***
Andy and Mack Keller, along with their mother, heard Russell’s scream as they stepped out of their house to go wait for the bus. Alarmed at the obvious distress in the cry, Mrs. Keller ordered her boys to wait in the yard while she ran to her car and drove it across the highway and down the gravel road to investigate. She found Russell Cokeland laying in the middle of the road, his unseeing eyes wide and staring at the sky.
Doctors later confirmed his injuries to be consistent with those of a high speed bicycle accident. He had suffered a three broken bones, multiple lacerations, and lost a large amount of skin due to his impact with a gravel road at an unknown rate of speed. Yet even though he wore no helmet, he did not sustain any head injury to explain his current state.
Although his eyes were open, nobody was home. Nothing that made him who he was remained, as if his very min—or spirit—had been torn from his body.
Russell Copeland was gone.
A short time later, the Keller boys started having their mother drop them off with the Rawlins kids up the highway to wait for the bus. When asked why, they said that sometimes when the mornings were still dark they heard something that frightened them. Something that made no sense whatsoever.
They claimed that even though he still lived in a far-away hospital, staring unseeing at the ceiling, they could still hear Russell screaming from somewhere up the gravel road.
A Long, Cold Forever of a Night
When you’re walking with a loved one along the side of a humid rural highway in the dead of night, it really helps you to get to know a person.
“How do you get a flat in two tires?” Carol chuckled in her patented “nobody but you” voice. “When I said we needed to get out more, I didn’t mean this.”
It was in the years before cell phones, or at least the ones an ordinary person could afford and actually fit in a pocket. Carol and I were returning from a get together of old college friends. As was our custom on those infrequent trips, we chose a “short cut” taking us through our old home town of Pritchard Hill. I think seeing the town we both grew up in, even late at night, reinforced our bond with each other. It always invoked some new memory for both of us to compare and chew over. That always helped pass the time and shortened our trip.
But on a steamy July night, while paying more attention to the hazy recollection of a pigtailed Carol than the road in front of me, I turned into a curve a little too deeply and drove the car onto the shoulder of the narrow lane.
It hardly counted as a major mistake. Even as I felt the vibration under the wheels, I made the necessary correction in a smooth and unrushed reaction. And on any other spot in the entire ten mile stretch of highway, it would have been such a minor occurrence it would have caused nothing more than a brief teasing from Carol.
But somebody had thrown out a bottle.
And in one single pass over the shoulder, I managed to hit it and take out both tires on that side of the car. I crushed the thing with my front tire, piercing it in such a way that it deflated over the course of several seconds in a wild gyrating hiss. It sounded like some maniac Pecos Bill whirling the world’s most pissed-off snake over his head.
But the joyride didn’t stop there. Oh no, it’s never that simple…not when I’m behind the wheel.
The bottom of the bottle, now a circular crown of jagged, tire-eating fury, flew back from the impact to embed itself into the treads following behind. The tire rolled over it, driving the pointed shards deep into its rubber, yet sealing the puncture at the same time. This delayed the inevitable until I managed to wrestle the car to a stop. Then it popped back out and my rear tire deflated in one flatulent thump.
I thought Carol was going to hurt herself laughing.
Even as we began our four mile walk back toward town, she had to stop twice because she successfully reproduced our poor tire’s final, flopping, hissing fit and dying fart then laughed herself into breathlessness.
“You know,” I sighed, and rolled my eyes in the dark. “I can’t help but feel envious of all those other lucky slobs whose wives would be complaining and nagging them about this. Lucky me, I get the comedienne.”
“Oh, c’mon, Mike,” she chortled and leaned briefly against me as we walked, “It was funny. You men can never see the humor in things if it involves your cars.”
“We could have died,” I groaned in a futile attempt to inject some seriousness into our plight.
“That’s true,” she replied in a chastened and sober voice. “We could have had a really bad accident.”
We walked a few steps in silence, with nothing but the crickets and each other for company.
“But we didn’t!” she added brightly. “Instead, we got THWISS! THWISS! THWISS! THWISS! THWISS! Poop! THHPTTHHPPT!!”
The nighttime countryside rang with her laughter.
“You are hopeless!”
“Yep, and that’s why you love me.” She leaned into me again as we walked through the dark.
“And here I thought it was because you have big boobs.”
“No, that’s the other reason you love me.”
“I thought the other reason I loved you was because you have great legs.”
“Well, yeah,” she made it sound like an agreeable concession on her part. “I suppose I can see that. We’ll just say it’s the latest on the long list of reasons you love me.”
“Right after your modesty and saint-like humility, right?”
“Well, there are those. But I didn’t know you noticed such things.” I could feel her grinning up at me in the dark. “I’m impressed. Not bad for a guy, you’re coming along nicely.”
I grinned myself, knowing as long as it didn’t rain this walk might turn out to be okay.
Twice, the mutter of distant thunder accompanied the flickering glow of thunderheads on the horizon. They briefly towered over the trees on the horizon, like great luminous cliffs from some epic myth, before disappearing again in the distant blackness. There may have been a storm coming, or there may not. On a hot, humid night like this they were just as prone to slide on over and deliver their burdens to somebody in the east.
So, on we walked.
We didn’t stay with the car because, both having grown up here, we knew very well there wouldn’t be anybody driving by for hours. Especially not since the newer highway bypassing Pritchard Hill went in a few years back. Besides, Carol had been working out to speed her recovery from a recent regime of chemotherapy, and practically champed at the bit to tackle the challenge of this walk. My offer to go alone had been met with open derision.
That suited me just fine. I would never admit it, but it was just one more adventure in a whole line of adventures I shared with Carol. Carol, of course, would have gleefully admitted it right up front.
Only a thin sliver of moon showed in the sky, so we had scant illumination to go by. Fortunately, there weren’t a bunch of trees in this stretch of the road or the blackness would have been total. Still, the highway itself appeared as a faint, bluish hint of shadow that barely stood out against the surrounding murk. The thrumming racket of pasture crickets seemed to bring the night in even closer. If a night could be both claustrophobic and vast at the same time, this one did a great job of it.
So imagine my relief at seeing the distant, blinking light of Junction 402.
“Ah, the first faint gleaming of civilization,” I sighed. “It ain’t much, but it’s man made. That means we’re already halfway there. It’s only two more miles to Pritchard Hill from there.”
“And here I was getting comfortable in a universe ruled by sleeping cows.”
“Oh sure, you say that now. But wait until it’s time for Oprah and you’ll be mooing a tune of tragedy and woe.”
“Ha!” She punched me gently in the ribs, “I don’t watch Oprah! And just for saying so, I hope you’re attacked by a wild, man-eating skunk.”
“And I’m sure you would just stand there and let it happen, evil vixen that you are.”
> “I’m allergic to skunks,” she replied primly, “So you’re on your own. Waitaiminute…wha???”
She stopped and peered ahead. I followed her gaze but saw nothing but the distant junction, flashing in and out of existence under its single yellow light.
“Carol?”
“I thought I saw something,” she laid a hand on my arm, and something in her touch raised an alarm in me. “Mike, I could have sworn I saw somebody standing in the junction just a second ago.”
The light winked only a couple of hundred yards in the distance now, and we both paused and let it cycle though a few more flashes. The rhythmic bursts of yellow revealed nothing. Nothing but cracking asphalt, and a faded sign that proclaimed Pritchard Hill to be ahead and Hallisboro off to the right. Outside the light’s perimeter, the night stretched in all directions.
I couldn’t imagine a lonelier place on the planet.
“Easy there, pumpkin.” I put on a brave face. “I don’t think Melissa Meyers is hanging around waiting for pedestrians like us.”
“Thanks for that,” she replied weakly…which is kind of our secret signal that what the other said wasn’t very funny. I didn’t object, since I regretted it as soon as I said it. If nothing else, it bordered on poor taste.
The Ghost of Junction 402 may have been the product of the wild imagination of teens, and some badly hurt survivors of a couple of car wrecks, but the girl at the base of those stories had been real. While neither Carol nor I were close friends with her, we did know her. She had gone to school with us and been a familiar face in the hallways. Her accident had been a tragic way for a young woman, or anybody else, to leave this world.
Her death traumatized the entire school, which probably helped give rise to the stories later. And considering she died at the place right up ahead, it really didn’t seem an appropriate place to make light of it.
On the other hand, I’m a red blooded male and I had just detected weakness in my smart-alecky spouse. I suddenly realized I held an advantage in this latest ongoing verbal duel of wits that made so much of our marriage, and I did not intend to let the opportunity pass.
“Besides,” I continued smoothly and started forward again, “out here in this neck of the woods it’s always some inbred hick who loses his mind and grabs the nearest chainsaw and hockey mask you have to worry about.”
“Oh, verrrryyyy funny,” she grouched but resumed walking.
“Relax” I gave an exaggerated yawn, “We’re totally alone. Besides, where is some yokel going to get a hockey mask down here? Come to think of it, didn’t that guy up in Texarkana, the uhh...Phantom Killer…have to settle for just wearing a white bag over his head?” Nothing like invoking a scary movie based on a true story to add a little zing to the atmosphere. “Seriously, the deranged killers hanging around our nighttime highways leave a lot to be desired when it comes to fashion sense.”
“Okay, mister. I see where this is going…”
“Of course the guy from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre had some potential, but he was just a character and the real Ed Gein lived up in Wisconsin. I think people have an exaggerated idea of how many axe wielding maniacs we have running around the woods down here.”
“I think you have an exaggerated idea of how comfortable our couch is.”
“Hah! An empty threat if I ever heard one. It wouldn’t be ten minutes before you were out on the couch with me.”
“Welll…maybe,” she grumped. “But I would be calling you awful names while I did it.”
“Oooo…but I love it when you talk dirty.”
“No you don’t!” Now it was her turn to laugh, “You hate it! The couple of times I tried it you got all embarrassed and wanted me to hush. You are such a prude!”
“I don’t know about that.” I put my arm through hers and went along with her change of topic. I really didn’t want to scare her further, and felt content with my little victory. “I think ‘prude’ might be a little strong. I would say ‘upstanding and wholesome’ might be more in order.”
“Lassie is upstanding and wholesome…you are a total prude.”
“Who deserves to get eaten alive by a wild skunk. So noted.”
“Okay, maybe not ‘eaten alive’ so much as…”
Carol’s words seemed to die in her throat beside me and she came to an abrupt stop. I had been looking at her face in the growing light of the intersection while sparring with her, so I got the full effect of the shocked look that seemed to just appear out of nowhere. Her eyes widened. Her mouth widened further. And the slight shake of negation she gave her head caused such a violent sympathy reaction of fear on my part, that I think I lost the ability to speak myself.
All I knew was that her sudden recoil could have only been caused by her seeing something in one flash of the light that hadn’t been there in the one before. And all I could do was turn my head to see the cause of her alarm—with a sick certainty in the pit of my stomach of what it would be.
My stomach was right.
We were all alone on a deserted country road…with a dead girl whose appearance always coincided with disaster and death.
***
It happened in 1978.
Carol and I were both juniors in high school, along with a certain young lady named Melissa Meyers. I was already in love with Carol so my attention toward other girls was somewhat limited. I just remember a quiet, slender girl with whitish blonde hair and a pretty face. She didn’t seem either nerdy and reclusive, or boisterous and loud. To me she was just one of those kids you go through high school with, who exists out there on the periphery of your attention and you forget soon after graduation.
Unfortunately for Melissa, nobody would end up forgetting her. At least not in the long run.
As I said, it was 1978—one of the coldest winters on record.
South Central Texas is a subtropical area, and what we usually call winter down here would barely rate as autumn up north. But not that year. That year the arctic was feeling feisty and felt like expanding its boundaries. It sent massive cold waves down through the lower forty-eight states, reaching even our balmy latitude in the first two months of the year.
Of course, it never occurred to any of us to be concerned.
To the teenage Texans of our town, the snow and ice offered a grand new challenge to rise to. It came as a novelty we only ever witnessed on TV. Any perils it contained only existed as some abstract we might have acknowledged if pressed, but immediately dismissed once allowed. I realize now the adults mustn’t have been much better…
Because they didn’t cancel the basketball game between Pritchard Hill and our rivals over in Collinsdale.
Heck, the only reason I didn’t go was because I chose to visit Carol in the hospital. She had come down sick with what would later be diagnosed as an ovarian tumor. The doctors removed it successfully, and she recovered well, but it marked the beginning of her lifelong relationship with the Big C. Yet that night she said she was glad I stayed in Pritchard Hill, and if it took her getting sick to keep me from acting like a fool then so be it.
Of course, anybody who knows anything about small town Texans and their relationship to high school sports (especially back then) wouldn’t be surprised. Those aren’t fans up there in those bleachers. They’re a congregation. And while high school football reigns supreme, high school basketball holds a respectable second. So even though it had already begun to sleet that January evening, a rowdy caravan of teens set forth for Collinsdale to attend a game any person in their right mind would have cancelled.
Proving Heaven’s mercy toward drunkards and fools, the entire train of cars made it without incident and the big game took place. Great plays were made, mighty deeds were accomplished, and a game winning shot at the buzzer insured Brian Gossberg of local hero-hood… and most likely a tryst or two with a couple of the more enthusiastic members of the Pritchard Hill Pom-Pom squad. It was a game which would be long remembered in the annals of the rivalry.
But while
this battle raged in the Collinsdale gym, a nightmare was forming outside.
The ice falling from the night sky ceased to melt on impact, and now began to glaze every surface it touched. Icicles formed on eves and power lines. Store windows that had never sported even a border of frost now shimmered under a distorting sheet of frozen water. That night, when the Pritchard Hill kids came celebrating their way out of the little gym, they stepped into a world they had never experienced.
Of course, they were delighted.
They played and shouted as they slid around on the way to their cars in the parking lot, and the pair of inevitable fender benders occurring afterwards were taken in stride and good humor all around. Even the defeated locals were entranced into a better mood. Motors revved, wheels spun, and catcalls were traded as the line of cars weaved and skidded its way out onto the empty town streets and started the journey home.
And the wonder of it all is they almost made it without incident.
Twenty-three miles of dark, icy, back-country highway twisted and coiled over hills, between cow pastures, and across creeks with but a few lonely farm lights to mark the way. They made twenty-one of those miles without a single accident. They were almost home.
Then the divine protection covering drunks, fools, and rowdy rural teens came to a disastrous end at the crossroads known as Junction 402.
You have to remember this was south central Texas in the nineteen seventies. as insane as it sounds these days, most of these vehicles were pickup trucks with kids huddled together under blankets in the cargo beds. It was just the way we did it back then. And most of the time people didn’t think a thing of it. Until something bad happened...
Like Jeffrey Crawford hitting the brakes too hard when he attempted to slow down so he could make a left turn at the junction, and sliding sideways into the intersection instead.
It wasn’t really his fault, other than deciding to drive under these conditions in the first place, because he simply didn’t know how to drive on ice. He didn’t understand he needed to allow himself more time to do things, and he possessed all the confidence of the typical boy his age. So he hit his brakes far too close to the intersection and went straight into making his turn. After that there was nothing he could do but react to a situation he had never been taught to deal with.
Shades: Eight Tales of Terror Page 19
