Ravenous Ghosts (2 page)

The trooper nodded.

Grant cleared his throat. "Who is your partner?"

"
Excuse me?"

"
The man sitting in your vehicle? Who is he?"

The trooper looked from Grant to the cruiser and back.
"That's Trooper Williams. Why do you ask? You know him?"

"
I...maybe. Tell me, does he also work at the gas station a few miles back?"

The trooper stared at him for a few moments then made Grant flinch when he burst out laughing.
"Hey!" he called back to his partner. "Hey, Danny. C'mere. This guy thinks he knows you. Says you work back at the gas station!"

Grant accepted his paperwork from the chuckling cop.
"It's all right really. I just thought I recognized him from somewhere, that's all. Can I go?"

"
Uh…you can pay your fine now or send a check to the address on the back. Hey, Danny. Something you're not telling me, bud?" the cop said, his voice brittle with mirth and Grant felt irrational fear surging through him as in the mirror he watched the other trooper step silently from the cruiser.

He
's not laughing
, Grant thought, his fingers clawing toward the keys dangling in the ignition. "Can I go?"

The question was drowned out by the cop
's guffaws as he motioned for his partner to hurry. "Cop by night, pump-jockey by day, huh, Danny?"

"
Sir, can I go?" Grant swallowed. The trooper from the car closed on them.

"
Just a second, I may need you as a witness if my boy here is moonlighting for Texaco," quipped the trooper, and he backed away to give his partner room to peer in through Grant's window.

Oh shit. He
's going to kill us both!
Grant thought with sudden, striking clarity as he felt the air shift between him and the window. The other trooper was still laughing.

"
Can I...?" Grant began as a uniform moved into view and a thick-fingered hand clamped down on the door. He started the ignition and hit the accelerator before the face could float down into the window. The other trooper yelled a half-hearted protest, his voice still infected with mirth. Grant drove away as fast as he could without breaking the speed limit again.

What the
hell
is going on?

In the mirror, he saw one of the troopers shaking his head and walking back to the cruiser. The leisurely pace suggested Grant was not going to be pursued, and for this he was thankful. Not because it might mean another ticket or time in jail, but because it would mean he
'd have to face the other one. The attendant who was dressed as a state trooper, or the trooper who'd pretended to be an attendant.

It made Grant
's head hurt to think about it.
I'm tired that's all. Been a long day.

Struggling to regulate his breathing, he tried the radio again. A shriek and he turned it off.

What's wrong with the radio?

What
's wrong with
me
?

Surely it was possible that exhaustion was creating this nightmare, that two cops were now laughing at him and back further a gas station attendant was still flipping through his magazine. Was this how it felt before someone had a nervous breakdown? Was paranoia a symptom of something far worse ahead?

"I'm not crazy," he said aloud and lowered his high beams as a truck coming against him crested the hill. "I'm just tired." He wondered if it would be safer just to check into a Motel 6 for the night rather than risk driving home when his mind had apparently already vetoed the idea.

With his gaze flicking from the road to the odometer to the rearview mirror, he almost sideswiped the eighteen-wheeler coming in the opposite direction. He swung the wheel to the right and gasped as in the blur of motion, a familiar face leered at him from the cab of the truck as it blared its horn and sped by in a cloud of dust.

Grant pulled the car to a halt and gripped the steering wheel with both hands, knuckles white and teeth clenched.

This time he
'd been wearing a red baseball hat and his hair had been long but there was no doubt in his mind who had been driving the truck. The face, though he'd only glimpsed it for a split-second, was mocking him, attempting to push him over the edge of reason. It was toying with him.

I
'm not crazy,
he
is
. The thought offered him little comfort. A story he'd read once where a man was stalked cross-country by a faceless truck-driver in a massive black rig came to mind and he chided himself for being ridiculous. Things like that never happened in real life, especially not in his carefully compartmentalized world.

He restarted the car and drove over the hill, eyes wide and searching for a payphone.
I'll call Francis. She'll tell me I'm being a fool
.

Careful to adhere to the speed limit, he continued on over the dark and endless highway, trying his best to ignore the staring white faces pressed against the windows of passing cars. Trying his best not to feel
watched
. He dared not meet their eyes as they swept past his little metal box for fear of what he might see in them. Murderous rage? Wicked glee? Sympathy? Hate? Accusation?

A pale blob in the distance crawled from the side of the road and stretched itself out as if to grab hold of his car. He whimpered and prepared to mow it down should it be so bold. But as the shape loomed nearer he saw it was nothing more sinister than a hitchhiker, thumb outstretched to snag a ride.

It did not occur to Grant to stop for the hitcher. He was, after all, a young man and, on this highway at least, young men had a habit of wearing the same faces. In the corner of his eye he saw the hitchhiker wave his arms but then he was past him, the man swallowed by darkness.

The relief faded a few miles later when he saw the same hitchhiker.

And then another one.

And another. And another, all sharing the exact same faces. Enraged to the point of violence, Grant swallowed his fear and stamped on the brakes, sending the car into a fishtail that left the front of the vehicle pointing back the way he came. He jumped from the car and stalked toward the hitchhiker, fists clenched, face scarlet.

"What do you want from me, you son-of-a-bitch?"

The hitchhiker said nothing and when Grant got close enough to take a swing at him he saw why.

It was a mannequin.

A very life-like mannequin with flesh-colored skin and a pose perfectly suited to a teenager brimming with attitude. The face stared indifferently at Grant as he frowned and looked it up and down.

Mannequins spread out along the road? What kind of insanity was this?

Yours
, his mind hissed and Grant began walking backwards to his car. "Funny."

He swung the car around and continued on, his eyes registering the mannequins dotted along the road, craning his head to look at them even as they turned to look at
him
.

Soon they went unnoticed as Grant
's eyes glazed over, the road growing darker, slipping beneath the car like a velvet carpet.

I have to get home.
He was nearing hysteria, could feel its hands prodding his back, testing his resilience before it pushed him headlong into the abyss.

I have to
. The realization that the attendant was now sitting next to him in the car and drooling fine silvery threads from a mouth that took up the entire lower half of his face gave him no pause.

I have...
The familiar face from the gas station had been a face he'd recognized at the conference, he knew now with sudden clarity. The face had even then been watching, staring, gloating, worn by a man in a dark suit and light blue silk tie, a man feigning interest in statistics and market reports.

The leader of the AmeriCom group.

He kept us late so I'd be on the road after dark. So they could get me.

In the periphery of his vision, the mannequins were whipping past the car as he shoved his foot down on the accelerator, waving their plastic arms at him, their grins wide and oozing darkness darker than the night, drooling ink and shrieking.

He snapped his head to the right and the attendant was gone.

Frances.

Payphone.

I need...

A weight was removed from his chest at the sight of another gas station ahead of him, another neon-lit oasis in the madness of the night. His relief faded quickly however when he saw the crowd milling aimlessly around the parking lot. There were hundreds of them, weaving and staggering, moving with no apparent purpose.

"
No," Grant breathed and a hush fell over the crowd as they turned as one to look at him. His heart stopped. "No."

All their faces were the same.

They began to move towards his car like B-movie zombies.

All their faces were familiar.

Their mouths stretched wide into black crescent moons that oozed black nothingness.

All their faces were
his
face.

"
No!" he roared and the rear wheels spun as he stamped on the gas.

A thousand figures wearing his likeness staggered closer. It was an obscene sight, an image that transcended nightmare.

He released the brake and the engine cut out with a fading whine.

"
What?" Panicked, he looked around the car as if the answer to his predicament lay somewhere nearby.

The crowd surrounded the vehicle. He was watching himself through a million other eyes. A million of
his
eyes.

His breathing ragged, he looked out through the windshield at them, waiting for whatever fate they had in store for him. But they simply stood in a crude circle around the car, watching. And that was much, much worse.

As darkness began to run, pour, ooze from their eyes, a terrible certainty came over Grant.

It no longer mattered if he made it home. There would be no one there he
'd want to see.

Frances…

He opened the door, the cool breeze turning the perspiration to ice on his skin.

His wife would not be the woman he
'd married.

The mannequins turned their heads to watch his approach, their grins widening.

Frances, forgive me
.

He entered their circle, their excitement palpable, coursing through the air around him like glass hornets.

Someone would be waiting at home...

I
'm sorry
.

But no one familiar.

THE BARBE
D LADY WANTS FOR NOTHING

I wrote this one for a competition and to this date I don't know if it was ever read. It's a simple tale and the first of my jaunts into comic book territory. I think the whole story has a very pulpish feel to it, as do many of my stories—a trait that is fast becoming a much-derided attribute in certain circles. But what the hell, I was weaned on those old classics and find no reason to defend my ongoing love affair with them.

"The hell kind of name is that for a bookstore?"

I shook my head, only because I didn
't want to get into an argument with Kane about the proprietor's choice of title. He was the kind of guy that loved to lose his temper because it served as a distraction, kept him from looking too closely at the shambles his life had become.

Although I never told him as much, I could relate. In fact, I didn
't know anyone who couldn't. The world had gone to hell.

Rain ran down my neck in icy streams while Kane huffed and snorted his derision up at the green neon gorgon leering at us from the sign. I nudged him into moving.
"C'mon, he'll be closing soon."

Above our heads, the glowing green letters read:
'THE BARBED LADY WANTS FOR NOTHING'

I agreed with Kane that it was an odd name for a store but not one that specialized in rare and out-of-print science fiction novels. I remembered a time when this place had been my utopia.

The small golden bell above the door announced our arrival to the only ears inside the bookshop, those of the venerable Arthur Glimmsbury.

"
Egads, a customer. No wait, two customers! Is it Christmas already?" he quipped as we both shuddered off the rain and glided toward him.

He stood behind a waist-high mahogany counter, large thick fingers splayed out atop the surface like claws, his nails polished crimson. He grinned from ear to ear, allowing us to see our harried reflections in his silver teeth. Tufts of hair curled up from his peeling pate like frozen smoke, held in place by some lubricant of which we were blissfully unfamiliar.

Kane grunted and nudged me forward. I sighed. I had known Arthur for years and though the name had changed many times since my childhood, the bookstore had always been here, always smelling of dust and age and mildewing secrets. A quaint outpost untouched by the barreling, destructive train of time.