ROAD KILL part 2

Copyright (c) 2018 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.

ROAD KILL

Part 2

By R. Peterson

“I don’t see any obvious injuries,” the admission’s nurse said. “Has she spoken to you?” She pried open the girl’s eyelids and shined a small light inside.

“Just a tiny bit,” Walt answered. “She opened her eyes for a moment, and said one word”

“What was that?” The nurse put her ear next to the girl’s mouth and watched her chest rise and fall.

“Almost,” Walt said. He thought for a moment. “She also asked me if I was an angel.”

“Well, you are an angel for stopping and bringing her in, a lot of people would have just driven on.”  The nurse pulled a sheet over the girl up to her neck, tucked it in around the gurney, and then stood up. She stared at the black pointed shoes on the girl’s feet. 

“She appears to be in shock or in some kind of trauma. Strange, it’s almost like she’s hypnotized. I’d better get on the phone to the on-call doctor. Before he gets here, you’ll need to fill-out some paperwork.”

“I really don’t know anything about her; I don’t know any more than you do.” Walt pleaded.

“No I.D.,” the nurse said searching her clothing. “We’ll have to admit her as a Jane Doe, but I will need the paperwork done. Until someone comes in to claim her, you’re the closest thing to a relative she has. Be sure to put down your home address in case we need to contact you.”

Walt shook his head, what did I get myself into?

He walked to the desk and began filling out an admittance form.

I’m her closest relative? He smiled a little as he tried to think of a way to answer the questions. She is really cute … If I wasn’t here … I’d be home watching horror movies on the tube, like some un-dateable dork. Maybe there truly are rewards for doing good deeds? 

-------2-------

The doctor came in a few minutes later holding a clipboard, writing as he walked. “Thank you for filling in for Madeline. I know it was very last minute… Mrs.?” He looked at the nurse.

“Hamilton,” she said. “Pauline Hamilton”

He did roughly the same examination the nurse had done, except he listened to the girl’s heart and lungs with a stethoscope then asked the nurse to draw blood for a test.

“I’d like you to stay with her,” he told Walt. “In case she wakes up. It’s a good idea for her to see a familiar face when she opens her eyes.”

“Like I told your nurse,” Walt pointed to Pauline. “I’m not family. I really don’t even know her.”

“You’ll do until we find someone else,” the doctor declared.

“You’ll have to wait in here.” the nurse showed him a waiting area, just before they wheeled the girl down the hall. “We’ll come and get you … when she wakes up.”

Walt watched Mrs. Hamilton walk away. He knew there was something odd about her. After a moment he realized it was her shoes they looked out of place. He stared at the nurse’s feet as she pushed the gurney down the hall. The shoes were black pointed things with a large silver buckle on the front ... just like the girl’s.

Walt sat on a sofa in the waiting room opposite a row of tall glass windows, reading a People Magazine; thankfully he didn’t glance up.

 The pallid face of a dark hag, covered with a mass of twisted hair, appeared in the bushes just outside the window. Jagged teeth glistened in the moonlight as the thing peered through the glass. Black eyes rolled upward in a moldy skull, like a shark that has just tasted blood.

-------3-------

Walt grew restless. He lay the magazine down, got up and began to pace. He heard voices. It sounded like the girl and the nurse.  He hurried down the hallway and listened at a closed door. 

Walt didn’t see the dark shape creep into the waiting-room behind and hunch over the admittance forms on the desk, turning the pages with a filthy gnarled hand.

“Pauline!” Walt heard the girl say. “I’m tired of … being a hunter, even if our shoes protect us, we still succumb to their spells and tricks. I’m sorry I ever got mixed up with you. I was almost an offering to their dark God tonight. ”

“I knew you would be rescued,” Mrs. Hamilton said. “That’s why I came … to be here.”

“You can see the imminent … but only an hour ahead. What about my future? … Can’t you see that I want more?  I need a life to go on living.”

“We have for many ages been the predators of the wicked ones like Ham,” the nurse said. “The touching shoes have been passed down from hunter to hunter for more than five centuries. You and I must insure that dark covens like Abra Cadaver do not overpower the light in this world.”

The door flew open and Nurse Hamilton stared. A faint smile formed on her lips as she turned to Joanie. “You have a visitor,” she said.

Joanie Otter sat up as Walt entered the room. Her platinum hair fell in cascades around her shoulders. Pouty lips opened, turning into a grin that showed glistening white teeth. She gazed at him with eyes the color of a summer ocean.  He stared, bewitched.

“You’re the one.” she said. A trace of recognition registered in her voice. “You’re the one who saved me!” Her open mouth turned into a smile. “Come closer,” she ordered. Joanie grasp Walt’s hand as he walked toward the bed “You broke the spell,” she breathed. “What can I do for you in return?”

“I don’t want anything … I’m just someone who found you sitting in the center of the road and brought you to a hospital … here.” Walt immediately felt foolish. His tongue was all twisted up; he always got a little stupid when he talked to girls and this one made him feel idiotic. To a hospital here?  She probably thinks I’m retarded.

“I demand to know what my champion’s name is.” Joanie parted her mouth and brushed her tongue over a full upper lip. “I’m Joanie Otter,”

“Walt,” he stammered. “Walt Huntington.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t hear you,” Joanie whispered. “You’re going to have to move a little closer.” Walt was mesmerized by her impish smile and blue twinkling eyes. As he leaned down to speak into her ear, Joanie turned and brushed his lips with a kiss. Walt felt a delightful sensation rush from the area of contact to all points of his body. Somewhere in his mind a church bell chimed. He was instantly and irreversibly in love.

“I thought you two didn’t know each other.” Pauline scowled from the doorway. Walt jumped to his feet, his face like a ripe plum.  

“I was … just telling her my name,” he said.

“Walt and I were kissing,” Joanie confessed. “Would you mind giving us some privacy, he’s my boyfriend.” She stared at the open-mouthed Pauline as if daring her to object.

Mrs. Hamilton shrugged her shoulders and began to walk away. Joanie called after. “Please close the door … would you.” The woman stomped back wearing a glare … and slammed the door.

“I’m cold,” Joanie said. She pulled the tucked sheet out from one side and lifted it. “Slide in next to me, and keep me warm.  But first take off your shoes,” her eyes scanned down Walt’s body, “…and your pants.” she grinned and bit her lower lip so hard a drop of blood fell on the white bedcover. Walt’s eyes darted nervously toward the door, as he took off his shoes and then with shaking hands undid his belt buckle.

-------4-------

Mrs. Hamilton was at the desk, pretending to check patient’s records, when Walt entered the room with his arm around Joanie. She was dressed.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Pauline stood.

“I can’t do this anymore,” Joanie said. “I’m leaving. Walt and I are going to start a new life of our own, one where we don’t hunt witches that are constantly trying to figure out ways to kill us.”

“You can’t leave! Not on this night. It’s too dangerous! Haven’t you looked outside? It’s a full moon!” The woman charged from behind the desk and grasped Joanie’s arm.

Joanie brushed away her bony fingers. “Do me a favor and don’t look into my future anymore,” she said. “Let my next hour, my next day, my next year be a surprise.”

Mrs. Hamilton watched as the Chevy Nova roared from the parking lot. Joanie would be asleep in less than an hour from the sedative she had given her. Pauline turned and walked back toward the desk. A sudden paroxysm of future sight shook her body and her nurse’s scrubs spun outward like a whirlwind. She covered her eyes with trembling hands as if trying to block an intrusive light.  “I must shelter her,” she wailed as she crumpled onto the highly polished floor.

Joanie snuggled next to Walt as they drove through the mountains toward his house. “I guess I have lots of explaining to do” she said.

“I heard the talk about you and Mrs. Hamilton hunting witches,” Walt said. “Is that true?”

“It used to be,” Joanie said. “I’m done with that now.”

“What were you doing sitting in the middle of the road?” Walt asked her.

“I was captured by Ham and her followers,” Joanie said yawning. “They can’t kill hunters outright because of our shoes, but they can make us have accidents. They have a thing, a power, a person … a blind man who sees with the eyes of something else.” Joanie’s soft blue eyes closed and her head slumped. Suddenly her eyes flew open again, and she forced herself upright. “That thing … It, can put you into a reverie, make you do its will.  I had a flat tire coming home from school … when I opened the trunk for my spare, the thing was inside!  They had put it in while I was in class … and I looked.”

Her head slowly slumped onto Walt’s shoulder. Less than a mile down the road Joanie Otter was asleep.

-------5-------

A short time later they arrived at a ramshackle two-story house tucked into a grove of willows. Joanie stirred for just a moment as Walt carried her inside. “Lock the doors,” she mumbled. “Don’t look outside … don’t look into the unseeing thing’s eyes.” Then she fell asleep.

“Unseeing eyes?” Walt muttered. “She must be having delusions. I know I am.”

Later as Joanie lay upstairs sleeping, Walt heard a noise. Strangely, it had an oddly familiar jumble of notes, like a favorite Beatles’ song being played backwards. He looked toward the window. A human-shaped form dangled in the air just outside the glass. A white painted face with red lips grinned at him. He jumped from the sofa and staggered backward across the living room grasping a bronze bear figurine from an end-table as he went to use as a weapon.

Walt was terrified by the human form dancing in the air until he noticed thin strings reflected in the moonlight.  It was a marionette. A puppet on strings! Walt was furious … someone was playing a tricks on him.  He lunged toward the window holding the metal bear over his head just as the puppet was pulled upward out of sight.

He heard tiny footsteps clatter across wooden shingles on the roof. Walt shook his head in disbelief as he turned following the sound. The puppet had the appearance of painted wood, but the eyes inside the carved head had looked real. Walt ran to get his hunting rifle. He was swinging the door open on the gun cabinet, when he suddenly found himself at the other end of the house holding open the entry door. His hands were empty and his guns were still locked safely away at the other end of the building.

 The ugliest woman Walt had ever seen stood just inside a luminous circle made from the porch light. Her clawed fingers dangled from bony arms and splayed out from her ragged shroud like protracted raven wings. Walt stumbled through the door and toward her, no longer in control of his own legs. The thing danced backward; her kindling-wood arms thrust outward before her, enticing him forward. Whispered voices came from a dark chapel that had once been a vegetable garden.

Soon this corpse you’ll be his wife.

Bleed all, bleed all … and take his life.

Bone and claw with blood and fur.

Say all, say all … Abra Cadaver.

Walt was struggling against the witch when he heard a low thump. A huge boil covered hand grasped him by the neck and lifted him off the ground. Walt twisted his neck and stared into huge eyes and a grinning mouth filled with broken teeth. A giant swayed on legs as big as tree trunks as it dangled him in the air. 

A gaunt man, pennies stuck into the eyeless sockets of his skull, jumped from the roof and began to wind strings around a marionette. The doll the blind man held was made of carved wood but the eyes that turned in its sockets were living things.  The human eyes turned and gazed at Walt as everything began to go black. “I Demilune watched you, and you looked,” the doll sang. “Now you’re mine and we all get to eat.” A green tongue darted from a hole drilled in the wooden mouth, and licked red painted lips. Walt watched the blind man carrying the puppet scurry into the house and pitch up the stairs to where Joanie was sleeping. A moment later he heard her screams. Walt passed out as the giant tossed him high into the air laughed and then caught him in its massive arms.

-------6-------

Walt was slowly waking from a nightmare.  He felt something warm next to him. It was the girl he had fallen in love with, bound to him with heavy rope as they sat on the asphalt. The full moon caressed her platinum hair like the sails of a ghost ship.  She gazed at him with eyes the color of the sky in autumn. Joanie gently leaned toward him and covered his lips with hers. Walt was in the throes of ecstasy, he didn’t care about anything except for the moment.

Two hooded figures held Pauline next to a 1938 Adler Damenrad ladies’ bicycle with a wire-basket mounted in place of a headlight and a woven picnic basket strapped above the rear wheel.  “Joanie!” Mrs. Hamilton cried, looking at them sitting in the highway. “You are one of us … a hunter… you wear the shoes. You must remember that!”

“You shouldn’t have tried to save me; the shoes don’t protect us from everything,” Joanie said, “Now they have caught you too.”

The witch they called Ham screamed laughter. “Shoes? Yes, the shoes may protect you from us…you can’t be killed by our hands when you wear them.  But there are other ways to die!” she twisted in all directions as she danced around the captive Mrs. Hamilton.

Ham pulled her moldy black dress to just above her wart covered knees. Three clawed-toes jutted from each boney foot. “You’re just my size” she looked at Mrs. Hamilton as her eyes rolled in her head. “Soon your powers will be mine; they will give me that which I have always desired. I will have the power to enter a home … any house of my picking under the full moon and receive my pleasure. I shall drink blood from any I wish. You should not hunt us so.” She pointed a dirty fingernail at Joanie. “Now all of you will die!”

Ham turned her eyes on Walt and screeched. “You mortals are such fools … no good deed goes unpunished.”  She laughed as she watched the road.

Pauline hung her head … her eyes suddenly grew large and round. She stared into the night sky and an out-of-place smile flashed in the moonlight.

A semi-tractor trailer came thundering around the corner. The screeching of locked brakes split the night as the careening truck swerved at the last minute crashing into the bound woman and the clustered coven assembled at the side of the road,  plowing through the living … and those who had cheated death for so many years.

Pauline Hamilton perished with a last vision frozen forever in the mirrors of her lifeless eyes as she was swept under the huge roaring wheels. Not just an hour of future seeing this time but a whole generation. A much older Joanie Otter stood before a small house with a white picket fence, grown children stood at her side, a granddaughter playing in the background all wearing black pointed shoes with large silver buckles.

-------7-------

.

Walt gazed at Joanie as they sat in the center of the road. She leaned in and kissed him. She was the most beautiful creature in the world. “Where will we go?” he asked.

“Cloverdale,” she said. “Ham and her followers are not gone and I must create my own powers to fight them. They are like shadows that vanish with the coming of night … but they still exist. I have family, a mother I haven’t seen since my parents divorced and friends … you will have friends too.”

Walt put his arm around her and together they struggled against the ropes.

THE END?