Pipeline

by Christopher Carrolli

  And the radio turned on again.

  It was the same haunting guitar riff she’d heard earlier, the one by Blue Oyster Cult, the song that David loved so much.

  All our times have come...

  Here, but now they’re gone...

  The volume from the radio inched upward, as a soft, white glow emanated from the dashboard. Still, her eyelids opened and closed; she strained them open and stared at the glow. The song played on of its haunting melody.

  We can be like they are...

  Come on baby... don’t fear the reaper...

  We’ll be able to fly... don’t fear the reaper...

  She didn’t notice the headlights in the rearview mirror.

  * * * *

  “That’s her!” Leah said from the back seat of the van, as Sidney slowly gained on the Cherokee. They could see the jeep lumbering ahead at a steady pace; they also watched it swerve back and forth from the center of the road. Sidney stepped on the accelerator to catch up, and the van hummed and purred in response.

  Dylan and Susan trailed behind in the Taurus. They kept in contact through cell phones, and Leah glanced through the back window as she dialed Dylan. Tracy was swerving in the jeep in front of them she told him when he answered. He and Susan would follow closely, and the two vehicles trailed their target up ahead in a small parade procession through the night.

  The van’s horn needed fixing, and when Sidney blared on it, it whined and moaned like an out-of-key accordion.

  “Don’t, Sid,” Brett said. “You might scare her into wrecking.” He sat in the front seat, navigating the route when needed, although Sidney was already listening to some unseen source. Brett could see it on his friend’s face every time a voice bewitched him—he looked like someone having a seizure.

  Now Sidney sat behind the wheel of the van with his heart galloping, the sweat pouring down his face, fogging his over cumbersome, horn-rimmed glasses, cruising faster and faster to catch up to the runaway jeep.

  “What else do I do?” Sidney’s voice cried out in deepening frustration and for once, Leah and Brett heard their friend sound helpless. “We have to get her to pull over!”

  They inched closer to the van that was now about twenty feet away, which to Sidney, may as well have been a mile. Leah leaned forward, her elbows touching the back of the front seats. She could see something happening inside the jeep.

  “Does she have the interior light on?” she asked, leaning a little closer. “Something is going on in there. There’s light coming from the dashboard... see it?”

  She pointed, and they looked closer. She was right, and Sidney’s only response was with his foot as it stepped on the accelerator and the van’s purr grew into a roar.

  * * * *

  The team’s van in front of them had shot forward. Sidney had lead footed the gas pedal, leaving the Taurus behind.

  “Something must have happened up front,” Dylan said. “I don’t like this.”

  “I can’t see in front of the van,” Susan said. “But let’s hurry, maybe we can catch up, then go around him.”

  “No, don’t! It’s too dangerous, especially on these back-roads.”

  “I don’t like it either,” she said. “I’m sure this is the same route that she and David had taken that night.”

  Dylan had figured as much, and now he felt his heart sink down to his tingling legs and not for the first time this evening. He tried to dial Leah back, as Susan followed Sidney’s lead, flooring the Taurus’ gas pedal.

  * * * *

  Tracy shook her head, fighting off the approaching slumber that was distorting reality into a dream-like euphoria. It was happening again, and at this moment, her body waged a full scale battle with her mind for a much needed reprieve. Her body began its countdown toward sleep, while her mind fought to focus on the road. Her hands gripped the steering wheel, baring bone white knuckles.

  The light shining from the dashboard became a hot-white, blinding iridescence, blurring with the headlights in the rearview mirror. She thought she heard a strange honking like a horn, but it was hard to hear over the radio that had become a voice of its own, taking command with a haunting tune she knew so well.

  Valentine is done...

  Here but now they’re gone...

  She tried to keep her eyes on the road, but the light kept glowing brighter, and the smell of David’s cologne became potent and unmistakable. Her sleepy eyes burned with tears.

  “David,” she said, her voice now a weakening rasp. The song continued louder, but the power of the volume did nothing to sober her. In the recesses of her subconscious, the song merely became part of the dream state; it was David’s song.

  Romeo and Juliet...

  Are together in eternity...Romeo and Juliet

  40,000 men and women everyday...Like Romeo and Juliet

  The light was closing her eyes.

  40,000 men and women everyday... Redefine happiness

  The swerve of the jeep was everywhere now.

  * * * *

  “She’s all over the road!” Sidney yelled, and pressed with his palm on the defective horn with all of his strength. The jeep swerved, and it was as though Tracy couldn’t hear them behind her, or didn’t care.

  “Something’s happening to her up in front, Sid, can’t you see it?” Again, Leah pointed to the light in the jeep, the ghost light they could do nothing about. It was happening without them, and they were powerless.

  “Run her off the road, Sid,” Brett’s desperate idea was the only thing left to do.

  “What?!” Sidney scoffed.

  “Off to the side, nudge her off to the edge of the road, quick, before she gets...

  * * * *

  The jeep steadied again and as she glanced to her right, she could see the light from the dashboard now illuminating the shape of a figure, much like a ray of sunshine unmasks a flurry of rolling sawdust in a shadowed corner. He was sitting next to her. The light revealed more than his outline. She could see the fullness of his lips, the shape of his nose, the wave of his hair and a strange, sad, contentment in his eyes. His eyes—she could almost see the blue of his eyes.

  It was a dream, she thought, but what about the jeep? Maybe it was all a dream. She could no longer feel the vibration of the wheel beneath her fingers. She couldn’t feel anything, but she could still hear.

  Baby take my hand... don’t fear the reaper

  Her eyes forced themselves shut, and she failed to recognize the sign before her.

  CAUTION

  SHADOW VALLEY CURVE AHEAD

  She felt the pulsing beneath her feet and popped her eyes open, seeing the real world roll out before her as the sleep state slipped away. She gasped and moaned at a final shock all too familiar. She squeezed the brake pedal hard with one sleeping foot.

  We’ll be able to fly... don’t fear the reaper

  The brakes screeched and squealed, and Shadow Valley Curve loomed before the jeep’s headlights. The Cherokee flipped in a somersault and flailed over a steel barrier, front over back, down over the steep embankment. It twisted and bounced and each hard landing of the now contorted death trap screamed sounds of crushing metal, steel, and shattering glass.

  It crash landed face down into the same oak laden valley where she and David had met fate before. This time, it wanted to meet only her.

  Tracy Kimball was dead underneath the two ton broken machinery, her hands still clutching the wheel as the blood soaked her glass filled hair. And the radio played on.

  Baby I’m your maaaaan... La La La La La

  Chapter Sixteen

  They felt the momentary heat of shock and disbelief grip their bodies, enflaming them with an invisible torch as instant tragedy unfolded before their eyes. The jeep had toppled and careened head over heels down the fated embankment. They watched in stunned silence; the moment they had strived to prevent played out in front of them like a motion picture.

  A vision of the last tiny grains of sand slipping through to the bot
tom half of a completed hourglass flashed inside Sidney’s mind.

  “NOOOO!!” His caterwaul was steeped in shock, regret, and defeat, a drone that gushed forth tears of shattered denial from the rest. There was no mistaking what they’d just seen. It was real, not a dream. There was no clock to turn back, no hourglass to reverse.

  The wheels of the van screeched as Sidney slammed the brakes and pulled over alongside the twisted steel barrier.

  “We have to get her out!” Sidney jumped from the front seat, ignoring the admonitions of Brett and Leah to wait. He carefully straddled the rail, and by the time they reached the side of the embankment, Sidney was scurrying and skidding downhill towards the toppled jeep.

  Just as Brett and Leah were carefully scaling the embankment after him, Susan pulled behind the van, wheels screeching to a speedy halt. Her headlights shined on them as they stepped over the guardrail.

  She and Dylan could see that something had happened ahead, in front of the van, and the nervous pleading of prayers were uttered in desperate whispers. Their worst fears were confirmed in the glare of the headlights: Tracy had gone over the embankment and crashed... just like David.

  “God, this can’t be happening!” Dylan said, already dialing 911 from his cell.

  “Wait!” Susan yelled out the window, and quickly told Dylan what to tell the emergency operator. Like all psychiatrists, she was also a medical doctor, and the unexpected crisis she hoped would never happen had occurred. She sprang into action, fleeing from the Taurus and popping the trunk, grabbing her black medical bag from inside.

  But deep down, she knew the bag would be unnecessary, and a pain winced at her heart. She thought back to first day she’d met Tracy Kimball in the nurse’s lounge, then the night of David’s accident, the therapy sessions afterward, even the frozen look of terror on her face tonight. She wiped all that from her mind; she had to get downhill to the jeep.

  * * * *

  Sidney’s cries wailed up the embankment, echoing through the wide valley much like Tracy’s had the night that David died. He had tried to open the driver’s side of the jeep, then turned, running toward the passenger’s side. Both sides of the jeep were smashed in, the twisted metal of the doors melded shut. He yanked hard, but the doors wouldn’t budge. He began kicking away part of the spider webbed windshield that hadn’t completely given way. The sounds of smashing glass and frantic prayer went up in the night.

  “Wait!” Susan yelled again. “Don’t move her! Wait for me, Sidney. I’m a doctor.”

  Sidney ignored her and managed to partially pull the body from the wreckage. She was face down in his arms, the blood and glass soaked and strewn through her long, brown hair. Sidney screamed out again in desperation to the vast, starry expanse above, cradling her in his arms leagues beneath Orion’s belt.

  The music from the radio continued to play a fateful message.

  She had taken his hand...she had become like they are

  Come on baby...don’t fear the reaper...

  Susan and the others moved closer toward the front of the wreckage where Sidney sat on the ground, clutching her, a failed rescue illuminated by the still beaming headlights of the totaled jeep.

  “Sidney,” Susan said, touching his shoulder. He wept in broken sobs while visions played a slideshow in his mind: the apparition’s face and those cold, black eyes flashed on his mental screen, followed by an hourglass no longer sifting sand. The final grains had slipped away.

  Susan gave him a moment. There was no point in rushing—Tracy was gone.

  The repeated wail of sirens blared, coming closer. It had only been two minutes since Dylan had phoned, and now the sounds of emergency usurped the radio and its continuing performance.

  Susan would ride with the ambulance and the rest would give their statements to the police—as best they could without divulging Tracy’s situation. Then they would fill out their own reports with the society as to what really happened. There would be questions, and there would be answers. But first, there would be grieving.

  * * * *

  Thirty six hours had passed since the accident and Sidney, who still hadn’t slept, forced himself to read the headline of the newspaper’s afternoon edition. He’d been avoiding it, and now he was the last to flinch from its eerie, enigmatic truth.

  Shadow Valley Curve claims former crash survivor in ironic twist of fate.

  Underneath the headline was a picture of Shadow Valley Curve taken that morning once the sun had set, and the car and the body had been removed, and the only thing to remain was the black and yellow police tape cordoning off the stricken guardrail. The caption under the photo mentioned that the well known hazardous spot had claimed yet another life, now a total of six victims in the past twenty years.

  Sidney threw the paper across the table like the rag he thought it was then lowered his head in sadness and frustration. All, including Susan, sat around the long conference table at the team’s campus headquarters. They had arrived back after the day’s sad agenda, an event that shouldn’t have been.

  Tracy Kimball’s funeral was an assembly of friends, relations, colleagues, and high school chums all gathered by unexpected bereavement, disbelief, and a shock that would linger long after explanations were issued. They paid their respects and grieved for the young woman they had considered a survivor. Her co-workers at the hospital exchanged glances at each other, looks that secretly confirmed their silent suspicions that Tracy’s drinking had escalated to a degree greatly underestimated.

  Marcia Ross’s face displayed a wrenching pain that distorted her features into a solid mask of hardened confusion. Her diamond cut eyes had become red pools of bloodshot tears and at one point, those eyes had cast a frigid glare at Susan Logan.

  “When this is over,” Marcia said, referring to the service. “I want to know exactly what happened in that house. Do you understand?!” Her voice climbed an octave, causing heads to turn and wonder, but Susan pacified her into a quiet hush. “What am I supposed to tell them?”

  Marcia had pointed to Tracy’s parents, who had returned home for their daughter’s funeral. Jim and Sara Kimball sat in the front row at the viewing, unable to take their eyes off of their daughter who lay posed in permanent slumber, snug in the peach colored, satin lining of a white casket. Both in their early sixties, they seemed somehow younger.

  Jim showed only traces of salt and pepper in his hair and Sara’s youthful face seemed not much older than her daughter’s. Their bewildered eyes stared in confusion, awaiting some explanation, and when their eyes did divert, they shot around at each unfamiliar face that entered the room, hoping one of them knew what really happened to their daughter.

  They wondered who these five people were that had arrived together. The blond woman was a psychiatrist; she must have been the one Tracy was seeing. They didn’t recognize the younger people. Tracy hadn’t spoken of many friends outside of Marcia, who was now talking to the psychiatrist. One of the young men, the fat one, stared at them for almost a minute then quickly turned his eyes away. Something was going on, and soon they would discover just what that was.

  “Let’s get through this,” Susan said. “We are going to discuss everything when this is over... I promise.” Susan continued to hold Marcia’s quivering hand as she burst into sobs, and then Susan held her.

  The service wasn’t long. After David’s funeral, Tracy had been adamantly opposed to the old fashioned, three day, death ritual that was most common. For her, it had been torturous, and she had made this fact known.

  The viewing was three hours, followed by the interment at the cemetery where the preacher talked about how God’s plan couldn’t be predicated, especially for his chosen ones. The final moments of goodbye were cued by the singing of “Amazing Grace,” unleashing tears and cries of rueful, early good-byes at the cemetery.

  The procession made its exit in a single file, car lineup. Many drove to Marcia’s house for the gathering afterward, but five of the most crucial guests ha
d returned here, to the team’s headquarters, where Tracy had originally sought them out. They had to prepare themselves for the story they were about to tell. What they had told the police was something entirely different.

  The team eyed Sidney with irritating glances of surprise when he threw the newspaper across the long conference table. A rising anger stirred inside him at how the paper was trying to dismiss Tracy’s death as a random tragedy. He couldn’t and wouldn’t.

  Dylan, once again, had taken his lead at the head of the table.

  “I was contacted by Roman Hadley this morning,” he said. “He thinks that we did the right thing by not disclosing full details to the police about Tracy’s situation. He said that the publicity was the last thing the Kimball’s need right now, and the press would be relentless with this story, especially since they’re already running rampant with the Shadow Valley Curve angle.”

  Roman Hadley was the rarely seen, head of the university’s paranormal investigative society, and one of the donors financing its entire existence. He was the silent watcher, the unseen eye that inexplicably saw every move they made, every bit of research that took place. They were stunned at how he had known so much so quickly, including Tracy’s death. The team had never met him, so all of their correspondence was by phone or e-mail.

  “We also don’t want this attached to Tracy’s memory,” Brett said. “Soon enough, the story would become some urban legend.”

  “And I think we can all agree that we don’t want that,” Dylan finished.

  “The story is that we were all taking part in an intervention,” Susan said. “We were there to confront Tracy about her drinking. She participated, but when our backs were turned, she fled from the house before we could stop her. It was simply an intervention gone awry. I was the psychiatrist involved, and Tracy is still listed as my patient. So, let the blame fall on me. This will avert suspicion, and there will be no reason to check Tracy’s e-mail and find the letter she sent you.”