Husk (42 page)

The SUV toppled and rolled into the ditch.

The airbags activated.

Rebecca screamed and the night spun around them, the sky once again afire with bolts of lightning.

Then all went silent, vanishing into the darkness of unconsciousness.

CHAPTER 50

Tim didn’t even possess a driver’s license, let alone have the skill to manage a car in an out-of-control, high-speed slide. He had no idea how much brake pressure to apply, or which way he should turn the wheel in order to stop them from going into a spin. Adding to his predicament, the car had lost all power: no lights, no power steering, no anti-lock brakes. But against all odds, the Mercedes stayed on the road and slid to a halt about two hundred feet from where its unwavering route had first began to falter, its front end now facing the way they had come.

At first, no one spoke. Everybody seemed too focused on the fact that they’d survived, or on the pileup of vehicles they’d left in their wake. Cars in the eastbound lane screeched to a stop adjacent the accident scene, their taillights burning red. Tim gaped at the sight, finding the semi truck they’d passed only a moment earlier now angled diagonally across the road.

Thunder trembled in the air.

The sound brought to Tim’s mind the image of multiple lightning bolts that had striped the sky just seconds ago. And that memory sparked the recollection of intense light that had flown from the Mercedes at the exact moment it lost control.

It’s gone
.
The creature’s gone; that’s why we spun out. Just like it jumped into my jacket, it must have jumped out of the car.

He began fumbling for the door locks, about to voice his suggestion that they all flee the vehicle while they had the chance, when he noticed Mallory. She’d doubled over in her seat, hunched like a limp rag doll. She clutched her chest, moaning. Enraptured with the prospect of escape, he hadn’t stopped to think of how the car’s careening movements must have affected her chest wound.

“
Mallory, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry! I didn’t know what else to do.”

She issued a pathetic weeping noise that made Tim tremble with worry. He reached out to her, his hand hovering for a moment before touching down on her back. “I’m going to get you to safety,” he whispered. “I—”

“
Don’t touch her,” a demonic voice boomed from the car’s stereo speakers. Each word crackled and popped, laced by sharp electronic squeals and hissing static.

With the crack of a whip, the shoulder belt shot out from behind him, arced across his chest, and locked into place. The strap drew taut and yanked him backward.

Tim howled in pain.

Ensnared, with both arms restrained, he had no other option but to watch while Mallory’s safety belt lunged around her, pulling her upright. From behind, he could hear Becky, Adam, and Lisa also being seized.

The car came back to life.

Once again running in submission to their invisible captor, the Mercedes made a quick U-turn and resumed their terrifying journey westward.

* * *

Flickering blasts of lightning mimicked the barrage of thoughts that flashed through Frank’s mind.

Behind him, the rampaging eighteen-wheeler had come to a noisy standstill. The harsh keen of its air brakes still rang in his ears. But the damage had already been done. Seconds before, Frank and Melissa had swiveled in their seats and watched Paul Wiesses’ veering Ford vanish from sight behind the semi’s towering cab, its outcome still uncertain. The truck’s massive trailer continued to block their view. Worse yet, roughly thirty yards to the west, Officer Hale’s ravaged patrol car had settled into a deathlike repose halfway off the road. Its back end lay in the ditch while its crumpled front end pointed skyward—an optical illusion created by the monstrous amount of damage the vehicle had sustained. Indeed, from what Frank could tell so far, he and Melissa appeared to have been the most fortunate of the three. Though the Blazer had taken some damage and stalled out from their encounter, the two of them had come through the ordeal unharmed.

He looked to the Mercedes.

Removed from the inexplicable episode, it had skidded to a turbulent halt several hundred feet away and now faced them with darkened headlights.

No one got out. Nobody ran.

What was he to do? Should he stay and help—surely injuries had been dealt—or try to get to the teenagers trapped within the possessed auto?

Melissa had already made up her mind; she prompted him to check on the patrol officer while she went to find Paul Wiess’s Ford.

“
There no time for that,” Frank said. “We have to get the kids before—”

The Mercedes’s headlights blazed white, and the car swung around.

“
We can’t leave the others,” Melissa said, looking to the crash.

Frank seized her arm when she went for her door. “We can’t let it get to Kane’s body,” he said, restarting the Blazer. “If it reaches the cemetery, there’s no telling what we’ll be up against. We have to follow them.”

He didn’t wait for Melissa to protest and immediately gunned the engine.

They lurched in place, then sank to the right. The whole vehicle shuddered with the roaring motor, but the Chevy refused to move.

Melissa opened her door and checked left and right, her sights settling on something behind them. “It’s no use, Frank, your rear axle’s broken. We’re not going anywhere.”

Frank let off the gas, watching the gleaming black Mercedes speed away, fading into the tempestuous night.

* * *

The nightmare ride continued.

Tim closed his eyes and forced himself to block out the hysterical screams of the others, focusing all his concentration on how to escape their traveling mechanical prison.

He exhaled a long slow breath, relaxing his muscles. In his mind, he saw his body narrow and pull inward, felt the excruciating grip of the Nylon strap around him loosen.

Maintaining his calm control, Tim wedged his right hand between his hip and the seatbelt, striving to reach the lock release. He didn’t know if the stunt would work, but he had to try something, had to keep fighting. There was no telling where they were being taken, but he had the feeling once they got there the situation would only worsen.

At the intersection of Highway 55 and County Road 19, the speeding Mercedes jarred Tim’s eyes open when it sideswiped an old pickup truck and cornered right to race northward.

The car hadn’t traveled far before a curving line of bright red lights became visible farther ahead, on the street’s left-hand shoulder—a series of road flares glowing in the darkness, outlining the parameter of a stopped vehicle.

And he saw a police car.

Secured like a metal patient in a straightjacket, Tim had no way of sending a warning to the unknowing officer when the man stepped out into the middle of the road and began motioning them around the cordoned-off stretch of asphalt.

The possessed car hurtled forward.

Realizing the machine’s intent, the cop scrambled backward, drawing his weapon. Tim could already picture the first slug rupturing the windshield, and he joined in with the others, shouting at the top of his voice for the officer not to shoot.

But the Mercedes moved too fast for the man.

The cop abandoned his shooter’s stance and lunged to get clear of the car, only to find he’d backed up parallel to the disabled vehicle and had nowhere to go.

Tim closed his eyes.

The impact felt like a cannonball hit. The whole car jolted.

The windshield imploded. The roof bucked.

Shouts and cries that had originated with the terror of being trapped within the haunted auto and subservient to its evil presence silenced in the crash.

Tim opened his eyes to find that the safety glass of the windshield had turned white with destruction and now bowed inward toward them. Despite the devastation, it remained in its frame. Tim craned his head around to see what had become of the unfortunate officer, but all he saw were the terrified faces of Mallory’s friends.

Clear of the patrol car, the Mercedes rushed on, making a sharp right onto a heavily wooded side road. It plowed through outstretched arms of plant life that overhung its boundaries.

At the end of the drive an abandon church and cemetery emerged out of the murk.

The Mercedes slowed to a stop before an iron fence half hidden by overgrown weeds. Scores of various shaped headstones glowed in the vehicle’s high beams.

The car idled.

“
Everyone out except Mallory,” the dreaded voice demanded.

The restraining belts lashed around Tim and the three teens behind him all clicked softly in their buckles and slipped away. The driver-side doors swung open.

“
What about Mallory?” Tim asked. “Why won’t you let her go, too?”

He leaned over and checked Mallory’s ever-worsening condition, finding she’d slipped into unconsciousness and wouldn’t respond to his voice.

“
If you want Mallory to go free, then you’ll do as I say,” the speakers transmitted. “Otherwise, I’ll tear her apart, slowly, piece by tiny piece, making her suffer a hundred deaths before I finally
allow
her to die.”

Tim didn’t question the validity of the monster’s threat, and the thought of what it might do to her made him choke. “W-what do you want from us?”

“
Complete a job for me,” it replied. “The four of you go into the cemetery and unearth the center grave. There are shovels waiting and most of the work has already been done. Dig up the coffin and bring me the body of Kale Kane, if you want Mallory to live.”

Tim’s skin prickled with unease.
Kale Kane. The serial killer? He’s here!

“
Time is short,” the creature warned. “Bring me Kane now, or your friend dies.”

“
All right,” Tim shouted.

He and the others piled out of the car and faced the waiting graveyard. Its eternal markers stared back. The night air had taken on an unseasonable chill, but remained thick with moisture and the threat of the churning storm above.

Tim moved away from the vehicle last, taking tentative steps toward where Mallory’s friends had gathered. They looked to him with imploring glances.

“
What do we do now?” Adam whispered. His gaze kept darting to the wilderness.

“
We do like it said,” Tim answered.

“
But we could run,” Lisa said. “It couldn’t follow us out here, not through the trees.”

“
No way,” Tim warned. “Now, come on, before it does something to hurt Mallory.”

They looked to the car, to the blazing headlights that seemed to watch them, then followed Tim through the gate. They let him lead the way amid the monuments, wading through the waist-high weeds to the grave they’d been instructed to unearth.

Piles of dirt rimmed the open pit.

Two shovels awaited use at each side.

“
Oh, my God,” Becky screeched.

Hordes of glossy black crickets crawled across the tombstone and around its base, scuttling over and under one another, some spilling into the grave itself.

The two girls huddled close to each other and kept their distance. Tim didn’t blame them. Though harmless, the insects’ exaggerated number proved daunting.

He took up one of the shovels and cleared away a majority of the bugs, heaving them into the weeds. Once finished, he knelt and started into the hole, indicating for Adam to join him.

“
Let’s get to work,” he whispered. “Maybe it’ll let its guard down if it thinks we’re doing what it wants.”

“
Hell with that,” Adam said. “We have a chance, right now, just like Lisa said. If we can get into the forest, it won’t be able to catch us. We’re halfway there now.”

Tim shook his head. “Trust me, it can and it will.” He dropped into the open excavation and looked up at them. “Besides, I think I have an idea how we can
all
get to safety, but first we need to get Mallory out of that car. If we bring it the coffin, we might have a shot at freeing her, but I’ll need your help to do it.”

“
You’re nuts,” the boy replied.

“
It’s for Mallory’s life,” Tim replied. “What’s wrong with you people? Don’t you understand—we leave, and that thing will kill her. You guys are her friends, you can’t abandon her.”

“
He’s right,” Becky said. The fear in her face seemed to have dwindled. Disentangling herself from Lisa, she stooped and picked up the shovel. “I’m with Tim. We have to help Mallory. She’s the one still stuck with that monster, not us.”

Together, Tim and Becky began clearing the remaining soil from the killer’s coffin while Adam and Lisa fidgeted several paces away, not watching.

CHAPTER 51

Paul knelt on the interior roof of the overturned Expedition, immobilizing Rebecca’s head with his hands while Melissa examined her injuries. Once the detective established she wasn’t in shock and it would be all right to move her, they eased her out of the seat.

“
Got her shoulders?”