The Nightcrawler (34 page)

Scott put the car in reverse; he had to make sure it was over.
Bad to the Bone
still echoed around inside the car as Scott skidded to a stop just inches from Roger and Beth. Triumphant, he got out of the car and strutted around the car to witness the end of The Nightcrawler. He looked down at the kid sprawled on the gravel, then into the streaming eyes of the girl trying to shield the boy from any further attack.

“What’s your fucking problem, man?” Beth was near hysterics but this time her voice was clear.
 

Scott looked down at her, then at Roger, lying broken and bleeding in the dirt. His head was shaking back and forth, his mind unable to comprehend what he was seeing.

“No, it wasn’t him. I didn’t do that. It was the bum I hit.” Scott was terrified. Had he done this?
 

He pleaded with Beth, “Where did that bum go?”
 

“What are you talking about?” She was screaming at the top of her lungs. Hate flared out of her eyes burning into Scott Randall.

“What the hell is going on out there?” Beth and Scott both turned to see the silhouette of a man holding a rifle, standing in the doorway of Duke’s.

Beth resumed her desperate plea for help. Scott was frantically trying to explain about the bum, but nobody heard a word over Beth’s shrieks for help.
 

“You stay right there, fella,” the man in the doorway hollered in Scott’s direction.

Scott began to back up fearing that gun might just go off by accident, or maybe not by accident. He bumped into the open driver’s door of the Charger, and before the guy with the gun could utter, “Stop or I’ll shoot,” Thomas Andrew’s beautifully restored, 69 Charger was just a pair of disappearing taillights in the darkness of the desert.

Chapter Twenty-Eight
 

Tears streamed down Scott Randall’s face as he sped away from Duke’s. The night was now completely black. Only the instruments on the dash and the fanned out illumination of the headlights broke the darkness. There was no moon overhead, not a single star was visible across the desert sky. The Charger’s 440 droned a hum as it hurled the car at a speed that would be extremely hazardous in the light of day. In this blackness it was suicide.

Where did that kid come from? It was the bum; the bum was the one standing in the road. Why did that kid look familiar? Scott began to have a myriad of thoughts stream through his mind. Ashley, how was Ashley doing? Jesus Christ who cares about Ashley, she is probably fully recovered and back at home with her mother. Her mother, Ashley made living with her sound like a real summer vacation didn’t she. Who gives a shit, that kid back there looked like he might be dead. Christ of course he’s dead, the fucking car was going over a hundred when it hit him. No, when I hit him. The car didn’t do anything, I did it.
 

While the banter echoed around in his head, the speedometer registered a steady one-ten. In the glow of the instruments, his face unshaven, his hair mussed, his eyes pink, cheeks tear stained, Scott Randall could barely be mistaken for the man who walked out of C.S. and T.’s boardroom just days ago. His six-hundred dollar suit packed away in the trunk, he now wore shorts and a golf shirt, both wrinkled and smelling of two days wear.

He’s dead, he has to be dead. I have to go back. Maybe I can help. Shit, what could I do? Didn’t I do enough already? They’ll come looking for me. Even if they didn’t get the plate number, how many mint 69 Chargers are on the road? What are you talking about? Christ, you have to go back. It was an accident. Sure. That’s why you ran off. They will all say that. If it was an accident why run?

Some how, in the middle of the longest debate, possibly the only debate he had ever had with himself, Scott’s father’s advice popped right in.
Scottie my boy, not matter how bad you screw up, no matter how much trouble you think you will be in, you have to take responsibility for your actions. Sure trying to cover things up, or denying them most times seems like the easy way out, but every time you do that you add a chip of guilt into a little space in the back of your mind. Eventually the space will fill up and rupture, leaking evil that will corrupt everything you are.

“Sure, Dad, easy for you to say.” They are going to throw me in prison for this. That kid is dead, and that girl thinks I did it on purpose. The look in her eyes, there was hate in her eyes. I have never seen that look before, but it was easy to read. It was hate, hate as deep as the deepest abyss of all the oceans. She didn’t see me as a guy who had an accident, or even a man who made a mistake. She looked at me like I was evil.

The Charger crossed the solid double lines as the road curved slightly to the right. The Uniroyals squealed their protest as Scott corrected his position on the road. When the road straightened, the center line disappeared, again total blackness took over. The speed dipped below ninety-five through the bend in the road and leveled off there.
 

Reluctant, but not wanting to continue his nonsensical rationalizations for going back or running away, he turned up the radio. His hope was that music would steal his mind away, calm his thoughts so he could come to a logical decision. Static hissed out like an angry snake, Scott hit the seek button, a Walgreens commercial ended followed by the drawling voice of a woman. “We just got word of a hit and run out near Duke’s Restaurant, anyone in that area please yield to emergency vehicles. Now here’s an oldie from Blue Oyster Cult.”

Scott’s fingers began to tap the wheel. Tension began to ease, as if he had turned a valve, and the stress escaped his mind with each breath he exhaled. The desert didn’t look as dark and the future, less bleak. Of course he could return to the scene. He is a respected man of means. It was an accident; he didn’t intend to run down that kid. It was the bum he was aiming at.
 

He felt a chill as the night air rushed in, so he rolled up the driver’s side window,as the Cult continued.

As he reached across the front seat to close the passenger side window, the speedometer dropped to ninety. He fished for the knob to close the window, unable to find it. A brief glance at the passenger side door and his hand was on the knob. He turned the crank, the window began to rise in that uneven way that crank windows do.
 

When his attention returned to the road, the car had slowed to eighty-five. An odd figure to his left drew his gaze out over the desert. Double solid lines suddenly broke the monotony of the darkness and the hypnotic broken single line. At eighty-five mph, it was only seconds before the lines that warned of a bend in the road actually curved to the left.

The road curved harder than Scott was prepared for and he had to fight to keep the car on the pavement. His eyes concentrated on the white lines down the center of the pavement.

The speedometer now settled at seventy, the road straightened, the center lines disappeared and Scott’s concentration on what was directly in front of the car expanded past the radiance of the headlights. The figure he had seen moments before was closer; he squinted into the darkness to make sense of it. His distance perception, compromised by the blackness of the desert night. Before he could react, he was right on top of the strange figure.

Scott Randall had just enough time for his eyes to send the image of the figure to his brain before he reacted. The image was so out of place he should have known it wasn’t real. What he saw was a little girl, twelve maybe thirteen years old, standing in the middle of the road. She was wearing a winter coat, snow pants and ice skates. No way there was a girl alone out here at this time of night. Even if a twelve-year-old did find herself out here, she would have enough sense not to stand in the middle of the road. The most surreal of course was the clothes and skates. This was the Arizona desert in the middle of summer, triple digit temperatures made ice-skating impossible.

At seventy, Scott didn’t have time to reason those facts out. He didn’t have time to tell himself that little girl was just another hallucination and to just plow through it. At seventy the only thing he thought to do was turn the wheel hard to the right. The front tires instantly hit the gravel shoulder; the whole car shuddered at the sudden unevenness. Scott fought for control of the car as the drone of the engine was replaced by the thumping and groaning of the suspension. He caught a brief glimpse of the girl as he passed her. She was waving and smiling.

An abrupt quiet replaced the noise of the tires and the protesting springs and shocks. The only sound now was The Cult, coming from the radio. The ride was suddenly smoother than any fine luxury car on brand new pavement. Scott jammed both feet down on the brake pedal. There was no change. That’s when he realized the car was airborne. He looked down to the ground from the side window, straining hard, trying to see how far down it was. He saw nothing but black.

His hand gripped the wheel like a vise, he looked through the windshield, waiting for the lights to give him a sign that he was landing. He didn’t get any sign, the car crashed down on the hard pan of the desert floor with such force that the steering wheel spun like an airplane propeller. Both of his wrists broke instantly, his body thrust forward crushing his ribcage against the steering wheel. His spine sent electric shock waves across his shoulders and down his arms as his head was snapped back, then thrust forward splitting his chin on the wheel, shattering his jaw. The impact forced the floorboards up, driving his left knee into the steering column shattering his kneecap.

After the initial impact, Thomas Andrew’s car left the ground again, turned over twice and came to rest on its roof. Steam billowed from the engine compartment, the freewheeling rear tires continued to spin at high speed, the left front tire was gone and the right was bent up inside the fender at a ninety degree angle. The cloud of dust raised by the impact hovered over the car and the glow of the one remaining headlight made it look more like fog.

The car now at rest was no longer a prize piece of Detroit muscle, but a worthless pile of broken glass, broken plastic, and twisted metal. When the car crashed down on its roof, Scott was hurtled down onto the roof with a force that was nearly impossible to survive. On impact with the roof two of the ribs, which broke when he was thrown into the steering wheel, punctured his left lung. His left leg bent at an unnatural angle at the knee, his left foot quivered outside the car. The right side of his face, gashed open when he collided with the dome light, gleamed scarlet in the dim glow from the instrument panel.

“I told you this afternoon that you were driving too fast.”

Scott looked out the window from which his left leg protruded and saw him. He was sitting cross-legged, his elbows on his knees, his chin on his hand. Scott had no reply, his brain wanted to get up and kick the fucker’s ass all over the desert but his body would not co-operate. He tried to scream but nothing came from his mouth but a gurgling sound and a foamy mixture of blood and saliva.

The bum straightened up, tapped his knees, smiled his grin of gaps and black teeth and said, “Criss cross apple sauce.”

Scott’s respiratory rate increased with the added anxiety of Matt’s appearance. A wheezing, whistling sound now accompanied each exhale. Coughing came at increased intervals sending small eruptions of crimson ooze from his mouth.

“Gee Scottie, you don’t look very good at all. I was really hoping we could continue our discussion. You know, the one about all people adding value to society. But you know what, Scottie old boy. I don’t think you have the time.”
 

Blue Oyster Cult had been followed by an endless commercial break. Everything from tonight’s lineup on Fox, to Beater Boyz. Scott’s breathing had quickened, his entire body shivered violently. The commercials continued on the radio. The metallic taste of blood and the pungent smell of the foulness he spewed out with each coughing fit now combined with the odor of his own urine brought an urge to heave. His eyes, filled with tears, locked on the blurred figure sitting outside the car.

“Damn commercials, eh Scottie?” The bum reached into the car, Scott saw the exposed skin on his wrist. It looked slimy, like the figure back at the Best Western. Scott’s breathing stopped; his eyes bulged out in terror. The bum hit the seek button on the radio, Elton John filled the air with “A Funeral for a Friend”. “That’s much better, don’t you think?”
 

When the bum withdrew his arm from the car, Scott’s rapid breathing continued. He looked from the wrist to the face. It too was a shiny writhing mass.

“Well Scottie, time for me to go. Don’t get up, I’ll see myself out.” He cocked his now glistening, sickly hand into a gun, and made that clicking sound. The bum collapsed into a writhing mass of earthworms, no they were nightcrawlers. The worms flowed in a ghastly wave into the car. They moved with a collective purpose. The initial wave left him covered to the waist and he tried again to scream, bringing on a spasm of coughs, producing a flow of blood that didn’t end with the coughing. At the same time the electrical system in the car failed, the light was gone, and the radio fell silent. Complete darkness enveloped him and the worms. The desert was completely silent but for Scott Randall’s wheezing and a very faint oozing sound.

Chapter Twenty-Nine
 

When Roger regained consciousness, he was lying in a private hospital room in Phoenix. After Beth had gotten over the initial shock of the accident, she completely took charge of the scene. She instructed the man with the rifle to call an ambulance. When he came back, she got her cell phone and called Jack. She was very calm, fighting off the urge to cry at the sound of Jack’s voice. Jack told her he would take care of everything.