Blood Alley (The Highwayman)

by David Wisehart

  The dead girl turned to face Claire.

  Can she see me?

  The fold of skin on the cheerleader’s forehead began to peel off. She touched her head. Felt the loose skin. Curious, the girl pulled on the skin to see what it was.

  Her entire face peeled off, exposing muscle, bone, blood—

  Trevor hit the accelerator. Tires burned rubber as the Hummer picked up speed, leaving the cheerleader behind. He drove over the corpses in the road, but the tires never felt them.

  The burning school bus lay directly ahead, blocking the road.

  “Stop! Trevor!” Dakota yelled. “Oh my God!”

  Trevor drove into the burning school bus.

  And through it.

  As Claire passed through the flames, she felt no heat. A dying woman knelt on the floor of the bus. Her chest was torn open. Her intestines had spilled into her lap, but her exposed heart was still beating. The woman stared at Claire. Claire screamed. The woman screamed. Claire’s head passed through the woman’s head as their screams became one.

  The Hummer cleared the wreckage, and raced into the darkness.

  Trevor laughed and eased up on the gas.

  “Are you insane?” Dakota asked. “You could have killed us!”

  “Relax,” said Trevor. “They’re just ghosts. They can’t hurt us.”

  Claire said, “You don’t know that.”

  35

  When they reached the desolate farmhouse, Trevor pulled over to the shoulder and idled the car. The farm stood fifty yards from the highway. There was an old gray barn out back. There was no driveway, no access road. Just a short stretch of desert leading to the porch.

  The porch light was turned on.

  “No lights inside,” Dakota said.

  Claire held up the news clipping, comparing the farmhouse to the one in the photo. “It’s the Fowler’s house.”

  “I don’t think anyone lives there,” Trevor said. “The place is falling apart.”

  He was right. The original color had peeled from the wood, and there were holes in the wall large enough to stick a hand through. A screen door hung loose from a single hinge, and creaked softly in the wind.

  Claire said, “If the light works, the phone might work.”

  “No telephone poles,” Trevor pointed out.

  No electrical lines either, Claire noted.

  Dakota asked, “Who would want to farm in a desert?”

  They were at the edge of the foothills. Claire saw trees in the mountains. In a rainy year, the farm might have been viable.

  Not this year.

  The Fowlers hadn’t lived an easy life.

  “We’re not going in there.” Trevor shifted into gear and rolled forward.

  Claire pulled up on the handbrake. “I am.”

  She opened her door.

  Trevor grabbed her arm. “Claire, don’t—”

  She wrenched her arm free. “This could be the answer.”

  “This place has nothing to do with you.”

  “It has everything to do with me.”

  Claire stepped outside.

  “It’s just some rotting old building,” Trevor said.

  I have to know who I am.

  She walked to the house and heard the Hummer following her, rattling behind over rocks and sagebrush.

  When she reached the front porch, Claire hesitated. The steps were rotted wood. One of the boards had busted through.

  The Hummer parked behind her. Its headlights threw Claire’s shadow across the porch.

  She caught movement in the corner of her eye, and glanced up at the window. A dark figure passed through the reddish moonlight.

  Someone’s home.

  Claire listened for sounds coming from inside the house, but heard no footsteps.

  Dakota’s voice, muffled by the window: “This place gives me the creeps.”

  The car horn sounded, and Trevor called out, “Hello!”

  No answer.

  “I’m going in,” Claire said.

  She took the stairs carefully, testing each step before applying her full weight. The boards creaked under her. Trevor followed Claire up to the porch. Dakota got out of the Hummer, but held back to put on her sweater. It was chilly out. Claire considered going back to put on another layer, but—

  No excuses!

  Claire moved aside the broken screen and knocked on the front door.

  Paint flaked off.

  She looked up at the porch light. It was on, but the bulb was broken.

  Trevor saw it, too. “That light,” he said. “That’s not natural.”

  Claire peered in through the window. Moonlight stabbed the darkness inside. All she could see was a wooden floor.

  “Looks empty,” she said.

  She rapped lightly on the glass. “Hello?”

  “Let’s go,” Dakota said, her voice high and tense. “There’s nothing here.”

  Trevor jiggled the door knob. “Locked.”

  Claire tried it for herself, and the handle turned free. The door opened a crack.

  Trevor said, “Claire, wait—”

  “I’ve waited all my life to open this door.”

  She pushed it open, and stepped inside.

  36

  The farmhouse was dark and dusty and smelled of decay.

  Something died in here, Claire thought.

  She powered up her cell phone and turned on the flashlight app.

  So much for saving the battery.

  Claire stood just inside the doorway, looking into the small, bare living room. The only furniture was an antique table and three chairs. A ratty old rug still lay on the floor. If Eldritch Fowler had owned anything of real value, it was long gone, willed or scavenged or confiscated. No doubt other travelers had stopped to explore this empty house, and taken souvenirs. It was one of the few landmarks on Blood Alley.

  The kitchen entrance was across the room to her left and a hallway straight ahead. From the front doorway, the kitchen looked bare. All Claire could see in there was a rusty Franklin stove.

  The hallway drew her interest. It had the deepest shadows.

  If you want to find answers, look in the shadows.

  She crept toward the hallway. The floorboards creaked and groaned. A rectangle of moonlight spilled in from open door behind her, forming a trapezoid of reddish light on the floor. A shadow stepped into it.

  Trevor.

  “Careful,” he said.

  “There’s something’s here,” she answered. “Something we’re meant to see.” With her light, Claire indicated the kitchen. “You check over there.”

  “We should stick together,” Dakota said from the porch.

  You should be watching Ethan. Claire kept the thought to herself.

  She stepped into the hallway. There was a door to her right. With her foot she eased the door open and cast her light into the bathroom. It looked like an outhouse. No sink. Just a toilet with a shelf above it that held an old-fashioned water tank.

  Claire saw graffiti carved into the bathroom walls:

  “Who farted?”

  “I did!”

  “Who died in here?”

  “Your mother!”

  “Go away. I’ll kill you all.”

  “Prove it!”

  “I just did.”

  She continued to the room at the end of the hall. It appeared to be a bedroom, but there was no bed, no dresser, no closet. Remnants of a broken lamp lay in a far corner. The window glass was broken. Tatters of cloth fluttered on a curtain rod.

  Something flew past the window, screeching. Large and white and fast.

  Owl, she thought.

  Claire crossed to the window, which looked out on the barn. A man stood by the barn door. He wore a slouch hat and a black duster.

  The Highwayman.

  A floorboard broke beneath her. Her right leg fell through the wood. She felt a sharp pain on her calf and heard her summer dress rip.

  “Ahh!”

  “Claire!” T
revor hurried to her side.

  “What happened?” Dakota said.

  “I’m okay. I think.”

  Claire’s right foot was stuck through the floor. She could feel the ground below. Her left leg was bent on the floor, her right hand bracing against the boards to prevent herself from dropping further.

  Trevor grabbed her right arm and took some of her weight. Dakota supported her on the left. Claire eased her leg out of the breach. A jagged edge of wood had gouged her right leg. She saw blood on her dress.

  “Ouch,” she said, though the worst of the pain was over.

  Warm blood seeped down her ankle and into her shoe.

  “Let me look at it.” Trevor helped her sit down on the floor, then knelt beside her to check the damage.

  Claire held the light steady on the wound. There was a good bit of blood, but the cut looked superficial. “I’ll be fine.”

  “We need to wash it clean. I’ve got a kit in the car.”

  “I’ll get it,” Dakota said, and left the room.

  “Watch your step!” Claire called out after her. “Now I feel like an idiot.”

  “Think you can you stand?”

  She nodded, and he helped her up. Claire turned back to see where the floor had broken through. She flashed her light into the dark hole.

  There was something inside, something pale in the shadows.

  She limped closer.

  “Careful!” Trevor warned, restraining her from the edge.

  “Trevor, look. There something down there.”

  “Give me that.”

  He took her cell phone examined the hole.

  “Looks like a piece of paper,” he said.

  “Can you reach it?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  He knelt and put his hand into the hole, reaching all the way until his shoulder was at the level of the floor. “Got it!” He came back up with the paper trapped precariously between two fingers. He turned the paper over.

  “It’s a photo,” he said.

  “Of what?”

  Something in Trevor’s expression changed.

  He’s afraid.

  “Trevor, what is it?” she asked. “What’s in the photo?”

  He looked back up at her, staring.

  He’s afraid of me.

  “Trevor? Are you all right?”

  He handed her the photo.

  She saw that it was an old black and white photo of a young girl, a teenager, with a man who might be the girl’s father, but it was too dark to see the details.

  “Give me the light.”

  He did, and she looked at the photo again, under the light. The picture was old and worn—not black and white, but sepia. She knew the girl’s face in an instant.

  At last I found you.

  “Claire,” Trevor said. “It looks like you.”

  37

  Dakota crossed carefully through the living room, stepping over the ratty old rug. The room was dark, but the front door was open and she could see the Hummer parked outside.

  Ethan was in car. She hadn’t wanted to leave him there alone, but he had told her to go. He was trying to be strong, foolishly so. Ethan thought he was going to die, and didn’t want Dakota to watch him suffer.

  You’re not going to die, Ethan.

  She’d gone inside to find help, but there was no help in the house. No phone, no supplies—

  Something moved outside.

  Dakota saw the figure of a man cross behind the Hummer. She heard no footsteps on the ground. The figure moved silently, like a shadow. He wore a loose, long jacket and a wide-brimmed hat. Dakota didn’t see his face.

  “Hey!” She darted to door, but lost sight of the man.

  He’s behind the car.

  Dakota stepped out onto the porch. “Hey, you! Mister! We need help. My boyfriend’s hurt and we need to call nine-one-one.”

  She jumped down from the porch, over the rickety steps, and onto the ground. She circled around to the other side of the car.

  No one was there.

  Where did he go?

  “Hey!”

  Dakota continued around the car, completing a circle, but didn’t see the man. She scanned the area. There was no one between her and the house, or between her and the road, or between her and the barn.

  She was alone outside.

  Dakota crouched down to look under the car, but saw no feet.

  Freaky.

  None of the car doors had opened, so the man couldn’t be inside.

  Or could he?

  She looked in through a window, and saw Ethan lying there alone across the back seats, eyes closed, moaning softly.

  He’s breathing.

  She moved forward and checked the front seats.

  Empty.

  Remembering her purpose, she went to the back of the car to retrieve the first aid kit. She opened the back door. Inside, everything was a jumble. Clothes, suitcases, trash. She moved things aside.

  It’s here somewhere.

  Ethan sat up in his seat.

  “You okay, Baby?” Dakota asked.

  He didn’t answer, but opened the car door and stepped outside.

  “Ethan?”

  She went around to check on him. He was walking away from her. Dakota saw that his back was bleeding badly, all down his legs and onto the ground, but he kept moving slowly, stiffly, with jerky steps.

  “Ethan, wait.”

  Dakota went after him. She reached him easily, and was about to grab his arm, but thought better of it.

  He’s hurt.

  She stepped in front of him.

  “Baby, where you going? You’re—”

  Ethan backhanded Dakota across her cheek.

  She heard it more than felt it, a loud explosion inside her head. Then her legs gave way and she was on the ground. The world went black and the stars came out and she was on her back in the dirt and looking up and the world throbbed around her.

  Dakota tried to speak but her lips were cracked and numb and all she could manage was to spit and cough. It tasted like blood and tears and betrayal.

  Ethan?

  She heard a shuffling sound, and raised her head to see her boyfriend shambling away, heading towards—what?

  The barn.

  Dakota struggled to her knees, and fell, and got back up. The world shifted around her until she held out her arms to steady it.

  Wait!

  She stumbled after him.

  Something was wrong. Terribly wrong. Ethan had never hit her before.

  He would never do that!

  He was gentle and kind and sensitive.

  The physical pain was nothing. She could bear it. It would pass. But what disturbed her most was—

  His eyes…

  That look Ethan had given her when he raised his arm and the blow came down.

  When he’d looked at her, his eyes glowed green.

  Claire gazed at the sepia photo of the young girl and the older man. They looked like a father and daughter. The man was in his forties or fifties. The girl was a young teen. The father looked proud, smiling. The daughter seemed camera-shy, nervous, with a tight smile and dead eyes.

  She was hiding something.

  Faking it.

  “It could be my mother,” she said.

  Trevor adjusted the angle of the photo. “The picture’s way too old.”

  He was right, of course. Claire was born in 1995. Her mother was seventeen at the time. But this picture wasn’t taken in the nineties, or even the eighties.

  Maybe the thirties or forties.

  The people looked like something out of the Great Depression. Like in that dust bowl movie, The Grapes of Wrath. Their faces were hard and lean. The girl wore a simple country dress and black shoes. The man wore a long dark jacket and a slouch hat. He almost looked like—

  “It’s that guy,” Trevor said. “That hitchhiker.”

  “The Highwayman.”

  “It’s the same dude!”

  “Eld
ritch Fowler. This is his house.”

  Trevor paced with excitement. The floor trembled under each step. “So the ghost we saw…is the guy who lived here…and he’s haunting this place…because…”

  “He’s not haunting the house,” Claire said. “He’s haunting the road.”

  “Why?”

  Claire pulled the news clipping from her pocket. “Eminent domain.”

  “What’s that?”

  “When the government wants to build a road, sometimes they have to buy up the land from whoever owns it.” She had read enough of the article to know the basics. “Fowler owned the land around here. The state needed the land for their new highway. But Fowler refused to sell. The case went to court. Fowler lost, but he refused to leave. So they sent cops here to evict him. There was a standoff.”

  “And they killed him?”

  “I think so. That’s what they say about ghosts, right? There’s always a crime. Some kind of…vengeance. Something that ties the spirit to the place they’re haunting.”

  “But Fowler was a murderer. He raped his daughters and killed his family.”

  Claire shook her head. “A cover story.”

  “You think they framed him?”

  “There was a standoff, and Fowler got shot. Then they made him look like the bad guy.”

  “They killed him for the road,” Trevor said. “And now…”

  “Blood Alley is his revenge.”

  Somewhere outside, Dakota screamed, “Ethan!”

  Trevor muttered, “Oh no,” and ran from the room.

  Claire followed, but couldn’t run as fast. Her leg hurt. She limped down the hall, through the living room, to the front door. She saw Dakota running to the barn. Trevor ran after her.

  Someone needs to stay with Ethan.

  She stepped gingerly down the porch stairs. A car door was open. When she reached it, she saw that Ethan was gone. There was blood on the ground. A trail of blood. It led away from the car, toward the barn.

  What’s going on?

  Claire was about to close the door when she noticed that Trevor had left the keys in the ignition.

  Bad idea.

  She grabbed the keys, then headed for the barn.

  Trevor reached the open barn door just behind Dakota, who hesitated at the edge of the darkness within.

  “Ethan?” she called out, pulling her long-sleeve sweater tight around her.