The twitching black tuft looked just like the tip of a tail.
You have been out in the sun too long, he admonished himself.
Alicia greeted him as he slid back into the driver’s seat. "Everything all right, dear? You were out there a long time."
"Fine," he muttered as he fumbled with the ignition key. "Everything’s fine."
The engine grumbled. Come on, dammit, he thought tensely. Catch, you steel bastard! Don’t you die on me here.
With the third wrench on the key the big engine came to life. Frank let it idle for a minute, then put it in drive. The motor home exited smoothly from the station. As soon as they were clear, he leaned slightly forward so he could see the whole image presented by the rearview mirror on Alicia’s side. Nothing stirred behind them. The station and its attendant trailer home appeared as still and lifeless as they had when he’d first pulled in.
He turned onto the on ramp, flooring the accelerator. The motor home picked up speed like a runaway juggernaut, roaring onto the deserted sanctuary of the slow lane.
Alicia didn’t speak until her husband set the cruise control. "Frank, you look like you’ve seen a ghost. Is something wrong?"
"No, nothing’s wrong. Everything’s fine."
"You’re lying. I can always tell when you’re lying."
He clung to the wheel, didn’t look around at her. "Tell you later. It’s no big deal, okay? We’re on our way again and everything’s fine. Just don’t press me about it right now."
Maybe she saw the tension in his face. Certainly she heard it in his voice. "All right. You’ll tell me about it when you’re ready."
"Right."
He ought to have been able to relax then but could not. The landscape was beginning to bother him as much as his memories. For one thing it seemed darker than it should have been outside. There wasn’t a cloud in sight and the external thermometer hadn’t fallen a degree, but suddenly it didn’t look as bright as it had before they’d pulled into the strange little gas station. The interstate was unchanged, but the desert didn’t seem right anymore.
The plants, the sandy shoulder pushing up against the pavement, even the mountains no longer looked the same. Steep slopes had acquired a rusty red hue instead of the familiar beige and brown. Several plants hovered over the barbed-wire fence that isolated the interstate from the surrounding terrain. Branches reached for the concrete. At sixty it was impossible to say for certain, but a few appeared to be dripping dark liquid. Probably creosote, Frank told himself. Creosote bushes were supposed to be common in this part of the world. But should a bush drip creosote?
The ocotillos looked shriveled and drawn, like anorexic octopuses. Then there were the Joshua trees, not as common here as elsewhere in the desert, with their contorted limbs that resembled broken arms. That was to be expected. All Joshua trees looked like that.
But they shouldn’t have had faces with wide, imploring eyes and mouths frozen in midscream.
He thought about pointing them out, found himself wondering if he was the only one to notice what might not actually be there. All desert plants looked funny. Just because he was seeing their gnarled shapes as ominous didn’t mean someone else would view them in the same way. They might find the distortions amusing, and laugh at his interpretations. So as badly as the sights unnerved him, he kept his observations to himself.
No one passed them from behind and there was no traffic in the oncoming lanes. That was starting to worry him as much as the appearance of some of the vegetation when something rocketed past in the fast lane. The low jet-black sports car must have been traveling well in excess of a hundred miles an hour.
Damn highway patrol’s never around when they should be, he grumbled silently.
The truck convoy that passed a few minutes later was moving at a more sedate velocity. There were three of the big eighteen-wheelers. He tried to see the drivers, but the three cabs were wrapped in smoked glass. All were painted a bright red-orange and were devoid of company logos or identification except for the big crimson H stenciled on each side. Very catchy, Frank mused.
The last truck had vanished over the horizon when he pulled hard on the steering wheel, forgetting that he wasn’t driving a sports car himself. Wendy squealed and was immediately angry at herself for doing so, while Alicia let out a startled gasp. Then the motor home steadied again. Frank clung to the wheel, trying to drive and stare at the rearview mirror at the same time. There was sweat on his forehead.
"Snake."
Alicia gaped at him. "You almost wrecked us to avoid hitting a snake? I know you love animals, Frank, but…"
"Not a snake. I thought it was at first, but it had legs. Short, stubby legs, and it was about eight feet long."
"I don’t care how big it was! You" — she hesitated, leaned toward him — "Frank, you’re sweating."
Reflexively he drew a forearm across his brow, sopping up the moisture. "It had stripes, Alicia. Legs and orange and black stripes. Eight feet long. And it had — a face."
She stared uncomprehendingly. "A face? Oh. You mean, like a lizard face."
"Yeah, that was it. A lizard face."
Except it hadn’t looked anything like a lizard. It had been distorted, the expression a frozen alien grimace, but humanoid. Much too human. As the motor home had roared down on it, the wide mouth had parted in a hiss of fear and loathing. He’d barely avoided it, careening wildly into the fast lane, fighting weight and wheel as he’d brought it back under control.
A crawling abomination, a stripe-slashed monstrosity born of some fevered nightmare, that’s what it had been. Nothing so normal and healthy as a snake. What was happening?
The gas station. That heat-ravaged gas station with its damned attendant. That’s where it had started. Had they taken a wrong turn somehow? Had he driven onto the wrong on ramp, the wrong highway? They’d driven into a part of the desert people didn’t know about. Perhaps a desert that lay just under or parallel to the real Mojave? Or maybe he was going a little crazy from all the driving and the heat. The latter explanation was the more reasonable of the two.
A glance revealed Wendy locked in the blissful catatonia provided by her tape player, Steven absorbed in a comic book. Say nothing to them, don’t involve them. So far the nightmare was still a private one. Alicia had only been brushed by the horror. Leave her out of it, too. The snake that was something less than a reptile and the station attendant who might have been something more than a man had him seriously unsettled.
"I’m going to lie down in back for a few minutes." Alicia climbed free of her chair. "Just a few minutes so I can rest my eyes. Then I’m taking over. You’ve been driving too long, Frank."
"Yeah. Yeah, maybe I have." He nodded his thanks, followed her with his eyes as she moved toward the back of the motor home. "Steven? Hey, come on up and sit with your old man for a few minutes, kiddo."
Silence, then a resigned sigh as his son reluctantly set the comic aside. "Okay, Dad." Moments later a rotund little form plopped itself down in the big captain’s chair next to his. Father and son watched the passing scenery quietly for a while.
"Tell me something, kiddo. What do you see out there?"
Steven had to sit up straight in order to be able to see out the window. He gazed for a moment before turning back to his father. "Same old shi — stuff, Dad. Sand and rocks."
"That’s all? It doesn’t look different to you? I mean, different from when we started out from Barstow."
"Different?" Steven frowned, wondering as he made a second survey of their surroundings if this was some new kind of game. He pressed his face against the glass. "I dunno. Some of the plants look kind of funny. Weird, like. Isn’t that how desert plants always look?"
Frank stiffened in his seat. So he wasn’t imagining everything. "How do you mean, weird, like?"
"Sorta twisted." Suddenly he was on his knees on the seat, his head turning to look back the way they’d come. "Hey, neat!"
"What?"
"There went one that looked just like a little kid!"
"Really." Frank kept his voice even. "A kid, huh?"
"Yeah. It looked like it was running. That’s what was so neat. I mean, lots of these plants have branches that look like arms and hands, right? But this one musta had two trunks. They looked just like legs, like they were running. Too bad you missed it."
"Too bad." How deeply did he want to involve his son in this nightmare? Did he have any choice, or were they all already deeply involved? If his son was seeing similar apparitions, then there was nothing personal about the nightmare. If it was a nightmare.
It had to be. Had to. "Remember the gas station where we just stopped?"
"Sure, Dad." The boy looked simultaneously small and overweight in the oversized, velour-upholstered chair. "What about it?"
Frank struggled with the words. "Did you notice anything, well, funny there? Besides the bones you found?"
Steven thought a moment before shaking his head. "Naw." His expression brightened. "Well, maybe one thing. You know the old weirdo who ran the place?"
"The elderly gentleman, yes."
"When we first got there and I was over lookin' around at that pen or whatever it was, I saw him trying to peek inside the motor home. He was standin' on his tiptoes trying to see in one of the back windows. I didn’t think about it 'cause I thought he was helping you, Dad. He had his face right up against it, real close, like." Steven demonstrated by putting both hands in front of his face and pressing his nose against them. "He was, like, sniffing or something. I guess that was pretty funny, huh? Is that what you meant?"
Frank nodded slowly. "Funny enough. He was standing up and sniffing? Not looking underneath?"
"Nope. Just sniffing along the side, like a big dog." The boy laughed at the memory. "That’s pretty silly, isn’t it?"
"Hysterical. Do me a favor and go get your mom."
Steven looked around the seat. "But she just went and laid down."
"Just get her. Tell her I need to see her for a minute."
"Okay." Steven shrugged, slipped off the chair, and jogged toward the rear bedroom. A few moments later Alicia appeared, blinking and rubbing at one eye.
"That wasn’t much of a rest, dear." She settled into the chair. "But if you’re ready for me to drive, I’ll take it."
"It’s not that. There’s something wrong."
She was suddenly alert and awake. "With the motor home?"
"No. I don’t think that’s it. I think it’s something else. I’m not exactly sure what it is, but I’m tired of wondering about it and I think I’ve figured out how to fix it." He tapped the map clipped to the dash. "In a few minutes we’ll be in Baker. That’s where our hitchhiker is getting off."
"In Baker? I thought you wanted to take her all the way to Vegas?"
He nodded vigorously. "That’s what I thought at first, yeah. On reflection, I think maybe we’d be better off dropping her sooner. I have this feeling we’re getting ourselves too involved in someone else’s personal business, some kind of business we don’t know anything about and that we’re better off not knowing about. I’ll think of some reason. It’s not like we’re dumping her in the middle of nowhere. She ought to be able to get a ride out of Baker easy if she just hangs around one of the gas stations."
"You’re not making a whole lot of sense, Frank. That’s not like you."
"Didn’t you want to get rid of her?" he asked challengingly.
"Well, I wouldn’t put it that way." She glanced toward the back bedroom. "She looks so frail and innocent when she’s sound asleep. What happened to change your mind?"
"Tell you later. You agree we should put her off, then?"
"I don’t know. I know what I said when we first picked her up, but we’ve agreed to take her all the way to Las Vegas. I don’t feel right about changing my mind."
"This is our vacation, isn’t it? She oughta be grateful that we brought her this far instead of leaving her standing where we found her."
"If you think this is the best way, Frank."
"I do."
There was silence between them for a while before she spoke up anew.
"Frank?"
"Yeah."
"Can’t you tell me what’s going on? Please?"
He chewed at his lower lip. "Hon, I’m not sure I know what’s going on. I just know that she’s involved somehow and that I don’t want us to be a part of it. She still sleeping?" Alicia nodded.
"I think what’s going on is she’s in some kind of trouble. She may be a singer like she claims. I mean, we know she can sing, but we don’t know that that’s her profession. Now, you know me. I’m always ready to go the extra mile to help somebody out of a jam. But not if I think it’s going to touch my family."
"Us?" Alicia was genuinely puzzled. "How could any problems Mouse might be having affect us?"
"Like I’ve been saying, I’m not sure. It’s just that there are a number of things that don’t feel right."
"Your funny-looking snakes troubling you again?" She half smiled, uncertain whether she expected to be taken seriously.
"Among other things. You remember the old attendant who sold us gas?"
"Not really. I hardly got a look at him. I was talking to Wendy."
"He asked me if we’d picked up any hitchhikers. He tried to be casual about it, but I could tell he was real interested in my answer."
She frowned. "Why would he ask a question like that?"
"He said something about having problems with people swiping stuff, but I don’t think that had anything to do with it. I think it’s something else, something a lot more serious. Steven said he saw him trying to sneak a look inside while I was pumping gas. Sniffing around, you might say."
"You think he was looking for Mouse?"
"I don’t know, but he sure as hell was looking for something, and I don’t want any part of what’s going on. He wouldn’t give me any straight answers, and she" — he jerked his head in the direction of the back bedroom and their sleeping guest — "hasn’t given us any straight answers and I think the best thing under the circumstances is to let people like that work out their problems among themselves. Let her find another ride. I’ve had enough of her and enough of this."
Then maybe life would return to normal, he thought desperately. Whatever else Mouse might be, she wasn’t normal. Her appearance wasn’t normal and her voice wasn’t normal and her whole aspect was slightly skewed. Once they were rid of her maybe the world would return to normal. Unless he was the only one who’d gone crazy. But Steven had seen the attendant sniffing.
Alicia thought her husband was overreacting, but she kept quiet. She accepted his change of heart gratefully. Not because she didn’t like Mouse. She just didn’t like strangers. Obviously Mouse’s presence was putting a strain on their vacation. That was reason enough to ask her to find another ride.
It had nothing to do with funny-looking snakes and curious gas station attendants.
4
According to the map, Baker was less than ten miles ahead. They drove the ten miles, then fifteen, without sighting the little desert town. Frank hadn’t paid much attention to the odometer since they’d left Los Angeles, but he watched the slowly revolving numbers intently now.
Admittedly Baker wasn’t much. A couple of hundred inhabitants, a few gas stations, a convenience store or two. But it was definitely too big to overlook. He drove another ten miles, searching the salt plain north of the highway. They had yet to see so much as a sign.
At least the sky had brightened. The unnatural darkness had vanished. The absence of their intended destination, however, mitigated the relief he felt at the return of the sky to normalcy. He checked the map. Baker should be twenty miles behind them by now.
"Sweetheart?" Alicia shifted uncomfortably in her chair. "Shouldn’t we be there by now?"
"According to the map." He nodded at the dash.
"Could we have gone past it somehow?"
&nbs
p; "You can’t go past a whole town out here," he shot back irritably. "Maybe it ain’t Manhattan, but there’s at least one off ramp. I don’t see how we could have missed it. We’ve both been watching and there are no wrong turns out here. I don’t under — "
She interrupted excitedly. "Oh, there’s a sign!"
Sure enough, they were coming up fast on one of the familiar big green highway signs that were posted on the shoulder. He could read it easily.
LAS VEGAS — 152 Miles
HADES JUNCTION — 6 Miles
The sign came and went at fifty-five miles per, leaving him little time to ponder the implications. Hades Junction but no Baker. He squinted at the map. There was no town by that name anywhere along I-40.
"They don’t always show the real small towns, Frank," Alicia said, replying to his concerns. She leaned close to the dash, looked satisfied when she sat back in the chair. "This map’s a couple of years old. They’re always putting in new stops."
Not in the Mojave, he told himself, but how could he be sure? Since when had he become a specialist in desert real estate? Anyone who wanted to build a new station, maybe a motel, could lobby for state recognition as a town. If you paid for your own off ramp, the state would probably grant you any kind of designation you wanted. He stared at the map.
He could have purchased a more detailed one, but what for? Why worry about the location of details you had no intention of visiting? None of which explained how they’d managed to drive right past Baker without seeing it. Baker had been here for a long time. Could it have been renamed Hades Junction since the map had been printed? He almost smiled. Certainly it would be a more descriptive moniker for a community located in the middle of the desert. If he’d been on the local Chamber of Commerce he would’ve voted for such a change. Hades Junction might attract a few more tourists than the bland Baker. Maybe that was it.
As for it lying twenty-six miles farther east than it should have, that could be his mistake. Or the odometer might be defective.
To the Vanishing Point Page 6
