The Haunting of James Hastings

by Christopher Ransom

  I wet my tongue. ‘Why?’

  ‘Why?’ she said, her eyes glistening. ‘You needed me. You would have taken your own life. I used everything to reach you. I took her for you. I got rid of Lucy for you. Look at me. Once I had Annette, I called Lucy every night. I went into her bedroom and taped her mouth and told her things. I told her what would happen if she didn’t do what I said - but I did it for you. I chased her away for you. I got rid of them all so we could be together.’ She looked at the dead man on the floor beside us. Dead Rick Butterfield. Her own brother. ‘I set you free. Do you think Annette would be capable of killing her own brother for you? It’s me, you know it’s me. Don’t you know by now? Don’t you know?’

  I didn’t speak for a long time. Her eyes, the anima behind her eyes, was very convincing.

  ‘James died,’ I said. ‘I saw the video.’

  ‘No . . .’

  ‘You never wanted him. You wanted Ghost.’

  ‘No.’ She held my face, shaking me, keeping me awake. ‘You’re not dead. It was an accident. She didn’t know it was you. She thought you were Ghost. She never meant to hurt you. I tried to stop her. You’re not dead. I can fix you. I’ll make it all better.’

  I raised the gun and pushed it between her breasts, hard against the bone there.

  ‘No . . .’ She leaned back on her legs. ‘Please . . . please.’

  I applied more pressure to the trigger. She looked down at the gun, then up at me.

  ‘It’s not natural,’ I said.

  Squeezing . . .

  But what if it really is her?

  What if Stacey’s inside the monster and I kill her again?

  Her eyes opened wide enough for me to see the whites all the way around.

  Stacey would never hurt so many people. This malignancy killed your wife.

  Kill her now.

  My finger tightened and Annette lunged from the floor, shrieking. The pistol blasted overhead. She kept coming and I tried to bludgeon her with the gun and she slammed into me, pulling my arm straight until she had wrestled the gun from my grip. I kicked at her and she thrashed. I tried to cover myself and she went five notches insane all over me, screaming as she battered me and yanked my hair and dragged me bleeding across the floor. I twisted sideways and something in my back popped and the pain moved through me like electric eels. I screamed in agony as my entire body convulsed and went rigid. The room flashed by and the front door was kicked open and then I was falling down the front steps, hips cracking on concrete as she shrieked.

  She hauled me across the front walk to the driveway and I had nothing left, but still I resisted her. I gnashed, my teeth catching on the bone of her wrist. When we got to Rick’s car she used the driver’s side door for an anvil and beat my head against it over and over until I stopped fighting back. I didn’t lose consciousness this time. My head rang like a bell and I just stopped moving, half sitting up, my hands floating in front of me, the pain so severe I felt clapped between the hands of an angry goddess.

  She wrapped her arms around my waist and with a grunt threw me into the back seat. She leaned in over me and pressed the gun to my chin and said, ‘There are two bullets left. Fuck with me I’ll blow a hole in your ungrateful stupid head and that will be it for both of us.’

  She slammed the door on the flats of my feet, jarring my knees up. I curled onto my side and closed my eyes. She drove us out of Sheltering Palms.

  41

  The miles turned into hours and the day turned into night. By the time I was able to move without setting off a new round of spasms in my back and legs, we were well past Las Vegas and St George, Utah, heading north-east on Interstate 15, or perhaps we had already merged onto I-70. I could not sit up but I could read the terrain through the windows and the passage of time as miles. My best estimation was that we were out where the signs that say LAST GAS 160 MILES begin to appear, just before the real canyons swallow you.

  When we first moved, Stacey and I drove from Tulsa up through Colorado to stop at Gaynor Lake for a weekend, before continuing west to Los Angeles, and then back and forth the two times we went home for the holidays, always preferring an extra day or two in the Rockies over the hotter, vaster and less scenic route through Texas. Annette had stopped for gas only an hour or two into this adventure. We were now some seven or eight hours outside of Los Angeles. I did not ask where we were going and I don’t think she knew. What I did know was that after that sign for LAST GAS, there would be only scrubby desert, yucca plants daring you to take a shortcut, vertigo-inducing rock walls with pink and black candy swirls, and occasionally the mirage of civilization just a few miles up ahead, which were nothing more than strange clusters of stars playing tricks with your witching-hour brain. I needed medical attention and unless she stopped for gas soon, we were going to be stranded in the fuck-all nowhere.

  I was very thirsty. My wounds were dry but only because I hadn’t been moving. As soon as I acted out, the cuts would reopen. I tried to keep my back flat on the seat as I counted off miles and she ate another hour off my life. Even if the Interceptor got twenty miles to the gallon, which I knew it didn’t, the tank would be no larger than eighteen gallons. If we had ten gallons left, and I doubted we had that much, we might make another hundred and sixty miles, tops. But we were climbing now and we would continue climbing in elevation all night as we approached the Rockies. We’d be lucky to pull sixteen miles per gallon, maybe even twelve when the inclines really kicked in. Added to the way she was whomping on the pedal . . .

  ‘We’re going to run out of gas,’ I said at last. ‘Do you have a plan or . . . ?’

  She didn’t reply for two minutes. Two and a half miles. ‘It’s summer. We have to go to the lake house.’ Her voice was dry and tired sounding.

  ‘What lake house?’ How did she know that?

  Annette laughed softly. ‘Oh, James. What’s it going to take to convince you?’

  I didn’t have an answer for that.

  Ten or twenty miles later she said, ‘Don’t worry. We’ll find a new car at the rest stop.’

  Eventually the canyons released us onto the rolling hills again. She opened a window and the cool wind blew in smelling of childhood.

  She means to steal a different car. She’ll never pull it off. She can’t keep carrying me. I’ll scream. Someone will intervene. This is going to end soon enough.

  The night closed in. Against my best intentions and all will power to stay wide awake, I dozed.

  When I woke up the car was parked, the engine off. High road lamps lit the car with a dull bluish white light that felt like a hospital ward. It was late night, early morning. I was cold.

  ‘Where are we?’ I said, blinking up at the headliner.

  Annette didn’t answer.

  I squirmed, testing the pain. It wasn’t unbearable. I clutched the seat back and raised myself slowly. She wasn’t in the car and the driver’s side door was wide open. The two semi-trailers parked at an angle up ahead looked grainy, not quite real. Where did she go?

  The needle on the gas gauge was below E.

  I inched forward and nudged the door open with my foot. I leaned out and looked around. The rest area had the usual plain building of gray cinder-block walls and brown sheet-metal roof, a wide strip of grass with some picnic tables and a line of twenty or so parking places in the parking lot. Aside from the two semi-tractor trailers at the far end, there was only one other car. A small rusted-out silver Honda hatchback, empty, probably abandoned.

  She must have gone to the bathroom. She’s still carrying the gun. Get to the trucks. Get close first, then scream for help.

  This is our chance.

  I pulled myself to my feet. I leaned into the driver’s side and turned the key in the ignition. Click, click, click. The battery was dead, too, now that she had left the door open and, most likely, the headlights on.

  I shuffled a few feeble paces from Rick’s police auction sedan. I looked to the bathrooms and saw no movement, then loo
ked back at the trucks. A big guy with a bulging gut like a trash bag full of water was smoking a cigarette in front of his truck, rocking back and forth in a pair of heeled boots. He tossed his butt to the ground and walked around to the driver’s side, disappearing for a moment. His door swung out, the dome light in his cab came on and he popped up into his seat.

  I glanced back at the toilets and then began hobbling after him. The pain worsened with every step, but if he drove off without me I didn’t know what would happen here. I trotted over the parking lot, onto the sidewalk, waving one hand. The truck was at least a hundred feet away. I couldn’t tell if he was looking in my direction. I opened my mouth to shout for him before remembering that if she heard me yelling . . .

  Get closer first.

  A grinding noise kicked into the night and his engine fired, belching black smoke from the perforated vertical pipes. The diesel engine sounded like the world’s largest dental drill. I was covered with dried blood and as I hobbled faster my clothes began to slip from my skin as warm wetness began to flow. God damn the desert at night.

  As I approached, he bent down in the cab and I lost sight of him. I was short of breath as I walked around the front of the big white cab and stopped outside of his door.

  ‘Hey!’ My throat was as dry as if I had just run a mile. I looked back toward the bathrooms but she wasn’t there, nor on the grass play area.

  ‘Hey, hey, need some help here,’ I called louder, straining over the drill of his engine. Six spaces behind me was the other truck, its engine off, the cab dark. This guy was my only chance.

  I rapped on his door. ‘Hey, can you hear me?’

  He sat up quickly and looked down at me. After a moment, the window powered down.

  ‘Help you?’ His face was oddly thin for a man of such girth. The cheeks were pinched, the jaw askew. His nose hooked into a knob of loose flesh, as if he had contracted some rare disease that affected only his face. His neck skin was loose, baggy as a pelican’s.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, gasping. ‘I need help. I’m - they kidnapped me. I need a doctor. Did you see her?’

  He scowled and worked his lips around. He pushed the folded bill of his mesh cap back as he scratched his forehead. He looked across the lot, back to the car.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I’m . . . you have to help me. Call the police. You have to call for help, now.’

  His chin shot forward. ‘Call the police?’

  ‘I think my back is broken. These people, they tortured me. I can’t . . . do you have a cellphone. Can I come inside there with you? Please? You have to help me, please!’

  ‘You want to get inside where?’

  ‘It’s not safe!’ I realized my shouting was scaring him. ‘Please, I can explain, but we have to get out of here first. You have to radio for help.’

  ‘Who you traveling with didja say?’

  ‘The woman. A blonde woman. Did you see her? She’s crazy . . .’

  He looked away, scanning the rest area, then back at me, frowning. There was about him zero sense of urgency. His mouth opened a crack and he snorted twice obscenely, as if he had a duck call in his sinuses. I waited for him to spit, but he just watched me.

  ‘That your Interceptor?’

  ‘Yes, that’s her—’

  ‘What’n hell you doing with a cop car?’

  ‘She stole it. She had a brother - look, you don’t understand . . .’ I was dizzy, holding myself upright with my hands on my thighs. He was high up in his rig, safe. I was going to scream soon. ‘I just need a ride. Will you please help me?’

  He licked his lips. ‘Well, I can radio the highway patrol. They’d run a can out to ya. Might take an hour or two but it’ll get ya goin’.’

  A can? He thought I was asking for gas? ‘No, no, I don’t want a can of gas! This is an emergency! Do you understand? She tried to kill me! She’s got a gun!’

  The man in the truck stiffened. ‘A gun? Who’s got a gun?’

  ‘The woman who kidnapped me!’

  ‘You on dope?’

  ‘What? No! I’m injured—’

  ‘Huh?’ This came out like an accusation.

  ‘I’m bleeding to death!’ I screamed at him. ‘Call the fucking police!’

  ‘Okay, then,’ he said. ‘Sit tight, fella.’

  I stared as his window went up in a smooth slide. I stepped forward with my palms raised, shouting. The loud engine got louder as he pumped the pedal and began to slide back, stopped, and then went forward again. His lights came on and a plume of black smoke belched into the night. The rig came at me, horn blasting as I stood in front of him. But he did not slow as he swerved lazily around me and rolled onto the interstate entrance ramp.

  I screamed after him, trying to run, but I couldn’t run and he was moving up through the gears now, rolling away until the orange lights across the rear doors winked and faded into the night.

  I stared off into the dark distance where the truck had just been. No other cars passed. I turned in a circle. I was alone.

  ‘Sonofabitch!’

  I went numb. Motionless. The earth continued to rotate.

  I was about to turn away and walk back to Rick’s car when faint red spots glowed on the far horizon.

  Brake lights.

  He was at least a mile up the road now, but the fucker was braking. I blinked, waiting for them to fade out again, but they didn’t. I took two hesitant steps, then three, and I never took my eyes off the brake lights as I began to move faster, ignoring the pain now, in fact feeling no pain at all, knowing any minute they would vanish.

  I never looked back to see if she was coming after me and, eventually, I found the strength to run.

  42

  The headwind and exertion watered my vision, making the stars on the horizon oscillate. My feet slapped tarmac in a disturbing rhythm. Far beyond the reach of the rest stop lights, a hundred yards ahead where the red glow was thinnest, something low and moving fast crossed the road, blurring from the desert to the yellow lines and then back into the desert before I could classify it. It was too low and fast to be a person but larger than any animal I could think of. I kept running, my pace flagging, until I was limping in a desperate shuffle.

  The truck was idling. I could see and hear it now. The engine seemed to vibrate through the road as I approached. The brake lights glowed red, faint but growing brighter as I neared, and my destination seemed another mirage, a vision that receded cruelly every time I closed another hundred feet, the black highway a giant treadmill intent on dragging me back.

  Slowly, finally, the entire back of the truck came into clear view. My eyes adjusted and the road became a fixed position below the tall gray doors. I waved my arms and slowed as I reached the back, veering left, coming up the trailer’s long dirty flank. I was out of breath, standing just behind the door of the cab, when I stopped.

  Why hadn’t he opened the door? He must have seen me by now. Surely his conscience had dictated that he call the highway patrol, stop, wait for help to arrive.

  Unless . . .

  For the first time I glanced back the way I had come. The rest area was now only a faint glow above the few trees alongside the road. There were no other cars coming at us. Even way out here in the middle of nowhere, someone had to come along soon . . . eventually . . . but where had she gone? Why hadn’t she followed?

  I turned back to the cab. The driver’s door was now open.

  Wide open. Inviting.

  I hadn’t heard it open. No voice had called out to me.

  And then I knew.

  Annette had been in the cab all along. In the sleeping compartment behind the front seats. She had watched and waited at the rest area, waiting for the right prospect to come along. We were out of gas, and she was guided by the need to escape at all costs, in any shell that would have her. The trucker had left his rig to use the bathroom and she had crawled inside. She’d heard me screaming for help and she had stayed silent, hidden in the back. And
as soon as he had driven off . . .

  I was trapped again. Stranded. There was no escape in any direction. I simply would not survive out here.

  Before I had made the decision, my feet were shuffling forward, wide of the door. I walked out onto the center lane, pulled even with the open door.

  The trucker was not in his seat. The front of the cab was empty. The seat was as high as my head, and behind it the cabin, an extended box behind the seats, large enough to conceal a narrow bed, a small table for eating, a cabinet above with a television and God knows what else bolted to the ceiling. The engine drilled the night.