Tales From the Gas Station 2

by Jack Townsend

  “Are you serious?”

  “How does tomorrow morning at eight sound?”

  A much longer pause this time. I wouldn’t have been surprised or offended if she hung up, but instead, “That sounds doable.”

  “Great. I’ll see you then.”

  “You promise that you’re really going to be there this time, right?”

  “Of course.”

  ***

  I spent the rest of my shift conscious of the fact that my laptop was spying on me. I didn’t want to alert the person on the other end, but I also didn’t want an audience, so I kept the computer buried in my backpack in the storage room and let myself get lost in another book. This one was a mystery thriller about a psychic detective and his ghost girlfriend who solve crimes together.

  The first customer didn’t arrive until after the sun had set. When he walked in, he did so like I was supposed to be expecting him.

  “Hello, Jack!” he sang excitedly. “I’m baaack!”

  He had a long nose, light blue hair down to his shoulders, a black pork pie cap with a red feather sticking out of it, and a faded yellow wife-beater below a black suit jacket. His bristly chest hair was on full display. On his face, he wore a pair of glasses with Coke-bottle lenses and a wide, gummy smile with only a couple of front teeth. His delicate skin resembled milky cellophane, barely there at all, and I got the sense that a single well-placed papercut might chop him in half. In one hand, he carried a birdcage covered in fabric. In the other, he gripped a walking cane.

  “Hello, hello, hello again!” he said, sideways-dancing up to the counter, leading me to conclude that his cane was purely for decoration.

  “Hi.”

  “Remember me?”

  “No. Should I?”

  “We met a few months ago while I was testing out different business ideas. My discount food enterprise, I’m proud to say, was an immense success!” My brain finally connected the dots. This was the same old man who wheeled an ice chest into the gas station and left me with a scoop of ground meat as a free sample.

  Strange. I thought I imagined that whole thing.

  “Oh, right. I remember now. Congratulations?”

  “Thank you! You’ll be happy to know that I sold my meat business for ten million dollars.”

  “Why would I be happy to—”

  “And now, I’ve undertaken a new endeavor. One that I hope you and your company may be so lucky to invest in at the ground floor. This is a brand-new once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! Consider yourself honored! Blessed by the gods, even!” I sighed and rubbed my achy eyes as he set the birdcage on the counter and lifted the cover with a loud, triumphant “Voila!”

  Inside the cage was a tiny, live elephant, the size of a purse-dog. It looked at me and made a high-pitched toot before digging its miniature trunk into a saucer of birdseed and shoveling a load into its scary adorable mouth.

  “Okay,” I said. “That is not what I was expecting.”

  “Well, what do you think?”

  “About what?”

  “My creation!” he exclaimed, waving his hands over the cage like a campy magician.

  “I don’t know; it’s pretty weird.” He stared at me with a blank smile on his frozen face. When his look still hadn’t changed a few seconds later, I felt compelled to elaborate. “I don’t really see the business opportunity here. How are you supposed to monetize a baby elephant?”

  The smile snapped off of his face. “It’s not a baby! It’s a miniature—” He shut his eyes and rubbed his temples as he worked his way through a pained question. “Do you know... how long... it took... to create these things?”

  “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

  He reopened his eyes and aimed them at the ceiling. “No, no, it’s fine. I just... You know what? You’re right. This is pointless. I don’t know what I was thinking. A miniature elephant?” He rattled the cage and crazy-laughed. “All they do is eat and poop. They aren’t any good for farm labor. I tried cooking one, but they taste like gristle and cauliflower. You know what? How about we both forget this whole thing ever happened? Okay?” He reapplied the cover in a hurry. “This was my mistake. I tried something new; I put myself out there, and it didn’t pan out. Good day, sir.” With that, he tipped his hat, scooped up the cage, and turned to leave the store. Once he noticed the display of lawn gnomes, he froze.

  “What on earth are those?”

  I leaned over to make sure I was seeing the same thing as him. Indeed, he was transfixed by the gnome army.

  “Those are our garden gnomes.”

  He set the elephantcage on the floor and tip-toed up to the display. “Where did you find these beautiful specimens?”

  “All over.”

  “Tell me, Jack, have you ever cut one open to see how they work?”

  “No. Of course not. Why would anybody do something like that?”

  “I must have them!”

  I started to feel something almost like excitement, but tempered with a healthy dose of skepticism. If this guy could take any of the gnomes off my hands, that would make this entire interaction worthwhile. “How many do you want?”

  The man turned and walked back to me, his flip flops slapping the ground noisily with each step. He dug a bill out of his jacket pocket and slapped it onto the counter. Once he’d removed his hand, I could see that it was a crumpled, wet, hundred-dollar bill with moth holes around one of the corners.

  “How many can I get for this?” He spread his smile wide, showing off a mouth full of perfectly white, perfectly straight teeth.

  Wait… did he always have that many teeth?

  I leaned behind the counter, grabbed a contractor bag, and handed it to the man. “How many can you fit in this?”

  He giggled and clapped his hands, then took the bag from me and went to work fitting the gnomes inside. He’d taken nearly our entire stock before finally stuffing the cane and birdcage on top and tying the bag off.

  “Thank you, Jack!” he said, hunching forward and hoisting the bag over his shoulder like some kind of poorly-dressed Krampus. “‘’Twas a pleasure doing business with you.”

  That’s when I noticed something. His beady little eyes looked wide with excitement, except… that wasn’t right.

  “What happened to your glasses?”

  He giggled and said, “Don’t be ridiculous, Jack. There’s no such thing as glasses.”

  “What?”

  He carried the bag over to the door, kicked it open with one freakishly long, skinny leg, then turned around and made eye contact one last time before backing out the doorway. Now I could see that he was, in fact, wearing a three-piece suit, complete with the vest and top hat and dress shoes. Whatever I thought I’d seen earlier must have been my imagination.

  “Goodbye, Jack! Stay alive if you can!” With those parting words, he vanished into the night.

  I rang up the sale, put the cash in the drawer, and went back to reading my book.

  ***

  The book concluded with a twist ending that didn’t make any sense. Turns out, the detective was the one who killed his own girlfriend. I’m sure the author thought he was being deep or clever, but really it was cheap and stupid. I hated it. Unfortunately, I didn’t bring another book with me, so I didn’t have anything else to read to cleanse my mental palate.

  How did I get through this book so quickly? I wondered. It made sense—with the exception of the elephant-monger, I hadn’t had any real distractions all night. In fact, since he left, there hadn’t been a single customer.

  I looked out at the gas station and noticed that, for a grand reopening, it sure was quiet.

  ...a little too quiet...

  I put my book away, grabbed my only crutch (the other had been in the trailer when it went up in flames), and went to take a look around.

  The first thing I noticed was a sign posted on the outside of the front door. I couldn’t see what was written on it until I stepped outside into the frigid night air.
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  “Gas Station Closed for Repairs.”

  That explains it, I thought. One of the repairmen must have left this up. Except… does that explain it? Why didn’t I see it earlier? Why didn’t the creepy guy with the gnomes see it when he stopped in? Time is linear, isn’t it?

  I pulled the sign down and almost went back inside when I noticed something else. At the edge of the parking lot, there was a line of traffic cones blocking off our driveway from the main road. Someone must have set those up to make passersby think we were closed. Who would do something like that?

  As soon as I realized the answer, I hurried back into the gas station, locking the door behind me before heading straight for the phone. When I picked up, the line was dead.

  Okay, Jack. Stay calm. No reason to freak out yet. You’re safe. The doors are locked. You have time to come up with a plan. All you-

  “Night night, bitch.”

  His voice was right behind me. Before I could turn around, an arm locked around my windpipe tighter than a noose. My crutch fell to the ground, and I lurched backwards. I couldn’t see the man holding me in a chokehold, dragging me kicking and gagging past the aisles, past the cold drink cases, down the hallway past the bathroom and storage room and finally, right out the back door. I fought and scratched and thrashed, but the more I moved, the tighter he squeezed.

  As the night air hit me and my vision faded, I felt like I was being pulled right into the bowels of hell. Just before my world fell away for good, he spun me around and tossed me onto the cold ground.

  I sucked in as much air as I could between fits of coughing, and when I realized I was free from the chokehold, I jumped up in an attempt to make a mad dash for the woods. It took me all of one step before I remembered why a mad dash wasn’t an option for me. My right foot failed to gain any traction from not being there anymore, and I barely managed to avoid hitting the ground face-first while Spencer Middleton laughed his ass off.

  I rolled onto my back to see him pick up a shovel and walk it over to me. He looked exactly the way I remembered him. Tall, built for war, a wicked grin and hateful eyes. He wore all black: boots, pants, shirt, jacket, and soul. His hair was a little longer now, but his face was clean-shaven. The only thing that had really changed since the last time he beat me senseless was that nasty scar across the bottom of his neck from where Benjamin halfway decapitated him with a hunting knife.

  “Oh. Hey, Spencer. Fancy meeting you here.”

  He stabbed the shovel into the ground next to my head.

  “Hey Jack. You miss me?”

  I tried scooting backwards, but that was a mistake. Spencer took a step forward, yanked the shovel back out of the ground, and pinned me in place by dropping his heavy boot and all of his weight right onto my bad knee.

  I screamed, and he laughed. Then he took the shovel in his hands like a golf club and swung it at my head. It missed me by less than a foot, close enough for me to feel the woosh of air. I dropped flat against the ground.

  “Whoa! Spencer, hang on! Hang on a second!”

  He repositioned the shovel, locked eyes with me, and swung it again. This time, it grazed past my face by an inch. I tried to jump away, but the Earth was at my back, and I had nowhere I could go.

  “Hold still,” he ordered calmly. “I want to see how close I can get.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to shrink into the ground, but Spencer ground his boot into my leg staples like he was putting out a cigarette. When I’d finished screaming, he asked, “Did I say you were allowed to close your eyes?” I opened them. “Much better.”

  He swung the shovel at my face, and for a microsecond I accepted my inevitable death. The shovel came close enough for me to feel the metal touch my eyebrows.

  “What the hell do you want?!”

  He let the shovel fall down at my side, then he pointed at it and ordered me to pick it up. For the next two hours, he forced me to dig a grave.

  To be honest, I found it a little encouraging to learn that despite my injury, I was still good at something. I think I surprised him by making such short work of it, especially considering I was on my knees the whole time and bleeding profusely through several layers of bandages. Spencer watched silently from a few yards away, sitting on the back of his black Mustang with a gun in his hand, reveling in my pain as the hole got deeper and deeper until finally, “Anybody ever tell you you’re really good at digging?”

  “Thanks,” I said from the bottom of the hole. “I’ve had a lot of practice.”

  He jumped down from the trunk and walked over to the edge. “That ought to be enough. Good work.”

  “Not to argue, but I think I can probably do a little better.” It was only two or three feet deep, a shallow grave by any standards, practically a ditch compared to some of the others I’d dug back there.

  He reached down, wrapped his hand around my shirt collar, and hoisted me out of the hole before dropping me at his feet. “You’re not getting out of this, Jack. There is no running out the clock. Your time is up. I’m going to kill you tonight.”

  He was absolutely right. I couldn’t just run out the clock. I needed a plan, and I’d spent the last two hours considering every possibility, every chance, every escape. What I’d come up with wasn’t much, but it was all I had.

  I grabbed the shovel, pushed it into the ground, and used it as a makeshift crutch to brace myself as I stood up and faced him. He grinned down at me as I said, “No, you’re not.”

  He seemed absolutely delighted by this turn of events.

  “Oh? I’m not?”

  “Come on, Spencer. You came out here tonight to scare me, and you did it. I’m terrified. But we both know you’re not going to kill me.”

  He walked right up to me and whispered, “And why’s that?”

  Now that we were face-to-face, our height difference felt like a lot more than I remembered, but I tried to stand tall and look him in the eyes as I spoke. “Because you’re not a killer. You just get off on scaring people like me. You’re good at it, but that’s all it is. The dark god saw something in you. He told you not to kill anyone, and you were okay with it. I think, deep down, you’re a soldier, but you’re not a murderer.”

  He chuckled and said, “Funny. That’s the same thing she said.”

  He delivered a wild haymaker like he was trying to kill someone standing behind me. The next thing I knew, I was on my back at the bottom of the grave, struggling to remember how to breathe. In time, the air came back. My head was pounding, my body felt destroyed, but I was still alive, and the plan had worked so far.

  “You don’t think I’m willing to kill you, Jack?” He was walking away from the hole for some reason. “I’ve killed plenty of men bigger and smarter than you. What exactly makes you think you’re so special?” I took advantage of his distraction and punched O’Brien’s number into the phone I’d swiped from Spencer’s jacket when he got too close. Lucky for me he hadn’t learned his lesson from last time. I knew exactly which pocket to pick.

  I typed a quick text message: “SOS -J,” then hit ‘send’ and slid the phone into my pocket while Spencer popped open the trunk of his car. Now, I had a chance. Now, running out the clock was a valid strategy. But the clock wasn’t exactly in my favor. My leg wound still hadn’t fully reclotted, and Spencer was up to something. I could only imagine what he would do if he realized I’d stolen his phone again.

  I tried to sit up, but the pain from where he’d landed his punch felt like I’d been shot by a fist cannon. I didn’t know at the time that two of my ribs were broken, but I did know something was wrong. It hurt to breathe. (It also hurt not to breathe, but it hurt to breathe even worse.)

  I powered through, knowing that Spencer wasn’t the type to turn his back often. This was my chance to get away, to climb out of the hole and crawl into the forest and never come back because there’s no way anything out there could be as bad as what I’ve been through here in the so-called civilized world.

  I pulle
d myself up and almost made it out of the hole when Spencer opened the trunk of his car wide and gathered something up in his arms. No doubt another weapon of torture, and I didn’t feel like sticking around for confirmation. I was almost out, but before I could make a crawl for it, I saw what he was holding and knew exactly why I wasn’t going anywhere.

  He threw her to the ground, where she collapsed into a heap. Both wrists were bound together behind her back and a white bandage gag wrapped around her head cut off any chance for screams. When she saw where she was, she jumped to her feet and tried to make a run, but he kicked her in the back of her knee, grabbed her by the hair, and pulled her to the edge of the grave.

  She saw me sitting in a bloody mess at the bottom of the hole as Spencer dropped her to her knees.

  “Hey, Vanessa,” Spencer said with a light-hearted voice like we were all old chums having drinks at the barbeque. “Did you know Jack thinks I’m not a killer?”

  He knelt down at the edge of the grave next to her, wrapped an arm around her shoulder.

  “What about you, Vanessa?” he asked. “Do you believe I’m a killer? You know the drill. Blink once for yes. Twice for no.”

  She blinked once. Her eyes were desperately trying to send me another message, but I couldn’t understand what it was.

  Spencer looked down at me. “And do you think either of you are getting out of this alive?”

  She blinked twice. This time, tears rolled down her cheeks.

  He laughed. “What about you, Jack? Do you still think you’re getting out of here?”

  “Yeah, of course I am.” It was an easy answer. Even if I was wrong, at least I wouldn’t have to hear him say ‘I told you so.’

  She stared at me with terror in her eyes as our captor abruptly stood up, turned his back, and walked away from us. He whistled to himself all the way back to where he’d carelessly left the gun on the roof of his vehicle when hauling the poor, frightened, teenage girl over to me. I knew he was playing with us, but I tried to reassure her.

  “Don’t worry,” I said in a soft voice, hoping the sociopath’s bag of tricks didn’t include super hearing. “I’ve got a plan.”