1958: A Ghost Story

by d c mallory

Copyright 2021

ONE

Destiny is a nasty bitch, stubborn and yet submissive, harsh, yet fair. And, when she decides its time for you to find yours — or to get yours — she goes about it as relentlessly as a fat man eating at an all-you-can-eat buffet. Being as I’d always considered myself footloose and fancy-free, I’d never really given two shits about destiny before, but something was eating at me as I cruised along the old back-water roads in the middle of nowhere, heading uneasily into an unknown destination. Now, as I’ve had time to look back on it, I truly believe Destiny was driving the car and I was just along for the ride.

Driving down an old beat-up back road between Buckeysville, Virginia, and Anywhere, USA, I could feel the weight of the night deep within me. This road had definitely seen better days; a hundred years ago this road was possibly the Cadillac of transportation media. Today, judging by the jolts the car’s suspension were taking as it moved over the sad surface, not so much. It didn’t really matter where I was or the lay of the road anyway, because it’s not as though I really had anywhere to go; being a loner is like that. It’s being free to follow the currents of the Northwind or to swim in the moon’s sweet tide whenever the feeling took me.

The night was a cliche, black as pitch and as silent as the grave. The sky was smothered by dark clouds so vast that any chance of getting a little natural light from the stars or the moon above was mostly out of the question; every now and then one or the other would peek out from a break in the clouds to see what was going on below. From the looks of things, I’d have said it would dump some rain on me before dawn rode the eastern sky, but it just didn’t feel muggy enough. Not that I’m any kind of expert on cataclysmic weather events of that sort, or of any type of weather phenomenon for that matter, but I knew the difference between muggy, and hot and sweltering. Rain was definitely out of the question which suited me just fine.

I’d been listening to the radio as I made tracks down the road earlier in the day, but what they called music had morphed into some serious Bible-thumping full of predictions of doom and gloom. Seemed strange to me as it was hours until time turned Saturday night into Sunday morning, but when in the South you get what you get, and you like it by God. Don’t get me wrong – The Creator and I, we’re on a first-name basis. It was just that I’d learned years ago that I don’t need a priest, live or Memorex, to act as a mediator for me to talk to my maker; I could talk to her just fine all on my lonesome, thank you.

In place of the Bible-thumping I had some old Creedence Clearwater in the tape-deck playing, John’s sermons truly a stark contrast to the old religious stations that had been on the radio. As I drove along, I tapped my left foot along with the music, occasionally blasting out an enthusiastic line or two along with John, my off-tune vocals almost seeming to blend in with one of his righteous refrains, at least in my mind; I’m sure from someone else’s view the truth would hurt.

Driving alone late at night with nowhere to go made life good, and some invigorating vocals fit right in. Well, as good as it gets when all you own is your car, such that it was, and a ragged backpack, packed with some spare clothes and other assorted odds and ends, tossed on the seat behind you.

I didn’t have the tunes cranked, either. It was turned down real low, kind of quiet and intimate, with John’s upbeat lyrics just kind of rolling out of the speakers behind the front seat until the rear of the car was full of sound and, then, that sound barely spilling into the front over the seat-backs, kind of like a slow stream over a small dam. It was almost pleasant in a surreal kind of way, what with being able to hear the wind rushing in through the open front windows along with the driving bass beat drowning out all the other local sounds.

Though I had the music going, I was still concentrating pretty hard on my driving, paying a little more attention than I normally would have, kind of like I was tired and trying my damnedest not to fall asleep behind the wheel. But the truth was exactly the opposite of that; I felt wired and alive. I was so full of energy, my mind so electric and alert that if I didn’t know better I’d have thought I had eaten a handful of speed. Or possibly some really good LSD that was just waiting to kick in with a smorgasbord of sound and vision. But, because of low funds and not knowing where to pick up anything good in this Southern Hellhole without risking deviants looking for free money instead of providing a product, or some sort of sordid Police involvement, I was distressingly straight at the time, which I suppose was a good look for me for a change.

Then, just as I was thinking how good things were going, it seems Destiny called the next few shots. In one fleeting moment, everything went south in a hurry and left me wondering what the hell had happened. Maybe it was a result of me paying too much attention to my driving, tied to an upbeat, natural high. Or maybe it was thinking about how great I felt about life in general. Whatever, I guess I must have really been jinxin’ the janx because, as I said, things surely turned to shit between one mile and the next.

In the end, the result was spectacularly bizarre, as in ‘I’ve just seen the strangest shit and wished I hadn’t.’ It was like being lost in a Picasso painting, trying desperately to find an easy way out or, really, any way out. As long ago as this had happened, my mind is still trying to grasp the gestalt of the pieces, to create a whole of that moment; the more I think on it, the more I’m convinced it never will.

What I did grasp was that John was singing, the words “I see a bad moon arising, I see trouble on the way…” an obvious omen, while up ahead in the distance the scenery to the right side of the road seemed off-kilter. It was quite a way off in the distance, and yet there was no mistaking the effect. In one specific area, it seemed what was there was covered in some sort of weird-assed blanket similar to low-lying fog.

The small section off to the side of the road which was shrouded the most seemed to be fluctuating, pulsing, almost like the arhythmic beating of a mechanical heart. At first, it appeared as a blurred image, almost as if it were trying to hide the scene tied to that location for a brief moment of time, and then the area seemed to shift forward and back rapidly and randomly for the next few moments, as if it were fading in and out, flickering almost like a TV  station back in the old days when the reception was shit and you just had to deal with it. The image stuttered in and out as if it were trying to load an overlay of a vision overtop that of an already existing image and being fought by the competing entity the entire time.

Whatever was going on it certainly didn’t endear itself to me, and I felt my euphoric state of pseudo-tripping take a quick nosedive, like shit being flushed down the toilet. The whole idea of nature being manipulated before my eyes made me feel creepy and scared, which was sad considering the excellent natural high I’d just been riding. Maybe I was in the throes of an LSD flashback, the moment trying to sneak up on me similar to a stray thought trying to escape the prison of my mind and let itself be known to my consciousness.

I didn’t know what to do so I slowed down a little, just to be safe, trying hard to get my eyes to move off that spot so I didn’t drive into the ditch in my almost hypnotized state, or something just as bad. But, try as I might, those old peepers of mine just kept peeled to that damned spot in the road up ahead, like a rubbernecker gazing at a horrible accident in an effort to make sure they took in all the gore.

As I continued to stare the road took a long, slow, sweet turn to the left, and, seemingly without my help, the car continued tracking it as if it were on auto-pilot and gliding towards the disturbance of its own accord. Perhaps Destiny was now driving the car and I was just along for the ride.

The closer I got to the area constituting the strange disruption, the more the scenery acted as if it was going all wonky; yes, wonky is a technical term, and for fucking sure it applied in this case. The whole situation really began to weird me out even more, if that were even possible because my mind felt as if it was already a couple cans short of a six-pack. It seemed the only thing that had any sort of fixed substance to it was the car, and with the way my brain was bouncing thoughts around like the ball in a women’s volleyball game, I couldn’t even be completely sure about that.

Then, just when all the strangeness of the last few minutes was building up like a crescendo at the end of an opera and my thoughts were stretched as thin as a rubber-band wrapped around an old stack of rolled-up paper, I swear I saw the faint image of a person standing there next to the road and kind of down in the ditch that ran alongside the road for drainage, smack dab in the middle of the hallucinatory storm, wearing the Lovecraftian scene like an old, well-worn jacket.

From what I could tell the person was just standing there, not moving at all. It was not like someone trying to thumb a ride or attract any attention in any manner at all. One might expect some handwaving at the very least if they were looking to be noticed. Still, I couldn’t tell whether it was a man or a woman, what with the distance they were from me, but I clearly remembered thinking it beyond strange that anyone would be doing anything in this area, whether it was the dark of night or the blinding light of the day. You have to understand what I felt with all the confusion going on in the back of my mind, which seemed to multiply by the minute, but what I didn’t fully grasp at the time, couldn’t in fact grasp, was there was nothing for miles around.

Just. Fucking. Nothing. I don’t remember seeing any houses on this stretch of the road. There had been no stores or Strip Malls since I’d left the highway miles back. No gas stations, either. There was not fucking anything around for miles. And I sure as hell knew that fun-filled fact because I’d been driving the roads through that Absolutely Fucking Nothing for quite some time.

The only thing I could figure in my slowly functioning brain to account for a situation such as this if it truly existed, was that maybe their car had broken down somewhere up ahead, and the person was walking along in hopes of finding a filling station. Flimsy, since I had seen no car anywhere along the path I had driven, but possible if they had come from the opposite direction.

Or maybe they hoped to find a house with a working phone in it as if that were likely to happen; well maybe finding a house out here could happen, but one in this fucking hillbilly heaven with a working phone was highly unlikely; the people in the house would probably be questionable as well. Hmmm. Watching “Deliverance” all those times seems to have tainted me for life when it comes to country living – I’m sure anyone who chose to live out here in this nothingness would be a fine outstanding citizen, and the moon could be made out of cream cheese. Right.

As I crept up nearer, the car now on a slow approach, to where the person was standing in the pervading hypnotic cloud, I felt I could make out more of them. While it was difficult to see anything conclusively due to the still flickering scene playing itself out, I thought I could at least see what held the resemblance of a Poodle skirt deep inside the cloud, and what could possibly pass for a High School sweater. These items seemed to be hovering above a pair of black-on-white saddle shoes worn over white ankle socks which were folded over in a nice cuff effect, all over pale bare legs.

Immediately an image of a young girl pushed into my mind, although what the hell a young girl was doing out here was way more than a mystery; it was a dilemma. Thoughts on why she was out here flooded through my mind like fast-flowing water over a rocky creek bed. A myriad of images came fast and furious for this situation, each new image pushing the previous one out, and none of them could pass the sanity test in any manner.

 In one the girl could have had a fight with her boyfriend and said boyfriend, being a macho prick and a desperate drunk, had dumped her out of the car at the side of the road to teach her a lesson. Then, to teach her some tough love on top of the lesson, he’d driven off like some cum-filled condom, leaving her no option but to walk the night like one of the damned. Mayhap he would come back for her, mayhap not.

Or maybe she lived in a house back in the woods and was just out wandering up and down the road checking out the night, tired of sitting at home warding off the advances from her drunk daddy while her mama watched in silent desperation, but equally glad at the same time that daddy-dear was concentrating on the daughter instead of herself this time. It’s a hard row to hoe for a mother to deal with incest and abuse of a child, but one could only take so much before cracking.

Then again, it could be I was just hallucinating from lack of sleep, and she wasn’t there at all, waiting for something to happen; hell, even at the best of times Sherlock Holmes I’m not. But then both Sherlock and I liked our coke in a seven percent solution to tide us over during the slow times and times had sure been slow for quite a while.

As the car continued to creep slowly up the road towards the girl, and by now I was absolutely certain it was a girl, she suddenly snapped into sharp focus, the change so abrupt it was like switching from binoculars to a telescope to look at the surface of the moon. She looked to be just the far side of old enough to know that hitchhiking could be dangerous, and just the near side of young enough to think it was safe to take a chance anyway because, as all young people believe at this age, she thought herself to be immortal.

Or maybe she just figured bad things always happened to the other girl, or at least not one who was dressed as a High School darling from the late fifties. Still, I can’t read minds anymore than I can solve mysteries, so I just left the why for someone else to phantom and moved on up the road towards where she was standing, the car’s pace slow and sure.

Amazingly, even through all the spatial distractions dancing in and out through the now near distance, I continued to drive up the road instead of plunging off it into the ditch while gawking at the persistent show. The closer I inched towards her, the better I could make out her details. From a scene that was once patchy and indecipherable, to the one now which was still shrouded and yet somehow becoming clearer with each click of the odometer.

The overall image itself, while not really sharp and clear, was still discernible. I was still creeped out by the almost hazy veil that seemed to hang about her, seemingly at odds with how clearly she stood out in the midst of the locale, but feeling creepy didn’t keep me from looking at the prize inside the box.

She was dressed as though she’d been to, or was at the least on the way to, a costume party, or perhaps one of those school dances that celebrate the good old days when boys were boys and girls were hard to get. Then again it could have been anything else in between, what with all that goes on now in this crazy mixed-up world. I tried to see through the shroud surrounding her to get a better idea of what she looked like, but for the fact that her body was in nearly perfect focus, her face was still just a little too fuzzy to fully glean.

When I pulled right up close to where she stood, within spitting distance you might say if you could hack a loogie a fair distance, I finally got a good look at her face. I couldn’t say she was beautiful because there’s no way she would be the first person you’d notice when you entered a room. I could say she appeared to be captivating; once she had caught your gaze there’d be no way you could ever take your eyes off her. With that sweet heart-shaped face and skin as pale as moonlight, a high pony of dark-colored auburn hair, and a body that would stop a clock, I couldn’t tear my gaze off of her. I could almost feel the ditch at the side of the road getting closer, resulting from my lack of paying attention to anything other than the apparition.

While the car was now very close to her, I realized I was still far enough away to make a sane decision. I shut down the morbid peek show which was currently running rampant in my brain, and which was inadvertently leading to a stirring in my groin and began to think long and hard about the options open to me concerning the girl. These options included stopping to pick her up like a good Samaritan would do, or mashing the gas pedal to the floor and blowing past her like a bad dream. As much as the later option attracted me, in the end, my conscience took over and convinced me that the best thing to do would be to pull over to at least talk to the girl find out what the deal with her was.

Even though I was sure my mind was made up, I found I still had to convince myself that it was just the right thing to do as I continued to have second thoughts about stopping. It didn’t help matters any that the saner part of my brain kept screaming, much too loudly in my opinion, that if I left her there at the side of the road whatever happened to her would end up being my cross to bear. As much of a low-life as I might be on the best of days, I don’t think I could have lived with myself if the worst happened although, for a last argument in favor of leaving her gaping in surprise as I drove past, I’d probably never know anything about what happened to her anyway as I would have already flown the coop.

Still, in the end, her demise if I didn’t stop and somehow found out about it later would no doubt taint the last few sane thoughts I might have for the rest of my life; I guess driving on so wasn’t happening, so stopping the car it turned out to be.

TWO

Although I knew that it was just as dangerous to pick up a hitch-hiker as it was to be said hitcher, my better half had won the battle, and there was no way coherent thinking could persuade me otherwise. There was always a chance that stopping for her was as stupid as a kid with a sweet tooth going into a candy shop with a hundred-dollar bill, but I had made up my mind. Still, my over-active imagination raced with the possibilities of what could happen to me when I did stop and offer her a ride, and none of them were the kind of thoughts that spoke of being rewarded with an afterlife in Heaven coming from my twisted act of kindness.

One thought that manifested in my mind figured she could be the front person of a rabid gang of deviants, mutants, and devil-spawn, with her standing there looking all sweet and demure and harmless to a fault, waiting there next to the road for some good samaritan to pull over to help. When they stopped next to that sweet little package that she was, her eight-foot-tall boyfriend with a face like Frankenstein’s monster and who, like the monster was dumber than dirt and stronger than Hercules, would jump out of the woods lining the drainage ditch and tear the passenger door off the car. Then Lurch and the rest of the gang would jump in the car like a nest of Manson Clan wannabes who needed only a very small reason, if even that, to practice their preferred method of violence on whoever happened to be unlucky enough to be in the vehicle. In my mind, it involved buckets of lube, physical and mental pain, and in the end a blissful retreat to death. Of course, with this gang buckets of lube might be optional.

Or, pushed another thought into my fertile mind, she could be crazy all on her own. I could imagine her packing a slick little straight razor down in her adorable child-sized white stocking, needing just a hint of a reason to skin an unwilling sucker slowly from head to toe, with a gleeful zest that would put a veteran butcher to shame.

For that matter she could have a single-shot derringer stuffed down deep in her panties, all snuggled up tight and right against her sweet little shaved kitty, the cold metal of the messenger of death being warmed up by the damp heat coming off her sex, the lucky metal made not only hotter due to its proximity to Heaven but wet because of her excitement, but the thought of pulling it out and using it was causing her juices to flow.

Dangerous times, these. But, as I had said earlier, I wasn’t going anywhere in particular, and I wasn’t doing anything but driving just to pass the time in my nomadic life. A little bit of danger just seemed to flow with the seemingly endless night that led to either the twilight of my life or the sunset of my death. And yet, more to the actual point, my damned conscience had me on auto-drive with no way out; I guess Destiny really did have me by the balls and thought it would be funny to give them a tight little squeeze.

These twisted images rolled relentlessly through my tired old brain, nothing more than morbid thoughts flowing like wine. It was hard to push out these images and formulate what I needed to do to help the girl, but I forced myself to try and come up with an idea. I considered many different scenarios, throwing all of them out for one reason or another. Some I’d considered lame, some ridiculous, some just plain crazy, but I kept on going through a multitude of possibilities.

Once I’d come up with what could pass for a plan I got down to it, consequences be damned.

Since I was already creeping the car up the road, I had no problem with pulling to a smooth clean stop right next to her. As up close and personal as I was now I could see that she wasn’t really the looker I had thought her to be from a distance, but that hadn’t been why I’d stopped anyway. Shoot, she could have been a two-bagger and I would have stopped just the same because, as my friend Sherlock would have said, “The game is afoot.”

With a great amount of effort, I put my now sadly sordid thoughts on the back burner to simmer. I leaned over the steering wheel, cranking my head to the right so I would be able to see her face clearly as I talked to her through the open passenger window; it somehow seemed to be more polite than me sitting up ramrod straight and talking to her tits, and possibly safer, too. I put on what would have to pass as my poker face, as goofy as it might have looked considering how I was feeling, to make me seem to be disinterested in whatever charms she was working on me, and started off the conversation.

“Need a ride?” I asked her, trying to sound pseudo polite while simultaneously breaking the pregnant silence, suddenly realizing the line was about as stupid as they come; I might as well have added “on my cock” for good measure, my deviant mind chipping in unsolicited. Don’t take that the wrong way; while I really didn’t really care about being “Mr. Manner’s” like my mama always tried to instill in me when I was growing up, I felt I should at least extend some sort of olive branch to her to show I wasn’t a pervert or a deviant regardless of my gutter thoughts which hopefully I hadn’t said out loud, or something worse along those lines.

I waited for a reply but didn’t get one. I thought this strange, but maybe she was just trying to think of what to say. I didn’t want to appear as if I were in a hurry or anything along those lines, but in truth I was and for the sole reason I was ready to jump out of my skin. I casually slipped the transmission lever up into park and waited. I really wanted her to get on with either accepting the offer I’d extended in good faith or blowing me off so I could move on without her. With the duration of silence from her, I guess she thought along the old lines of ‘silence is a virtue.’ Or maybe ‘children should be seen and not heard,’ because I was also starting to rethink the whole age thing after getting a good look at her; her age was as hard to read as a book written in Aramaic, but while she could have been she certainly didn’t look like jail-bait.

With her body bent over at the waist and her peering in the window, I could see her clearly. Her face was framed by the confines of the window casing, her strange violet eyes fixed unwaveringly on my face. She still hadn’t uttered a sound, but she finally nodded her assent for accepting a ride. Still, without saying a word the girl reached out for the door handle.

She moved slowly, as though she was trying to work out in her head what her hand needed to be doing to open the door, but it looked to me as though the hand was always a second behind her brain. In what appeared to be a surreal effort, her right hand finally made it to the door the handle and, with an exaggerated effort, seemed to lift it even though there was no sound associated with the action. In that same strange disjointed way of working the door handle she stood up and made to pull the door open, but aside from her going through the motions of pulling on the door nothing happened; the door stayed closed. She had backed up a couple of steps, I assume to give the door room to open outwards, but nothing else had changed.

I just figured she was goofing on me, because I mean how in the hell could this drama have happened otherwise, especially since I could see the lock on the door was down; hard to open a door when it’s locked, right? It didn’t bother me much that she appeared to be having a laugh at my expense; she wasn’t the first, and I was sure she wouldn’t be the last. Though some of my earlier manic buzz had calmed down, my mind was still cruising at subsonic levels, so I just let it all slide on past me.

And, with John singing “don’t go ’round tonight, it’s bound to take your life,” sanity fell away from me like an old blanket, and with a jolt that shook my whole system I entered the Twilight Zone.

I wish I could say it didn’t bother me when she slid in through the closed door; I mean her body went through all the right motions as if the door had really opened for her, with her turning her left side to the car and crouching down so her head wouldn’t hit the upper frame as she slipped into the vehicle, her body sitting down on the seat beside me but still close to the door, and her little saddle shoes resting snugly on the floorboard. Then she mimed pulling the already closed door shut behind her, all with that same smooth “not-doing-anything-but-pretending” motion she had used when she was outside looking in. Maybe she wasn’t goofing on me after all. Maybe I should have taken Option Two and blasted past her like a shooting star past the moon.

I didn’t want to look to be too freaked out by what had just happened, although I was, and extremely so. By golly, I was so freaked I was just one short step away from jumping out of the car and heading south as fast as my legs would carry me. Hell, I was like ninety-nine percent sure that if I hadn’t hit the crapper back at the last gas stop a while ago I would have had to get out of the car and shake the shit out of my drawers, all while keeping a respectable distance from the car; you don’t shit where you sleep. Or drive for that matter. Just because I could surely didn’t mean I should. Still, it seemed a better option would have been to be in control of the situation you’d gotten yourself into, and might not be able to get yourself back out of. Hindsight is twenty-twenty, or so the wise man said.

I took my time in dropping the transmission lever back to the drive position so I wouldn’t appear to be spooked, checked the side mirrors for a calming effect as I was sure there wasn’t shit behind me, and hit the gas, getting the car back on what there was of this washboard of a road. I headed north into the encroaching black of the night and clenching my butt-cheeks tightly together from time to time when I felt the need to take the strain off my sphincter arise to keep from ruining my underwear.

In an effort to calm my jangled nerves as I drove along, I tried to coax her into some sort of conversation which I found to be extremely difficult as casual conversation and I were not old friends. Still, I tried various subjects with her, and it seemed to be an uphill battle on my part when suddenly she acted as though she had made some type of decision.

 Unexpectedly, at least to me, with a slow, smooth motion she slid across the seat to sit closer to me, laying her left hand gently on my thigh. I think I might have appreciated the gesture if I could have felt the weight of her hand on my leg, but that wasn’t happening; it just felt like a spot of cold through the material of the jeans where he hand lay, kind of like spilling a small amount of ice water on my leg. From the corner of my eye, I could see her swivel her head to the left so she was looking at me, and then she opened her mouth.

A meek little voice seemed to come from her throat, barely audible at all over the quiet rumbling of the big V8; I think she was asking me whether I could pull over for a second but I wasn’t sure. In fact, her voice was so soft I wasn’t really sure if I had heard it or not; it could be she was projecting the request straight into my brain given the way this whole night was going. Glancing her way, I could see her looking at me, her eyes almost pleading with me to do as she asked.

“Pull over?” I ran past her, as if seeking confirmation that she’d made a request of me, and maybe I was just too damned slow to figure it out all on my own.

She nodded her head, slowly but decisively. “Yes, pull over. Sooner rather than later, if you please.”

Now that she had spoken again, I still wasn’t convinced that it wasn’t just her thoughts filling my mind. Her lips were moving, but the sound of her voice seemed to flow into my head like a  slow running stream, calm and assuring.

“The sooner the better, I think. I’d like to have a talk before we go much farther.”

She kind of waved a semi-transparent hand around and over her body and continued, “About all this.” I took ‘all this’ to mean about her condition, but for once I kept quiet.

She continued to stare at me as I pondered her words. I must have looked dumb as a rock, so she clarified herself for my edification.

“If we go much further I’m afraid I’ll be too thin to finish the conversation.” She still spoke softly, but the look on her face was so full of sorrow that I couldn’t help but take her seriously. “I have limits to what I can do, and I need to be close to my anchor point to make this work.”

Well, don’t we all I thought, even though I had no clue what a fucking anchor point was, or even why it needed to exist. And I sure as Hell didn’t know what it was that needed an anchor point to work.

Now, y’all probably think I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed and you might not be far from wrong, but I swear to you on my mother’s life that as I continued to drive slowly up the road she was looking less and less real. By less real I mean less there, less physical; she was starting to become more transparent than she had been when I’d first stopped for her, and she continued to get less visible the further up the road we traveled.

Seeing this and really thinking about how she had emphasized ‘too thin,’ I started to suspect there was something to her words after all. I mean, I was ninety-nine percent positive she didn’t want to stop to have a fuck break with me, and right now even trying anything like that would be all for naught as I couldn’t have gotten the old trouser snake up with a handful of naked porn stars all working me at the same time.

Now I may be slow, especially with everything that had happened this evening, but I had already known something was up with her when she slid into the car through a closed and locked door, but this “thin” thingie was really taking reality beyond the pale. Even with all kinds of thoughts bouncing around the confines of my skull, most of them questioning my sanity, I managed to get the car stopped, although I would be lying if I’d said I’d quite made it to the side of the road. There was no traffic out here anyway, so I figured it didn’t make any difference to anyone exactly where I stopped the damned car.

“I see you’ve figured out that there is something different about me,” she said sadly, her pale violet eyes appearing ready to leak and her body nearly see-through. Something different about her indeed, I thought. “If you’d care to listen to a story about me, about my past, I think you’ll understand why that is.”

She seemed to be ready to start talking as soon as the car was stopped and the transmission lever slammed into the parked position, but she waited. Somehow I knew that she was too far from where ever she needed to be and she was waiting for me to figure it out.

A quick thought had me thinking that maybe I should take her earlier words to heart, so I dropped the transmission lever into reverse and backed the car up a couple of hundred feet, closer to where I had picked her up. I noticed that as the car moved backward her form became more solid again; each click of the odometer in reverse giving her a little more substance. It caused a tingling in my spine like a whole damned army had just marched across my grave. I reckon that’s what happens when you’ve seen something as bizarre as what I was seeing. Yeah, something was definitely different with her. Hell, I guess there was something different with me as well, as I hadn’t jumped from the car screaming incoherently at the trees and running down the road like a madman with my arms waving about wildly.

When I’d backed up far enough to see that she looked pretty much palpable again, I stopped the car and turned the engine off; even though I had filled the tank at the last station I had passed, I didn’t have gas to waste idling and I didn’t know how long we’d be sitting here. More so, she was so hard to hear even taking into account that I still thought she might be throwing her voice directly into my head; I didn’t want anything competing against her in the sound department, and that included the quiet rumble of a big Detroit V-8 engine. If she had something to say, I sure as hell figured I should take a couple of minutes to listen, considering I had stopped and let her into the car. Either that or drive up the road as though a demon was chasing me until she’d just popped out of existence, which it seemed she might well do. That’s assuming that’s what would happen, although with the way this evening was going I surely wouldn’t bet on that.

I was contemplating how long I might have to wait for her to get started because of the way she seemed to be so hesitant to speak earlier, but to my surprise, she kicked right in. In hindsight, with the story that came gushing out of her in a whirlwind of emotion, I almost wished she’d never spoken.

THREE

“A while back,” she began slowly, almost as if she were searching through her brain for the right words to say, her voice as soft as the summer breeze and her face tilted slightly downcast as if what she was getting ready to say made her feel somehow tainted. “Well, quite a while back, to be fair, I was heading to the Robert E. Lee High School Hop. Although we had them about once a month, it was a big deal for most of us students. Especially for me since I was finally a senior, and one of the few who had turned eighteen earlier in the year. You know, footloose and fancy-free, and all that goes with it; the highs, the lows, the torture and death.” She mad a sad face at the last couple of words, and I almost wondered if I’d heard her correctly.

She waited there before continuing, I guess staring at me to see whether I was listening to her, or maybe just seeing whether I could comprehend what she was saying; I did say that at times I looked slow, or maybe just uninterested. But not this time; I nodded at her, and made swirling “go on” motions with my right hand. I guess they could have been “hurry up” motions just as easily. Whatever, she got the gist of what I meant and continued on.

“Back in the Fifties, and this was spring of Nineteen-Fifty-Eight, walking alone at night wasn’t a big deal as far as being safe went, or at least it shouldn’t have been. I had never had many friends so I never really gave any thought to walking alone at night. I didn’t have any worries about hoofing it that night either, since I wanted to get to the dance and had no other way to get there. I suppose I had done it so many times that I was numb to the dangers that laid themselves open to me, so the two-foot shuffle it was.

“I wasn’t meeting anyone there as I didn’t have a boyfriend, never had, and as I said not really any girlfriends either, but I was still in a hurry to get there and enjoy the party. I loved the music, and the way it made me feel when I was moving to the beat. Dusk was just getting ready to turn itself over to night, and the weather was great. Cool, with a slight breeze blowing in from the West which kept the temperature up just a little bit. It was a great night to be out and about.

“Being as I was in such a hurry, and really not thinking dark and dismal thoughts as I would later that night, I didn’t think twice about it when a man pulled over and asked me whether I wanted a ride. Hell yeah, I thought to myself! I’d be rockin’ to the tunes that much sooner.

“I looked in the open window and told the man, who I would soon learn the hard way was the Son of Lucifer, ‘Sure, I’d love a ride,’ and then made the fatal mistake of climbing into the car with him. I’d barely gotten the door closed when he took off, the tires squealing on the pavement and the big car jumping forward like a sprinter out of a gate.”

She paused there. I wasn’t sure if it were for effect, or just because she was trying to get her thoughts queued up, but whatever the purpose was, she didn’t pause for long; she rushed right along as if she had to get her story out before it faded in the same way she had been earlier.

“As he drove up the road talking to himself, or maybe arguing with himself like a person torn between good and evil, I began to wonder if I’d made a horrible mistake. I thought it strange that he didn’t ask me where I was going, but I figured he’d guessed from the outfit I was wearing it was clear I was headed to the school Hop. There are not too many places you’d go wearing a class sweater and a poodle skirt, right? I mean the choices are pretty much limited to the soda shop or the local dance.” I noticed a sad smile pass over her face as she made the comment, maybe a hint of nostalgia gripping her for a second, but it was only a flash before she continued her tale.

“When he blew past the high school without slowing down, I knew I’d made a mistake and not a little one; I was sure it would probably turn out to be a great big mistake. And I can tell you for true that, whether big or small, I knew I’d be paying for it in the end, one way or another. There was something seriously off about the man, and while I hadn’t noticed that at first, I could certainly see it now. It could have been that he hadn’t said anything to me since I’d gotten in his car, or it could have been the shifty look in his eyes and the slack features in his face. Whatever, it meant trouble for me.

“I kept asking him what was going on, and I told him again that I was headed to the high school and would really be happy to be taken back there if he pleased, but he didn’t even acknowledge me. He just kept on driving a pre-determined path, the town roads slowly becoming rural roads, the rural roads slowly becoming back roads, and the back roads slowly becoming gravel roads that tossed the car back and forth between the ruts in the surface, torturing the car’s suspension as we bounced along. We drove for a long time, my anxiety and dread increasing within me with each mile we drove. I still figured I was in deep trouble and my mind was going to dark places, but I couldn’t help but hope that maybe he’d let me live after he was done doing whatever he had in mind with me. That would be blessing for me, right?”

Her question caught me off guard as the depressing sound of her voice told me that maybe I really didn’t want to hear her story after all. “Yes,” I said, feeling like shit. “That would be sweet.”

I had been watching her the whole time, totally engrossed in her narrative, even if I knew the worst was yet to come. I noticed that as she talked, her hands would wrap around themselves like a couple of snakes in a mating ritual. Then, as her fingers continued their weird dance, I noticed her eyes would water over and, at these times, I swear I could see faint pink tears running down her pale cheeks, slightly discoloring a wash of lightly colored freckles. I wanted to hear the rest of the story, but then again, if the beginning of early waterworks were any indication of where this was heading, I knew for sure I didn’t care to hear the tale of what was to come. I figured I knew where she was going with this, and I sure as hell didn’t want to be forced to live her past agony along with her. Oh, hell no – I don’t play that game. But, I guess I didn’t have a choice now, as she started back up with only a slight pause in her narrative.

“So finally we pulled off what could be called a road if you were kind and were really literal about it, and bounced down a broken and overgrown path. Up ahead, even through the deepening dark, I could see a little shack, or maybe a shed; whatever you called it I didn’t like seeing it out here. Looking at the dilapidated structure caused me to think to myself, ‘Lyssie, this is the end.’ I knew I was sounding like a pessimist, even if only to myself, but why the hell would he bring me all this way if he didn’t have something dark and evil in store for me?”

I had no answer for her, for Lyssie as I assumed she was talking about herself in the third person, but I really don’t think she expected one. Lyssie was pretty much on auto-pilot now and the story was going to come out before the night ended, one way or another.

“By then I’d made up my mind that I wasn’t just going to sit there and be taken; I’d never been one to just take things as they come and I wasn’t going to just roll over for whatever the Devil had in mind; I just wasn’t wired that way. When he stomped the brake pedal down hard. almost mashing the thing to the floor, and brought the car to an abrupt stop in front of the shack, I threw open the door and ran for the nearby woods as fast as I could move over the pock-marked terrain. I swear I had no plan in mind except that of getting away from this guy and surviving whatever he had planned for me, and I would try my damnedest to make like a tree and leave. He still had not said anything, nor did he call out after me as I ran from the car. Truthfully, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to hear anything out of him if he did decide to talk. I only knew that getting away from him was a necessity for me. Job One, you might say.

“Well, I took off like a jackrabbit, but I didn’t make it very far before he ran me down; he was a lot taller than I was and every time I glanced by over my shoulder he was that much closer to me; his long legs seemed to eat up the distance between us like a storm cloud rolling over the ocean.

“When he caught up to me he grabbed me by my pony tail without breaking his stride, and yanked so hard on my hair that my feet actually came off the ground and up into the air, my feet sailing up until they were higher than my head. He dropped to his knees and slammed me down to the hardpan, his position being lower than mine allowed him some extra strength on the pull. I hit hard, my head bouncing up and down like a basketball on the gym floor and my feet hitting the ground close behind. The air was knocked from my lungs due to the force I’d hit the ground with, and I just lay there trying desperately to suck some air into my lungs, whimpering all the while and thinking about how really scared I was. Thinking about what might happen to me was one thing, but feeling it begin was another. And, worst of all, alone. I was completely alone, and I remember thinking to myself ‘No one should have to die alone. Please God, don’t let me be the one.’ I think I might have been talking to myself right then because I didn’t feel any great presence around who might be listening, or inclined to help.”

She took another second to pause again. Tears were running freely down her cheeks now and her voice had started that hitching sound you make when you’re trying hard not to start sobbing but utterly failing.

Though the Lord knows I’m not a pussy, or at least I didn’t consider myself one, I swear some tears were close to running down my cheeks as well, which caused my nose to start running. I gave a quick look around the car to see whether there was anything I could blow my nose on, but I didn’t see anything; par for the course — nothing around when you really need it. With an air of nonchalance, I just blew my nose with my fingers and wiped them on my jeans, getting my fingers as snot-free as possible. I didn’t figure it would make any difference to Lyssie because she was waist-deep in a dark and dreadful past and didn’t seem to be paying me any mind anyway; it was almost as if she were telling the tale to herself at this point, just trying to accept what had happened to her.

“After I’d lain there for what felt like a few minutes but was probably only seconds, trying to get myself together, I heard him laugh. It wasn’t a pleasant, playful laugh either. It was the laugh of a man who’d sold his soul to the Morning Star and had nothing more in life to lose. It was that laugh that, in my thoughts, sealed my fate – I knew it then just as I know it now.

“Before I could gather myself and try to get away again, he tightened his grip on my hair and, just like those cavemen I used to read about in the town library on Saturday afternoons,  he got back to a standing position and started dragging me towards the shack. As he marched forward, still clutching my hair, I remembered distinctly that I screamed, and I screamed, and I screamed. I screamed from the pain as my hair was being torn out of my skull, and I screamed in the hope that there was someone around who might hear me and come to provide succor. I screamed at the thought of my life ending, and no one around to even know about it, much less to care. And I guess that I screamed just so that I would know I was still alive and kicking.

“When we got to the dilapidated grey door he kicked it open, then he released the hold on my hair and grabbed me around the throat with one huge hand and yanked me up to my feet in one savage motion. He spun me around so my back was facing the inside of the shack and I was staring straight into his dead eyes. I watched him rear his right arm back until his fist was just behind the side of his head.

“I knew what was coming, but couldn’t break free from the grip he had around my neck to dodge the blow. That arm launched forward as fast as a striking serpent, the huge fist smashing into my face so hard that I knew he had to have broken some bones in my face. Probably knocked a few teeth out as well, though I don’t remember spitting any out. Then again, I don’t think I was worried about remembering anything at that point, the pain in my face so agonizingly intense that I thought nothing on Earth could hurt worse than I felt then; I hate to be wrong, but right then I was.”

Lyssie shook her head at that as if reliving the blow, and a sad soft chuckle escaped her. I could guess what she was thinking at that moment, at how wrong she was about anything being able to hurt worse than being struck in the face, but being the coward that I am I kept it to myself.

“He must have let go of me as his punch landed because even with all the damage he’d managed to inflict on me with that one strike I still flew into the room as if I were shot from a cannon, seeing even more stars as my head bounced off the edge of a table, causing my body to crash heavily to the floor. I figured I must have hit my head on the table pretty hard because my consciousness wavered from light to dark a few times as if there was a battle going on for control between the two of them, and then the blackness finally won.”

I just sat there like a manakin, stricken dumb by the sadness that emanated from her. I secretly hoped that she had died when she hit the table — almost an act of kindness — but I suspected neither she nor I for that matter, was to be that lucky. I had tears coursing freely down my cheeks now, and didn’t care if she thought less of me because of it; I swear to God that I was there, in her body, reliving the whole sordid scene, and I didn’t feel any too good about it at all.

“When I came to, I was tied down to some sort of bench or table. I wasn’t sure which at the time, and it turned out it didn’t make a difference to what was to happen anyway. Maybe it was one of those tables the gynecologists use when they need to be able to stand between your legs and check out your equipment up close and personal because my knees were hiked up in the air and spread so far apart I could feel the cold stagnant air blowing over my privates. My feet felt as if they were tied in those steel stirrups that pull out from the base of the table because, although I tried to kick out of them with all the strength I could muster at the time, nothing happened. I tried to wiggle and buck as well, but I think there was a thick strap over my stomach holding me down on the table too, as I couldn’t whip up much in the motion department.

“After figuring out I couldn’t move any at all, it also struck me that I was cold. I was hoping that it was caused by blacking out, but reality informed me, rather rudely in fact, that it was that I was laying on the table completely naked. That really didn’t surprise me much considering the situation I was in, but it still made me feel violated.”

She stopped for a few seconds, and half-wept out a frail laugh. She looked back up at me, shaking her head sadly, then looked back down at her hands which were weaving minarets in her lap before continuing. “I found out what being truly violated meant a little while later, but even at that particular point in time it definitely didn’t feel right what that asshole was doing to me.”

“Through my swollen eyelids I could make out that the guy was standing over me, staring greedily at what he must consider a free buffet, while his hands were busily groping at my breasts like there were buried treasure beneath them; I supposed he figured that one of my nipples was the magic “X” that marked the spot where the treasure was located because he was pulling on it so hard that I was sure he eventually would tear it loose. I could almost imagine him eating that nipple as an entree. It certainly wouldn’t have surprised me any as I was well past happy thoughts by then.

 “I remember thinking how incredible the pain was then, but I was shortly to find out the anguish hadn’t really even started yet, and the amount of pain the human body could endure most definitely wasn’t finite as I later learned it could go on forever. And while the mind can fight a lot of pain and cruelty and perversions, it had a point at which it just gave up and left the body it was protecting to suffer on its own, withdrawing into a secret room that none else could enter.

“Apparently the Son of Satan hadn’t even waited for me to wake up before he began to paw at my body, as if I could expect any kind of decency out of such a perverted being. I knew he hadn’t waited because he was running his filthy damned hands all over me when I’d finally come to and opened my eyes. Other parts of my body ached and felt as if they’d been ridden hard and put away wet, so it wasn’t too much of a stretch of my imagination to think he hadn’t been up to any good while I was staring at the back of my eyelids. Had I’d been dead instead of unconscious I knew it wouldn’t have made any difference to him in his current state of mind as his blank soulless eyes told me more about him and his deviant behavior than I ever needed to know.

“So he finally let go of my breasts, but apparently only to give him time to land a few more blows to my face and body with those big mean fists of his. From the intense pain I endured with each blow, I knew bones were cracking and breaking everywhere those flesh mallets struck my body. While I was drifting in and out of the blackness that tried to save my sanity by pulling me under but couldn’t quite succeed, I fought back the screams; I didn’t want him to know how bad he was hurting me or how scared I was. I thought he might get off even more if I totally lost it, so I tried not to. God knows that I tried to keep all of my thoughts and emotions buried deep inside of me as he’d continued to beat me. I actually began to hope that I might die from his savage ministrations before I completely broke, but it seemed he was being just controlled enough not to end it for me. I began to suspect that he wanted me alive but wasn’t quite sure it was true; I don’t think that my death would ruin any of his fun in the end.

“After he got tired of using me for a punching bag he walked away somewhere to the far side of the room. I couldn’t see him too well because I could not move my head from side to side very well, but I could hear him rummaging through some things which were apparently piled up on his workbench of torture. I found I was too terrified to even imagine what he was looking for and even more so of what he intended to do with whatever he found. He was up to something for sure, and whatever it was didn’t bode well for me; I found myself wishing over and over that he wouldn’t find whatever it was he was rooting around for. And, at that moment I knew that wishes were like dreams; they never come true. Lady Luck had left the building and left me alone to be fucked over as far as I was could tell.”

Once again Lyssie paused for a time, shaking her head slowly back and forth as if clearing her thoughts or trying to ward off blows only she could see. I knew she must be hurting from what she was reliving, but it seemed she was adamant to continue to let her secrets out.

“The noise stopped far too soon,” she continued, her voice wracked with sobs, “and I heard him coming back towards me. I didn’t know what he’d found to use on me, but I remember praying to God that if she had any love for me at all she would strike me dead before that crazy bastard crossed the room with his newfound toy. Still, I wasn’t surprised that God didn’t love me enough to let me die then with everything the Spawn of Lucifer had already done to me, even though I’d never intentionally done anything wayward enough to deserve her utter disinterest in my plight. I mean, the way this whole night was turning out, I was becoming very sure there was no God and if there were, how could she allow this to happen to an innocent girl. My mama had always told me there was a God though, and I’d always tried to listen to mama as I had thought when I was small that mama knew best. But of course, it seems to me that I could remember her saying there were no monsters, either. I guess she was batting zero on both counts, and I was paying for her lack of knowledge.”

Lyssie turned her face back towards mine again, looking as though she was somehow weathering the storm that had been cast upon her. She continued to look at me as she continued on with her tale. I’m sorry to say that it was now me who not only found it hard to hear her but to look at anything but my clenched fists, one resting on either thigh.

Lyssie gulped a new breath of air, moving on with her tale. “I was openly shaking now, although I tried so hard not to, and I was so scared of what he would do to me next that I kept my eyes closed tight so I couldn’t see what was coming. I mean, what you can’t see can’t hurt you, right? And believe me, I was so sure of that mantra, repeating it in my brain over and over, that I didn’t think there was anything on earth that could have made me open up those eyes and see the real world. Still, I hadn’t been right about anything this whole night, and I certainly wasn’t right on keeping those peepers closed down tight, either.”

“While I lay there, strapped down to a mad man’s table of torture, begging for a quick death, all the while still praying to a God I knew with all my heart had abandoned me, I felt the tip something big, cold, and hard pressed up against my butt hole. When I felt the excruciating pain as to what felt to be not as big an object as I had at first thought, but instead a huge object, being pushed up my rectum, my eyes popped open like the sun pushing its way out from behind a cloud and the full misery of the sordid mess I found myself came crashing down on me like a heavy weight. This single maneuver brought home the absolute meaning of pain. The next thing that flew through my mind was a new round of deep humiliation I’d never before imagined could be possible in any world or plane of existence, followed by that old saying, ‘Recked ‘em hell! I killed ‘em!’ And although I still fought with all my inner strength to be strong and still and, above all, quiet, a screamed ripped from my throat like the wail of a banshee.

“I knew at once I was right about being quiet and that piercing scream that had been torn from my throat was the worst possible thing I could have done bar none. Once the scream had erupted from me, he grinned like the Devil and pushed that nasty rod up my ass that much further, making it go in so deep that I thought I’d be choking on it in no time. As he continued to push it in with one hand, he was back to grabbing my breasts with his other. He made sure it hurt, both that thing being forced in and out of my ass, and my breasts being squeezed as if he were trying to test to see if the melons at the Farmer’s Market were ripe and ready to pluck. He made sure I screamed, even though I tried with all that was left in me not to. And, the good Lord knows, I screamed, howling in pain and humiliation and rage.

“When the pain had become so bad that I thought the only way to be saved would be by passing out or, even better for me, dying, the strangest thought crossed my mind; I stupidly thought, ‘Thank God this pervert doesn’t have four hands.’ What a strange thought to force its way out, don’t you think?”

I raised my eyes to hers and just stared, speechless. My eyes were leaking something fierce, snot still ran from my nose, and I couldn’t have talked if I tried as I was just that choked up with what I’d heard so far. I guess she didn’t really expect me to answer, which was good for me, because after a couple of minutes of blessed silence and finger weaving she carried on with her narrative.

“Once he tired of plunging that cold steel bar in and out of my ass he gave it a final shove and backed away creating enough space around himself to start taking his clothes off. He did it slowly, leering at me the whole time like a demented shark prowling along the shallow water next to a beach packed with people.

“He might have thought I was really getting worried about what further indignations and pain he had in mind for me, but the truth was he’d already taken everything from my mind and my body that he could. I had nothing left in me to give or to take, and I am proud to say that I felt absolutely nothing when he moved up between my legs and forced himself into me, grunting like a rutting pig as he did so. He must not have been truly hard at first as he thrust and thrust, trying hard to do whatever it was that got him off but I felt nothing inside me. Although his cock had felt soft or small at first, my sobbing and discomfort must have triggered something in him that brought him to life because soon he had his cock driving deep into my dry hole, tearing me up inside more and more. Still, I did nothing but lay there, unmoving and quiet, realizing the end couldn’t come too soon for me.

“I must have passed out as he was having his way with me, because when I came to I found I was alone, laying in the woods, my body one giant warehouse of pain. Occasionally I thought I could hear the sounds of a car going by, but I could never be sure from where I lay. One thing I was sure of though, and that was that I would die right where I was, laying on a bed of dirt and old leaves, wrapped in a thick shroud of humiliation. I would die used up like an old whore who had lost all hope in her situation and, worse yet, all alone with no one knowing what had happened to me, or where I had gotten off to.

“From the way I hurt, I knew that he’d done more than just fuck me like a dog and then cast me aside like so much rubbish. I felt as if I’d been beaten again, and my skin felt as if my body had been burned with hot irons. I could almost remember seeing through the cloud of blessed unconsciousness a poker, with the end glowing red hot. I’m sure it was not only pressed all over against my skin but up inside me as well as I realized I didn’t have any opening that I couldn’t feel the searing pain of that instrument. Not my mouth, not my vagina, and certainly not my ass. For all I knew, he even shoved that thing up my nose!”

With a sudden action I had not expected Lyssie slammed her fists down on her thighs. I was surprised that I heard a slapping sound on contact between the two. It had to have meant something, but I’m not sure what. No matter what that sound was trying to convey to my mind, Lyssie continued with her story.

“As what was left of the night was wearing away toward dawn, I felt my life continue to ebb away, like the waves retreating from the beach as the tides run out. I remember closing my eyes, and feeling the blessed relief from the pain as my spirit slipped away, like the grains of sand in an hourglass finally running out. I saw my soul tear loose from my body in those last precious minutes before death claimed me and watched my spirit stand above me, looking down at the carnage that used to be me as if making a vow of revenge.”

She stopped again, and I didn’t know whether or not there was a God, but I thanked her anyway for letting the story end. I’m not sure how She could have let this happen to anyone, and I knew there could be no good reason for it. Although Lyssie had paused with her story, my body still screamed out with the pain she had endured. It was like I was in that old shed, tied to a table, hoping for a merciful end that would never come.

What’s more, I didn’t know why she had told me of her death, unless there was something she needed me to do for her. I guess that I was right about Destiny leading me by the balls, and I knew right then that I would do anything for Lyssie she asked of me. How could I do anything less for her after all she’d been through?

“What now?” I asked her after an uncomfortable silence. “What happens now?”

She just sat there and stared at me, occasionally wiping away an errant tear from her eye. In my heart, I knew she was feeling me out, trying to determine whether the resolve she had built up in me with her tale would be enough to push me over the edge of my beliefs to help her set things right with her past. Lyssie hadn’t needed to wonder as I belonged totally to her at this moment.

After another long stretch of silence, and searching my face for my feelings, she must have decided all was good with me and I would help her. She went back to talking, low and sweet, with more than a touch of sadness laced in with it, a sadness which would more than likely haunt her for eternity.

“I’ve heard that when you die a horrible death, alone and forsaken, your soul is tied to the earth. It must be true, because here I am, weeping night after night, reliving a past that I could never have imagined, and surely not one I’d ever asked for or deserved. I’m not sure of what I need to do to move on, or even if I will ever be able to move on at all. I just stand here, at this place in the road night after night, hoping someone will come along and help me. I don’t know whether the few people who use this road didn’t see me standing there, or saw me and just didn’t want to stop, but I began to give up all hope of anyone ever stopping to ask me what was wrong. I was giving up all hope just as I did on that night so long ago.

“But then you came along. You saw me and stopped. You let me in your car, and you’ve listened to the sickening tale of how my life ended, mired in pain, misery, and depravity. And now I think that maybe, with your help, my soul can be salvaged after all.”

FOUR

With her story told and me basically her slave at this point, Lyssie gave me the “follow me” gesture with her hand that I had used on her what seemed like years ago, and passed out through the car door, pausing there long enough so I could get out and follow her. I was reluctant to do anything but start up the car and hightail it out of there, but I didn’t. Her story had me caught like a fish on a hook, and now I had to see it through to the end, regardless of how that might turn out for me; I could do no less.

Unlike Lyssie, I had to open the door to get out, and I left it opened just in case I needed to get back into it quickly. I was half-assed worried about the battery running down and thought I probably should have left the car running before I got out just in case, but it might be a while and, as I said before, a car don’t do you any good if it’s out of gas. So, with the door open and the dome light burning, I walked to the back of the car and waited for her to meet me there.

Surprisingly, when she drifted around to where I was standing, I noticed she was just a tiny little thing. I couldn’t tell before what with the car in the way at first, and then with her sitting down on the seat next to me, but with her standing beside me, she didn’t come up past my chest. I’m six feet even, which I figured made her just a little shy of five feet; after hearing her story though, it seemed she should be much bigger and, in my heart, she was.

She wasn’t talking anymore, just gesturing, and I didn’t know whether telling her tale had used up all her words or if she were just saving her ethereal energy to have enough strength to end this tragedy. She beckoned to me again with a come-along wave of her hand, turned around, and started to walk away from me; like a good dog I followed along at her heels as if wearing her leash.

We walked down the shoulder of the road for a while, the back of the car growing smaller in the distance. We were closed in by a light fog that wrapped around us like a cool blanket, and a copse of shaggy hardwood trees lined the edge of the road, giving me a distinct feeling of being hemmed in by evil. I wasn’t sure where we were headed, or how far we’d need to go, but it didn’t really matter; I’d follow her to the ends of the Earth and into the pits of Hell if that’s what it took to finish this nightmare.

After what seemed a trek of miles but could only have only been a short distance, Lyssie stepped across the small ditch that paralleled the road and walked a little way into the woods. She glanced left then right, adjusted her angle slightly, and then stopped after a few more steps. I stepped up beside her, glancing down to where her eyes were staring.

There, lying at the base of my feet, I found I was standing next to what looked to me to be old bones, covered in a layer of mummified skin. The tattered remains of her outfit that had been carelessly tossed down on her naked body still covered some of her, but not much. It was a sad sight, seeing the image of the girl beside me and the remains of her at my feet. I am not really a squeamish guy, but right then I felt an overwhelming urge to hurl. Guess it was good that dinner was so long behind me.

After giving me some amount of time to figure out what I was looking at, she looked up at me. I knew without thinking what I had to do to free Lyssie from her nightmare. It came to me with a sudden jolt, almost like an epiphany had drilled through my skull and into my brain. And, more importantly, I also knew what Lyssie had to do to free herself.

With the tale she had woven like a finely crafted carpet, I was filled with hate towards the man who would do something like this. And, even though I knew it was baseless, I couldn’t give a fig on how the Creator would react to what was going through my mind. One thing I knew beyond any shadow of a doubt is that I was well up to the task of helping Lyssie, and I knew she felt the same about herself.

Going back to the car, I opened the trunk and pulled out an old blanket. I gave it a couple of good shakes, folded it up loosely and laid it over my bent arm, and then headed back to where Lyssie lay. Quickly I grabbed the blanket off my arm, grasped it in both hands, and I shook out the blanket and stretched it out next to Lyssie’s body. Bending over, I carefully lifted up what was left of her remains placed them on the old blanket, wrapping the edges up around the body so I wouldn’t inadvertently lose any parts of her that might come loose, and I carried the remains back to the car.

Lyssie followed along behind me, keeping silent the whole time, her mind probably dwelling on the events that had led to this point in time. I guess she’d let me know what the rest of the evening held for us, what we needed to do to finish this when the time came. I also felt that she knew I’d accepted her request for salvation, for the both of us. With deference I’d never known before, I laid her body in the open trunk’s gaping maw, and then gently lowered the trunk lid until it latched shut with a solid click of the lock.

I walked back to the driver’s door, got back in the car, started it up, and waited for Lyssie to flow through the passenger door and into the passenger seat. Once she was in, she looked at me and made a “turn around” gesture with her hands. In acknowledgment, I performed a three-point turn so I was headed back in the same direction I’d come from in what felt to be ages ago. As we drove down the battered old road, I kept surreptitiously glancing over at Lyssie, expecting her form to start to fade. I was surprised when she stayed as solid and real as she had when we were standing next to her body. It was then that I began to suspect that her corporeal form that needed to be near her anchor as she called it, was tied to her body and not the spot where it had lain for all those years.

I was even more surprised, and somehow elated when she slid across the seat until she was next to me, as close as she could get without melting into my body. To me, someone who had wandered around aimlessly for most of his life, I felt a moment of kinship with Lyssie, almost like she was my anchor, the one thing in life I needed to settle down.

Lyssie still wasn’t talking, almost as if she’d said all she had to say. Maybe she was thinking of what needed to be done, or maybe, judging from the furtive glances she kept sending in my direction, she was unsure of how far I would be willing to go to end this. Still, when I needed to make a turn, she would point the way before I got there, and that’s the direction I would go.

It wasn’t long before we were bouncing down an old rutted path, and in the distance I could see what looked to be an small decrepit shed, looking as though a stiff wind could blow the shack down; in my mind, I pictured the Big Bad Wolf huffing and puffing. Such a stupid thought to have, but there it was.

There was an old beat-up Cadillac sitting beside it, almost hidden in the fog that covered the area. I pulled up beside it trying to make as little noise as possible even though the ground was bouncing my car around like a ship at sea lost in a storm, and stopped. I killed the engine and waited for Lyssie to give me something to move forward on. Still, she didn’t say anything, so I just kept on following her physical leads.

It didn’t take long for her to get moving; I’d gotten her here and now the rest of her salvation was in her hands – I couldn’t take care of what she had to do, even though I would have gladly done anything for her to save her any more trauma.

She got out of the car, stood beside it for a moment as if she were gathering up her courage, and then headed for the shed. I shut off the car’s engine, got out, and followed her. Since I had to get to the shed’s door as I couldn’t just pass through the wall as she did, Lyssie was already in the building by the time I’d reached the door.

When I finally got inside, the door being a major pain in the ass to open with any amount of silence due to its age, I could see Lyssie standing there in the shadows. She was staring at the back of an old man, her eyes filled with rage and hate. He was standing naked beside a table, using an old iron poker to abuse a young girl who was laid out on it, the tip glowing a dull red. She was as naked as the man, though I doubt she was that way voluntarily, and she was held down by multiple straps. Her body was already drenched in blood and what you could actually see of her skin was covered in horrid marks from the searing iron; if she were breathing at all I couldn’t see it. To me it looked as though he didn’t care if they were alive or not when he did his thing as depraved and disgusting as it was; to him, flesh was flesh and life was useless. And, from what I was seeing, paired with Lyssie’s story, it seemed to be true that you couldn’t teach an old dog new tricks. I imagined he stuck with what worked for him and to Hell with the rest.

Lyssie took in the scene before her, shaking with uncontrollable rage and disgust at what she was looking at, the agitation building in her and making her form shake. I could see her small fists clenching and unclenching from the scene that was playing out in front of her. I could not even imagine what was going through her mind as she likened the unknown girl’s plight playing out in front of us to her own demise so many years ago. I didn’t want to know what horrors had surfaced in the recesses of her mind when she came into the room, but I knew I wouldn’t let her witness any more of this bastard’s perversions on my watch.

The hate that had built in me from the atrocities Lyssie had narrated suddenly surfaced, and a cataclysmic rage that seemed to come out of nowhere burst within me and took over my consciousness. At that moment, right before my mind flowed to black, I felt two things very distinctly; blood running red in a stream, and his death at my hands.

I covered the distance from the door to the table in three large steps, no longer caring if I kept silent or not. I knew the douchebag had figured out I was with him in the shed by now, but with my anger running wild like a fire in the mountains there wasn’t shit he could do about it. My temper had hit one hundred percent and then blown the top off the gauge as it continued to climb. I was unable to contain all the hate and disgust that I felt from seeing what was happening right in front of me, and I leaped into action.

I had covered the distance between us without even realizing I was moving, and I had my fingers tangled in his greasy gray hair with my left hand. After making sure the grip in his disgusting lank hair was secure I yanked his head back and spun his body half a turn so that the bag of shit was facing me. I felt almost like Mohammed Ali, floating like a butterfly and getting ready to sting like a bee. I pulled my arm back, turning my body with it for the maximum power I could manage, and let go with a haymaker that would make the old Norse God’s cheer.

The right side of my body felt as though it had all the power of God coursing through it, and the forward motion of my fist was smooth as silk and as fast as a mongoose going in for the kill. Everything at that moment seemed to be coming together as if I had the blessing of the Lord Jesus himself.

When my fist connected with the side of his face, just to the right of his nose as I faced him, I could swear I saw the bones collapsing so completely that the eye on the left side of his face flew out of the broken socket and hung down on his cheek by the optical nerve, like a wad of snot that was running from his nose. This was immediately followed by what seemed to be a gallon of blood spraying out of the empty eye socket, covering me in bright red gore. While the blow I had delivered felt like Christmas morning and filled me with intense satisfaction, I knew deep inside me that I was nowhere near done with this cocksucker. I had a lot of vengeance stored up in me for the wrongs he’d done to Lyssie, and someone sure as fuck needed to pay him back for the girl on the table. Hell, someone had to pay him back for all the girls who had lay on that table, before and after Lyssie. And, let me tell you, since there was no one else around to dish out payback for the masses, it was up to me to supply the Wrath of Man. Lord knows I felt just like an Avenging Angel – you could call me the Archangel of Justice, put in the here and now to balance the scales for all those who couldn’t.

I wound up the right arm again — still having that nasty hair gripped in my left hand, and popped the old bastard in the side of the face again, breaking whatever bones had survived the initial punch. He almost passed out from the pain of it for a second, the iron that had been dangling in his hand from the damage of the first hit now dropping altogether. I heard it hit the floor of the shed with a dull thunking sound. In my head, it sounded as though iron hitting the floor was a gift from God.

I shook him violently just to make sure he was still in the waking world with me, then I flung the asshole to the ground. While he seemed to be a little more with it I’d thought at first, he was still groggy, so I slapped him over and over to keep him from passing out on me. I wished I could say I wasn’t enjoying slapping him hard first on one side of his face, then on the other, but I would be lying. I was enjoying the hell out of it. I’m sure I was grinning like the Cheshire Cat when weaving his magic in Wonderland.

When I’d tired of slapping his head back and forth like a ball in a tennis match I stood back up and landed my left foot heavily on his chest, gaining some satisfaction at the delicious cracking sound of ribs breaking. I stomped on his chest again, just because I could, then bent over and snatched up the iron bar. I raised the round metal bar in my right hand over my head and swung it around a few times, feeling as though I must look like a helicopter revving up for takeoff. I was warming up for the grand finale of the evening and I had to confess it felt fucking great. This demented pervert would feel the taste of Justice, delivered by God’s Left Hand himself. Yes, indeed! Revenge is a dish best served cold, and baby, right then I was the Ice Man.

With an end to the theatrics of waving the rod around my head, I got down to business. With a fury that would have surprised a Gladiator in the old Coliseum, I began to beat the man mercilessly and with absolutely no remorse; the more blows I rained down on his now broken body the more I felt the need to deliver another one. I beat him on his head, on his chest, on his arms, and on his legs. When I heard some bones break during the beating it only spurred me on to greater heights. I gave him a few good solid whacks in the gonads, just for good measure you understand, my foot still pressing down on his chest to keep him from curling up into a ball brought on by the pain in his nuts. Then, giving my arm some much-needed rest, I began to kick Chester the Molester in the side until he managed to flip himself onto his front to keep from getting any more of his ribs broken. His naked ass stuck up in the air, shit running out of his ass.

I took this new unbroken canvas as a sign that I still had some artistic painting in my future. I went back to work with the bar, beating every inch of his body that I could reach. Then, in what was to be the Big Finish – the Grand Finale you might say, I used my foot to spread his ass cheeks apart and got ready to push the still hot poker up his ass.

“STOP!” Lyssie shouted, her command seeming to come from directly inside my brain, so sharp and so intense it was painful. “Stop before you kill him and it’s too late for me!”

The sound of her voice seemed to bring me back somewhat to myself, giving me some measure of calm even if it was only fleeting. Even though I was still seeing red, I yanked the iron rod away from his asshole and flung it to the ground beside him. He was bloody and beaten and lay there making strange cooing noises in his throat, sounding as if he were ready to give up and die. It was then that Lyssie made her move, and something told me she was to be the Grim Reaper of his soul after all, not me.

Lyssie waited only a moment, looking as if she were preparing herself for battle, and then pounced on the broken man, a haunting scream ripping from her throat. The man, now down and beaten to within an inch of his life, tried to reach over his shoulder to grab her and fling her away, but there was no physical form for him to hold onto, and even if he could latch on to her I doubt he had enough strength left in him to dislodge her

Lyssie, however, was having no trouble holding on to her own personal devil. She’d wrapped her legs around him as best she could, and then pulled his head back with her hands and twisted it hard to the side so that his neck was at an unnatural angle, but giving her full access to the front of his face. She placed her mouth over his and then began to make awful sucking motions as if she were trying to pull all the air from his body and into hers. 

As I watched I realized that Lyssie was like a wraith, sucking the man’s life essence out of the cretin while he kicked and screamed. He couldn’t get up and run because while Lyssie was getting her own back, I’d used my foot to flip him over and onto his back again, his hips raised up higher on one side than the other, probably because his legs were not responding to any commands coming from his brain. I had worked around Lyssie and proceeded to sit on his chest, holding his hands down and letting his legs kick around at random. I’d gotten him pretty much secured, at least as much as I could without tying him up, and there was no time for tying anything as the end was playing out quickly. I figured though he could flop around like a fish while he has some life left in him, he wasn’t going anywhere. 

Lyssie had been quick to re-adjust herself when I had flipped him over, and she still had her mouth locked over his, in what I could only think of at the time as the true kiss of death. She kept her mouth in place, pulling at his life’s essence for all she was worth. She continued with this mystic dance, and as she did his thrashing and screams began to slow down, his body slowly shriveling up like an orange left out in the sun until he looked like an old mummy. As his body withered more and more, Lyssie was actually beginning to act as if she were mostly satisfied with the outcome. After what seemed like a week but which had only been a few minutes, Lyssie finished him off.

She looked over and saw I was still there, her eyes darting quickly away as if she wished I hadn’t seen what she had done. When she had glanced back, I shrugged my shoulders to let her know it didn’t matter to me; I might have felt a little out of kilter about the whole thing, but he deserved whatever he got for what he did to her. I certainly wouldn’t lose any sleep over her recent actions, especially not after what I had done to him.

The whole while she had been sucking the life out of the stupid bastard, her own form seemed to be fading, getting ‘thinner’ as Lyssie might have said. Now, with it all said and done, her form was quickly fading out of sight. I figured that meant that with her revenge satiated I was going to lose her, even though in my heart I knew she was never mine to begin with.

Still staring at me, and she mouthed a “thank you” in my direction along with a sad smile, and faded fully from my sight. I felt a little sad, both for Lyssie, as well as the girl on the table, and maybe even a little bit for me. Still, life moves on. There were things that still need to be done, and no one around but me to do them.

I rummaged around the shed for a few minutes and finally came up with a stub of a pencil with enough of a point to write with and a small scrap of paper I could scribble on. Carefully I wrote on the paper, throwing the pencil down when I’d finished. I walked over and dropped the note on the table, next to the body of the girl who was still strapped to it. There were two words printed on the paper; Lyssie, 1958. Someone had to let her parents know what had happened to her, that’s if they were even still alive, and I hoped they were. I’ve heard it said that closure was the final salvation, and after everything that had happened over the course of several hours, I was in no position to argue with that.

When I’d finished with the note and left the shed, my heart felt heavy and my shoulders slumped in that way you get when you’ve been riding the adrenaline for too long and the rush of it was finally over, forcing you to sink into the abyss. I knew I wasn’t fully back to myself, but something seemed off more than just the exhaustion that seemed to encompass me. I could have sworn I heard a kicking sound coming from the trunk of the car, and imagined I could almost see the car moving ever so slightly, but figured that had to be the jitters of the night’s events affecting me. I couldn’t imagine what could be in there making that ruckus as the only thing left in the trunk space was Lyssie’s remains. The thought of those moving around on their own was more than creepy, and I’d had enough of that for one night.

FIVE

As I thought about heading for the rear of the car Fear was gripping my balls tight, and squeezing them like there was no tomorrow, locking me in place. I didn’t know if I could handle one more thing without going completely Bonzo, but I had to do something. Sure, I’d managed to hold together so far, but a lot of that was due to my need to help Lyssie. She was gone now, and any strength I’d had left had surely left the building when she had. And yet, as I stood rooted to the spot just outside the shed, staring at my car and listening to that repetitive banging, I knew I needed to open the trunk to find out what the hell was going on. Even as it seemed as though my control had gone away for a while I still meant to check out what was going on regardless of the consequences.

Reaching deep down for anything I had left to help propel me forward, I forced my legs to move and headed towards the back of the car, pulling my keys out as I went. When I got there I gave a big show of bravado by pounding a couple of times on the trunk lid even though there was no one around to see it. My big act really didn’t do for me what I thought it might, but it did still the noise of the other side of the lid. Slowly, almost like a simulacrum, I slid the trunk key into the lock and turned it. As the truck lid lifted up I saw Lyssie laying there, staring up at me with those bright violet eyes, her legs pulled up to her chest, her arms wrapped around them in a bear hug. It was one of the most bizarre and wonderful sights I had ever seen in my life.

I almost had a heart attack when I realized she was no longer a ghost or a spirit, or whatever the hell she had been through the long night. Where her body had been a dried husk over bone, it was now filled out. Her skin was now as pale as a full winter moon, her smile like the glimmer of moonlight on the water’s surface.

Where the mummified corpse had gone I could pretty much guess; sucking the life out of her killer had revived her own emaciated body and given her a semblance of life, if not something close to the real thing. Now, just looking at her lying there in the confines of the trunk, I couldn’t help but think about what a truly captivating girl she really was; she’d never beautiful, but she was still the one you’d want to go home from the party with and would be feeling like a million bucks that everyone had seen her leave with you.

I lifted her gently out of the truck, amazed at how alive she felt. Her skin was warm and soft, and her chest rose and fell as she breathed in the cool night air. I could hear her heart pounding with life, pumping new blood through her veins. Wistfully, I set her down next to me, and reluctantly let go of her.

Smiling, she took my hands in hers, the now solid feel of them making me wonder about what I’d done to reach this point. But, the truth was that I didn’t give two shits about what I’d done or what I would continue to have to do to keep her in my life. I had saved her from her stay in Hell, and everyone knows that when you save someone’s life, it becomes your responsibility forever after. That was fine with me; I figured it was about time that I took on a little responsibility.

“Well, what now?” I asked her, still holding her small hands in mine, staring down into those beautiful violet eyes.

She shrugged, looked around her for a second as if she were taking in the scenery, not saying anything right away. After a moment’s hesitation, Lyssie looked back at me, her head tilted back so her eyes could continue to meet my own, and smiled.

“Maybe,” she said slowly, almost meekly. “Maybe if you thought you could stand to be with someone with a past as sordid and shameful as mine turned out to be in the end, maybe if I don’t creep you out too much, maybe, just maybe, we could drive off into the night and keep going, never looking back. We could leave this place, just you and me together. Find us a little place to live and make the most of what life has to offer us before we both move on.”

Even though her idea was more of a statement than a question, I didn’t hesitate a second before answering her. “I think that sounds like a plan, Lyssie,” I replied. “Indeed I do.”

I might have even smiled back at her as I said it. In fact, I’m pretty sure I did, and I’ve been smiling pretty much ever since.

And drive off we did, not wasting any time at all before we got moving. I opened the door for her, letting her into the passenger seat, and then closed the door after she was comfortably inside the car. I walked around to the driver’s side, climbed in, and started the car up, closing my door as the engine roared to life. I hit the Play button on the tape deck, and as John Fogerty’s voice wailed out of the backseat and headed for the front, I turned the car around and headed back to the highway, pulling her over next to me and holding her warm hand in mine.

Time moves on, and so do Lyssie and I. We each found a job to tide us over and provide the foundation to get us a little house in an old established community in a small southern rural Virginia town. There was lots of space between the houses, the neighbors kept to themselves, and life moved along at a slow pace. It was all those things together that made us happy that that’s where we decided to make up our home.

We’re happy, at least as happy as we can be, being reminded every so often of what Lyssie had been through when her dreams are haunted by the ghost of a demon with dead eyes and no soul. Still, she seems to be coming to terms with it, and her past doesn’t affect me except for the guilt I feel for what she went through. That guilt never lasts long as Lyssie tries not to dwell on the nightmares in her waking hours, if for no other reason than to not worry me. I love her, and I’m pretty sure she feels the same way towards me. She never comes right out with a confession of love for me, but I know she has a lot of baggage she needs to overcome before she can think of her new life and true feelings for those in it. Letting Lyssie realize how much I love her will just have to do for now.

It doesn’t even bother us anymore when we have to take a trip out of town when Lyssie starts to get a little thin, what with the amount of time that has passed since Lyssie’s rebirth and now. We don’t let her get too thin mind you, before we meet the needs she requires to recharge her soul; we do our homework ahead of time and only pick those who deserve a horrid death, the ones who won’t be missed and will never help the world move forward in a better way. Truthfully, as much as I loved her, if push came to shove I wouldn’t even worry too much if we grabbed someone who was just out for a walk and had a heart of gold, but Lyssie would never stand for that.

For better or worse, love is what you make it, and we’re making as much of it as we can while we are together. One day, when she has made her peace with her past, she’ll say she loves me, too, and then our lives will be complete.