Desert Places: a Novel of Terror

by Blake Crouch

  So I pushed the cart right on through the automatic doors, back out into the storm. The parking lot was frosted now, blanching as the snow swept down in torrents. Behind the strip mall, red cliffs stood out sharply against the white, and it occurred to me that I’d never seen a desert snowfall.

  Upon reaching the Lexus, I opened the back door and began shoveling groceries on top of my suitcase and Walter’s. Orson was making a racket. I told him to shut up, said we were almost home. The parking space beside mine was empty, so I left the cart there and opened the driver’s door.

  “Excuse me, sir?” An obese woman bundled up in a puffy pink parka, which did not flatter her proportions, stared at me quizzically from the trunk of the Lexus.

  “What?”

  “What’s that sound?” She tapped on the trunk.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I think there’s someone in your trunk.”

  I heard it, too, Orson shouting again, his voice muffled but audible. He was saying something about killing me if I didn’t give him a drink of water.

  “There’s nothing in there,” I said. “Excuse me.”

  “Is it a dog?”

  I sighed. “No. Actually, I’m a hit man. There’s someone in my trunk, and I’m taking them out into the desert to shoot them in the head and bury them. Wanna come along?”

  She laughed, her face rumpling. “Oh my, that’s rich! Very rich!” she said, chuckling maniacally.

  She walked away, and I climbed into the Lexus and backed out of the parking space. The pavement was becoming icy, so I drove tentatively out of the parking lot and back onto Highway 191, as nervous as a southerner on wheels in a snowstorm.

  31

  WIND blasted the car. The road had disappeared.

  I’d been following a single set of tire tracks for the last forty miles. Leaving Rock Springs, almost four hours ago, they’d cut down to the pavement. But as I plowed north up the mind-numbingly straight trajectory of Highway 191, the contrast between the blacktop and the snow had dissipated. Now, looking through the furious windshield wipers, I strained to see the faintest indentation in the snow. It would soon be too deep to negotiate. Even now, I felt the tires slide at the slightest pressure on the accelerator or the brake. Aside from a hurricane that came inland into the Piedmont of North Carolina seven years ago, this was the worst weather I’d ever seen.

  Precisely seventy miles north of Rock Springs, I stopped the car in the middle of the abandoned highway. Sitting for a moment in the warm leather seat, I stared through the glass at snow that fell as hard and fast as rain. Beyond one hundred feet, the white was inscrutable, and still the visibility continued to diminish. A violent downdraft joggled the car and whisked the fallen snow off the road. With the pavement revealed, I saw that the tires straddled the dotted line.

  I turned off the engine and, grasping the keys, opened the door and stepped into the storm. Driving snow filled my eyes, and, shielding my face against the side of my arm, I struggled toward the trunk. Three inches had already accumulated on the road, more upon the desert. Once the snow depth exceeded all shrubbery except the tallest sagebrush and greasewood, we would have no point of reference by which to follow the road. But we have time, I thought, unlocking the trunk and bracing against another icy gust. This storm is just beginning.

  Orson was conscious, and his dark, swollen eyes widened when he saw the snow. It collected in his hair. There were red lines across his face from hours of sleeping on the carpet, and his lips were parched and split.

  “We might be in trouble,” I said. “I want you to put your hands behind your back, ’cause I’m gonna undo your feet. Put ’em up here.” He hung his legs out of the trunk, and I removed the bicycle lock from his ankles. Tossing it back into a corner of the trunk, I helped my brother climb out and told him to go around to the passenger door. By the time I’d returned to my seat and adjusted the vents to their maximum output, my clothes were soaked from the snow. I opened the passenger door and Orson got in. Leaving his hands cuffed behind his back, I reached across his lap and shut the door.

  We sat there for a moment without speaking. I turned off the windshield wipers. The snow fell and melted on the heated glass. The grayness darkened.

  “We’re exactly seventy miles north of Rock Springs,” I said. Orson stared out the windshield. “We near the dirt road?”

  “Probably within a half mile. But when it’s like this, it might as well be a hundred.”

  “The cabin’s on that side, right?” I pointed out my window.

  “Yeah. Somewhere out there.”

  “What do you mean? You can’t find it?”

  “Not in this.” Concern had tensed his jaw and reduced the gleam in his blue eyes.

  “Let’s try,” I said. “It’s better than—”

  “Look. About five miles that way into the desert”—he nodded at the swirling grayness out my window—“there’s a ridge. You probably remember it.”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “If I can’t see that ridge, I have no way of knowing where we are in relation to the cabin. Hell, we could drive that way, but it’d be a shot in the dark, and we’d probably get stuck.”

  “Shit.” I turned off the engine. “I should’ve stopped in Rock Springs for the night.”

  “Probably so. But you didn’t know it’d be like this.”

  “No, I didn’t.” I wiped the snowmelt from my sleek bald head.

  “You look like me,” Orson said. “What’s that about?”

  “You thirsty?”

  “Yeah.”

  I fed him a full bottle of tepid water.

  “Orson,” I said. “You try anything. One thing. I’ll kill you.”

  “I believe it.”

  The dashboard clock read 4:07. I watched it turn to 4:08, then 4:09.

  “It’ll be dark out there soon,” I said. Sweat trilled down my chest and my legs. Orson leaned back in the seat and closed his eyes. He smelled of urine. His robe was soiled, and I felt ashamed I hadn’t let him use the bathroom properly since Vermont.

  The seconds ticked on: 4:10. 4:11. 4:12.

  “I can’t stand this,” I said, and I started the car.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m gonna find that dirt road.”

  “Andy. Andy!” I’d shifted the car into drive, and with my foot on the accelerator, I looked over at Orson. “Quit being stupid,” he said calmly. “You aren’t gonna find the road. You aren’t gonna find the cabin. This is a full-fledged blizzard, and if you get us stuck off this highway, we are fucked. Now, we aren’t leaving this car anytime soon. That’s a given. So let’s wait it out here, in the middle of a highway, where we at least know where we are. If you try to find that dirt road, you’re gonna put us in the middle of a desert in a whiteout.”

  “All we have to do is go straight. The cabin’s that way. We’ll go straight for—”

  “Which way’s straight? That way? That way? That way? It all looks straight to me!”

  I punched the gas, and the tail end of the Lexus fishtailed. Letting off, I pressed more gently, and the tires found the pavement and gave us solid forward momentum. At forty miles an hour, I turned into the desert. The tires sank into the powder, and our speed slowed to thirty. The snow was twice as deep as on the road, and though I felt we might lose traction at any second, I maintained control. Steering between sagebrush, I squinted through the windshield, looking for that long, straight swath of white that would be unmarred by vegetation. It would extend westward, a thin white ribbon in the snow, and we’d follow it and find the cabin.

  Orson gaped at me.

  “You see anything?” I asked. “You looking?” The engine labored to keep the wheels turning, and the speedometer needle jigged between twenty and twenty-five. I watched it uneasily.

  “Circle back,” he said. “Do it now and we might reach the highway. But if you let this car stop out here, we don’t have a prayer.”

  “Look for
the dirt road,” I said.

  “Andy—”

  “Look for the fucking road!”

  Four minutes passed before I realized he was right. I couldn’t see farther than fifty feet beyond the hood of the car, and with the needle hovering at ten, I doubted if we had had the velocity to return to the highway.

  “We’ll go back,” I said, easing the steering wheel to the right.

  The back end jinked left and the tires instantly lost traction. Panicking, I stomped the gas, and the car spun 360 degrees. By the time I’d backed off the accelerator, our speed had dropped under five miles an hour, and there was nothing I could do to regain it. The Lexus came to rest against a shrub of sagebrush.

  “It’s fine,” I said. “Don’t say anything.”

  Touching the gas gingerly, the tires spun, but they didn’t achieve traction. I clenched the steering wheel and pushed the pedal into the floor. The engine roared and the tires spewed up a load of snow, and, for a second, dirt. The Lexus surged forward into fresh snow, and I shoved my foot harder into the pedal until the rpm indicator redlined, and I could smell the engine cooking. But the tires never met the ground again, and after I’d overheated the engine, I turned off the car and jerked the keys from the ignition.

  I opened my door and ran out into the storm. At fifty miles an hour, snowflakes become cold needles, and they relentlessly pricked my face. I bent down and scraped through six inches of powder, thinking, Maybe I’m standing on the dirt road. My hands ached as I clawed through the snow, and I reached the dirt finally, but it was too loose to be a road.

  Staring up into the raging white fog, I screamed until my throat burned. My face stung from the cold, and the snow seeped through my sneakers. This isn’t happening, I thought, the dread of being stranded out here with him beginning to suffocate me. This cannot be real.

  32

  I climbed back into the Lexus and shed my wet clothes. Throwing them onto the floorboard of the backseat, I opened my suitcase and put on a clean pair of underwear, a sweatsuit I’d packed to sleep in, and two pairs of socks.

  “Should I turn the car on?” I asked. “Will that run down the battery?”

  “It shouldn’t. But leave it off for now, at least till it’s pitch-black out there. We’ll need it to run all night for the heat.” He leaned against the window, still haggard and sluggish from the drug. “How are we on gas?”

  “Half a tank.”

  Orson brought his legs up into the seat and turned over on his side, his back to me.

  “You cold?” I asked.

  “A little.”

  From Walter’s suitcase, I grabbed a pair of sweatpants, wool socks, and a gray sweatshirt featuring the UNC insignia in Carolina blue. Placing them across Orson’s lap, I picked up the Glock, which had been at my feet, and took the handcuff key from my pocket.

  “I’m gonna uncuff you so you can get out of that nasty robe,” I said. “Then they’re going right back on.” I unlocked the handcuffs and removed them from his wrists. Disrobing, he dropped the bathrobe at his feet and bundled up in Walter’s clothes. I moved to put the cuffs back on him, but he said, “Hold on a second,” and lowered his sweatpants so he could inspect the burn on his inner thigh. “It itches,” he said, and after he’d scratched around the perimeter of the peppermint patty–size blister, he pulled his sweatpants back up, placed his hands behind his back, and allowed me to cuff him.

  I tilted my seat back and listened to the wind ravish the car. Lightning blinked against the snowy dusk; thunder promptly followed.

  “Orson,” I said, “I want you to tell me why you killed our mother.”

  “You know.”

  He was right.

  “I want you to say it. I’d have come after you for Walter’s family. Maybe just for me.”

  “I’m sure you would have.”

  “You’re an abomination. I’ve got another theory. Want to hear it?”

  “Sure,” he said, staring into the storm.

  “Because she brought you into this world.”

  He looked at me like I’d caught him sniffing panties.

  The temperature inside the car had already begun to plummet when I selected a box of Ritz crackers, a cylinder of provolone cheese, and a bottle of cabernet sauvignon from the stash of groceries.

  “We aren’t gonna be able to drink this,” I said. “No corkscrew.”

  “There’s a pocketknife with one on it in the glove compartment,” Orson said.

  Finding the Swiss army knife under a stack of road maps, I uncorked the bottle and swilled the spicy wine. Then I tore open the box of crackers and lined them up on my legs.

  “You hungry?” I asked, slicing into the smoked cheese with the dull blade. “Here.” Sandwiching a disk of provolone between two crackers, I placed it in his mouth. Then I lay back in my seat and watched the night come.

  Once the windshield froze, the snow stuck to the glass. The wind blew so savagely that the flakes clung to every window, and within fifteen minutes, we could see nothing of the blizzard all around us. Only the constant shrieking and the cold, voracious energy confirmed its presence.

  Orson noticed the bloody clothes beneath his feet.

  “Andy,” he said, “is that Luther’s blood?” I nodded. “Wow. Where’d you do it? Ricki’s?”

  “We were supposed to meet at nine. I went at six to leave a note with the barkeep that you couldn’t make it. Luther walked in as I was getting ready to leave. If he hadn’t come early—”

  “He came early because he knew something wasn’t right.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He’s smart. But you were, too. You had your gun. Otherwise, you’d be dying right now.”

  “Are you sad he’s gone?”

  “No. And that’s nothing against him. We did a lot together.”

  “Well, I’m delighted he’s dead.”

  Orson smiled. “He’s wasn’t all that different from you, Andy.”

  “Sure.”

  “I happened to him like I happened to you. He just took to it a little faster.”

  I stared at Orson, astounded.

  “You know, you’ve done worse than kill me,” I said. “You’ve wrecked me. You’ve taken my mother, my best friend. I can’t go home. I can’t return from this.”

  “No, I saved you, Andy. Your home was a sham. You no longer flit around like everyone else, blind to that black hole you call a heart. Be grateful. You now know what you’re capable of. Most people never do. But we live honestly, you and I. Truth, Andy. What did Keats say? It’s beauty. Not just pretty truth. We have black hearts, but they’re beautiful.”

  We devoured the entire box of crackers and most of the cheese. The wine was diluting my chary vigilance, so I slowed my consumption.

  When we’d finished eating, I unzipped my fanny pack. There were two vials of Ativan remaining and two vials of Versed, but because it was the safer drug, I took the last of the Ativan.

  “Andy,” he said as I poked the needle into the first vial and began drawing the solution up through its hollow shaft.

  “What?”

  “You remember the summer they found that man under the interstate behind our house?”

  “Yeah, I remember that.”

  Orson sat up straight and stared at me, his head cocked to one side, as though he were buried in thought. I drained the second vial and thumped the syringe. It was steadily darkening in the car—beyond twilight now.

  “What do you remember?” he asked.

  “Come on, man, I’m tired.”

  “Just tell me what you remember.”

  “We were twelve. It was June.”

  “July.”

  “Okay. July. Oh, yeah. Around the Fourth. In fact, it was on the Fourth when they found him. I remember that night, sitting in the backyard, holding a sparkler and seeing three police cars pull up on the curb. The officers came running through our backyard with two German shepherds. Dad was grilling hamburgers, and we watched the men disappear into
the woods. A few minutes later, the dogs started going crazy and Dad said, ‘Sounds like they found whatever it is they’re looking for.’”

  Orson smiled. “Willard Bass.”

  “Huh?”

  “That’s who they found in the tunnel.”

  “I can’t believe you remember his name.”

  “I can’t believe you don’t.”

  “Why would I?”

  Orson swallowed, eyes asquint. “He raped me, Andy.”

  Thunder vibrated the glass. I stared into the half-empty bottle of wine between my legs. My fingers wrapped around the cool neck. I lifted the cabernet to my lips and let it run down my throat.

  “That didn’t happen,” I said. “I can look at you and—”

  “And I can look at your face right now and see that you know it did.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Then why do you have a funny feeling in your guts? Like something you haven’t touched in years is waking up in the lining of your stomach.”

  I took another jammy sip and set the bottle between my feet.

  “Let me tell you a story,” he said. “See if—”

  “No. I’m giving you this so I can sleep. I’m not gonna sit here and listen to—”

  “Do you have a cigarette burn on the end of your dick?”

  It felt as though ants were traversing the back of my neck.

  “Me, too,” he said.

  “That didn’t happen. I remember now. It was a story you made up after those kids found him.”

  “Andy.”

  I didn’t want to know, but I did. I sensed it had always been there, tucked away in an alley of my memory, where I could walk by and know that something awful lurked there, without ever wandering down the corridor to behold it with clarity.