His body had been in the trunk some hours already when she began to feel him next to her in the cab as well. She couldn’t see him at first, could only sense he was there. But soon the hair on her right arm stood up and the air beside her began to shimmer. Before she began to see him fully, she whipped her gaze away.
She looked straight ahead. She didn’t know how long she drove, staring at what she could see of the desert road in the headlights, desperately resisting a desire to glance over. Several miles at least. Maybe a dozen. Long enough that she had almost convinced herself she could keep it up for the whole drive, even though she wasn’t exactly sure where she was driving.
“Hello, Lamb,” his voice said. It was faint, distant, but it was his voice.
She didn’t say anything, just kept driving.
“Didn’t your mama teach you to speak when you’re spoken to?” the voice asked, after a time. There was a smell in the cab now, like something burnt. Wasn’t burnt what you smelled when you were having a stroke? He’d hit her hard enough in the head before she killed him that a stroke or a brain bleed was possible. That sounded much better than the alternative.
“You think I’m not really here,” he said.
“No,” she countered. “I know you’re not really here.”
“If that’s true,” he said, and she could hear a smile coloring his voice, “what harm can it possibly do to turn and look at me?”
Tremendous harm, she was sure. She did not answer, just kept her eyes focused on the road. Her fingers, she realized, were white from gripping the steering wheel. She tried to relax them.
“You’re not there,” she said.
“That’d be easier, wouldn’t it? Safer too. For one of us, anyway.”
She heard the plastic of the seat creak as he stretched, and then she felt him slide closer to her, and closer still, until he was right beside her, mere inches away from her ear. She could feel his cold breath brush the side of her throat. You’re not feeling anything, she reminded herself. He isn’t there. But she felt his breath anyway.
Finally he spoke. “Sooner or later you’re going to have to look over,” he said.
“No,” she said. “I won’t.”
For a long time they drove on in silence.
Or rather she drove on in silence. She was, she reminded herself, alone.
Beside her, he chuckled, as if he could hear her thoughts. Perhaps he could.
There was nothing on this road, next to nothing. That was why she’d chosen it. It was the kind of road where you could pull off on the shoulder, drag a body a few dozen feet away, and it would likely never be found.
She was in the middle of nowhere, two-lane highway between Las Vegas and Tucumcari. High desert, dry scrub. One or two turnoffs to ranches or ruins or farms—hard to say which since whatever they led to was too far away to be seen now in the dark. She’d passed a collapsing and long-abandoned gas station as well, and, a little before that, a tiny church, weather-beaten and isolated—the kind of place left unlocked for travelers who wanted to stop to pray, checked on by a caretaker maybe once a month, if that. Maybe she could turn around and go back and—
“Enter as many churches as you please. I’ll still be waiting when you come back out,” he said.
And then, after a moment of silence, “Or maybe I’ll follow you in.”
How long had she been driving? Shouldn’t she have reached Tucumcari by now? The muscles in her neck were frozen from holding her head fixed straight ahead. Her fingers had grown stiff again, numb. She unclenched one hand from the wheel and shook it out. Then she placed it back on the wheel, unclenched the other, and shook that one out as well.
Surely she should have reached Tucumcari well before now, no? Was he doing something to the car? To her? Were they even still on a real road at all?
All this while, he stayed motionless. There beside her, uncomfortably close, his breath softly but insistently licking at her neck.
It was perhaps some time later, or perhaps no time at all. She was trying to pay attention to the mile markers, but something always happened to cause her to lose track. She was exhausted. Whatever adrenaline had been in her had run out and left her depleted. She probably shouldn’t have been driving.
“Why did you kill me?” he asked.
“You had it coming,” she said.
He chuckled. “I guess I did at that.”
“And you tried to kill me first.”
“Is that what you thought I was doing?” His voice was incredulous, or mimed incredulity. “I wasn’t trying to kill you. I was trying to make you immortal.”
“Bullshit.”
But maybe he had been deluded enough to think that. The way he had gone about killing her had been strange. For instance, there was the pattern he had inflicted on the dust, scraping it in with the heel of his boot. Or the fact that he had tied her up and gagged her and placed her in the pattern’s center. Before that, he had struck her on the side of the head with what she had thought at first was a random rock he had groped up from the ground. Later, once she was conscious again and watching him complete the pattern around her, she could see—because he had dropped it right there beside her—that it was a polished and carefully shaped piece of stone, a series of lines scratched into it that recalled the pattern he had scraped into the ground.
She heard his hand tapping softly on the dashboard, like he used to do sometimes back when he was still alive. She almost looked over, stopped just in time.
“I was binding the two of us together,” he said. “Trying to ensure neither of us would ever die. That’s how much I loved you.”
“Bullshit,” she said again. But she was worried he really believed it.
When he tried to kill her, she hadn’t been able to see everything he was doing because of the way part of her face was pressed to the ground. But when he came into her field of vision she saw him checking the lines of the pattern, correcting a few. He was muttering, chanting, as he did so. All the while, she was working desperately and as unobtrusively as possible on the knots that bound her hands together, her fingers and wrists desperately struggling while the rest of her tried to remain still. He had not tied her wrists properly—probably he hadn’t expected her to revive quickly enough for it to make a difference. For a while nothing happened, and then a knot loosened a little and she worked the loop around her wrist a little bigger. She wriggled and nearly dislocated her thumb and suddenly one hand was free. But she held it behind her, near the rope, like it was still bound. She waited.
“Maybe I’m not really dead after all,” he said to her, now, in the present, in the car. “Maybe you’re the dead one.”
She started to turn her head but stopped herself just in time.
He laughed. “Almost had you that time, darling,” he said.
She blinked. The car had begun to drift. She pulled it straight again. She was having a hard time focusing. She shook her head, felt her neck muscles spasm. She took short breaths and tried to relax until, finally, the spasms subsided, leaving a dull ache in their place.
How had the rest of it gone? She had been lying there, eyes half lidded, feigning unconsciousness. The rock he had struck her with was right in front of her. She might be able to scoop it up and hit him if everything worked out just exactly right. But when had anything ever worked out just exactly right?
Just within her range of vision, still muttering, chanting, he stripped his shirt off over his head and discarded it somewhere out of sight. She could see now the handle of the pistol, jutting up just over his waistband. He came a little closer, careful not to disrupt the lines he had drawn, and bent down and reached out to caress her head. She almost grabbed the rock then, but by the time it occurred to her to do so he was already straightening up again, his hand red with blood. Her blood. He smeared it in a wavery line across his bare chest, and then he stepped outside of her range of vision again. When, later, he stepped back in, he was holding a boning knife.
There was a noise coming from somewhere. She saw now she had drifted off the road and onto the shoulder. The noise was the sound of scrub and dry grass whipping the side of the chassis. She jerked the steering wheel, and for a long moment the back wheels fishtailed in the loose dirt, and then they caught hard and almost carried the car over the road and off the other side. She jerked the wheel again, more deftly this time, and suddenly she was firmly on the road again, and in the correct lane too.
“Do you want me to drive?” asked the voice from beside her.
She tried to speak but nothing came out. She shook her head.
“Why postpone the inevitable?” he asked.
Why indeed? Because maybe it wasn’t inevitable. It had seemed inevitable when, a few hours before, he had leaned over and grabbed her head by the hair and lifted it, ready to do something with the knife. But she hadn’t given up. Instead, her loose hand had flashed out and grabbed the pistol in his waistband. She meant just to pull it out and threaten him with it, get him to back away and drop the knife, but things hadn’t worked out that way. As soon as her hand closed around it, the gun discharged, bullet burrowing high into his thigh and straight through his femoral artery. He blanched and stumbled back, the knife clattering from his hand. He pressed his hands to the wound, trying to stanch the bleeding. And then, muttering, he sat awkwardly down, slowly tipped over, and lapsed into unconsciousness. His blood was everywhere and began to flow along the lines of the pattern. But well before the pattern was replete, he was dead.
“You weren’t thinking,” his voice said.
“No?”
“You should have left my body and fled. Or called the police. Fleeing and hiding the body makes you look guilty. Are you guilty?”
She didn’t answer. The night outside seemed exactly as dark as it had been when she first started driving. Time wasn’t moving. She was getting nowhere.
“Are you a ghost?” she asked.
She heard from beside her a hissing sound. It took her a moment to decide that what she was hearing must be laughter. “What else?” he finally managed to say. “What else would I possibly be?”
Which, she realized, both was and wasn’t an answer.
Her head started to fall. She caught herself. She shook it clear, felt her neck threaten to spasm again.
“Won’t be long now, Lamb,” he said. “You’re almost there.”
She kept nearly drifting off, catching herself just in time. The car had slowed, was barely moving at all. When she realized this, she sped up.
“There’s a car behind you,” he said.
She looked in the rearview mirror. There was nothing there.
“Where?” she said. “I don’t see anything.”
“Look again,” he said. And this time, when she did, she saw the headlights.
“So what?” she said.
“It might be a police car.”
She looked again, longer this time. Was it a police car? All she could see was headlights. How could she tell from headlights? How could he?
“Way out here?” she said. “Why?”
She heard him shrug next to her. How can I hear a shrug? she wondered.
“Probably he’s wondering what you’re doing,” he said. There was his breath, licking her neck again. “What are you doing?” he asked.
Did she even know? Had she really not passed any decent places to dispose of his body yet? Why hadn’t she already stopped?
Because what if, she thought, when I do stop, when I do drag the body out of the trunk and across the ground, I return to the car to find him somehow still there on the seat?
The car was drifting a little. She straightened it out. Behind her, she saw red and blue lights start to flash.
“Oh, no,” the voice beside her said. “Now you’ve really gone and done it.”
She slowed, turned on her blinker, pulled over. What else could she do?
The police car pulled up behind her. It stayed there, idling, waiting.
“Anything the matter with your car?” she asked. “Is he going to find anything when he calls the plate in?”
“That would be telling,” he said. “Why ruin the surprise?”
She waited for the officer to leave the cruiser.
“I bet you’re hoping he won’t look in the trunk,” he said.
She didn’t say anything.
The officer got out of the car and walked toward them. Early sixties maybe—fit, thin, weathered skin. In the glare of the headlights he looked relaxed, not like someone who suspected something was wrong or that the car he had stopped had something in the trunk. She rolled down the window as he came.
“License,” he said.
She fumbled it out. He took it and stared at it while she stared at him.
“How long have you been driving, miss?” he asked, handing the license back.
“Not long.”
“You’re weaving all over the road,” he said. “You need to stop and rest.”
“Yes, sir,” she said. “I want to, but there hasn’t been anywhere to stop.”
“Well, there’s not much on this road,” he admitted. “But, then again, nobody comes down it this time of night. Should be OK if you just pull off to the side and rest a half hour. That should be enough to carry you safely to Tucumcari. You’ll do that for me?”
“Yes, sir, I will.”
He nodded and prepared to turn away.
And then he sniffed, wrinkled his nose.
“Christ,” he said. “What’s that smell?”
“Smell?”
He was sniffing the air, trying to locate it. “Like something burning,” he said.
“I don’t smell anything,” she lied.
“He’s going to look in the trunk,” the voice beside her said, low.
But the police officer didn’t look in the trunk. Instead, he kept scenting the air, like an animal. She watched his eyes wander and then, slowly, focus on her face.
Beside her, the voice gave birth again to that hissing substitute for laughter.
“Anything the matter, Officer?” she asked.
He didn’t answer. Instead, still sniffing, he bent down and looked into the car. His gaze slid off her and past her, and then she watched his composure suddenly crumple and collapse.
“Jesus!” he said.
He stumbled back, gasping, fumbling for his gun. She heard a growling from just beside her ear and then something exceedingly dark flowed rapidly around and even through her, pouring impossibly fast out the window to engulf the police officer like a fog. He was immediately lost within it.
She turned quickly away, heart thudding, and stared straight ahead out the windshield. She could hear the officer screaming, screaming. She reached for the car key and turned it, and abruptly the screaming stopped. Don’t look, she told herself, don’t look. Instead of looking, she reached for the column shift to throw the car into gear and drive, but before she could, in a flash, there was the officer, right there, standing in the glare of the headlights, staring in at her. His face, where it wasn’t spattered with his own blood, was unnaturally pale.
She tried to pull the shift lever down, but found she couldn’t move.
Slowly he began to circle his way toward the passenger side door. She tried to follow him but her head wouldn’t move. She watched him with her eyes as long as she could, and then he slipped out past the edge of her vision and was gone.
For a long moment she could only hear the sound of his boots moving along the shoulder, through the gravel. Then she heard the passenger door open, felt the car sway a little as someone, or something, came inside.
“You can look now,” said a voice that was almost familiar to her, even if it was being distorted by the unfamiliar fluting of the officer’s throat.
Suddenly she could move her head again. But she didn’t turn. She just kept staring ahead, through the windshield.
She felt a hand caress her face, and then slowly, inexorably, tighten on her chin and turn her head. She could not stop it.
She kept her eyes clenched shut as long as she could and then, finally, when she began to feel fingertips toying with her eyelids, with a sigh, she gave up and opened them.
The police officer was there before her, blood still oozing from his mouth. He smiled when he saw her open her eyes.
“Hello, Lamb,” he said. It was the wrong voice. The officer’s face looked wrong too, since it had another face hidden inside it, and not well hidden at that.
She heard a whining. It took her a moment to realize it was coming from her mouth.
The officer smiled in a way that made his mouth stretch too wide.
The officer’s hand reached over and placed her hand on the shift lever, and then his hand made her hand slowly put the car into gear. Carefully, it moved her hand back to the steering wheel and then, once her hand was holding on, the officer’s hand moved away.
“Now drive,” the voice said. The voice was clear now, despite the new throat. “Drive and drive. Don’t ever stop.”