car. He shook him, hard. Harold’s teeth clattered together. ‘Listen-to-me-close-ly,’ Martin hissed, rattling Harold with each syllable. ‘My-wife-is-in-dan-ger. She-needs-me-to-help-her-and-I-need-your-car-to-get-me-back-to-Cornwall. Un-der-stand?’
He gave Harold one last shake and let go of him.
Harold tottered backwards, tripped and sprawled into the road. He didn’t try to get up.
‘Put two thousand pounds on to my bill,’ Martin said, walking away. He climbed into the Vauxhall, sat down and felt for the keys.
They were not present.
Martin’s temper reached boiling point and he began to scream.
20 - James at Black Rock
‘keys!’ someone who sounded vaguely familiar shouted. ‘give me the keys!’
They’re in the ignition, for God’s sake, just take the damned things and leave me alone, I’m hurt! I cannot give them to you because I cannot move.
‘Please!’ a stranger replied in a tiny, terrified voice. ‘Leave me alone. The car won’t go anyway. We both have to walk back to the motel from here. Don’t you see?’
Motel? What motel?
‘Just give me the keys!’ the familiar voice shouted.
Told you where they are. Just take them. I’m broke and I’m probably dead by now. The big black dog got me. He burnt me to death and I can’t pick up anything solid any more because I’m a ghost.
The snatches of conversation he seemed to have been hearing for the past billion years faded and James Green’s eyes popped open.
For a few moments he knew neither where he was nor what he was doing there. This agreeable state of existence didn’t last for long enough, because when James finally remembered he began to feel very uncomfortable indeed.
He had recently been killed by a dog which had dived through his chest and, apparently set him on fire.
This piece of information didn’t sound at all right, but he could remember it happening - and in fine detail.
James was no longer certain if he was alive, or if he’d become the ghost he’d been busily claiming to be when he woke up. He was still sitting in the Caddy and he could still feel its seat beneath him - which was a good sign, he thought - but there surely had to be a dog-sized hole in the centre of his chest.
He was frightened to look.
It took all the courage he had, and some borrowed from thin air, to make himself raise his hands and touch his ribcage, but when he’d done it he was glad he had. Not only was it whole and undamaged, but he had a good solid heartbeat too. It was a little fast, admittedly, but that was hardly surprising after what had happened.
James felt the Cadillac’s ignition just in case he really had invited that strange voice to take the keys. He seemed to remember the ignition being on, and the car’s engine running when the dog had come through the window, but both were off now.
The keys were present, which was another good thing. James turned them and the car started immediately, which was surely the third and last good thing. He had to be running out of good luck by now. He turned the lights
on, half expecting the big black dog to be out there glaring at him and pointing, but the way ahead as far as he could see was empty.
He took the torch from the seat beside him and shone it out of the back window. The dog wasn’t out there.
Good thing number four, he thought. Keep it up!
James shone the torch at the front of his tee-shirt and discovered something else he could add to his collection of ideal happenings: the shirt did not bear the ragged hole he had so fondly imagined was burned through it. It wasn’t even scorched.
The result of the equation he’d been running through his head since he’d woken up, now appeared: a black dog had not burned its way through his body.
Now he was forced to consider the bad news, first and foremost of which was the item marked: Then why did I think it had?
There was no good answer to this question. He’d had an experience that couldn’t have happened.
You’ve been acting like a book character, and now you’ve had a fictitious experience. That isn’t very surprising, is it?
But it was surprising. James had, for a few moments back there, lost his grip on reality and finished with a flourish by losing his grip on consciousness too. But it was the reality thing that concerned him; he’d lost consciousness before, but he’d never experienced unreal things.
Unless what happened was real, he told himself.
‘I think we ought to get ourselves out of here,’ he told the car. ‘We did promise we’d retreat at the first sign of anything being awry. And I think that first sign has presented itself.’
Reversing back up the steep hill was going to be a bastard but it looked like a better option than continuing. Perhaps S’n’J was right and there was some weird connection between the book and this place. It no longer looked as if his mission was going to be quite as simple turning up at Black Rock and threatening S’n’J’s ex.
James froze for a moment because now he’d brought Martin to mind, his memory had woken up and gone to work. The familiar voice that had demanded the car keys through his unconsciousness had belonged to Martin. The man had once thrown a fit at Cars Inc. when his Ferrari’s new exhaust hadn’t arrived on time. And he’d sounded just as irate and unreasonable back then.
Whether that meant that the magic man behind all this was Martin or not, James didn’t like to judge. All he knew was that in the garage he’d seemed an inconsequential little man, full of his own importance; but when James had heard him just now his voice had sounded a lot more scary.
Work it all out later, he told himself, looking over his shoulder at the steep hill. S’n’J wants a live boyfriend not a dead hero. We’ll get the police in on it or something. Let’s just get out of here.
He put the Caddy into reverse, put his foot on the brake, released the handbrake and twisted round to look out of the back window.
The reversing lights were not on.
‘I don’t fucking believe it,’ he swore. But as the words left his lips, he already knew he could reverse up the track with no lights. It wasn’t going to be easy, but it was possible.
James let his foot off the brake. The car’s automatic gearbox held the Cadillac in position just as it was supposed to. James gently applied his foot to the accelerator pedal. And felt a moment of pure terror when what happened next turned out to be the exact opposite of what he had anticipated.
The car, even though it was in reverse, rolled slowly forwards.
James hit the brake, moved the shift into park then put it back into reverse again.
He took his foot off the brake and touched the accelerator.
The car rolled forward.
What made it worse was that this was a physical impossibility. He could live with it if the gearbox had broken. If that had happened the car would naturally roll down the hill when he let the brake off. But the gearbox wasn’t broken and neither was reverse gear. Somehow it had turned into a forward gear.
He even thought he knew why, but he kept this one at bay. It was impossible and if he allowed himself to voice it, he thought he might go mad. All that mattered was that if the gearbox had magically transposed itself then reverse gear had to be where drive usually was.
James selected drive.
The car, when he let off the brake, went forwards.
He repeated the performance, selecting the gearbox’s low gear options - first and second. Both these took the car forwards too.
James’ head spun. Nothing had been transposed. What had happened was that reverse had independently turned itself into a forward gear. It defied the laws of physics, but it had happened.
The only way you’re going to get out of here is to go right down to the house and turn round on its forecourt. Whatever’s inside that house knows that. It made this happen, for God’s sake. It knows you’re here and it wants you down there. So badly that it’s somehow fucked up your gearbox so you can’t leave. It’s waiting for you down there.
Suddenly James was more frightened than he had ever been since he was a child. The fear was black and all-consuming. It seemed to be turning his body to jelly.
‘What are we going to do?’ he asked the car and his voice sounded as if it ought to belong to a frightened four-year-old.
The answer was obvious and it was just as scary as the thought of driving down to the house. He could abandon the car and walk back up the hill.
James found that he didn’t particularly want to get out of the car.
The big black dog might be out there lurking somewhere, off the edge of the track. Waiting for him. This time it might kill him. James looked at the crowbar, doubted it would provide any measure of protection at all, then decided he would take it with him anyway.
As he was reaching for the door handle the car began to roll.
James hit the brake pedal.
Which sank gracefully - all the way to the floor - and provided no braking effect whatsoever.
The Caddy was heading towards the edge of the track and picking up speed. His foot still pumping at the dead brake pedal, James grabbed the steering wheel and straightened the car. When it was back on course he yanked the handbrake on.
Nothing happened.
‘Bastard!’ he shouted, steering the car with one hand while he groped for the gear shift with the other. His hand found the lever and he yanked the car out of drive and forced it into park. This should have been impossible to achieve but it wasn’t. It should also have locked up the transmission and stalled the car’s engine. Neither of these things happened either.
What did happen was that way off in front and below him - probably at sea level - something flashed. It was white and bright, as if someone had just taken a photograph of him using a powerful flashgun for illumination. James was blinded for a moment, unable to see where he was steering. His reflexes made him hit the brake pedal which sank to the floor again and just as he tho�
�ught, We’re going off the edge now! the second thing happened.
The car stopped.
It started again before the after images of the light had cleared from his vision. This time the car maintained a steady speed of about three miles an hour in spite of the fact that it was going downhill and should have been accelerating.
You aren’t driving this car any more, he told himself and touched the accelerator and brake to check this theory. Neither pedal had any effect on the steady speed of the Cadillac.
The car is moving in accordance with someone else’s rules. Whoever it is heard you think you were going off the edge and it stopped the car. The flash of light you saw didn’t come from a lighthouse or a ship out at sea, it came from the house. S’n’J was right in thinking there was something supernatural going on. The house is haunted.
James let go of the steering wheel and shut his eyes.
He saw the following flash through his eyelids and when he opened them again, the steering wheel was moving of its own accord.
There was now a choice of two from which he had to select. He either stayed right here in the car and let it drive him down to what looked as though it was going to be his death, or he jumped out.
It wasn’t difficult to make the choice. If the ghost - or perhaps, the house itself - could wrest control of the car away from him as easily as this, then James and his crowbar were going to be no match for it. He would jump and take his chances.
He picked up the crowbar again and reached for the door handle. This time there was no flash of light and nothing happened to stop him. Inside five seconds he realized why. The thing had foreseen this and had already taken the necessary steps to prevent it happening.
