Misfortune: Christmas With Scrooge Read Free Page B

tracks. Someone had left the party earlier than him, leaving
him a slightly plowed path. Turning his attention to the CD player
in his car, he slid a popular disc into the drive then sat back to
listen to the music.
    Eyes back on the silent road, he eventually
reached the fork in the highway where he would have turned right.
However, frowning, he slowed the Volvo until it came to a halt. The
other vehicle, the one which owned the tracks he had been
following, had taken the road to the left.
    “What idiot would have taken that road on
such a night?” he muttered to himself.
    The road ran parallel to the deep valley
nicknamed Hungry Hollow. Admittedly, the chasm was worthy of its
name. Over the centuries since it appeared in the earth's surface,
it maimed many, while consuming the lives of others. When the north
road had been built, the foundation was difficult to lay because of
the hard minerals beneath the rocky surface, so the result was a
very winding, and at points, steep decline along the gorge. A
popular spot for sightseers in the summer with its spectacular
view, but only a fool would attempt the road in the winter.
Especially an icy night as this.
    Dex found himself swinging his vehicle around
and heading down the north road, shaking his head at his own
stupidity as he went. What dim-witted notion forced him to follow
those tracks, he had no idea. All he knew was he continually told
himself to turn back, but discovered his instincts were completely
ignoring that practical portion of his brain.
    He had not gone far when the tracks suddenly
veered to the left and disappeared. Dex pulled his vehicle to a
stop and hastily jumped out. Running over to the shoulder of the
road, he peered out into the darkness. Shock, mingled with immense
horror, swept over his stunned form as he stared down into what
could only be the black and deadly abyss of the Hungry Hollow
gorge.
    Then he saw it. Barely visible through the
thick descending bush and the black of the night, was a tiny glow
of red light.
    A nightmare he had long repressed into the
back of his memory suddenly resurfaced. A night, very similar to
this one, fourteen years earlier where he stood frozen in fear,
unable to command his frightened limbs into action.
    Dex stared down at the small red light. The
night around him seemed to go completely still. The only sound was
the low rustle of bare branches. A chill crept up his spine and it
wasn't from the below zero temperatures.
    Then he heard it, a cry for help. And the
nightmare came back to horrific life, transporting him fourteen
years back when he was an eighteen year-old boy. He could hear his
father calling out for help as he desperately clung to the cold
jagged ridge of a gully. His car had just plunged off a bridge and
while his son had miraculously thrown himself free before going
over, Wallace O'Reilly had not been so lucky.
    The vehicle nose-dived into the hard surface
of the rock, tossing the remaining occupant out, before
disappearing into the dark brush below. Dex ran over to the steep
edge of the incline to find his father clinging fiercely for his
life. He called for his son, his hand stretched out begging for
help, but to Dex's horror he found his feet incapable of moving,
gripped with fear. Instead, he stood and watched as his father, no
longer having the strength to hold, disappear. The night around him
had gone deathly silent.
    A second cry for help pierced his conscious,
drawing him back to the present. A force greater than any he
experienced before, told him he had to go down that ravine. A
descent, fourteen years before, he was unable to make. In an
instant, he knew he could not make that mistake twice. Someone was
still alive down there and in desperate need of help. Gingerly, he
plunged downward.
     
    * * *
     
    Laura pushed her hands hard against the
dashboard, while at the same time tried to give herself enough
leeway to reach over and undo her seat belt. To no avail. She
grunted in frustration