Tales from the Nightside Read Free Page B

spewed gravel and dust in his haste to get on the highway.
    West of the toll plaza the road ran straight for nearly two miles, then began a sinuous curve that climbed up the sides of two consecutive mountains. At the end of the level stretch was an exit, closed now for repairs and barricaded heavily, the shoulders flush against massive boulders that would prevent a car of any size from squeezing around it. Because of the land and the trees, then, he knew there wouldn't be any way for Terry to leave the road for the next twenty-two miles. Foolish, he thought, as the speedometer climbed from fifty to sixty, sixty-five to seventy. What the hell is she running away from?
    His headlights punched weak holes in the blackness, and it seemed less like he was driving, more like he was floating through air that thickened the faster he went.
    He glanced down at the odometer and frowned when he realized it wasn't registering the miles he was traveling. Damn, he thought; another expense.
    He looked up, suddenly wrenched at the wheel and slammed on the brakes, the car skewing to one side, the smell of burning rubber already sharp in his nostrils. When he stopped, he was shaking and he laid his forehead against the cool plastic of the wheel until his stomach calmed and his arms stopped trembling.
    Then he slid out of the car.
    Directly ahead of him was a soft wavering light that stretched across the road from forest to forest. It wasn't the sun, he was facing west, and it wasn't a fire because he could smell nothing but the rubber, felt no heat as he approached it. It was... just a light, that illuminated nothing.
    He wiped his hands nervously against his shirt, telling himself he was too tired to think straight, too anxious about the possible new job to think anything through. But he walked cautiously forward until, with a step, he was in the light. In it, not beyond it. And stretched for what seemed like miles in every direction were lines of automobiles. Abandoned. Rusting. He reached out to touch one, pulled his hand back when his legs began to feel weak.
    Tired, that's all.
    The land was sloped down and away from him, and in the middle distance was a broad blue-white river. He could see on the near bank a small group of people straggling onto a rivercraft whose bow and stern were arched high and bent down toward the center of the deck; like a double-sting scorpion, he thought. In the middle of the deck was a tiny cabin. The people, their faces dimmed by the suffusion of the light, bent and entered until they were all inside. Then, from a shadow on the bank came a tall man who stepped up the gangway, pulled it to after him, and reached out for a pole attached to a rudder. As he did so he looked up... and Wes blinked, turned abruptly, and ran.
    The man's head was not human. It was black. It was a dog.
    Suddenly the light was behind him and he was in his car, racing the engine and skidding into a U-turn. A cloud of deep black fear settled over him until, with a check in his rearview mirror, he realized that the light was gone. There was nothing behind him but the road. And it wasn't until he had stopped his sedan in the parking lot that he realized the car he'd almost touched on that congregated slope had been a station wagon, had been Terry's.
    ***
    "So," Joe said near the end of the shift, "he would finish wrapping up the dead, see, and take them to something like a courthouse where they'd be judged for whatever they did when they were alive. But Wes, I don't understand what all this has to do with Terry."
    Wes smiled weakly, said nothing, and as soon as the morning shift began filing out of the office, he waved a brusque good-bye and headed for his car. He drove for several hours, aimlessly, though keeping to the back roads to minimize contact with other cars. Then, when he could no longer see without squinting, he returned to his apartment and threw himself onto the couch, one arm over his eyes.
    He slept.
    Did not dream.
    Woke only