In The Season of The Damned (Book One)

by Shannon Allen

  “Hey, haven’t seen you in awhile,” Shuster said. “Hey, would you happen to have any change?” I dug in my pocket, handing him seventy-five cents. The smell of cheap booze created a wall between us. I realized that amount was probably about a quarter short of what this guy usually pays for a drink, so I found a quarter more.

  I walked up the stairs; things had changed a lot since I’d lived here. The corners were full of mysterious characters, and it was a lot noisier. I didn’t really think the area was fit for my son or an ex whom I still cared a lot about. It was a better home than my small place, but still, I was going to try to convince Susan to move. She met me at the door, dressed in a purple nightie her blue eyes stoking my soul, it was my lovely ex, Susan. Before she said a word, I already saw the lecture in her gaze. “You are freaking two hours late, two hours!” she huffed. “Randy is here now!”

  “But I like Randy,” I said.

  “Yeah, but when you are around, Sam ignores Randy completely.”

  “It is because I give him more allowance.”

  She smiled, grabbing me and giving me a slight hug. “Geez, you smell good, I told her whiffing the airy rose scent that emanated from her body in elegant madness.

  “You are still such a flirt,” she responded, her lipstick shimmering like heaven’s shoes. “Today was your last day, wasn’t it?”

  “No,” I said sighing, “not quite. I have one more run to New York.”

  “Great,” she said. “I’m going to put your surprise party on hold.” I suppose for an ex she wasn’t that bad, an ex that I had a kid with. I always wondered if she was the one. It was hard to not think about this every time I saw her. We’d been close before that final incident. Sometimes I was not sure why we were not together; despite Randy, I knew we still loved each other. When I looked at her, I felt a little like a schoolboy with the magical inner turmoil of a deep crush. I knew what it meant, and none of the others besides Gabby ever had made me feel this way. I guess work and time apart just had created a void. I thought about her all the time before I hooked up with Gabby.

  Gabby worked for the trucking company. We were keeping things a secret, didn’t want the distractions of a workplace romance. Gabrielle was a late-thirties charmer. She was black, which provided our only problem. I do not think she had ever been ready for me to meet her family; she kept putting it off, it seemed. Her father apparently was really old school and had her life plotted out for her: She would marry a rich black business man, not a slightly overweight blue collar white trucker. However, instant attraction would say otherwise, and we had so many things in common. We bonded over our love of old horrors and plenty of popcorn and soda pop. Even in this decade, you would be surprised by how many sour looks we got in public the few times we went out.

  I never understood why skin mattered. My parents sometimes would talk about other ethnic people as if they were beamed down from Mars. I think it only takes interacting to fully open your eyes, then you can not be held back with what you perceived to be differences. One of the things that was so attractive about Gabby was that I always could be honest with her. She knew how I felt about Susan, and we just decided to take things slow. She had a bluntness and I strength I just loved, which made it harder to understand why she couldn’t stand up to her family about me. I was falling in love with Gabby, if I wasn’t there yet. At that moment, Sam burst through the door. “Dad dad!” Those words still reverberate, even though all that happened yesterday.

  When I got to the depot outside of town, they had impounded the truck. I was waiting for access. The person at the desk was a real snob. “Here are the keys,” she pointed to them, holding them up with one hand. “I need to see three forms of identification before releasing them to you.” She chewed snuff, pulling it in and out of her mouth and putting it back in sloppily, and the place smelled of onion and smoke. Her name tag read Agatha Grim. Grim indeed. She looked at me, slightly peering under her glasses.

  “Okay, I can do that,” I said. “Here,” and I delivered three IDs. We are used to upping identification as truckers. “Want to see my underwear tag, too?” I said under my breath.

  “What did you say?” she said, dipping her head and looking underneath her glasses a little more this time, as if she was going to come out and do karate on me if I repeated what I had uttered. “Okay, go to the side gate, he’ll let you in to see the truck,” and she pointed me outside. It was a cold, foggy, grey day. I felt the wind cut into me as I entered the side of the lot. It was very hard for either of us to keep our balance, as the place had iced over from lack of salt. The guy who worked the gate was very nice, if not a little nosey.

  He asked, “What happened here? How is it that we ended up with this truck?” I told him the guy who was making run 305 had died. “Is that where the maggots came from?” he asked.

  “Maggots, what maggots?”

  “This morning, while I was pulling the truck up out of the way, I sat in the driver’s seat and then noticed maggots everywhere. I vacuumed the little bastards out for you. There were a few spiders, too.”

  This is great. I should have just gone on vacation. I noticed a few remaining maggots on the headrest. “There’s still a bit of stench,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said semi-sarcastically, “I think I can smell that.” I took the keys as he went to open the gate for me. Yes, there was a stench of maggot, mixed with the smell of death warmed over. “Thanks!” I said with a wave. Well, it’s the final run, I told myself, as I drove out toward the expressway, just one more run. I knew this route was going to be hell. I pulled the notes off the dashboard, “bulk delivery furniture,” it read. Better check the cargo. I stopped, used the marked cargo keys, yep, all furniture still intact, closed up, and made my way. I called ACE Drivers to speak to Green.

  “Mr. Green isn’t in,” Laya the secretary said.

  “What?” he was supposed to give me info for route 3NY for run 305? Can you give me that?”

  “Sure,” she said.

  That night I settled into a rest stop. The bed in the truck stunk of maggots, and I was not sure I could tune it out. I put a sheet of newspaper on the pillow and tried to forget the scent. It felt good to be lying down. People look at truck drivers and see these robust figures; nobody knows the toll all that driving and sitting up takes on your body. Sometimes it hurts to stretch out.

  When I finally drifted off to sleep, I had a dream about how my father would lock me in the stable with Barry the rooster. He knew how much I feared that rooster. With its piercing eyes, it looked like something that had escaped hell. Dad would watch through an opening as it chased me around. It wasn’t just a rooster, it was a horrifying thing that had the knowledge to do me in. My mother finally made him put an end to it when I almost got run through by a hay fork. Being chased by Barry was terrible; I still have nightmares about that.

  Even worse was being locked in a closet with Amy, at least that is what I named it. I didn’t learn till years later that Amy was a black widow. I would sit crouched against the door, watching this spider do its daily routine. It became a friend of sorts. I don’t know what I would have done if the closet didn’t have a light. My father would lock me in there as a child, and all sound would disappear from the house. I convinced myself that my mother didn’t know what he was doing, locking me in that closet. I told her once, and asked her why. She told me if she didn’t let my father do it, then he would kill us both.

  From then on, I would pretend to be a hero, saving me and my mother. I could endure Amy the spider as long as it kept its distance. The spider never touched me, but my skin still would crawl. One time I would be shoved into the closet and come face-to-face with Amy hanging on a web, but she gently repelled as if she were used to me.

  The second nightmare was something altogether different. I dreamt I was sitting in the passenger seat of the truck, and the previous driver of the truck turned and looked at me from the driver’s side. His face was crushed in, and there were worms wiggling through
his eye sockets. He then lunged forward and grabbed me. I could feel the cold chilliness of his hands; they felt like the grave. He whispered to me, “It is only the beginning. You stand at the threshold. Stop them!” The tone of his voice shook me.

  Before I woke up, I heard a screech and a crash. When I woke up, I heard a loud banging noise and turned to see a woman knocking on the door. She was on my side of the truck. I rolled down the window. “Hi, I’m Ala, looking for a good time?”

  “Huh?” I said, still half asleep. “What?”

  “Do you want to get off?” she asked, slightly raising her voice.

  “Err, no, I just need to use the toilet, can you point the way to the rest area entrance?”

  “It’s over there beyond that small hill of grass. Just let me know if you want to do anything later,” she grinned. “I’ll be there,” she said, pointing toward the side of the rest stop building. That really wasn’t unusual for these types of places, you always got someone offering you something, whether it was sex or someone selling baby clothes.

  The new model trucks have all these amenities included, perfect for long trips over the road, but the truck I was driving not so much; it was pretty bare bones. Green was supposed to upgrade the fleet but was cheap with that sort of thing. He’d always say, “We get it done cheaper and faster than anyone else.” That has its drawbacks.

  I made it to the hill, and from the hill I could spot the rest area building entrance. I noticed the light inside flickering on and off, and I felt a wave of fear wash over me. You’re being crazy. It is just a flickering light. As I got closer, I saw a trail of fluid leading into the rest area. What is that? It looked like blood, and the closer I got, the more convinced I was that someone was bleeding badly, even though my mind wanted to rule out what I was seeing. Maybe it was paint. Though it seemed someone obviously had been dragged into the rest area. There were no people around, for a split second through the realization of the moment I thought about the prostitute, but not in a sensible way, like she could be the killer, but more like, I’d love to have some company right about now. I’ve never scared easily, but I had a sense of pure fear. It was made worse by the crunching sounds I heard as I made my way back to the truck.

  I picked up my phone, but what do you know, a no-service message. I wiggled to get a better signal. Just that moment, I saw two people come out of the entrance, and I heard a knock; it was her again. “Hi, I was wondering if you could give me a lift to the next rest stop?” I pointed to the rest building and asked whether she’d seen all the red stuff spread around over there. “Oh, yeah, it’s just paint spilled by the caretaker. He did it a little earlier in the day,” she said, walking to the passenger side and getting in.

  “Yeah, I will give you a ride,” I said sarcastically.

  “That is what I like to hear,” she said, picking up on the sarcasm.

  I started the truck and eased out of the rest area. In the dimness of the night, it was kind of hard to keep my eyes off this woman. She was beautiful; her legs were perfectly shaped. She smelled like cinnamon buns rolling through the air. This is the kind of situation that always got me in trouble while married. “So, what is a girl like you doing working rest stops? If you don’t mind me asking.”

  “No,” she said, “I just ended up on the downward spiral of an abusive relationship with my ex.”

  “Is he a pimp?” I asked.

  “No, he wasn’t, he was a blue-collar type of guy, full of arrogance and really big fists. I got sick of being beaten and left one day.”

  “Didn’t you have any family to go home to?”

  “No,” she said, and just at that moment, a huge black crow crashed into the window. It made a sickening thud going over the truck, and left a small smear of red fluid on the windshield. I slowed down but didn’t stop abruptly, so as not to jackknife the truck. “Whoa!” she said, “that was crazy! My grandmother always said birds and glass are ominous signs. Can I tell you something, and you won’t think I’m insane?” she turned toward me, sounding extremely serious. “At the last rest stop, I heard something that scared me.” I could hear the tone of her voice breaking. “I heard a crunching sound behind the rest building. And there was another sound, like something being ripped apart. I could swear…swear…”

  “What?” I asked.

  “I could swear I heard the most eerie laughter, the most eerie I’ve ever heard in my life. I got chills hearing it, have chills thinking of it, and when it stopped, it was as if I heard something moving my way. I ran to your truck.”

  “Could it have been the wind?” I said, noticing her tenseness.

  “I don’t think that was the wind,” she paused, “and with all the stories lately of missing people in the area, I wasn’t going to take a chance.”

  “Missing?”

  “Yeah, there’s been a lot of talk, the police are keeping it quiet, but some of it has gotten out. Worse than missing…There have been…people…their parts found stuffed in garbage cans, a woman, man, and two kids. This year I’ve decided that I’m going to try to turn my life around; it’s too dangerous out here.” I looked at her square in the eyes as she said that.

  By the time a sign read, “one mile to the next rest stop,” she was fast asleep. The surrounding area looked a smoky blue. The road could be a peaceful place; you always had miles to think, to catch up with yourself. I spent a lot of time thinking about my son. Sometimes I’d contrast that with how my own father treated me. Sometimes the thoughts were too vivid. I could feel him holding my hand over the fire, or busting my nose, these were his good child-rearing techniques.

  I pulled into the rest stop and said, “We’re here,” touching her shoulder. She woke up, running her hands through her hair. She gave me a kiss on the cheek and jumped out. “Hey, wait up,” I said, “I’m going that way. I’ve got to take a piss. So, Ala where are you really from?”

  “I’m from New Mexico,” she said, sounding a little amused at my interest in her personal life.

  But damn if she wasn’t my type. She looked too good to be whoring, I thought, almost forgetting to silence my mouth. “You know, you look like you should be married and settled.”

  Her brown hair flowed from the breeze as she brushed it away from her lips, “Been there, done that.” She walked ahead, and her hips swayed with a hypnotic movement.

  The rest stop was putrid-looking. A lone person sat behind a table that was set up as a desk; he was reading a magazine. The place had a long, dimly-lit corridor. At least there was a soda pop machine, even if it was the kind that looked like it delighted in stealing quarters. We split ways at the bathroom. “Guess that’s your destination,” she pointed, saying good luck.

  A toilet made of concrete; ah, the life of a trucker. I took a piss and then realized I was standing in a river of piss. I looked in the mirror and smoothed my hair. I needed more sleep. I really wish I hadn’t agreed to this haul. The urine attacked my nose, forcing me out after barely washing my hands. I stood in the area in front of the women’s bathroom and waited for Ala about five minutes. After a bit longer, I opened the door and called her, but there was no answer. I asked the guy at the desk if he saw her go back past, but he said no. I couldn’t help but notice his yellowing teeth and obvious overbite. I went back to the bathroom, opened the door again and looked around, but she wasn’t there. The smell from the bathroom overwhelmed me. I made it back to the pop machine, and turning toward it, I noticed a web spread across at the top. A fly dangled in it hopelessly.

  I was going to ask her if she needed a ride to the next stop. I didn’t mind the company, but oh well, she probably found a paying customer. I decided I was going to try to get a little sleep in back of the truck before starting back across the country. Maybe Ala would need that ride. It felt really cold this night, but at least this old model had good heat. I lay there, wondering what had become of Ala. I’d probably never see her again, which was for the best, because I liked her. I thought about how creepy our rest stops are. This
one had that forest preserve look, a lot of open space with picnic benches. It still looked like a hockey-mask wearing killer could be lurking anywhere.

  I fell asleep. I’m not sure how much time I was out, but I woke to the feel of the truck shaking back and forth slightly. I glanced through the windshield; a thick smoky fog surrounded the truck. I thought about getting out to see if it was on fire, but before I could, I heard a knock. Something unnerved me, and the hairs on my neck stood up. It wasn’t like a knock, but more like a raspy tapping. “Ala, is that you?” I said, not being able to make out who was out there.

  “Let me in,” the voice whispered. “Please let me in.” I reached to open the door when its eyes caught me, those glowing red, fiery eyes, and I pulled my hand back. The look in those eyes is something I know I never will be able to forget. There was the sinister happiness of something about to have its evil way with me. The eyes were very animal-like, but in them, you could see cunning. There’s this look you sometimes see from cats; you catch them just staring at you, as if they are thinking something incredibly intelligent, as if they know something you don’t. I heard it telling me to open the door, but its mouth wasn’t moving. “You left me with them,” the voice said, with a hint of anger.

  “I can’t,” I said, feeling myself being lost in the glow. Something inside me knew that if I opened that door I’d regret it, and yet I wanted to very much. There was the sheer sense of dread and yet I found myself wanting the sweet demise that the thing out there offered. I knew I was falling into its trance, into its eyes, and I couldn’t hold my hand back any longer. It smirked as it grew closer to the door. It knew that it was intoxicating me into a moment of madness; the fanged teeth were growing now and becoming more visible, as she was an inch from the glass. Through it all, I noticed black maggots spilling out her mouth. Her hand was pressed against the glass; her nails were long and hollow, slowly scraping the window.