Skeptic

by Denise Mathew

  Glacial fingers grabbed my arm, and fear paralyzed me, but I still managed to keep hold of the steering wheel. I turned to see Tansy's dark silhouette sitting in the passengers seat. Her face was shadowed, yet her terrifyingly pale grey eyes shone bright. I gasped and choked, the putrid air growing thicker around me, until it felt like I was inhaling bitter smoke. My eyes watered, and I tried to blink away the tears. With just one hand still on the wheel, and unable to wrench my arm away from Tansy, I was fighting a losing battle to maintain control of the car. I eased up on the gas, only to feel Tansy's heavy foot, hammer down on my boot, and the car sped up again. I fought to disengage myself from her grip, but she only held tighter, and the move made the car swerve again.

  "You're going to die, little girl, and I'll dance on your grave, while the worms and maggots eat you up."

  Tansy's voice had lost all semblance of control, and I knew that I had run out of time. My phone trilled, and in a last attempt to get help, I let go of the steering wheel, and touched the hands free button.

  "Help," I screamed, without knowing who was on the other end.

  "No one can help you now," Tansy cackled, and before I could grab hold of the wheel again she released my arm. Bloody imprints, where her fingernails had dug into my flesh, were bright red against my pale skin. Now free, I used both of my hands to jerk the wheel to the side. The car skidded on the loose gravel of the shoulder, tiny rocks mixed with the sheets of rain and sprayed the windows with loud snaps.

  "Elise?" Dakota yelled over the speaker, and I wanted to break down when I heard his voice.

  "Dakota," I whispered.

  Oddly his voice seemed to give me the strength I needed to fight. In one move, I elbowed Tansy in the face. Rather than solid bone, Tansy's body felt like a cross between clay and jelly. She grunted, and reared her head back, and started to fade away. With no time to spare, I threw my hands on the steering wheel, and cut sharply toward where I assumed the highway was, but instead of regaining control, the car fishtailed along the shoulder. The rain sheeted down the windshield, and my chin slammed the steering wheel hard, when I hit what I could only imagine was a pothole.

  "Elise what's happening?" Dakota hollered through the speaker. I wanted to tell him everything was all right, but I knew it wasn't.

  The wheel jerked in my hands, as if it had a life of its own, and I fought to bring it under my control again. I used whatever strength I had left, to spin the wheel to the right, and for a moment, I actually thought I was in the clear. Then it felt like I had entered a time warp, and everything slowed. I saw the wipers pass across the windshield and clear the view ahead, and the brilliant headlights coming for me. I knew without a doubt that we were going to collide, and there was nothing I could do.

  Silence converged around me, blocking out the patter of the rain, and the sound of Dakota's frantic voice, and it somehow felt like a movie, not real life. Then I spotted two faces, their shocked expressions, the man's silver grey hair, and the elderly woman's mouth forming a perfect O. When the cars hit, there were terrible sounds of twisting metal, more rain, the howl of the wind, and my screams mingled with Dakota's desperate shouts, and I knew it was over. Tansy had succeeded, I was going to die.

  6. DAKOTA

  Right after Dakota hung up the phone, he had a nagging feeling that things were worse than Elise had let on. She had always been too stoic for her own good. But he hoped now that they seemed to be on the same page, she would let him in more. He tucked his phone into his jeans pocket. He strode to the post-production studio, sure that Jim would be there. Jim, a self proclaimed workaholic, who leaned toward the micromanaging side of things, wouldn’t be happy that his protégée, Elise, wasn’t where she was supposed to be.

  As expected, Jim, wearing a flawlessly ironed snow-white shirt, tucked into grey woolen dress pants, with a black leather belt, and shoes to match, was hunched over the shoulder of a video and sound editor, that Dakota didn't know by name. Both men were dwarfed by the multitude of screens that formed a semi-circle around them. Dakota glanced up at the screen, and spotted Elise staring back at him. He knew that people said a lot of mean things about Elise. She had a reputation of being an ice princess and a control freak, but nobody could dispute that she struck an inspiring pose on the big screen. And now, after learning the secret behind her standoffish behavior, he imagined that if he had been in the same situation, he might have been just as paranoid and distant as she was.

  "Elise is fine, she's on her way," Dakota said, from behind Jim.

  He knew that as far as the television hierarchy went, he wasn't supposed to talk to the producer, since he wasn't the talent, or much more than a gadget boy, but Jim had always been open and friendly with Dakota, much to the chagrin of the other staff.

  Jim twisted his head to the side, grimaced, and ran an age-spotted hand through his closely cropped white-blonde hair.

  "What happened to her? I was ready to call the police, it's not like her to blow off work."

  Dakota shrugged for effect, the last thing he needed was to come across as being in the know. If he did, Jim was likely to grill him for Intel about Elise, information that Dakota had no place giving.

  "She said she had an important meeting or something..." Dakota said, trying to be vague.

  Jim's brow furrowed even deeper, accentuating the frown lines that he had earned from thirty-plus years of squinting at film.

  "Meeting? What kind of meeting would she be at, that I didn't know about?"

  Dakota was instantly pissed at himself for saying she had a meeting, of course the word alone would be a red flag to Jim, who would automatically assume that Elise was in negotiations with another studio.

  Dakota grimaced. "Sorry," he said, turning his palms upward. "It's more like meeting a friend I think..."

  "Get her on the phone," Jim snapped, and Dakota knew he had just made a shit mess of the situation. He clenched his jaw, stuffed his hands in his armpits and nodded.

  "Yeah I'll do that in a couple of minutes, she's apparently in the middle of a rain storm and..."

  "Really?" Jim said.

  His expression shifted from ticked, to suspicious. "You seem to know quite a bit about our star, is there something I should know?"

  Dakota sighed. He was wading waist deep in crap now, and as far as he could see he was only getting in deeper every time he opened his mouth. He knew Elise was the only one with the finesse to talk Jim down, so he dug into his pocket and pulled out his phone, tapping in Elise's number.

  "I'll get her on the line for you," he said, and moved out of the room.

  The phone rang a few times, he was about to hang up when it finally connected, and he heard Elise's shrill plea for help. The panic in her voice made him feel like he had been dunked into an icy lake, and he gripped the phone as if it were a lifeline to her. Before he could work out what was happening or even respond, he heard a voice that cut knife like through him. Though it seemed impossible, since Elise had just told him she was driving on the highway, he was sure it was Tansy's voice he had heard, and that she had somehow got to Elise again.

  "Elise?" he said through numb lips.

  He heard her say his name and he stood frozen, helpless. There was a soft, almost wet thump sound, then a groan, and he hoped it was the witch, not Elise, who had made it. He shouted Elise's name through gritted teeth, because he didn't know what else to do. Suddenly the sound of crumpling metal, squealing tires, followed by material ripping, then a whoosh, a loud boom, and finally the horn blaring in an unbroken stream, poured from the cell phone receiver.

  "Elise, Elise, damn it talk to me."

  "What's going on?" Jim said.

  He had somehow made his way out to the hall without Dakota knowing, and was standing there scowling, his body curving forward.

  "I think Elise's been in a car accident," Dakota said. His mouth felt as dry as sawdust, and he couldn't seem to swallow.

  "An accident?" Jim said, his expression shifting to alarm. "Where
the hell is she?"

  Dakota felt like someone had siphoned all the energy from his body.

  "Fuck," he said, without thinking. Jim was still the producer, and swearing in front of him was a major no, no, not that Dakota really gave a shit right then, and from the way Jim's face pinched with obvious concern, neither did he. Dakota's mind swam, as he wondered if Elise was bleeding to death somewhere, or if she was already dead. Knowing that time was a commodity he didn't have to spare, he tried to come up with an idea on how to find Elise so he could get her the help she needed. In a flash of brilliance, he remembered that her car had a built in GPS, and that meant that the company could activate the location beacon.

  A few months back, after Elise had had her phone stolen, she had signed up for a locating service, saying that she wasn't going to let anyone get away with her stuff again. But since he wasn't sure how to set the ball in motion and activate the locating device, he did the only thing he could think of, and punched in 911.

  The next few minutes seemed to go on for an eternity, and he fought not to lose his patience with the operator, who seemed to need too much information before she was willing to contact the phone locating service, and send out a tracking signal to Elise's GPS. Dakota forgot about Jim and everyone else in the studio, who had gradually crowded around him, eager to know what was going on. When the operator told Dakota the location, and that they were sending an ambulance out, he chewed the inside of his cheek until he tasted the metal of blood.

  "I'm sorry sir, it's going to take a little while to reach her, since according to the tracking beacon, she's a bit of a distance outside of the city."

  He clicked the end button without so much as a thank you, and stared at the expectant faces around him.

  "They found Elise," he said, breaking through the gaggle of staff, and ignored the stream of questions that followed him down the hall. The squeak of the soles of his runners against the beige tiled floors heralded his rapid exit, and the only thought in his mind, was that he needed to get to her.

  Rain spilled down in a relentless attack. He moved so fast to his car, that he didn't feel like he was on solid ground. Without the luxury of a GPS, he had to rely on an old-fashioned paper map, that he had stored in his glove compartment. It was dog-eared, and ripped in places, but still gave him the vital information he needed. Soaked from the short jaunt to the car, he wiped the water that dripped down his face out of his eyes, turned the key in the ignition of his car, and sped out of the parking lot.

  The blackish-blue clouds hung low enough to make him feel almost claustrophobic. Lightning flashed, and thunder boomed, as he pulled onto the highway. Though the rain was heavy, the wipers managed to keep pace, and gave him enough visibility to see. He had grown up in the mid-west, and driven in his fair share of snowstorms, but nothing could compare to a rainstorm, that washed everything from view in one efficient sweep.

  He jammed his foot down on the gas, and the speedometer needle dipped to eighty. He didn't push his car for any more speed, knowing that if he went any faster, he could easily become the next victim on the rain-slicked road. As he drove, he tried not to think about how badly Elise was hurt, but the image of her body, mangled and bloody, haunted his every thought.

  After he had driven about twenty minutes, and imagined every horrific scene in his mind, the clouds suddenly parted, and the sun in all its glowing radiance, broke through. The rain soon reduced to just sun showers, and a multicolored rainbow made Dakota wonder how something so beautiful could appear, when everything in his life had gone to hell.

  He pressed the gas, and accelerated to a speed that was nothing short of suicidal, but it didn't matter, because if Elise was gone, he wasn't sure how he could go on. Just after he topped a blind crescent, he spotted ambulances, fire trucks, and police vehicles, and his whole body seized up. Part of him wasn't sure if he could keep driving forward, wasn't sure if he could cope with what he might find.

  He didn't see any sign of the crashed cars until he was almost on top of the accident. And even though he had braced himself, nothing could have prepared him for the reality. The distorted pieces of metal, bore no resemblance to cars. Scraps of iron, glass, and even parts of the interior of the cars, littered the slick black pavement, and all he could think was that Elise had to be dead, because no one could have survived a crash like that.

  He drove as close as possible to the wrecks, and when he couldn't advance any further, threw his car into park, flung open the door, and sprinted forward. When he spotted the black plastic body bags, he bent at the waist, and retched a few times, before promptly expelling his lunch on the ground. Blood pulsed in his ears, and the spinning emergency lights casting macabre fingers of red and white on the asphalt, made him dizzy. Flares sparked on the ground, marking the accident scene, and he felt his phone vibrate in his pocket, but he didn't bother to check it. Jim, and whoever else had heard about the accident, would be looking for comfort that he didn't have in him to give. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, stood up and willed his body forward. Police officers and paramedics, intent on doing their jobs, didn't notice him, as he slipped into the cordoned off area.

  From the way the dark green SUV was crushed, as if it were a piece of tin foil, the accident had been a head on collision. The windshield of the SUV was nowhere to be found, and its white airbags, were deflated and blood spattered. Thankfully, whoever had been in the car wasn't immediately visible. He turned his focus to what had once been Elise's car. It was at least one hundred feet from the other wreck, and three firemen were working frantically with the jaws-of-life, cutting away the metal frame that had Elise trapped inside. And all Dakota could think, was that no one could possibly be alive in the car, that resembled something from a scrap metal yard.

  Though his legs turn to lead, he had to see her. No matter what he found, one way or another, he had to know. He took one step forward, then another, and soon he was running. Just before he reached Elise's car, he recognized a figure dressed in all black, just a few feet from the working firemen.

  "You bitch," he bellowed, charging at the witch.

  Tansy grinned, her lips so red, they looked like bloody smears on her ashen face, and he wanted to kill her. By the time he was a few feet from her, she flickered, and was gone, leaving no sign that she had ever been there. There was a piercing squeal of metal against metal, then a resounding crunch, and what was left of the driver's side of Elise's car, fell away. Dakota, now just a few feet away, still couldn't see Elise.

  "Ma'am, I'm going to put this collar on you," a fireman, with a sweat streaked face said, his plastic gloved hands disappearing inside the car. With his heart almost ready to explode through his chest, Dakota shoved his trembling hands into his pockets, and stepped as close as he could to the car, without getting in the way of the rescuers. Every part of him wanted to break through the people and see Elise, but the thought that mere seconds might make the difference between her living or dying, held him back. When he felt a hand on his shoulder, he tried to shake it off.

  "You can't be here," a man said from behind him. Dakota turned to the speaker. The police officer was in his mid-forties, and was wearing a fluorescent yellow raincoat, with the hood pulled up over his shaven head. A hint of a paunch pushed against the front of the coat, and his face was friendly, yet his stance was firm.

  "That's my girlfriend in there," Dakota said, almost unable to get the words out. The officer nodded, but didn't release his grip on Dakota's shoulder.

  "Wait until she's out, and then you can be with her," he said, then shot Dakota a weak imitation of a smile.

  "She's out," someone yelled. Dakota spun back to see.

  Elise was wrapped in a thick grey blanket, with only her head visible. From where he stood, her face was too pale and the same shade as the white foam cervical collar around her neck. She had a purplish-black egg above her right eye, and a small gash, oozing at the hairline.

  He broke free, and ran alongside her stretcher, as the
paramedics shuttled her to the waiting ambulance. As soon as they slipped her stretcher into the back, and before anyone could tell him not to, Dakota clambered in beside her. A paramedic already in the back seat, with latex gloves and a gauze bandage in his hand, opened his mouth to speak.

  "I'm her boyfriend," Dakota blurted out.

  Dakota glanced down at Elise before the paramedic could respond, and was relieved to see her blue eyes trained on him.

  "Dakota?" she said, with a weak smile. He touched her cheek with the tips of his fingers.

  "I'm sorry, I wasn't there for you, I...I..."

  "Stop talking and kiss me," she whispered softly.

  He grinned then barely touched his lips to hers. Satisfied, Elise closed her eyes.

  "I need to dress her wound, and take her blood pressure," the paramedic said.

  "Sorry," Dakota said, pushing out of the way. He perched on the edge of the long seat in the ambulance. Another attendant slammed the ambulance door shut, and shortly after, the engine rumbled to life, and they were moving, the siren pealing as they did.

  "Is she going to be okay?" Dakota asked.

  Even though he had spoken to Elise, he still didn't know if she was hurt worse than what was visible to him.

  "We don't know if she has internal injuries, but her vitals look good, she's lucid and coherent, and she doesn't seem to be losing much blood. All good signs, but she'll need to be checked more thoroughly at the hospital."

  Dakota released a long shuddering breath, and leaned back, his body going limp against the cool metal of the side. The adrenalin that had pumped through him since he had last talked to her on the phone, had finally bottomed out, and it was all he could do to keep his eyes open. As he watched the paramedic expertly slip an intravenous into the back of Elise's hand, then clean and dress her wounds, and do several checks, his eyelids flicked closed for a moment, and he drifted.