A. M. Caplan
Echoes
Copyright © 2020 by A. M. Caplan
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Second edition
ISBN: B07XTBSC9G
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1
The tight, smooth-edged ring the headlights bored into the inky blackness snapped shut behind her car. It was a night that had to be tunneled through, the lane of light the beams carved out so narrow Hannah didn’t see the deer until she was almost on top of it, the terrified flash of its eyeball almost level with hers.
She stomped the brake, making the back end of the car kick out on the loose gravel. The last thing she saw before skidding to a halt was a streak of white turn-up tail disappearing into the pine trees.
“Damn it,” Hannah let out in a whoosh of breath and eased back onto the road. “Stupid deer.” They were everywhere in the late fall, and out of sorts, with hunters disrupting their feeding and running them out of their nighttime cover under the trees. Going anywhere this time of year usually included a close call, and would until hunting season was over. Things would be less hairy after that, calming down just in time for snow and ice to start causing the close calls.
Not that a close call had ever slowed Hannah down for long, whatever the reason. Something about the empty back roads made her foot heavy, and Hannah goosed the gas pedal down a little further, ready to be home and done with this god-awful day.
She looked over at the passenger seat. “Oh come on. Are you kidding?” The metal canister that had been propped up against her purse was gone. It must have rolled off when she slammed on the brakes. Please let the lid still be on, she prayed silently. Just the thought of it open, its contents spilled across the floor mat, made her shudder.
Leaning across the center console, Hannah strained against the seat belt, reaching for the floor. Flicking her eyes back up to the empty road, she nudged the car back into her lane. She slipped the seat belt over her head and leaned a little farther, cursing over the music from the radio.
“Gotcha,” she said, fingers brushing the smooth metal. It was premature; Hannah felt the canister slide away, briefly catching a glimpse of it as it rolled out of reach.
Holding on to the wheel with her fingertips, stretching as far as she could, she finally got her fingers firmly wrapped around it where it had lodged against the bar that adjusted the front seat. Hannah sat back up victoriously, jerking the wheel to correct from where she’d drifted into the oncoming lane.
It was the correction that did it, the two feet of adjustment that put her right in line with the figure in the road. She didn’t see him until a split second before she hit him.
The quick glimpse before the impact was seared onto her mind, a flash of light-colored hair and pale skin, an angular face with a wide-eyed expression, followed by a sickening thud. That brief moment was still burning behind her eyelids like a polaroid picture when the car stalled out and rolled to a halt.
She peeled her face off the steering wheel and shouldered open the door. There was a trickle of blood from somewhere on her forehead making its way down into her eyes, and she smeared it away with the back of her hand so she could see.
“Oh my god. Oh no.” Hannah skidded to her knees on the gravel where her car had thrown the man. “Please no.”
He was still as a statue; a broken statue, with legs splayed out strangely and one arm pinned awkwardly underneath him. It was horrifying, the broken shape of his body, yet his face was worse. It had been utterly destroyed.
Hannah reached down and put a hand on either side of it, helplessly cupping it in her hands. One of his eyes was deflated like a popped balloon, the eyeball tugged out and lost somewhere in the deep gouge that started in his eyebrow and ran down through his lips, disappearing over his chin. There was slick, pink bone showing between the chewed-up edges of the skin on either side of the gouge, a light colored streak from his cheek to his jaw.
Everything around that pale length of bone was quickly turning black with blood. There was just so much blood—how could there be so much of it, from one face?—and it ran out from between her fingers in streams while she tried to hold the sides of his face together.
“Help. Help us!” she screamed, hearing the echo of her voice thrown back to her. But screaming was pointless. Out here, she could yell herself hoarse and pray another car would come past, but the chances were next to nothing.
When the sound of her voice died away it was dead silent and completely still, except for the weak movement of the man’s heart forcing hot spurts of blood into her hands and over her wrists. It trickled downward, cooling as it went, until it puddled, cold and gluey, in her sleeves at the elbows.
“Wake up. Come on, mister, wake up.” Hannah saw an eyelid flicker open and reveal a silverly sliver of iris. “That’s it, open your eyes.” She shook him a little, then regretted it, feeling how bonelessly his head moved back and forth. “That’s it. Stay with me. Keep your eyes open.” Eye. Jesus, it was horrifying, that gaping, blood-puddled hole. “Can you hear me?” She had to blink the blood that was trickling from her own forehead out of her eyes. By the time she could see clearly, his remaining eye was firmly shut.
“Help will be here soon. Just hold on.” It wasn’t true, any of it. It was meaningless garbage, the assurances coming out of her mouth between the choked-off sobs. He didn’t look like he was going to be okay, but she couldn’t seem to stop the babble any more than she could stop him from bleeding.
Keeping one hand pressed against the side of his flayed face, she looked him over, hoping there was a phone in his pocket that had somehow survived the crash. That was when Hannah registered for the first time that the man was completely naked.
He was a big man, broad and tall, without a stitch of clothing, or even a birthmark or tattoo she could make out. Every inch of him was deathly white except for the dark blood pooling in an unnatural divot in his chest. She looked back to his face when his throat gave a tight, wet gurgle and Hannah felt a shallow breath against her hand. A transparent red bubble formed in the corner of the transected lips and burst. It made a lighter red snail trail that cleared its way through the solid coating of blood down the side of his face.
“Help! Damn it, somebody help!” It was pointless. No one would be coming by, and just sitting here crying wasn’t going to help him.
Hannah held his head as gently as she could in one hand while she used the other to pull off her sweater. She wadded it up and tucked it underneath his neck, trying to create a cushion between him and the road. The moment she let go of him, his head flopped over to the side, neck cocked unnaturally.
The front end of her car was accordioned, and she had to stop and steady herself against it. Her head felt strange and her legs kept wobbling unexpectedly, but she dragged herself around to the passenger side. Her hand was slippery, and she lost hold of the door handle twice before she was able to swing it open. When she did, Hannah threw it wide with so much force it rebounded and cracked her across the back and knocked her forward, her head connecting painfully with the frame. She had to pause and waste another moment waiting for the dizziness to pass.
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nbsp; Her bag had been tossed to the floor, the contents all jumbled together under the seat, and the blood on her hands gathered a pair of gloves made of dirt and grit while she groped through the contents until finally she found her phone.
“Please still work. You have to work,” Hannah pleaded with the spiderwebbed screen. Mercifully it lit up when she jammed her thumb across the home button and swept aside the red slider.
“911 operator. What is your emergency?”
The dispatcher sounded flatly calm and completely unbothered. How was it the woman sounded so damn complacent when there was potentially a dying person on the other end of the line every time she picked it up? The placid, even voice sounded so wrong next to how desperate Hannah felt.
“911. What is your emergency?” the voice repeated.
“Please, I need help,” Hannah said. “I hit a man with my car. He’s hurt really bad. He’s losing so much blood.” She slid on the gravel rushing back to where he was lying. The phone shot out of her hand when she hit the ground, and she missed the tinny words coming from the voice on the line. Hannah crammed the phone back against her ear.
“What? What did you say?”
“Ma’am. It’s important that you stay calm. Can you tell me where you’re located?”
Hannah faltered, drawing a blank. It was a long, winding stretch of middle-of-nowhere back road. There were almost no landmarks and it was dark as pitch except for what little light her headlights threw.
“Ma’am, can you tell me where you are?”
“I’m headed toward Milltown, on the river road. I’m almost to the railroad bridge—I think. I’m not sure. I’m still on the dirt road. I didn’t make it to where it’s paved yet.”
There was the click of long nails against a keyboard and the muffled murmur of a radio conversation before the dispatcher spoke again. Hannah hoped to god the woman was local, because Hannah couldn’t swear to more detail than that with the directions.
“All right, ma’am, I’ve dispatched EMS and law enforcement to your location,” the dispatcher said. “Ma’am, are you still there?”
Hannah was leaning over the man who lay unmoving where she’d left him.
“Ma’am, can you hear me?”
The phone kept sliding out from between Hannah’s shoulder and ear, the blood dribbling from her nose and forehead making her skin slippery. Hannah turned the phone to speaker and laid it on the ground next to the suspiciously still man.
“Ma’am,” the operator’s voice came from next to his head. “Help is on the way. Can you tell me about his condition. Is he conscious?”
Hannah hadn’t seen a single movement since the one brief eyelid twitch, other than the sluggish progression of bubbles from the corner of his mouth. Now, a single filmy bubble clung to the corner of his lip. When it popped, she waited, but another one didn’t form.
“I don’t think he’s breathing anymore,” Hannah said. She leaned over until her ear was nearly touching his lips, trying to hear a rattle or feel the movement of air coming from his mouth. There was nothing. His face was still a mask of blood, but it looked thicker, growing cool and gelatinous. Where before it had been running in steady rivulets, now it didn’t look to be flowing at all. Hannah put her fingers against his neck and tried to feel for a pulse, but she was shaking so badly she wasn’t sure if she was feeling his heartbeat or hers.
“What should I do?” Hannah said. “He’s not breathing.” Should she try to do CPR? Was it even possible, the way his lips were nearly severed? His chest looked like a wet, black swamp.
“Lady, come on. Please, I don’t know what to do!” she said. “Damn it! What should I do?”
“Ma’am, calm down. Help is on the way,” the dispatcher said, her voice still even and not sounding the least bit rattled. “Until they get there, we’re going to do chest compressions.”
Hannah eyed the dark puddle of blood in his caved-in chest.
“I’m going to talk you through it. I need you to place the heel of your hand on the center of his chest,” the dispatcher said. “Ma’am, are you still there?”
Hannah put her hand down gingerly. Her palm sank into the pool far enough to cover it to the wrist before it came to rest against his skin.
“I don’t think I should do this. His chest is all—”
“Ma’am, I have confirmation that a member of the sheriff’s department has arrived at your location,” the dispatcher broke in. “EMS should be right behind them. Can you see a vehicle?”
Hannah craned her neck to look behind her. Thank god—she could see the flickering pattern of red and blue lights against the top of her car, and a wave of relief rushed through her. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as it looked. Help was here, so maybe there was still a chance he’d make it.
Her hand pulled away from the man’s chest with a sucking sound, and she rushed toward her car, waving her arms wildly in the direction of the flashing lights, spatter from her hands falling back against her face like rain drops. When she was positive they’d seen her, Hannah ran back to where she’d left the man. She tripped and landed on the ground and sat there, frozen in shock. All she could see was her sweater, lit up in the glow of her cell phone. He was gone.
2
The sheriff’s department and volunteer firefighters waded through the dark with handheld spotlights and headlamps, searching for him. Their beams did an indifferent job, the light swallowed up by the cover of the trees. They were able to pin back the blackness more completely when tall construction lights began showing up, rolling in from the DOT yard hitched to the backs of pickup trucks.
“Back it in tight to that one, Paul. Then pull the truck around right quick, so we can get the next one in.” The sheriff waved the driver of the pickup forward, the buttons of his uniform straining over his stomach when he lifted his arm. The driver jumped out and swiftly uncoupled the light, then squeezed his truck past the next one in line on his way back out.
A few sputtery false starts and the light was pull-started to life, the beam cutting another slice out of the dark. Another set of lights and they’d have a full circle of illumination to crawl through while they looked for the man.
“Sheriff,” Hannah said. She hopped down from the back of the ambulance, wobbling a little when her feet hit the ground. “Sheriff Morgan, over here.” Stepping in front of him, she lost her grip on the ice pack she’d been holding against the bridge of her nose. He bent over and picked it up for her, dusting off the leaves before handing it back.
He waved the final truck through and gave the driver a thumbs-up before speaking to her. “Yes, Miss Cirric?”
“I’m going to help them look,” she said. “I don’t know how he even got up, as bad as he was hurt, but he can’t have gotten far. He’s got to be right around here somewhere.” She still couldn’t believe the man had been able to move at all, but he must have. Since he’d managed to drag himself out of the road somehow, maybe there was a chance he was still alive.
Sheriff Morgan turned his head and looked down the stretch of road in front of them. Beyond the yellow cordon of plastic tape, lines of people were making a slow study of the ground around the scene. New arrivals to the growing group were being pointed to a place in line to join those already searching. The newest comers weren’t police or fire department but volunteers—anyone in the area who had a police scanner or had seen the parade of flashing lights and followed to see what was going on. They were better help than none—the curious rubberneckers—though Hannah thought some of them looked overly excited, so much so that they were struggling to contain themselves and hold their movements to a slow shuffle. They were jostling to be the one to find the victim; the only thing keeping them in check was the more watchful emergency personnel and the possibility of treading too quickly and putting their foot on a dead body.
“If he can’t have got far, then we’ll find him soon enough. Don’t need you; we got it covered. Get yourself back in that ambulance.”
Hannah didn’t need t
o be in an ambulance. Her scraped knees and palms had been cleaned and covered. There was a small butterfly bandage over the cut on her forehead, though she’d pulled out the wad of cotton shoved up each of her nostrils.
“I’m fine,” Hannah said. She was mostly fine; Hannah blinked away the fireworks display that bloomed in front of her eyes.
“You’ll only be in the way, and anyway, the EMTs are gonna give you a ride down to St. Joe’s.” The sheriff took Hannah’s elbow to lead her back to the ambulance, but she jerked it away, almost falling over in the process.
“I told you, I’m fine,” she said. “I don’t need to go to the hospital. I’m refusing medical attention. I’ll sign a waiver or something.”
The sheriff planted himself in front of her and crossed his arms.
“You can refuse treatment if you want. Can’t stop you. But you’re gonna have to go in for a blood alcohol and a drug test.”
Hannah’s temper flared.
“If they take me to the hospital, is there another ambulance coming?” she said. “For when they find him. Is there another ambulance?”
There wasn’t. The sheriff shook his head. “We’re lucky even this one wasn’t busy or stuck out in the east end of nowhere when your call came in.” It was a small town, and this was it. They had to find him any minute anyway. She couldn’t believe it had taken this long.
“Fine, then send me in the back of a police car, or even better, draw my blood here,” she said. “They can manage that, can’t they? Besides, I’m pretty sure you can’t demand I give it up anyway, without a good reason to think I’m under the influence.” She sure as hell wasn’t under the influence of anything other than frustration, and maybe a concussion, but she wasn’t going to tell him about that; he’d definitely send her packing then.
To her relief the sheriff shook his head wearily and agreed, mostly so he could get back to the search. Good—that was where he should be; where she should be.
Echoes (Book 1): Echoes Page 1
