Robert took a few long strides and slid into the driver’s seat, locked himself in the car, and put his hand on the shifter.
“Good evening fellow traveler,” an elderly man with a long white beard and a booming voice was standing outside the passenger door. Beyond him, a large pale horse stood patiently in the middle of the road. Its faint luminous eyes staring back at Robert. “I believe we’ve met for a reason.”
“What do you want?” Robert shouted through the window he opened slightly.
“I need a ride to my place down the road.” The voice carried through the car as if there were no barriers between them.
“I don’t make it a habit of picking up hitchhikers.”
“As I see it you do not have a choice.” The old man opened the passenger door and took his seat as though he’d been there the whole time.
“What the hell?”
“That is partially correct.”
“How’d you do that – it was locked?” Robert’s voice heightened, “what are you? What do you want?”
“We’re going to follow this old road until we get there. My horse will be waiting for us there.”
“Your horse?” He realized the horse was no longer in the road. “What is this?”
Robert’s accelerated heartbeat pulsed in his inner ears, sweat dripped from his hairline and more pooled in his armpits. A new headache pulsated just above his neck intensifying by the minute.
“We need to talk.” The old man’s strong voice felt familiar somehow. Soothing, Robert’s anxiety quickly subsided. He felt more relaxed hearing the cadence of each of the old man’s syllables. “Start driving the direction you were headed.”
An overwhelming need to sleep set in. “I’m having trouble staying away…I mean awake.”
“That won’t be an issue. Now drive where you were headed. We’ll be there soon.”
“What’s this about?” He wanted to feel anxious and scared, and angry. Too much Xanax, he thought, and then disputed the ridiculous notion knowing his pills were in his luggage in the trunk. He hadn’t touched them since Wednesday night when he and the guys decided to pop pills with their scotch while walking around downtown Albany looking for young women in the bars.
“You. This is about you.” A cool draft from the passenger seat terminated the sentence.
Robert put the car in drive and slowly pulled out of the turnoff high beams left on. He felt compelled to obey. Darkest night he could recall, even with the bright moon. He focused on the middle of the wet road as he struggled to keep his eyes open.
Three silent minutes passed. Robert knew this old man somehow, he met him somewhere a few times, he thought. “What’s your name?”
“Furcas. Some think of me as a knight, though I’ve moved on in my old age as those aristocratic titles have waned this century.”
“A knight, wonderful,” he whispered to himself. This guy’s a whack job. “What do you want from me, Mr. Furcas?”
“Your redemption.”
Robert’s eyes closed and he removed his foot from the gas pedal.
“You need to drive,” the old man was louder than before.
“Huh?” Robert looked around. “Right.”
“You should know you invited this tonight,” Furcas stated.
“What is this about, old man?”
“I’m here because you warranted me. Your lack of ethics and compassion for your fellow man. Once again and for the last time I must be your teacher and pass judgment.”
“Right. Are you kidding me? Compassion and judgment, asshole?” He sighed and considered what this was about. “I don’t steal or cheat on my wife. I live a happy life. Nice bonus coming, new house, awesome boat.”
“You know as well as I there is more. Continue driving.”
Questions about his past consumed his mind, the drowsiness subsided a bit. Earlier in the week he copied Greg Watson’s customer contracts and other private documents – including private photos of Greg’s wife – from his laptop while Greg laid unconscious face down on his hotel room floor. He fully intended to take that worthless son-of-a-bitch’s accounts when he wasn’t looking, force him to start the new year with nothing. He always let partying get the best of him that asshole. But that couldn’t be it, Robert surmised, guys in the sales world do this all the time. It’s how they get ahead of the pack, he justified.
“This meeting between us tonight has nothing to do with your reckless business dealings this week, though they reveal more of your flawed nature.”
“Excuse me,” Robert said.
“Seventy-seven days ago on this road you intentionally killed a dog with your vehicle,” the old man’s voice commanded.
“What?” Robert couldn’t figure out how anyone would know this, and seventy-seven days? “Ha! Good one, you crazy bastard.”
“A girl was walking it on a leash. You aimed your car at it and accelerated. And then there was the young woman stranded by her car on the side of this road this time three years ago.”
“Oh yeah,” Robert taunted.
“You stopped and claimed to help her when you invited her into your car.” Furcas stared forward. “Pitiful.”
Robert shook his head hoping not to hear the truth. After all, how could this old guy know anything?
“She was found the next morning battered and unconscious in the abandoned mall parking lot on this road near the highway.” Robert showed no emotion, no response as he listened intently. “This good woman has the good fortune to have survived your brutal attack,” Furcas spoke softly. The temperature in the car dropped.
“Liar,” Robert shouted. He stopped the car. “Get out!”
“I will leave you when I am finished with you.”
Robert leaned over the old man, his right hand stretched wide to grip Furcas’s neck as he reached for the door with his left. Robert felt a tingling, like an electrical current, upon contact with his wrinkled skin. Furcas remained still.
“You will stop this foolishness immediately,” Furcas commanded, “and continue to drive.”
Robert felt an overwhelming need to comply and resumed driving as much as he wanted to tear this guy’s head off. How dare he invade me, he thought as he imagined twisting that bearded head a full one-eighty complete with sounds of cracking vertebrae.
They quietly traveled the dark winding road for another twenty minutes. Robert looped the repressed memories of the events Furcas described between violent fantasies toward his unwanted passenger. He knew he should feel regret, that was the correct and appropriate feeling for those actions, and many others, but he was indifferent. Tired again, like someone had slipped a high dose of melatonin in his drink at dinner, he was ready to doze once more.
“You once tortured a young man in school,” Furcas interrupted his thoughts. “You killed him.”
“Huh?” Robert didn’t recall killing anyone besides a few random animals. He came close with that girl, but she deserved it when she resisted.
“How did you know...?” Robert combatted his lethargy and confusion. “What are you talking about?”
“Brian Jefferson Stanton the third.”
“Oh.” He thought about this for a minute. “BJ Stanton,” he whispered. A tingling raced down his back and chilled his extremities. “That snobby little rich kid from Scarsdale,” he recalled, “always talking about his father’s money and looking down on us. He deserved what happened to him, that accident.” He was scared awake and surprised. “He was an asshole!”
“You were the asshole,” Furcas said.
“Do you know what he did?” Robert drove faster attempting to justify his memories.
“Only what anyone else does.”
A rage Robert hadn’t felt in years washed over his psyche. “What the hell does that mean?”
“You killed him for being human. You and your friends.”
“We didn’t kill him! We held him down and beat him behind the school. But we didn’t kill him,” Robert shouted.
“Ho
w convenient the human brain is for selective memory,” Furcas mused. “You ambushed him and beat him. You burned him. You poured lighter fluid on his clothes and set him on fire.”
Robert slowed the car down. How does he know all of this? “You don’t know what you’re talking about. He started it.”
“Your friends tried to stop you from burning him, but you persisted. You kicked his face in as he lay there moaning succumbing to the fire.” Furcas paused, “you know this.”
Robert was stunned. He had not thought of the specificities of this event in twenty years. He spent the following decade drinking and getting high, telling himself it needed to happen and that it wasn’t his fault while taking his anger and frustrations out any friends who would listen and a few undeserving girlfriends. Frustrations soon turned to violence, leading to a year in a Pentecostal group home for recovering addicts in exchange for a co-worker not pressing charges following a drunken office Christmas party fight.
“I did,” Robert admitted quietly.
“Your two friends tried to pull you away as you escalated. ‘Enough,’ they shouted. You knocked them both unconscious with the crowbar you used to threaten Brian Jefferson Stanton the third. You did not stop.” Furcas paused again and turned toward Robert, his silver eyes casting an eerie spell over Robert’s attention. “All rage and no compassion.” His voice grew louder with each word. “No ethics, only violence and lust. No remorse. You had twenty years to atone and correct your ways, but that is who and what you are, Robert Stockdale, and why I have been sent to deal with you tonight.”
“Deal with me?” Robert repeated shakily. He was angry, but fear dominated the anger as the old man spoke.
“To teach you,” Furcas boomed, his voice resonating in Robert’s bones.
Robert quietly drove, speeding up around bends. He needed to control the situation, scare the old man with his driving. Throw him out. Maybe crash into a rock and send this guy’s head through the windshield. Pain and suffering, he thought, and he got away with it all. His friends didn’t snitch because he threatened them. BJ was a vegetable on life support last he knew, he might’ve laid off the beating if he knew it would have killed the little bitch. Robert spent over ten years trashed during and after work constantly changing apartments and living on friends’ sofas and floors before entering rehab. No one knew what happened, except this old guy. How? Who is he?
Furcas broke the long silence. “He looked like that when you knew him before the attack,” pointing a long bony finger ahead to the left side of the road. The periphery of the high beams caught an unclothed figure standing in the oncoming lane; Robert pressed on the brake.
“BJ?” He stared at the apparition in disbelief as he rolled the car to a stop. The figure stared back at Robert standing twenty or so feet away, just close enough to make out facial details. It looked like BJ when he knew him in school: handsome face, well groomed slick hair, toothy smirk. “Why is he naked?”
Robert stared unsure of what else to do. “How could this be,” he whispered to Furcas who remained silent and stared ahead. The illuminated figure stood still in the road, a stark contrast to the surrounding wet darkness. Its hands and arms began to tremble. “What’s going on?” Robert asked aloud. Moments later BJ shook violently and doubled over as if taking blows in the gut and the groin. Robert sat in awe as he witnessed BJ’s body contort and exhibit injury after injury. Skin burned under an invisible fire. Hair singed. Face sliced up before it bubbled, blistered, and partially caved in around the left eye and cheek.
“What the hell?”
Contorted and disfigured, BJ stood there menacingly staring at Robert. The transformation seemed to have slowed down as flesh started to decompose. Robert slammed the gas pedal. The BJ beast screamed and charged at the car. It leapt out over the hood planting its hideous disfigured face on the windshield with a loud crash directly in front of Robert. A dark and bloodied sunken cheek and eye socket, four vertical open cuts from chin to forehead spanning the face, a twisted nose, and a toothless snarl.
The car skidded to a hard stop, sliding on wet leaves and debris. Robert hoped to throw BJ off the hood. He stared at the monstrosity pressing back in his seat, arms tensed on the steering wheel. “I did this? We did this?”
“You did,” Furcas said quietly.
“What about the other guys?” Robert’s voice was panicked and high pitched, speaking quickly. “I wasn’t alone!”
“They atoned and changed their ways. You never did.”
“Why me? Why now?” Robert cried as BJ pounded both fists on the windshield.
“Because your time was chosen when you did this to him twenty years ago this day.”
BJ’s unearthly shrieks consumed the car; Robert clapped his hands over his ears. “Make it stop!”
The old man sat still un-phased. The pounding worsened. The glass cracked.
“Make it stop!” Robert demanded. He floored the gas pedal again and snaked the car left to right on the slippery road.
“He’s not leaving until he reaches you,” Furcas calmly stated. “This is your lesson for not changing your ways, for not making amends.”
“I don’t care about making amends! Get this fucking thing off my car!”
The semi-physical fist punched through the glass where it had cracked, leaving no hole. Burned leathery fingers opened around Robert’s neck. Robert felt the icy grip close on his throat. He couldn’t speak, barely able to breathe. He slammed both feet on the brake pedal fainting. He felt compelled to shut his eyes and give in. Thoughts of what brought this on ceased, the boat on the Hudson with his hot wife, all of it faded.
He felt the full weight of the icy naked corpse-like creature perched on his lap, both hands firmly wrapped around his neck. The shrieks continued to fill the car. What felt like millions of squirming insects poured from BJ’s rotted open wounds entering under Robert’s clothes and burrowed into his skin. He opened his eyes slightly looking for help from Furcas – the old man was gone. He looked back at BJ’s decrepit face. His fierce eyes fixed on him, they looked like his own. Several hard blows to his face, he saw flashes of white in his left eye. He faded as the beast continued to ravage his body; the pungent decay filled his lungs with each gasp for air, feeling his face slice open.
* * *
Robert woke up. Alone.
Windshield cracked, no one in the car but him. He struggled to reach the dash and turned on the interior lights. He looked down to see his tan polo shirt torn from the neckline to the middle of his stomach and khakis smeared in blood and dirt and rot. The back of his head felt cold, a migraine was forming. The car sat parked in the middle of the road, turned to the right, about a car length from a rocky outcrop that provided a natural wall on the roadside. Engine was off. The dashboard clock read 03:43.
He lifted his shirt, felt like hives or mosquito bites. Thousands of little swollen red spots contrasted with his light skin. Too fatigued to care about what was going on, and relieved to be alive and alone, he turned the key and put the car into drive, ignoring the missed call notifications on his phone plugged into the center console. He needed to go home.
The dark winding road seemed to go on forever as he processed what just occurred. A dream? Was I attacked? “Need a drink. And a doctor,” he whispered.
He glanced quickly at the rearview mirror not wanting to recognize the extent of his facial injuries. He noticed his face was freshly cut and his neck was bruised. Bruises in the shape of fingers, thumbs pressed against his Adam’s apple. A cool breeze flowed through the car from the backseat carrying the putrid odor of rotting flesh he recognized from the time he shot two raccoons dead with a BB gun on the street near his home as a kid, left for two weeks to rot before the Department of Public Works finally removed the wretched carcasses. He stopped the car and turned against the pain to peer at the back seat. Empty save for his computer bag, some scattered papers he intended to throw away, and a garment bag holding his blazer hanging from a hook over the driver’
s side rear door. Wrecked and relieved, he continued to drive.
The clock read 04:12, no sign of the road ending, no cross streets, no gas stations, nothing. Is this the right way? The headlights caught a slight movement in the road, two dots of reflected light stared at him. Focus, he kept reminding himself, focus! The silhouette was closer. “BJ,” he hissed. He floored the gas pedal aiming for the dark figure.
The hard impact forced him to throw both feet on the brake pedal as he turned the steering wheel a full one hundred eighty degrees counter-clockwise. A charge of adrenaline took control. The car swerved into an embankment, the sound of a heavy body rolled across the roof, shrieks of pain followed. Robert hit the side of his head on the side window. The back corner of the car came to a hard stop against a rock wall on the other side of the gully with the sound of something shattering. The papers and his phone flew forward. The final impact sent Robert’s head crashing to the side then forward. He heard his collarbone snap. The engine and electrical died. A thrashing deer slid down the windshield leaving a trail of dark blood and came to rest on the hood kicking and squirming attempting to roll upright.
Robert pulled his head back from the steering wheel. Barely able to keep his eyes open he looked around. He could partially see the road from the embankment. Vision in his left eye was fogged. The injured deer shattered the center of the windshield with its hoof as it maneuvered off the hood and ran into the woods.
“Robert,” Furcas whispered from outside the car. Robert tilted his head to the left for a better view, but he couldn’t see the old man. “Your destructive instincts disappoint me.”
“Where are you,” he asked, voice garbled with a salty and metallic mix of fluids. He coughed and took a few rapid breaths. “Look at what you … did to me!”
No response from the old man. He focused, or tried to, on the shattered glass pattern refracting the moonlight as he contemplated the situation.
* * *
Robert opened his right eye. He found himself lying in a bed, an IV connected to his bandaged arm. The familiar beeps of an electrocardiogram and the low hum of the air system pulled the scene together. Realizing his left eye was covered he glanced around unable to move his head. Kayla sat on a chair in the corner looking at him. She smiled.
The Demonologia Biblica Page 8
