The Revenants Read online

  Glancing at her phone, she saw she had at least two bars. It was worth a try.

  Little brother picked up on the first ring. “Hey Becca-Bear!” he said cheerfully, despite the early morning hour.

  “Hey Rob. I just thought I’d give you a call...” And tell you that I saw a ghost, two if you count The Midnight Knocker.

  “Where are you? Still in Seattle?” Becca could hear the steady whir-whir-whirring of Robbie’s elliptical-thingy in the background along with the early morning news report on the TV, which even now he was turning down.

  “No, I’m taking another dog over to the East coast. I’m about halfway between Rapid City and Sioux Falls. It’s a heck of a long trip so I thought I’d give my little brother a call to keep me company.” Becca could hear the wavering in her voice and hated herself for it. Then again, she sort of hoped Robbie would pick up on her obvious distress and say something that would make it all better, or at least ask her what’s wrong.

  But not Robbie, he had the perfect life, great job with the state department, pension, 2.5 kids, loving wife. He liked to keep things light. “So what are the roads like?”

  How to describe it to little brother?

  “Remember that movie Fargo?” When Robbie answered, “Uh-huh,” she said, “Compared to this place, that frozen wasteland is a tropical paradise.”

  The phone sizzled and cracked. On one hand she was amazed they’d shared a signal for this long. On the other, it surprised her that there were still some places in the U.S. you couldn’t use your cell phone. The crackle died down giving them a short reprieve, for now.

  “Yikes,” Rob said with just the right amount of measured concern.

  “Yeah. I think the last guy I saw was a trucker going the opposite way about an hour ago.”

  “Now you’re scaring me, sis,” he said, but the tone of Rob’s voice didn’t sound like he was scared. It was just like he was going through the motions of a caring little brother. He probably had a script and everything.

  Scaring little bro wasn’t what Becca really had in mind either. The truth of the matter was she normally liked the open road. For her, the cars, buses and trucks sojourning across the desolate highways were like ships traversing a massive ocean. The rest stops and small towns were small islands waiting to be explored; a place to meet other weary travelers and swap stories. Becca adored the seedy diners, the eclectic groups of people, the endless miles of asphalt. Picturesque and peaceful. No distractions. No radio, emails, Facebook, Twitter, Vines, and best of all… no reminders of everything she had lost.

  “Sis? You still there?”

  “Don’t worry, Robbie,” she said, opting to use her pet name for her kid brother. “I’ve got an extra can of fuel on the back, four spare tires on the roof, plenty of water, a toolbox and enough spare parts that would make any mechanic envious. I couldn’t be more prepared for this trip.”

  “That’s my sister for ya, Missus Ever-Ready.”

  Good-natured and naïve little brother probably wasn’t aware of the negative undertone this new nickname had so Becca had decided to let it slide. “That’s me,” she answered, trying to sound cheerful, and not as despondent as she actually felt.

  “Seriously, I don’t know how you do it. Working all over the world like you do. Me? The closest I want to get to your life is a four-star Holiday Inn.”

  Which was true. Even though Robbie exercised for forty minutes every morning on his elliptical-thingy without fail, her kid brother was about as adventurous as a ninety-year old living in a nursing home. Heck, the closest Robbie ever came to changing a tire was calling Triple A.

  Becca’s Land Rover rounded another bend in the road and that’s when she first saw it. The biggest moon she had ever seen in her life, rising up over the horizon. The moon’s glow was so bright it was almost blinding. I wonder if early Indians thought they could climb those mountains and jump up to that moon. It certainly looked that way now. Was this some sort of celestial event? I mean the moonlight was so strong it was like dusk outside.

  “Sis, can you hear me? Did I lose you?”

  Shaking off the hypnotic glare of the moon she replied, “Nope, still here, little brother. Listen, I’ve got to spend a few days in New York, but what do you say I drive up to New Hampshire and hang out with you and the kiddos for the holidays?”

  Kiddos? Since when do you use words like kiddos?

  No one’s talking to you, Donnie.

  There was a long pause on the other end. Becca counted at least eight whir-whirs of the elliptical-thingy before Robbie finally answered, “Gee, I don’t know, Becca. Trish’s family is all here, the house is filled to the brim. I mean we’d love to have you and all, and I know the kids would love to see you but…”

  But his stupid witch of a wife is still mad at you for exposing her little drug addiction to valium.

  ‘Quiet, Donnie.’

  “Sure, I understand.” Becca replied.

  Changing subjects, Robbie asked, “So how far are you from your next stop?”

  For some reason the GPS was on the fritz, but she wasn’t about to tell Robbie that. And according to the last road sign peppered with buckshot, she still had another hundred and ninety-eight miles to Sioux Falls.

  “About an hour,” she lied, so as not to worry little bro any further. The reality was it would take her at least three times that.

  But Robbie didn’t hear her; instead he was talking to someone else. “What are you doing up so early?” he scolded. “You’re supposed to be in bed.” Then speaking back to her, “There’s somebody here who wants to say hello to you.”

  “Hi, Aunt Becca.”

  It was Robbie’s youngest, Lincoln. “Hey there, little buddy, what are you doing up so late?”

  “I heard Daddy talking on the phone to you and I wanted to say hi.”

  Lord, they always sounded so much younger on the phone. Her heart really began to ache now.

  “Did you know the power went out last night? We got to use flashlights and everything.”

  At first Becca thought this weird since she could hear Rob’s elliptical and the television in the background, but then she remembered Robbie had a back-up battery system installed and hooked up to a generator in a shed on the side of the house. “Really? That’s pretty cool, bud. It’s like you’re on a camping trip, huh?”

  Ignoring her query, Lincoln asked, “When are you coming to visit?”

  “Soon, little buddy, real soon.” She knew it was a lie but hearing Lincoln’s voice she was already plotting how she might make it over to the Northeast. Maybe find a job somewhere nearby; far enough away so as not to incur the wrath of the wicked witch of the east but close enough to visit her nieces and nephews on birthdays and maybe holidays.

  “How many days away is soon?”

  She heard Robbie’s voice say something off phone and Lincoln said, “Okay, I love you, Aunt Becca, good night. I will pray for you.”

  “I love you too, little buddy,” she said back, but Lincoln was already gone.

  The phone began to sizzle and crackle again. It wouldn’t be long before she lost the signal entirely. When Robbie came back on the phone she quickly asked, “What’s Lincoln talking about, a power outage?”

  Robbie’s response was garbled but she heard enough to piece together, “The whole neighborhood’s been out since last night. We’ve been running off the genie; which reminds me, I’ve got to pick up some more fuel today. Anyway, I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about. The power company will probably have it back on by this afternoon.”

  The static tripled in intensity and she quickly tried to wrap up the call. “You’re breaking up pretty bad now, little brother. I’ll call you when I check in to the next motel.” She had wanted to say ‘I love you’ but the phone had already dropped the call.

  She smiled softly as she put the cell down on the seat beside her. It’d been a nice call.

  (What she didn’t know was that it would be the last time she would ever speak
to her brother or her nephew again.)

  (…)

  (Oh, we’re not telling them that just yet? I AM SO-OOOO SORRY. Uhmmm… the brother and his kids actually all turn out fine. I was just kidding before. Seriously, you can go visit them if you like. Let me look up their address and get back to you.)

  “IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT!”

  The lyrics came blaring over the radio speakers causing her to jump out of her skin and nearly drive off the road. She must’ve left the volume up on high when she had been searching for a radio station earlier. Cursing, her hand shot out to the dial to turn it down, but even as she did so the signal was already lost again.

  Bart seemed to sense something was wrong, too, because he started whining in the back.

  “Easy, boy,” she said soothingly. She knew he didn’t have to “Make”, which was the dog handler word for take a crap--because they had done that before they left. And if you could say one good thing about the dopey mutt, Bart’s intestinal tract ran like the proverbial Swiss clock.

  Bart’s whining became incessant. Something was really bothering him. It was almost as though he were under some sort of audible attack.

  As Becca began searching for a safe place to pull over she realized Bart was no longer whining. In fact, he had completely quieted down.

  Is he okay?

  She adjusted her mirror to view the cargo area but she couldn’t see him. So she tried calling out to him, gently at first, “Hey, boy. You okay back there?”

  Nothing.

  “Who’s a good boy?”

  Still… nothing.

  Slowing down to a safe speed she turned around in her seat, the aged leather creaking loudly beneath her, but Bart still wasn’t visible. It was as though he just vanished. That was insane of course; he was probably just lying down behind the seats.

  She switched her gaze back to the road. Thanks to the ridiculously bright moonlight she could see a long, narrow stretch of road lay ahead, but with the snow berms piled up on both sides of the road there was little room to pull over.

  Then she heard an odd rumbling sound, like a small dirt bike. It took her a moment to realize the noise wasn’t coming from outside. It was coming from inside, or to be more precise, it was coming from the back of her rig.

  One hand on the wheel she leaned back in her seat and stretched out her other hand to the metal cage that separated the passenger compartment from the cargo area.

  She gently tapped on the metal wire bars with her fingers and tried calling softly to the German shepherd, “Hey boy, you okay back there?”

  Bart slammed into the metal cage bars as hard as a shark diving into a shark cage on Shark Attack!

  Becca jerked her hand back instinctively and spouted every curse word in her vocabulary. Were it not for the cage separating them she was certain that Bart would’ve taken her hand off at the wrist.

  It scared her so badly she had nearly driven off the road for the second time in the last ten minutes. She quickly spun around and gripped the steering wheel with both hands. Careful not to overcorrect the wheel, she focused on controlling her breathing. As soon as she regained control of the Rover she yelled back over her shoulder, “Damn it, Bart! You scared the crap out of me!”

  But Bart didn’t hear this and his snapping jaws never ceased.

  For cripe’s sake, that damn mutt has gone Cujo! You should lodge a bullet between his stupid eyes, lass!

  Ignoring Donnie she yelled to Bart in her commanding instructor voice, “Hey! Bart! I said knock it off!”

  But Bart didn’t knock it off. And this went way beyond normal barking. These were downright scary barks. Not warning barks. These were ‘I want to grab you by the throat, rip it out and kill you’ barks. ‘Latch onto your bones with my teeth and grind them into fine powdery dust’ barks.

  Becca forced herself to keep both hands on the wheel. In the rearview mirror she could see where Bart’s vicious mouth began bleeding from where he was biting the tiny metal bars. And impossibly, he was actually beginning to work his way through the cage.

  What do I do?

  In a few more seconds Bart was going to be through the bars of the cage. Becca had seen firsthand what those snarling jaws could do with just one vicious bite. They could literally tear a man’s face off!

  In all the years she had been training canines she had never once had one turn on her like this. Reflexively, her elbow dropped to her holster to confirm that her pistol, the ever-talkative 1911, a.k.a. Donnie O’Donnell, was still there.

  It wasn’t.

  As an added safety precaution she always put her pistol in the glovebox so as not to get shot by some rookie-cop during a routine stop.

  Bart’s jaws were foaming now and he was nearly halfway through the fresh hole he had made in the bars.

  Becca let go of the steering wheel with one hand and reached for the glove box with her gun inside. Could she really shoot a client’s dog? That was going to take some serious explaining.

  Bart punched his head through the bars and quick as you please began worming the rest of his body through the hole and onto the rear seat. And after that he would be in the front seat and on top of her, ripping out her throat.

  Just as Becca was about to slam on the brakes, a claw-marked cheerleader with yellow-blond hair seeping with blood, stepped out of the darkness and into her high beams. Becca’s first thought was that the poor girl looked as though she had been mauled by a raging bear. And in the same thought logic kicked in and she realized a mountain lion or a cougar would have made more sense.

  Becca yanked hard on the wheel to miss the young woman stumbling in the road, but it was far too late.

  The world tumbled end-over-end a few times before coming to a stop upside-down. And then, to the blaring sound of her horn, coupled with the blunk-blunk, blunk-blunk of her turn signal indicator, everything sort of just faded away.

  There you go, lass… Sleep. Precious and eternal sleep.

  (Hhhhmmm… I wonder. Did Donnie have anything to do with the claw-marked cheerleader? Or is Becca the source of evil? And why does it seem to be strongest at the motel? I mean, you felt it too, right?)

  (What? You thought I knew? I’m not omnipotent? I am about as much as you are, Dear Reader)

  (Hey, you hear that?)

  (Ring…Ring… RIng… RINg… RING!)

  (Clue phone)

  Chapter 4

  Land Rover Ho!

  “Miss! Miss, can you hear me?”

  Becca squinted, and instinctively pulled her head away from the bright light. She was surprised to find herself hanging upside down in the driver’s seat of her Land Rover, held up only by her seatbelt. Oddly enough, the first thing she became aware of was how much crap had ended up on the ceiling: GPS unit, CDs, water bottle, sunglasses, and vintage backpack.

  “Miss?” That persistent male voice came from behind the bright light again. “Can you hear me?”

  Shielding her eyes from the harsh beam with her hand, Becca could see it was a pen light, like the kind doctors loved to wave back and forth between your eyes at yearly physicals.

  (I really hate those pen lights. I really do. In fact, if it were me? I’d stuff that pen light right up…)

  (Sorry about that. As you may have guessed I have a bit of a temper. One of the things that got me kicked out in the first place)

  (BBBBRRRRIINNNNGGGG…)

  As her eyes began to adjust, the firefighter behind the light came into view. He was wearing full turnout gear and lying on his side where he had obviously crawled in through her windshield. They must have pulled out the windshield to gain access. Flashes from strobe lights intermittently painted the interior a crimson red.

  Oh, man, my Rover.

  The firefighter turned his head and shouted to someone else behind him, “Her pupils are reactive; I think she’s coming around.”

  The face of the Becca’s impact-resistant watch was cracked, the hands frozen at 11:59pm, but the Rover’s hazy neon digit
al display read 12:46am.

  So I’ve been hanging upside down for nearly an hour? No wonder my head feels like it’s about to explode. She wiggled one shoulder at a time and was relieved to find her back, surprisingly, felt fine. Maybe I should hang upside down more often.

  The firefighter spoke to her in a calm but sunny tone. “Miss, my name is firefighter Wallman. My friends call me Wally. Can you tell me your name?”

  Before she could answer, the image of a young woman dressed in a high school cheerleader outfit flashed across her mind. The girl had hobbled out of the darkness and into the beams of her headlights. In that split second Becca had seen that the girl was covered in blood, and had claw marks on her forearms and face, as though she had been attacked by some kind of wild animal. It all happened so fast. Had she hit her? Was she alive? Becca was certain she’d hit the girl. How could she have possibly missed?

  Her voice sounded like gravel when she spoke for the first time. “The girl. Is she okay?”

  Firefighter Wallman (Wally) ignored the question. “Miss, do… you… know… your… name?”

  “There was a girl,” she said again, only this time more firmly. “In the middle of the road; is she okay?”

  “I’m sure she’s fine, Ma’am,” Wally responded. The firefighter couldn’t have been more than thirty-two. Sandy-colored hair peeked out from beneath his helmet and he had shockingly blue eyes.

  Oh no, Bart. Why can’t I hear him anymore? She seemed to remember something about him furiously barking at her, trying to break through his cage to get at her. It was all so hazy.

  “I’ve got a dog in the back. A German shepherd. Is he…” she was forced to swallow “… is he okay?”

  The fireman’s slight pause spoke volumes, and she knew what he was about to say. “I’m sorry, ma’am. Your dog, he didn’t, uh, he didn’t make it. I’m real sorry about that.”

  She twisted her head around and glimpsed Bart halfway through the metal cage. Another couple of seconds more and he would have gotten her. In a way, the accident was a blessing in disguise. Staring at the dog’s lifeless body, tongue hanging way too far out of his mouth and slathered with blood, she was overcome with grief.