Truck Stop (10 page)

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Russell groaned softly and stirred on the table in the diner. Bart grabbed a glass of water that he had standing by. “Hold on. Here.” He cradled Russell’s head in his hand and brought the glass of water to his lips.

Russell swallowed dryly, tried to take a sip. The water met his lips and trickled into his mouth. He started to cough and choke.

“All right. Okay, slow. Slow.” Bart pulled the glass away until the coughing subsided.

Russell started to shake his head as he tried to focus his bleary eyes on Bart. “Nnn…no, I…I….” he whispered hoarsely.

Bart leaned down close to Russell, trying to hear. “What?”

“It…it…wasn’t….” Russell trailed off, growing groggy again.

“Russell?” Bart raised his voice, trying to wake him again but it was no use. Russell was asleep. Bart carefully slid his hand out from under Russell’s head and set the glass down. He was considering what to do next when a low thump came from across the dark, shadowy diner. Bart looked over. “Hey guys, get in here. He was starting to talk.”

Bart waited for Kat or Roger to answer, but instead there was nothing. “Kat?” he tried again.

There was still no answer.

Bart stood, looked across the diner. A faint yellow glow was emanating from the kitchen. Bart grabbed his flashlight and started toward it.

Kat sobbed uncontrollably in Roger’s arms as they made their way to the edge of the junkyard. If he hadn’t been there to help her, she would’ve collapsed.

Everything Kat had ever felt about her mother was racing through her mind at once; her thoughts were scattered and her words couldn’t keep up. “This whole time, I…I thought she had left again. I thought she didn’t want to see me. I thought…she…” A new wave of tears wracked her body, and she couldn’t continue.

Roger pulled her close, doing what he could to comfort her. His mind centered on Russell. They were both victims of that monster in the diner now, and it fueled his rage even more. “I don’t give a shit how hurt that motherfucker is. I’ll beat him awake. I’ll fucking choke him until he tells me where Lilly is, and then I’ll kill him for what he did to your mother. I swear I….“

Roger stopped abruptly.

Kat collapsed against him, looked up at him through her tears. She could see a wary expression on his face. “What?” she sniffed, growing frightened.

Roger didn’t answer.

Kat looked over in the direction he was staring. The back door to the dark building was banging eerily in the wet breeze.

“Roger? What is it?”

“I closed that door tight when we left.”

“What do you think…?”

“Shhh…” he cut her off. They continued up to the swinging door. Roger raised his flashlight and peered inside.

The long, dark hallway was empty.

Roger looked back at Kat, put his finger to his lips, and stepped inside. Kat clung tightly to his arm.

They crept quietly past the shadowy doors to the sleep rooms and showers, which were all tightly shut. They reached the door to the diner. It was partially open. Roger exchanged a look with Kat, then pushed it further.

Pale smoke hung in the air inside the diner. The faint sound of something frying came from the kitchen. Roger swung his flashlight beam across the dark diner and stopped at the table where they had left Bart and Russell.

There was blood everywhere. Russell’s lifeless body lay in a heap on the floor in front of it, his throat slashed open from ear to ear.

Kat stifled a scream. Roger silenced her with a look and moved his light over to the kitchen. A flickering yellow glow played against the walls.

Roger stepped around the counter, reached out, and pushed the kitchen door open.

Bart was slumped face down on the red-hot cooktop, a knife sunk in his back. His face popped and sizzled as it fried against the scalding surface; his shirt smoldered.

Kat screamed.

Roger hurried over, shoved Bart off the cooktop. His lifeless body tumbled back, revealing his bubbling and smoldering face.

Roger choked and coughed on the sickly smoke and shut off the burner. He looked around frantically, grabbed a butcher knife, and held it out to Kat. “Here!”

Kat backed away, trembling, shaking her head. “There’s a pistol under the register.” She turned and bolted out of the kitchen.

“Kat! Wait!” Roger called after her, but she was gone.

Kat ran into the diner and raced behind the cash register. She reached into the shelf underneath and felt around frantically. “Shit.” She looked up at Roger as he hurried in. “It’s gone. Roger, it’s gone! What do we do?”

Roger rushed over to the front door, twisted the lock shut. He aimed his flashlight at the door to the back hall. “Can you lock that?”

“I think so.” Kat grabbed a large ring of keys from a drawer by the register. “It’s one of these.”

Roger took the keys from her and hurried to the hallway door. He examined the lock, then started trying one key after the next, hoping for a match.

Kat looked across the dark room at Russell’s lifeless body, lying in the pool of blood under the table. “We were wrong this whole time. We were wrong about him.”

“Yeah, and that means whoever did this is still here.” Roger found the right key, twisted it in the lock. He tested the metal door, then backed away, still not satisfied.

He grabbed a nearby chair and wedged it up under the knob. “There.” He stood back, caught his breath. “No one’s getting in through there without us knowing it.”

Roger turned, crossed over to the large front windows. He looked out at the shadowy trucks in the dark parking lot. “Fucking freaks,” he said. “It could be any one of them out there. You know I heard that sicko mother and her son together in the shower earlier.”

“What?”

“Yeah. Together. Same shower. They were up to some freaky shit. And that other old lady. There’s something going on with her too.”

“But it could also be someone else, couldn’t it? Someone we don’t know,” Kat said as she stepped up behind him.

Roger shook his head “I doubt it. Whoever it is knows this place…knows it well…they’ve been dumping bodies back there for years. Like that fat fuck with all the guns. He’s been around.”

“So when the police get here, we just….“

“Forget the police. It could be hours before they get here, and those are hours that Lilly might not have. If she’s still alive, every second now could mean the difference between life and death for her.”

“So what do we do? We can’t go after all of them.”

Roger stared out at the ominous collection of trucks for a moment in silence, and a dark look crossed his face. “No. We can’t go after all of them, but we might not have to.” He trailed off; his mind raced as a desperate idea began to form.

Kat saw the look on his face and grew concerned. “What? What is it?”

Roger didn’t answer.

“Roger?”

He looked back at her. “I could reach over and find out.”

“Reach over? What’re you talking about?”

“I could make contact with one of those victims back there in the junkyard. They could tell me who killed them.”

“You mean you’d cross over?”

“Yeah, and I could find out who the killer is.”

“But you said it almost killed you when you tried it before.”

She was right, of course; he had almost died when he had done it before. It had been a reckless thing to try, and he had done it when he was in a particularly reckless state of mind. At the time, he was a sophomore at Davis, and he had tried many self-destructive things in his attempt to drown out the noise and visions that made his life so unbearable.

He had been dating Claire, a twenty-year-old sophomore from San Francisco. They met at a frat party when they were both stoned. After that, most of their dates were spent downing Xanax and Vicodin together. Eventually she had tried to get sober, and she said the only way would be to leave him. Roger had been devastated, but he was used to the instability of life as a victim of his psychic gift, which required him to be a functioning junkie. Roger’s solution was the usual numbing of his feelings with his opiates.

Several months later, he heard that Claire had died of an overdose. Even in Roger’s heavily medicated state, it cut deep. She had left him to get clean, and she hadn’t been able to follow through with it. It was strange, but Roger was jealous of the drugs she had chosen over him; it was as if she had cheated on him. He couldn’t help but think that if only she had stayed with him, maybe she wouldn’t have overdosed.

Alex, Roger’s roommate at the time, had been an animal science major. They had spent long hours together, and Roger had opened up to him about his encounters with the dead. Alex was a believer, and he was endlessly fascinated by it. Roger couldn’t remember exactly whose idea it was at first, but once the seed was planted, it grew quickly.

Roger would cross over and seek out Claire. Roger had always known that stimulants seemed to trigger his visions, so this time they would take it a step further and try to force one to occur. Alex managed to get some synthetic adrenaline from the veterinary school, and Roger scored some coke from his Vicodin dealer.

That night they broke into the dorm room where Claire had overdosed. Roger ingested the drugs and slipped over to the other side.

In the years since this had occurred, Roger had forced himself to forget what happened next, and for the most part he had been successful. But the one thing he could never forget was the feeling of Claire’s icy, dead touch on the other side. She had held onto him, desperate not to let him return.

Back in the living-world, Alex saw Roger drifting away; his body was shutting down, and he was close to dying. Alex went into a panic. He pounded on Roger’s chest to get his heart going again and had all but given up when Roger returned.

The two of them never spoke about what they had done. Of course it was a story they couldn’t tell without having to answer too many questions. The next semester, Alex transferred to UCLA, and Roger lost touch with him. Roger went downhill quickly after that. It was the beginning of his big slide into the heavy narcotics that almost took his life.

To Roger, this was now just another chapter in his tortured life. A lesson he had learned. Another nuance in the ways his “gift” could destroy him.

Of course Roger knew the risks he would be taking if he tried this again, but with precious time ticking way that Lilly might not have, it seemed well worth it.

Roger gently put his arm on Kat’s shoulder and looked at her reassuringly. “That was something different. I know what to watch out for now. I’ll be careful.”

But Kat was still dubious and frightened. The one person she could count on now was talking about risking his life.

Roger could see she still wasn’t convinced. “Kat, I’m telling you, this could work. Any one of those victims could tell me who the killer is. And if I end up seeing Lilly on the other side too, then at least I’ll know.” As hard as it was to say, it was the truth. He could find out for sure.

Roger looked away from her. It didn’t matter what she said now, he was convinced, and he was going to do it. “I’ll need uppers. Uppers and speed. Lots of it, like caffeine, only more, so I can heighten what I feel, heighten my senses.”