HORROR THRILLERS-A Box Set of Horror Novels (19 page)

He had left
Louisiana and was crossing Texas. It was a dusty, rugged landscape.
He compared it to the surface of the moon. The towns were sparse and
far between. It was September, but the air felt as super-heated as a
cast iron frying pan over high flame. Ahead of him a shimmering on
the tarmac made it seem there were wide puddles of gray-blue water.
Just the sight of those mirages made him cooler. He thirsted,
lifting a hand to his brow to shield the sun’s rays. He spied
a café-grocery-gas station ahead and began to walk faster.
The food Marva had packed for him was long gone. He had eaten
nothing the day before and had drunk nothing since morning when he
found a hand-pump at a farmer’s cattle tank.

The place was called
Ed’s Gas Station and Café. Nick burst through the glass
door, out of breath and sweating. He saw a man behind a lunch
counter, wiping it with a wet cloth.

“
Howdy,
stranger. Take a load off.” The man indicated the swivel
stools at the counter.

Nick slumped onto a
stool and said, “Can I have a glass of water?”

“
Sure thing.”
The man dropped the wash rag into a sink of sudsy water. He served
Nick a tall glass of water with ice. “Hot out there!”

“
It is that
all right.” Nick emptied the glass, handed it over and the man
refilled it.

“
I’ll
take a hamburger and fries and a vanilla milkshake, if you have it,”
Nick said, wiping water droplets from his mouth.

While the man cooked
the meal at the grill behind the counter, he kept up a running
monologue. There was no one else in the small establishment and it
seemed the cook was happy to see another human soul.

“
Walking?
Hitchhiking?” he asked. When Nick nodded, he said, “Well,
stranger, there’s a lot of people doing that these days, just
taking to the roads on foot. It’s a long haul across Texas,
though, and I think of my place as an oasis in the desert.”

“
I’d
call it that, too,” Nick agreed.

“
Where you
from?”

Nick could have said
I’m from the right hand of God, or from the dark and terrifying
void, or I’m from England or Charlotte, North Carolina. He
said instead, “Back east.”

“
That’s
a long walk. Where you going?”

Nick could not say.
“I don’t know for sure.”

“
I see, one of
those. Some come in here heading for Arizona, others mean to trek
all the way to California. But you’re leaving your options
open, I take it?”

“
That’s
right.” A plate was set before Nick and his mouth filled with
saliva before he could take a bite of the hamburger. It was a full
three inches tall, stacked with a big burger patty, lettuce, tomato,
the works. He could hardly get it into his mouth. He thought he
might faint just from the good smell of it.

While he ate, Ed
told him about how he’d come to be in this place. He, too, had
come here from somewhere else. “Peoria, Illinois,” he
said, “land of Lincoln.

“
Found this
café and gas station on a road trip west. It was gonna close,
due to not enough business, and I picked it up for a song. I made
payments on it up until two years ago, when I paid the whole place
off. It don’t get much business, that’s for sure, but I
like the peacefulness of it. I like the sunlight streaming down
ninety-nine days out of a hundred. I even like the dust storms.
They come out of the north, kicking up sand and rolling tumble weeds,
smacking everything before it, layering it all with sand until it
looks like Egypt. Or what I think Egypt might look like.” He
grinned and balled the wash rag into his fist.

Nick finished up his
meal, slurped the last of the frosty milkshake, and sat back, his
hands still on the counter. “So you live here all alone?”

“
I do.
Couldn’t find a woman would wait tables here, much less marry
an old coot like me. But that’s all right. Like I said, I like
the peace and quiet. A woman now, woman’s not going to be
peaceable and keep her mouth shut, woman wants to go shopping, see a
movie at the theater sometimes, wants high heel shoes and cars with
leather seats. I can’t promise none of that. Therefore, they
want none of me.”

Nick let him talk,
enjoying the company. Ed advised him on the road ahead and made up a
package of beef jerky, potato chips, and a water thermos for his
trip. For a bit Nick thought about staying put, asking for a little
work from Ed, but something niggled at his brain, urging him to walk
on. It wasn’t that he felt Angelique at his back. But he did
feel her and he knew she was coming in search of him. She couldn’t
do otherwise. She felt she had too much invested and he’d
betrayed her by leaving. She felt he owed her his life, and in a way
he did, this life, but not enough to stay at her side while she
murdered and marauded and sinned like the demon she was, with him as
her silent witness. Then there was what she'd done to Mary, his poor
Mary, lying staked and naked in the moonlight, half out of her
mind...

“
I want to
thank you, Ed, you’re a lifesaver.” Nick held out his
hand to shake.

“
Stop in on
your way back one day,” Ed said. “I need all the business
I can get.” He smiled, showing yellowing teeth and the tip of
a pink tongue.

When Nick left the
café, it was afternoon. He wouldn’t get far before
night covered the land and snakes came out to cool themselves on the
highway in the light of the stars. Nick welcomed the twilight that
lowered the roasting temperature by thirty degrees so the sweat dried
between his shoulders. Ahead he could see the silhouettes of
mountains and not a light anywhere on the land stretching ahead. It
was desolate, empty, bare of green vegetation. Pebbles littered the
rust red chalky dirt along the highway and shallow ditches ran next
to telephone poles stretching out across the lowering darkness.

Nick walked on,
breathing in the cooled air, going over his conversation with Ed. It
really was a peaceful part of the country. Uninhabited except by
reptile, wolf, coyote, and hawk. Inhospitable to man, but a welcome
retreat for the lower beasts and angels on the run…

Angelique cursed God
with every step she took. On her own, on the road, she had to hide
in ditches and behind tall grass or trees anytime a car came past.
She felt she was on the right path, though, to find Nisroc. It
wasn’t anything definable, nothing she could see or touch. Just
a feeling that pulled her like an invisible rope tied round her
waist, tugging her forward, heading west.

She couldn’t
hitchhike. She couldn’t take public transportation. Not a
child alone. And she hadn’t time to find and train an adult to
stand in as a parent. This time she was on her own for real. She
didn't like it, not at all. She hated it.

She remembered the
last time she had been so alone. The days when she hid in the
mountainside cave on the island after Columbus came. Her own mind her
only company. She had nearly gone mad before she made contact with
the Spaniards. Her mind had teetered on the edge of madness with her
thoughts going in and out of a conscious state and dreaming. Reality
glittered like a mirage so that she felt she could reach out and
touch it, shattering the illusion for all time, leaving her like the
walking dead, senseless, insane.

“
You sorry
example of godhood,” she muttered, talking to a god she knew
might not be listening. “Throw me out, thwart my tries to bring
more of my kind to earth, and now turn Nisroc against me. I know
it’s Your doing, You have a hand in it someway. He never would
have turned his back on me if he hadn’t started changing. And
You made him change, didn’t You? You’re the one
responsible for this.”

She gnawed the
inside of her cheek and wiped sweat from her brow. The road was
paved, but nearly empty. Someone drove by only every now and then.
Deep woods lined both sides of the road and the sun overhead seemed
to follow the road from east to west, watching over the little shadow
below.

She had not eaten
all day. The night before she had caught a mouse that tried to sneak
up on her prone body where she slept next to a log in the woods. She
ate the rodent, fur and all, bones, guts, and blood. She was not
particular about what she ate, only that she gave the body fuel to
keep going. Nothing, no matter how disgusting, could turn her stomach
and make her retch. She had that much control over the body ever
since she’d taken it.

She needed water
more than food. She couldn’t control the specific needs the
human body demanded, though she could go longer than any human
without these necessities. Still, she needed water. Food. Without
those, eventually she would wither and die just like everyone else.

The woods were
thinning and ahead she could see pastures and farmland. Maybe she’d
find a house, sneak close enough to pump some water. Or a lake, a
river crossing…a puddle. She’d drink anything at this
point, her mouth so dry her tongue kept sticking to the roof of her
mouth.

Toward evening, once
out in the open, land lying straight and flat ahead of her, she saw
thunderclouds approaching. The air, full of new damp, cooled her hot
skin. She could feel beads of sweat dry and watched as spots of
sweat evaporated on her arms leaving circles lighter than her flesh,
sweat freckles, she thought. She sat down next to the highway and
waited for rain.

When it came it was
a gully-washer. Water fell like a silver curtain and Angelique
leaned back her head and lapped at the falling water like a cat.
Water covered her face, soaked her in a minute, and puddled in her
little black shoes.

She walked on, the
near darkness and the rain hiding her from people in the few and far
between farm houses. Around midnight she crept into an open barn and
climbed into the hay loft. She fell asleep with both hands under the
side of her head as a pillow.

When morning came, a
breaking dawn cool and wet, rays of light spreading across the near
fields, Angelique woke to the sound of someone in the barn. She
crawled to the ladder and peeked down. A boy around her age drew a
hand wagon in his wake and carried a pitchfork. He dropped the
wagon’s handle to the ground with a bang when he got to a hay
bale and began to fork over hay into the conveyance.

“
You,”
Angelique called softly. “Hey you.”

The boy jerked and
hay fell off the pitchfork. He glanced up. His eyes were the same
deep, dark brown color as his shaggy, long hair. Those dark pools
were filled with fear until he saw it was just a girl.

“
What’re
you doing up there?” He couldn’t keep the slight tinge of
fear out of his voice.

She swung to the
ladder rungs and came down. She threw back her head. “I need
some food. Got any?”

He stood watching
her. “Where’s your folks?” He looked up the ladder
as if he thought they were in the loft yet.

“
Got none.
But I bet you do. Can you get me something to eat without them
knowing? I can’t let grown-ups know I’m alone.”

He studied her, the
tangled hair, the wet and mud-streaked dress, the shoes all scuffed
and worn. He seemed to make a silent decision. “I guess I
could,” he said.

She watched him
leave the barn. He looked back at her twice, a frown showing beneath
the hair falling forward over his eyes. If he told his parents,
she’d see them coming and take the back exit.

But he proved to be
a good boy.

Angelique soon had a
biscuit in one fist and a thick slab of baked ham in the other. Ham
juice ran down between her fingers. She wolfed the food like a
starving animal. This caused the boy to step back. “Gosh,”
he said.

“
I told you I
was hungry. Now I’m going to sneak out of here. Your folks
still in the house?”

He nodded.

“
You won’t
tell?”

He shook his head.

“
Well, just in
case you change your mind, here…” She reached out
touching his cheek just before he could snap his head away. He stood
frozen, her hand on his face, his eyes glazing over. He swayed on
his feet and she caught his arm to keep him from tumbling over.

“
There,”
she said, satisfied. She took a moment to contemplate the idea that
came to her. If only she had been a real girl, instead of an entity
controlling a child’s body, she could have stayed a while and
played with the boy. Played a child’s game—hide and seek
maybe. Played as if she did not know the turning of the world and the
machinations that kept it on an even axis.