Tales of Chills and Thrills: The Mystery Thriller Horror Box Set (7 Mystery Thriller Horror Novels) (63 page)

Samuel smiled and raised his glass
while the other poker players clinked theirs, throwing their chins skyward to
help ease the liquid down their throats.

The hand finished with Samuel losing
again. He over-bet the last round in hopes of losing and not cashing out his
chips. The self-sabotage worked in his favor, allowing him to rise from the
table with an empty whiskey glass as well as an empty wallet.

“Fellas,” he said with an exaggerated
bow. “Unfortunately, I will see all of you assholes at the office on Monday.”

Another round of laughter filled the
room.

“Boss,” he said, raising a hand in the
air, “you do have the best office parties. I’ll give you that.”

With a few more salutations and even
more good-natured insults, Samuel searched through the coatrack until he found
his black leather. He pushed a curtain aside and looked out at the new round of
snow covering his car, making it look like a lump in a bowl of poorly mashed
potatoes. Samuel fished through his pockets until he felt his car keys and
fisted them in one hand. With a final glance, he looked back at the table to
wave, but the poker game had already moved on after his departure. Samuel
opened the door and stepped into the chilly, swirling snow. He pulled the
collar of his coat tight around his neck and trudged to the driver’s side
door.

Samuel’s fingers lumbered around the
keyhole, becoming numb in the process. He cursed at the cold air gnawing at him
and then swore at the battery in his keys, which were no longer able to open
the locks with the magic of infrared rays. He used the tip of the key to scrape
the ice crystals from the lock and managed to push it inside. The tumbler
surrendered with a click. Samuel shoved his frozen fingers underneath the
handle and lifted, dispensing the foggy haze from the dome light into the
frigid air. He sighed, blowing plumes of mist before pouring himself into the
driver’s seat. Samuel shut the door and leaned back on the headrest. The world
ramped up on a conveyor belt that started turning everything in a clockwise
motion. He opened his eyes and focused on the steering wheel until the car
stopped spinning.

“The cold air,” he said.

Samuel placed the key in the ignition,
and the car turned over, coughing and wheezing with mechanical influenza. The
radio came alive, and he thrust a finger at the presets. Some nameless vanilla
hard-rock song came on, which made Samuel’s churning stomach even worse. He
punched the power button with his right hand while hitting the power window
button with his left. The subzero air poured into the car. Samuel felt it burn
his lungs before putting the window back up.

He gunned the gas pedal several times
and released the parking brake. Samuel thought of Kim, but their conversation
was an ink blot, dark and formless. He decided she would want him home on a
night like this, where he could spoon with her, both of them staying warm. That
thought brought a smile to his face.

I can do this. Been drinking coffee
all night long.

“You fucking dog,” he said to the
empty car. “You have, but you’ve been dropping whiskey with it.”

Samuel laughed at his own dishonesty
before putting the car into drive. He had already pulled from the curb before
he realized he hadn’t cleared the snow. The hard, white precipitation covered
his windows and protected him from the reality on the other side. Samuel put
the windshield wipers into motion. The motor hummed and then rattled, but the
wipers remained buried in the snow piled at the base of the windshield.

“Dammit.”

He reached under the seat for his
trusty ice scraper and came up with the broken bottom half of it. Samuel tossed
it into the back seat and opened the door. The wind tore at his face and
whipped his hair into maniacal formations. Samuel pulled his coat sleeve over
his hand and used his arm to clear as much of the snow from the windshield as
possible. With a round porthole cleared, he stepped back into the car and set
the defrost fan to the high setting.

Samuel’s bladder decided he did
not have time to wait for the defroster to clear the window. Departure, and
urination, was imminent. He bent low and craned his neck to look through the
hole he had scraped. It wasn’t much, but Samuel thought he could navigate the
car for the ten-minute drive to his house. He would stay under the limit, and
he would stay alive.

Samuel navigated by alternately
sticking his head outside the driver’s side window and then looking
through the porthole, which allowed him to stay on the road. He successfully
avoided parked cars, sidewalks, and garbage cans awaiting pickup.

The first car passed with its horn
blaring and then fading into the distance like a locomotive in an old western
film. He thought he may have heard the driver yelling, but he couldn’t be sure.
Samuel pulled the vehicle hard to the right, assuming he had drifted into the
oncoming lane.

“Couple more turns and I’m home,” he
said to no one.

He followed the plows and salt trucks
through Detroit’s wealthier suburbs as they made their rounds, the last ones
before the shift change and a watery cup of warm coffee back at the garage.
Samuel concentrated on the blinking lights while the salt pummeled the front
end of his car like a localized hailstorm. When the truck turned right toward
city hall and the truck garage behind it, Samuel remained on the road. He
looked into his rearview mirror and saw black, the narrow secondary streets not
equipped with the streetlights like the main thoroughfares. The cold and the
darkness closed in, and Samuel felt the need to leave his window all the way
down. The bitter, winter air seeped in like a shot of insulin to a diabetic in
shock. He sat up straight and blinked. Samuel looked at the street sign and
then recalibrated his bearings, figuring he was only three or four miles from
his house. In one more mile, he would take a right onto Route 24 for the
one-mile stretch that would dump him at the foot of the development. The snow
relented, but the chill did not.

As Samuel turned onto the local
highway, he saw headlights approaching, the first since he left the party. He
glanced down at the gauges and felt for the seatbelt strap, hoping to avoid
getting pulled over and then having a seatbelt fine on top of it.

In an instant, the headlights doubled
from two to four. He saw the first set snap out into his lane and then wink as
the car slid sideways, fishtailing on the slick roadway. The driver regained
control and pulled the vehicle back into his own lane. But it sent
the second set of headlights into a spin of its own and into a collision course
with his car. Samuel became so enamored with the scene, he didn’t notice he let
his vehicle drift.

Samuel’s vehicle struck the oncoming
car, creating an impact that crumpled the other car’s hood, sending it into an
upside-down V, like a cheap accordion. He felt the brunt of the impact, which
threw him toward the passenger side and then the seatbelt snapped him back. He
felt his car spin and strike three more times, unsure what he was hitting. The
sound of crunching metal made him wince. All he wanted was for the car to stop
moving, even if it meant slamming straight into a tractor-trailer. Samuel
waited and waited, the seconds feeling like lifetimes. When it finally stopped,
he was facing the opposite direction on the highway, his passenger side
door stuck to the guardrail.

The silence lasted for a few seconds.
His ears rang and the adrenaline spiked his bloodstream. Samuel felt the warm,
sticky blood flowing into his left ear, and he winced. He did a mental check
and realized he was alive and without serious injury. The euphoria of that
revelation lasted until he looked out the other side of the car at the
discarded mess of steel balled up next to the opposite guardrail.

Samuel climbed from his car and limped
over the frozen roadway toward the other vehicle. He thought he remembered two
sets of headlights, but either that vehicle fled or the whiskey had created the
extra set of lights. He smelled gasoline and burning rubber, while drops of
sizzling liquid pooled in the roadside ice. He looked both ways and saw nothing
but the dead of winter. Somewhere beyond his vision, a distant siren blared.

A groan from inside the mangled metal
brought his attention back. Samuel approached, unsure where the front of the
vehicle could be. He saw twisted steel, dark plastic and scraps of humanity
thrown together inside the death cage. He walked toward the car and stepped
over a hockey stick, followed by a book. The closer he came, the more personal
belongings he stepped over.

The car’s dinging door alarm was on
but struggling to maintain sound, as if it was covered in thick foam. Samuel
saw the steering wheel contorted like a pretzel as he looked inside the
gaping wound where the windshield used to be. He saw the small, delicate frame
of a young woman, the seatbelt tight against her throat. Jet-black hair covered
her face. Samuel shoved his face inside and heard the ragged, desperate sound
of her lungs. He looked at her painted fingernails wrapped around the steering
wheel. The smell of exhaust mingled with blood made him queasy.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

As soon as he spoke the words, he felt
like a fool. He could not bear to ask the question he really wanted to ask.

“I’ll get help.”

He spun and remembered the Italian
restaurant fifty yards up the highway. It was probably getting close to closing
time, but an old phone booth stuck out near the guardrail like a beacon of
hope. Samuel had just spun toward it when he felt the warm, weak grip on his
hand. He jumped and let out a muffled cry.

The driver’s hand held his. He could
feel her erratic pulse, see shallow breathing, but he could not
move. The grip squeezed his hand as if to say all was forgiven, accidents
happen. Samuel felt the encompassing love, and he knelt low to see inside the
remains of the car. He used his free hand to reach in and gently push the hair
away from Mara’s face.

***

The memory advanced like a fluttering
reel of film until Samuel sat at a glass pane, holding a corded phone to his
ear.

Kim came into the visitation room and
looked at him. She had not been able to apply her morning make-up over red,
puffy eyes. Her face resembled the photograph hanging above the dresser, the
one of her and Samuel in college. She loved that picture and the wispy memories
of youth it represented. They both remembered the night that photograph was
taken and always joked that Kim’s hold on her car keys was as strong as the one
she had on Samuel’s heart.

“Kim, I thought I was fine.”

“There’s no point. After what we’ve
been through, after what you’ve been through, I can’t . . .” Kim trailed off,
fumbling through the conversation.

“I’m so sorry. I’m going to make this
right,” he said.

Kim sat, her bottom lip trembling.

“The kids?”

“My mother’s,” she said.

“Now what?”

“Now you figure out how you’re going
to live with this, Samuel. Now you have to ask God, or whatever demonic force
that commands you, for forgiveness and hope he doesn’t strike you down.”

“What should I do about—”

“I don’t give a fuck, Samuel. You do
whatever it is you need to do.”

He could hear the pain in her voice.

“I’ll deal with it.”

Kim laughed. “I’m sure you will.”

***

Samuel opened his eyes, returning to the
cave where Mara lay at the mercy of the reversion.

“I’m so sorry.”

Mara squeezed Samuel’s hand just as she
had on that cold night. She smiled, and the worry lines in her face loosened.

“I can’t believe that all this time you,
you knew that . . .” Samuel shook his head, tears clouding his vision. “I’m the
reason you’re here, stuck in this prison.”

“Come closer,” Mara whispered. Her eyes
closed, and the life drained from her voice.

Samuel moved closer and bent down, taking
her hand in both of his.

“I let you see what I thought you needed
to see while you were here.”

He nodded, setting at least some of his
guilt free. “Mara, I . . . I can’t believe I did that to you, and—”

She squeezed his hand again and shook her
head as much as possible. “Life did that to me, not you.”

Samuel started to speak but Mara squeezed
his hand, stopping him.

“There isn’t much time. Please listen,”
she said.

Samuel dropped his head and waited for
her to continue.

“I didn’t see your face at the scene. I
passed before you came over to the wreck. But when you arrived in this place, I
argued with Kole.”

A memory sparked in Samuel’s head. He
remembered seeing the disagreement at a distance.

“We didn’t so much argue about you,
although he claimed you were someone from his past. I guess you could have
passed through both of our lives, but I don’t really know. I told him you were
here for me, for him, for all of us. I explained you had a purpose and a
mission to release us from this.”

“But he didn’t agree. Major didn’t agree
either, did he?” Samuel asked.

She shook her head.

“They could have been here for other
reasons,” she said, a wet cough thundering through her chest. “But I knew why
you were here and what that meant for me.”

“What does it mean for me?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I wish I could say, but I
can’t. You’ll have to figure that out.”

Samuel looked up. Their bodies appeared
to float in pure darkness. The reversion had begun to peck at their feet.
Samuel could feel the power trying to dissolve the molecules in his body. The
cave and the rest of the dead locality attached to it were gone, swallowed and
consumed by the inevitable force of the reversion.