The Devil's Grip: The Curse of Stone Falls

by Steven Swaks

  “Did she say something?” Alex asked.

  “No…” Jennifer was sobbing hysterically.

  “What did you do?”

  “I screamed and ran to the door. What else did you want me to do? I looked back to see if she was following me, but she was gone. Can you believe that? Gone! Just like that! I’m done with this,” she constantly shook her head, her hair sticking to her sweaty forehead.

  “What can we do?” Ben asked Alex, while rubbing Jennifer’s back in a compassionate gesture.

  “We can’t call PD. What would we tell them?”

  “What if you get a call?” Jennifer asked. “I don’t want to be in there alone.”

  “You down the rig, that’s it. You give the call to 62 or 63. We can stay with you in dispatch until the morning.”

  “What about tomorrow evening?” Ben asked.

  “There won’t be a tomorrow evening. You hear me? I’m done. I quit this place. There’s no way I could ever be alone in there.”

  “What are you going to do?” Alex asked.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I know what I’m not going to do. I’m not going to hang out with a zombie!”

  “Well, I don’t think she’s a zombie, she is more like a… you know…” Ben tried to explain, but unwilling to use the actual words.

  “I don’t care what the hell she is. I’m not staying in there alone, that’s it.”

  “Ok, ok, let’s try to keep our cool. We’ll stay with you for now, and wait for the dayshift to take over,” Alex said. “Ok, let’s go back in.”

  Nobody moved.

  “Is she still in there?” Alex asked.

  “How would I know?” Jennifer shrugged.

  “Well, you’re the one who saw her. And you said that she didn’t follow you,” Alex said.

  “Uh, no, I don’t think so.”

  “Let’s go in there and check it out. Ben, you go.”

  “Why me?”

  “Because… you’re the most experienced.”

  “The most experienced in what?”

  “In that sort of thing.”

  “Like what?”

  “Public relations,” Jennifer said.

  “Yeah, she’s right, public relations,” Alex vigorously nodded.

  “That’s not PR.”

  “Oh, come on, what’s to be afraid of?”

  “I don’t know. Oh, yeah, she butchered her mother with a meat cleaver. Other than that, she’s a sweet girl.”

  “Stop arguing, Ben, get in there, we’re right behind you.”

  Ben pouted. “What’s the code?” He asked Jennifer.

  “5150.”

  “Figures,” He commented and dialed it onto the key pad. A small click unlocked the door.

  Dispatch was the same as usual, all the lights were on, the computer purred in a quiet hum, and the screens hadn’t changed. Aside from the office chair in the middle of the room, nothing was out of the ordinary.

  Ben beckoned Alex with a wiggling hand, “Your turn, buddy, you go check under the desks.”

  Alex rolled his eyes and entered the square room. “You keep that door open, Ben.”

  His partner complied without protesting.

  Alex slowly walked down the center aisle, keeping his breath shallow to catch any unusual sound. He approached the first two consoles. He bent down under the first one expecting the worst. Nothing. He looked up and shook his head.

  Ben nodded with Jennifer hiding behind him.

  Alex walked to the second desk and did the same. Again, there was nothing. He proceeded to the last two consoles. If Gina was in the room, that was where she would be. The paramedic stayed away from the desks and crouched. Again, there was nothing. He stood and walked to the last desk, not without a quick glance toward Ben who stayed still.

  Alex leaned down, his heart hammering through his chest. There was nothing but an empty trash can and a candy wrapper on the floor.

  Jennifer and Ben walked in, relieved to find an empty room. The trio looked at each other. What now? They would stay together for the night, then what? They didn’t know. They felt the urge to run away, quit their jobs, and leave Stone Falls. But where would they go? What would they do? The same job? Could they let Gina rule their lives? They didn’t voice a word of what they were thinking, but the thought process was the same for the three of them. They wondered about the present and the future, how to deal with her now, and what would happen if they packed and escaped.

  They were the victims of a spiritual bully. They couldn’t back down. They didn’t want to either. All they knew was that Gina Hawkins was taking a toll on them.

  Everyday Low Prices

  Alex hadn’t slept. How could he? The night had been straight out of a horror movie starring should-be-dead Gina Hawkins. He had no clue about what would happen the next evening on duty. Aside from their visitor from the grave, or wherever her corpse was, he didn’t even know if Jennifer would be there. She’d said that she wanted to quit, but she was a strong girl. He had no idea what she would do, but frankly, her professional future was the least of his problems. Right now, what Alex wanted to do was think about something else, and maybe even eat some chili cheese fries for lunch. Above all, he wanted to relax with his family.

  He roamed the aisle of the grocery store like a ghost. If he wasn’t a spirit, he knew that he looked like one with ghastly pale skin and large circles under his eyes from lack of sleep. His scruffy hair didn’t help either, but he didn’t care at this point. He was in a different world. Shoppers walked by him as if everything was fine. By now, a few of them had even noticed the increase of traumatic calls. The local television was going on a media rampage. For once, there was something more to talk about other than the potholes on Main Street or a run-over deer on the mountain highway.

  A few cans flew in his basket. Pasta, tomato sauce, two-liter bottle of Coke, Twix candy bars, good, all the food groups were represented. What else did he need? Nothing of significant value traversed his foggy mind.

  After strolling through the store for another few minutes, Alex decided that he didn’t need anything else and found his way to the cashier. He gladly threw his groceries onto the black conveyer belt. Carrying a large bottle of coke was a magnificent idea to build up biceps muscles, but not after a restless night.

  The cashier had a tag on his chest that read Andrew, 32 years of service. Alex wondered how Andrew felt working so long for the same company. Maybe it was reassuring and filled with benefits, or maybe Andrew looked back at his life and regretted his choice. Alex couldn’t tell. One thing was certain. Andrew was in a different reality from Alex.

  The cashier ran the products over the red laser light. The items listed added up on a screen for a grand total of twenty-three dollars and eighty-one cents.

  Alex punched his fidelity card number. He pulled his credit card and swiped it. There was a routine after all. He would go home, take a hot shower, relax on the couch, and probably watch a comedy of some kind. Doing nothing seemed so appealing.

  A young female employee ran back inside the store, screaming, and flailing her arms in the air as if she was trying to fan off an invisible demon. She stopped by the first cashier next to the entrance, her arm widely extended toward the automatic sliding doors. She said a word and lurched into the older woman’s arms, her continuous screaming ebbing into a deep sob. The cashier hugged her, trying to understand what was happening.

  The supervisor on duty, a young man hardly old enough to be out of college, strode to her. The scene his employee was making was unacceptable. It distracted the customers and created an unbearable ruckus. If the older woman hugging her cared about her welfare, the supervisor cared more about his store’s image. Whatever had spooked her did not justify such an emotional outburst.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Alex asked Andrew.

  “Something’s going on outside,” the cashier said trying to catch a glimpse of the activity on the other side of a tall stand of locked-up ci
garettes. He couldn’t see anything, but something told him that they weren’t in immediate danger. He didn’t expect to see a mad gunman walking in to do his weekly shopping with an AK-47. Besides, he hadn’t heard any gunshots, and the girl wouldn’t have landed in her friend’s arms to find consolation, if it was the case. She would have run as far as possible in the opposite direction.

  The young employee continued crying uncontrollably, nudged in her coworker’s arms. The supervisor tried to make sense of what was happening, his head swinging back and forth between his employee who was making a scene, and whatever was happening outside.

  Alex picked up his grocery bag and headed for the glass doors. They slid open in a quiet swoosh onto the grocery store’s parking lot with other businesses at each corner.

  A small group of people were looking down in front of a car. A wave of apprehension surged from deep within his being. He was alone and without equipment to deal with an injury. He had no crew to back him up nor provide any kind of support. He didn’t even know what the object of the fuss was, but he already knew that it was bad enough to send a girl into total panic.

  He made his way closer and discovered the scene: an older man was lying on the ground with glassy eyes, a Toyota Tacoma front left tire resting on his thigh.

  “It’s not my fault, man! I didn’t see him!” A young man said at the edge of panic. “I didn’t do it on purpose! I swear, I didn’t!”

  “I know you didn’t, buddy,” Alex said, “but you got to calm down, ok? Take a deep breath. Do you have a jack?”

  “A what? A jack? Why?”

  “We need to jack up the car.”

  “I can just back it up!” He said going to the driver’s door.

  “No! You’re going to drive him over one more time!”

  “Do you have a jack?” Alex insisted.

  “Yeah, I think, in my tool case in the back.”

  “Then, go get it, and jack it up, now.”

  Alex turned to a young Hispanic man standing by. “Can you help him out?”

  “Yeah, sure,” the young man said.

  Alex looked around the bystanders to form his improvised crew. “Did anybody call 911?”

  “I think so, I’m not sure,” an older man said.

  “Do you have a phone?” Alex asked him.

  “I do.”

  “Please call them to make sure.”

  The man agreed.

  Alex saw a calm woman standing a few feet away on the curb. “Can you help me, ma’am?”

  She nodded, “What do you want me to do?”

  “Come behind him,” he pointed at the wounded man on the ground, “hold his head like this,” Alex showed her how to hold spinal precaution with her hands on each side of his head.

  In less than a minute, the scene was already set up with several people working together to help the victim. Alex kneeled next to the man and assessed him. The sad verdict confirmed what seemed obvious. The inert patient was not breathing and without a pulse. Alex started CPR. The first thrust cracked the sternum in a nerve-wracking but expected move.

  The scene was strangely calm. The front tire went up, the 911 caller confirmed the rescue machine was on its way, and Alex continued performing CPR under the early morning blue sky, tall palm trees towering above them. Some shoppers walked by, a few stopping to see what was happening. Others moved on out of respect or unwilling to watch the sad spectacle. A mother with two young children stayed a few feet from the scene, completely unaware of the trauma she was inflicting on her kids. Alex shook his head, unwilling to engage in a battle against stupidity.

  Stone Falls Engine 62 was the first one to arrive. The captain jumped out and received a short briefing, but there wasn’t much to say. The car had run over the pedestrian before stopping with a front wheel on his thigh. They’d jacked it up and started CPR two minutes after the accident. A firefighter took over the chest compressions. Alex stood back while two paramedics from Medic 62 took charge of the scene.

  Alex wouldn’t know what would happen to the patient. That was the beauty, or the drawback, about EMS. The medics and fire mostly didn’t know what happened to their patients. Hope floated in the air, along with doubts about the outcome. Alex chose to hope for the best, unless the circumstances dictated otherwise, like this man lying in front of him.

  Alex was calm, but he didn’t know what was happening. The madness was bleeding on his time off. This scene didn’t belong to his job. He hadn’t signed up for a war zone, for people dying on a daily basis. How long had it been? Two weeks? In just a few days, he had seen more deaths than in the last two years. The situation kept getting worse. A sense of dread bellowed from within. He didn’t know if it would continue, but he knew it couldn’t last.

  Jessica

  Jessica didn’t like her mother’s car. Not that she was materialistic, but the 1995 Toyota Camry was a true testimony of her sister and mother’s inability to drive. There was not a single door or fender without some kind of scratch or dent, as if they both waited to hit something to find out when to stop. The appearance of the car was not the worst. The mechanics by itself was a true shame to the four-wheeled kind. The previous owner had done the maintenance himself, which had turned out to be a great mistake as he probably knew as much about mechanics as she did. The car was leaking every possible kind of fluid, the trunk lock was stuck, and even the windshield wipers were the wrong size. The air conditioning worked well, which was completely useless on this cold January evening.

  Eyes riveted on the road, Jessica focused on driving down the narrow canyon road. She knew that she was not supposed to stay so late at the trailer park, but she’d had a few older people to visit on behalf of the church. She was part of the outreach program, and she very much liked it. She enjoyed reading the Word to the lonely old folks. Some were quiet and listened. Others liked adding stories from the good old days. They even baked for her.

  Tonight, she was going home with a love story from the war in the Pacific. She was a beautiful nurse and the love of her life was a cocky but handsome gunner on a B24 Bomber. He had passed away in ‘98, but the spark of her love for him was still glistening in her eyes. The old lady had shown Jessica his framed black and white pictures, her wrinkly fingers caressing the wood as if it could bring her closer to him.

  Jessica smiled alone in her car as she thought about the lovely story. She kept a careful eye on the road, negotiating each curve with great attention. She was a confident driver, but the winding road at night was still nerve-wracking for her. She liked the vista in daytime, the tall trees hanging on the mountain and the woods spreading for miles. She liked the hikes in the forest, watching the water flowing down the stream at the bottom of the canyon, but she couldn’t see any of it that night. The beautiful view vanished, and the spruce trees hid in the darkness like tall statues beneath the starry sky.

  The short cliff and guard rail on her right gave way to the deep-forest as the road turned away from the river. Jessica relaxed. The narrow canyon was behind her. She drove another few minutes through the woods. The radio was quiet. Not that she didn’t want to listen to music, but because she enjoyed the peace.

  She entered a long climbing curve to the right. Two round eyes stood above the road an instant before a large deer drew into the headlights. Too short of a distance to brake, too high of a speed for the damp road, Jessica swerved to avoid the animal and skidded. She pushed harder on the brakes and turned the steering wheel in the opposite direction to compensate. The Camry veered to the right, straight toward the ditch. She turned left without enough traction to stay on the road. The front tire caught on the wet grass and slipped into the ditch. With little speed left, the back of the car swung into the trench and hit the moss-covered edge.

  Unscathed, the deer looked at the crashed car and strode away.

  One more dent, Jessica thought. The Camry’s headlights lit the road and the rising side of the ditch at the edge of the woods. Grass was lodged between the hood and the right f
ence. Other than that, she didn’t see any obvious damage from her seat. She hoped the side of the car wouldn’t be scraped. With some chance she’d slipped on wet grass, and the car would only need a pressure wash. The thought was almost amusing because it could have been much worse.

  Her short smile receded. She was a girl alone in a ditch, at night. The road was not completely deserted after the evening traffic had died down, but she had only seen two cars passing by since she had left the trailer park.

  She unbuckled her seatbelt. What could she do? She fetched her cell phone which had flown from the front seat onto the floor. Who could she call? Her father was on a business trip. Her mother was working night shift at the hospital and would kill her if she found out. And she would find out, but it would be better if Jessica told her in person rather than worrying her for nothing. Tracy? Jessica didn’t know where her sister was, but she seemed to be the best option.

  A wave of fear rose in her. What if there was no signal? She pushed the button to turn it on. Usually it was always on, except in class and church of course, but she liked to shut it off when she visited people. Nothing happened. She pushed again on the top switch. She waited for the screen to come to life. Still nothing. She removed the back cover and pushed the battery down to make sure it was in position. She pushed the power switch one more time.

  A set of headlights appeared behind her car.

  Jessica swiveled on her seat to take a look.

  The vehicle slowed down and stopped behind her.

  A wave of joy enveloped her. Maybe she wouldn’t even need to call her sister! Perhaps that car would have a tow rope to pull her out. She pushed harder than usual to open her door. She pulled herself out of the car, fighting off the steep angle. She put one leg out of the car and extricated herself. She looked at the vehicle behind her. Nobody was coming out. She hoped they weren’t calling 911. She didn’t want to deal with the extra fuss and attention. The police department would be involved, and her parents would forbid her to go back to the trailer park. At least, if she could get out of that little huddle by herself, she would be able to show how independent she could be.