by Ava Delany
“Shit. Shit. Shit.”
His gaze skittered across the area. A large retaining wall. Buildings. Everything was cutting him off, too high to climb. Where? Where? He frantically sought an escape route and found none. He struggled, but couldn’t draw breath. His lungs were on fire, yet filled with ice.
His legs were rubber beneath him, shaking and ready to collapse. The driveway was close. Oh God. The car was closer. Safety could have been miles away or right next to him, but it didn’t matter.
The car hit his legs, throwing him forward even as it seemed to go through him. A shock of agony slammed him as a rock cut into his palm. Now the tires would pulverize his bones. His body would convulse with pain.
But no crushing tires sped over him, no bone splintering pain while his body mashed to the road like a frog after the rain.
His heart raced. What had just happened? Why hadn’t it crushed him like a frog pancake? The thing in the car should have been laughing merrily while it drove down the road, leaving the carcass for the coyotes.
“Are you all right?” A woman hurried toward him. She dropped to one knee when she reached his side.
Buster sprinted up, licked his face.
Glancing back the way she came, she frowned. “I was just reading…I thought I heard tires…an engine. What happened?”
Almost running his mother over, now almost getting run down himself. This didn’t seem real. Goosebumps covered his arms.
“I just thought a car was losing control on its way down the hill, and I fell. Overactive imagination, I guess.” He tried to sound nonchalant, but only sounded lifeless. His stomach flipped and bile rose in the back of his throat. She’d heard the engine, so it had to be real, but if it was real, how could it have disappeared?
“I guess my imagination is a little overactive too.” She grinned.
Wincing, he pushed up into a sitting position and wiped the blood from his palm. “Thank you for your concern, Ms…” He waited for her to supply her name.
“Borne. Andrea Borne.” She offered a hand, and he shook it as she said, “Call me Andrea.”
“Well thank you, Andrea. I appreciate it, but I have to be heading back home.”
He struggled to his feet and tried to walk smooth and straight down the hill, but his knees didn’t want to support him. His chest seemed hollow, as if his heart had literally jumped from his body, leaving a hole in his insides. The odd emptiness, and the rubber in his legs, made him sway. He managed to keep his feet until he reached his car.
Ian dropped into the driver seat and started the car. Buster jumped in, and Ian backed down the driveway, looking at the young brunette who’d been kind enough to check on him. Trying to appear normal, he waved and smiled. She waved back before opening the door to her house and disappearing inside.
He called Brie on the way to Paul’s shop to drop off Buster. Her V.R. answered. He told her what had happened at the house. When he disconnected, he wondered if perhaps he’d only succeeded in worrying her about something she couldn’t change.
Chapter Eight
Ian’s i-com rang. He jumped, jerking the wheel and swerving out of his lane before he recovered. Luckily, the traffic was light, and he didn’t hit anyone. He yanked the i-com from his pocket and instead of sticking it into the port on his car, he held it to his ear and ordered the connect. “Hello?”
“Oh my God, Ian, I have to talk to you now. How far are you? I have to show you something.” Brie’s voice, full of astonishment and fear, made him cut off a small white Dodge and head across the overpass to the onramp for the 15 South.
“What happened, are you all right?” he asked as the driver blared his horn and tried unsuccessfully to guess Ian’s IQ with his middle finger.
“Don’t hurt yourself. No need to crash the car so you can get here one second earlier.”
“What’s happening? You sound upset. Did you find something?” Ian gripped the wheel so hard his fingers turned white.
“I found an odd and amazing coincidence, if it’s not involved in all this. Have you ever heard of the author, Donald Kingsley?”
“Yeah. I never read his stuff, but he was my neighbor for a year. He moved out about six months ago.”
“Was he angry with you?”
“Well, I don’t think so. Not anymore. We had a fight over a tree on the border of our properties once. He wanted to remove it and I wanted to keep it. Some stupid, petty nonsense came from it, but I don’t think he’d still be angry over something like a tree.”
“Um, well.” Brie’s voice went quiet. “I’m not so sure. I don’t know why, after all these years of seeing unusual things, I still expect life to be normal. A shadow is only a shadow, and a book is a book. And it really could just be a huge coincidence, but it just seems like…”
Despite the prospect of what might come, he couldn’t help but chuckle. “I do that too. Probably some sort of defense mechanism, but I have the feeling, if we live through this, nothing will surprise us ever again.”
“Yeah, but—”
“What’s going on? Would you just tell me?”
“I found a Donald Kingsley novel amongst the books. When I was reading the back cover, it struck me as familiar. I started reading it. A man, Dean O’Connel and his dog Bowser are tormented by a shadowy figure, but then I got to the part that included me. The girl Dean meets at the restaurant is Brittany, and she spends the night with him. After a strange attack, they run to his mother’s house the next day. I tried to skip forward, but I couldn’t get past chapter seven.”
“What is going on here?” he muttered. She was right. He shouldn’t be surprised, especially after Dark Day, but he was.
“Ian, it gets weirder. When I got to the end of the page where Dean is driving to his friend Peter’s house, my hand just didn’t want to turn the page. I started thinking of how I should call you, and I found myself holding my i-com. I didn’t have control. I dialed your number before I even realized it.” She paused a moment, and he let this new information soak in. “I called you the minute I understood what happened. There has to be a connection. I know it sounds insane, and I don’t know how he’s doing it, but it can’t be chance.”
Ian glanced behind him, to get over into the next lane and froze. The claws. The darkened cab of the car behind him on his right held the claws of his tormenter!
“Wait, I can turn the page now.” Paper rustled, and there was a pause then a small gasp. In the i-com next to his ear, he heard her reading, “Dean looked over his shoulder, and his heart began to race. Thin beads of sweat broke out on his forehead and upper lip. The claws, those misshapen grey razor blades, seemed to reach for him even as they clutched the wheel of the car. The unnatural darkness of the driver seat was broken only by the two black orbs that seemed to make the light in the car flee in terror.”
“Oh my God.”
She was narrating his life while he lived it.
“Are you ok?” she asked. “Ian, answer me.”
“He’s there.” Ian’s foot moved of its own volition, pushing the pedal to the floor. The car shook and groaned as he hit ninety-five; as if it was also worried something might happen to him. His car barreled along, but the claws followed, never losing pace with him. They raced along the freeway, and the grill of the car chasing him seemed to smile ghoulishly. He swallowed hard. What he saw in the rearview mirror very nearly made him stomp on the brakes. In the darkness, the black hole eyes weren’t the only thing he could see anymore. A skeletal yellow grin, too wide to be human, became visible in the darkness.
He was doing just what it wanted. Had been from the beginning. It never moved into the lane behind him; it kept pace, playing on his irrational fears. He lifted his foot off the accelerator, letting the car slow. He glanced over his shoulder again and the demonic car, driven now by a woman with two small children in the back, exited at the off-ramp. His heart pounded as his breathing slowed. Had he only been imagining the claws? What game did the creature play here? Was the point
to get him to kill himself or someone else because of the visions?
In the distance, he heard Brie calling his name and realized he’d dropped the i-com. As he exited the freeway, he noticed a big rig passing a truck. If he’d continued like a mad man at ninety to one hundred miles an hour, there would have been no way for the anti-crash system to shut off the car. He would have been jam on its fender.
He drove into the mall parking lot and found Brie by the doors of the Digi-page bookstore, reading a novel. Relief rushed through him when he saw her, and as he parked, he marveled again at her nerve. She’d been on the i-com the whole time, yet she’d never crumbled under the pressure of terror. He rushed over to join her, crushing her to him and kissing her hair.
“I thought you were going to be killed.” She squeezed him.
He leaned down and kissed her, trying to put everything into the contact. Trying to make the mingling of tongues express the mingling of spirits. He lifted his mouth from hers. “It’s going to be all right.”
“You don’t know that.” Her eyes were wider than natural. “The ending hasn’t even been written.”
“We’ll figure this out. Together we can do anything.” He squeezed her again, his chin resting on her hair. The strawberry shampoo his mother had always bought for him, despite his request for a more masculine choice, smelled so sweet on her head. As though it had been meant for her all along. “Now tell me what you found. We have to figure this out soon.”
“Okay, let’s go.” She held up a book as they headed back for the car.
“Listen. Brittany was on the other end. ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘I enjoyed our date, and I hoped we could see each other again. Maybe now?’ Next, you see the hands and the car, you race along and you lose the car, almost slamming into a big rig in the process. Then you drive in here and see me.”
He just stared at her for a minute, a little overwhelmed, then he opened the door. She sat in the passenger seat. Jogging around the car, he wondered what all this meant. As he slid into the driver’s side, she adjusted in her seat to face him.
“Don’t you see? It replaced what really happened with some inane dialogue. Everything about the author, the book—all gone. What’s left is some puerile ruse to get you to come see me. Those aren’t the only things missing either, the woman who came to help you down the street from your mother’s house isn’t mentioned either. It says you rolled out of the way just in time to miss the tire.”
Ian closed his eyes, remembering the disturbing feel of the car, which turned to pudding as it struck him. “I wonder if I’m the first person this has happened to. Has anyone else been terrorized because of arguments with Donald Kingsley? Is that even what’s happening here?”
“And why can’t I turn the page past the present?” she finished for him. “I only get to read a paragraph or so into the future, whatever is at the bottom of the page. Right now, I can’t even turn to the next chapter for some reason. Every time I try, I keep thinking of the things I need to do. Not even important things.”
“Strange.”
“Especially because I think in publishing there are at least three people who read a book before it’s published. Maybe more. So shouldn’t all this have happened months ago, if not longer?”
“We need some of his other books. There has to be something in them to help us.”
“I’ve already got them. I tingled when I walked down the clearance aisle. Most of all when I saw this one.” She dug in the bag and drew out a novel. A diner lit the gloomy cover—neon lights in the black fog. He took one of the books she held, skimming it for information.
“The areas are accurate, we know that much. Every city we went to in the book exists, including the cities where you and your mother live.” She plucked the i-com from the floor by her feet and handed it to him. “Speaking of your mom, why don’t you call her and tell her everything’s fine, but she should spend another week in her vacation spot.” She pressed a hand to his forearm.
Brie was right. His mother wouldn’t be safe on the road until she thought he was. Then, even if part of her sensed the truth, she would be the strong mother he always remembered. It was their thing. Pretend it was all okay, and ignore it if proof were presented otherwise. It had always worked for them, until she painted him.
“She’ll be too worried to have a good time. I would be.”
Ian smiled at her genuine concern for a woman she barely knew. While he called his mother’s i-com, Brie continued to scan the book about a waitress at a coffee house in Fresno who’s followed by a stalker in a ski mask.
“Ian? Oh thank God! How are you feeling? Is everything all right. Can I come home and make you waffles now?”
“Everything’s just fine. It’s all taken care of. Buster’s with Paul and everything’s going to be all right now.”
“Great. I’ll come home.”
“No, Mom.” He scolded, trying to sound casual about it. “Have you even spent one minute enjoying yourself? Have you even seen anything other than your hotel room? Did you even get a hotel yet?”
“Well, I—”
“You’re in a place you’ve wanted to go for a long time. Relax and enjoy yourself. I’m fine. We’ve got it all figured out, and I will see you next weekend, give or take. Try to have some fun.”
He said goodbye and put the i-com back in his pocket.
<><><>
They’d made it half way to Fresno when they’d decided it was late enough and stopped at an Extend-O-Stay.
“Brie Duval,” she said, triggering the audiolock, the newest type of lock all the hotels were using now.
She opened the hotel room door carrying the bag of used books. Ian followed, holding the take-out.
“Table.”
A small metal table folded down from the wall, and she set the books on it.
“I hope the bathrooms aren’t on this new audio system too.” Ian smiled for the first time since he’d picked her up, and something in the smile made her certain everything would be all right. Somehow.
“That would be a bit too much.” She took the books out of the bag, lining them up on the table while he laid out aromatic containers filled with shawarma and koobideh.
Ian took his plate and a few books to the bed, sitting atop the comforter with his knees bent and the food at his side.
He sat there in such a natural way, as if they were on vacation. It calmed her. But he’d always done that. He could make her forget her weight, her gift, and the creature who stalked them, and make her feel safe, no matter what.
Brie went to him, crawled across the mattress, and curled up in his lap. He braced a hand on her back as she hooked her arms around his neck. “You are so handsome. Do you know that?”
“Is that all you like about me? My looks and my virtue?” He held the top button of his shirt closed in mock horror.
Brie laughed. “Maybe. I delight in stealing virtue from unsuspecting innocents. But no, that’s not all, and you know it.”
He set the book down and grinned. “Then refresh my memory.”
“You have a big heart, and a strong jaw.” She ran a finger along his chin, delighting in the tingles racing along her skin. “And a hearty”—she grabbed a bit of chicken off the plate beside them—“appetite.”
She slipped the morsel between his lips, and when his tongue lapped her fingers, she shivered.
“I’m not the only one.” He gave her a wicked grin, which made her insides do some impressive stunts. Then he glanced at the book in his hand, and the smile faded. “But we shouldn’t do this now. We have to find answers. If we’re going to survive this, it’s the only way. Plus, you need to eat. I want you to keep your strength up.”
“I don’t need to eat. I need to spend time with you.”
He grabbed the thin plastic fork and speared a bit of beef. He lifted it to her lips, and her stomach protested so loud the in-room computer said, “I don’t understand your command.”
“Oh, all right.” She bit into the deliciou
s meat, not realizing how hungry she was until the food passed her lips.
He fed her silently for a while, pausing with each bite to stare into her eyes before returning to the book he was scanning. She couldn’t help but stare at Ian. His mother had painted his death, yet here he sat, ready to fight. Brie had crumbled so many times in the past. After her brother’s death, and her mother’s too, she’d been unable to stand on her own for months. Everything was different now. His strength made it easier for her to remain standing in the face of the fear and pain—even in her darkest moments when she wanted to run. Now, in one of their darkest moments, with the end looming nearer, he still took care of her before worrying about himself. She owed it to him to be strong now.
She got up, taking Cold Terror, the book about them, with her. Sitting at the table, she thumbed through the text. The trash cans, her call, their first date…
His lips met hers, their bodies coming together in an electrically charged shock of passion…She skimmed further, hoping she wouldn’t see— He entered her, his rigid—
She dropped the book.
“Oh God.” She covered her face, unable to look at Ian.
“What’s wrong?” Ian looked up from a book about an ailing woman whose son haunted her. “What is it?”
“It’s all in here. This book has every moment. It’s the cause for everything we’ve done.” She grabbed the book and shook it at him when he didn’t speak. “It’s been controlling us. It’s the reason we’ve been behaving strangely. Why we went home together that first night.”
“It’s not…” His jaw dropped.
She nodded, opening to the page. “Right here.”
He read the words, and his jaw clenched. He threw his fork into his half-eaten food and stood. “The bastard! Who is he to share our most intimate moments?”
“You don’t get it, do you?” Brie fought back a sob. “Us. We’re not real. Our love, and yes I realized I loved you when I almost lost you today, but it doesn’t matter. I can’t revel in my feelings, or tell you how much I care, since I only feel this way because the book tells me to. When this is over, we won’t love each other anymore. It’s all a pretense—to make a good story.”
