A ROAD SOMEWHERE IN THE DARKNESS

A ROAD SOMEWHERE IN THE DARKNESS




Isn’t it funny how all the things we think we know, can suddenly come undone. We look, as if from behind a veil at reality and see existence the way we wish. To be able to look upon the two-headed calf at a sideshow, then laugh it off as a neat little prank.

Funny, yeah right.

It was a new moon night with even the stars hidden from view, on a lonely two-lane highway in the early hours of a day yet to be. Only the road was there, visible just by the dim glow of the headlamps, nothing; save blackness, existed outside the fall off of the lights. That’s when the thought came to mind from somewhere deep in the subconscious where thoughts are stored that are best left alone.

If I were to turn off the headlights them, I too would cease to exist
.
The neon orange warning sign read: DETOUR-INTERSTATE CLOSED AHEAD.
Make a right for the ramp, left across the overpass of the interstate, and onto state route 666.

To my left I could see the lights from the truck behind me coming to the turn but I could also see that the driver was not going to take the detour.

Who ever was driving kept going down the interstate.

“Must be sleepy, didn’t even see the sign.” I said aloud to myself.
By now, I was across the overpass and heading down 666.

I stopped, got on the C.B. and keyed the Mic.; not even static.
Suddenly I had an odd feeling resembling confusion, did I really see a sign? I could not shake that thought. I set the brakes without moving off the road and got out the map just to check where route 666 was taking me. As I looked at the map, the same odd feeling came over me again only this time much stronger, carrying with it a cold, unnatural, outside to the inside chill.
I knew without understanding how, that something was behind the truck.

And it wanted me!

I jerked my head up from reading the map and looked out the driver’s side mirror, what I could see; or more to the point, what I could not see made the cold chill turn my spine into an icicle. What I didn't see, the shape of the overpass I had just crossed, the lights from any passing cars, normal things replaced with a blackness so complete that it had a form and a weight. It had a presence about it, like a dark cave alive with huge bats.

And it was getting closer!


2

I hit the brake release, jammed the shift into gear, and pushed hard on the fuel, I knew I had to get away, keep ahead of the thing that was blackness, and stay ahead until the daylight. I just knew; call it a gut feeling, that the light of the day shortly coming was the only thing that could save me. Save me from the thing that was behind, the thing that wanted to consume, to take me from life to a non-life, not death but a never-been where nothing but the blackness existed.

What is wrong with me?

The thought floods my mind and I almost laugh aloud.

"Get hold of your self!”

My voice sounded as if it came from someone sitting next to me. I start to ease off the fuel and my breathing starts to slow. I realize only then that I had been gulping air, like a diver about to run out of oxygen, I took a deep breath and shook my head. Monsters under the bed and again I almost laugh aloud, that thought and the almost laugh is cut short by the lurch of the truck, as if running over a log or as if something, outside, just latched onto the back of the trailer.

I again start gulping air, as the truck starts slowing, much more then normal, as if being sucked into a vacuum.

Turn on the spot light! The thought screams from somewhere deep inside of me.

I switch on the outside spot and aim its beam to the back of the trailer; into what ever it was that had me in its grasp. The truck again makes a lurch, this time from an increase in speed and from the back; I hear a low, unearthly scream; like a chain raking across loose tin sheets. My breath began to slow as the speed of the truck accelerates.

Okay, my mind said; do you need any more convincing that something is out there.










3

It’s not personal; I knew that, I just happen to be the next in line. When I was young, I would catch a bug from the endless supply of them that flew around the light over the back pouch then toss it into a spider’s web, nothing personal, one bug, one that just happened to be the next in line. It’s the same thing here, nothing personal, I just happened to be the next in line from an endless supply of people. Something put up the detour sign for the next in line to be tossed into the web.

Thank you very much...

My mind races, got to keep up the speed, got to last until daylight.

My right leg now starting to cramp from its hard push on the fuel and from the combination of adrenaline and lactic acid but I can’t ease it off now!

Thirty minutes maybe before the sun makes its arc over the earth, just thirty minutes I say out loud, as if the saying will make it so.

If it is all the same to you, I'll pass my turn.

Just letting the thing have me would be easy, let up on the fuel and it would be over. What would it be like? A knowledge of being without being?

In a mindless auto-response to an utterance registered only in my subconscious I start to ease off the fuel peddle. I sense the same sucking feeling of the vacuum and the truck starts to lose forward motion. Just as if the truck its self isn’t ready to go into what ever the blacknees is, it makes a sudden jerk forward, fighting to stay in the world of light, of life, of conscience. The trucks rebellion makes me come out of the stupor that I had been lured into, just like walking from a nightmare only to find the dream isn’t a dream and the monster under the bed is real. Again, I jam hard on the fuel.

Got to get away!

Got to flee out of the things hold!

Got to escape!

Without warning I am thrown forward by a gut shaking jolt, my stomach is slammed against the steering wheel knocking the breath from me. As if the road just dropped out from under the wheels, then another knock-the-breath-out jolt and the truck spins into a jackknife. Without taking my eyes from the road, I can see, in my minds eye the side of the trailer start its angle to the side of the cab, the wheels start there roll off the edge of the road and into the nothingness that is there.




4


Without thinking, I turned the wheel into the skid but the truck is too much into its jackknife to right its self. The drive tires bounc sideways on the pavement, a crush of metal as the fairing hit’s the left side of the trailer and the truck comes to a stop at a forty-five degree to the road, the trailer at a ninety. Just like that, it’s over.

The dead of night, for the first time I knew what that meant.

I stopped breathing, holding my breath because this last breath would be the only breath I would have again. I didn’t close my eyes, I just looked at the dash lights, the only light that I would ever see again and in the time that it would take for me to have the last thought I would ever have the thing would have me. Gripping the steering wheel and staring at the odometer, I realize that I’m still here, still in the living, still in the now.

Why is it waiting?

I let my lungs exhale and raise my head to look up but could not make myself look in the direction of where I know the thing is, so I look to the direction of where I was trying to escape. Over a horizon that did not exist only a long breath ago, a slim, red line of sunlight. Light that is slowly chasing away the night and bring with it life.

I know I can drive out of the jack but I’m afraid to make a move, afraid that if I do the thing will make one last lunge to suck me into it before the light can take away it’s last measure of non-life. Forcing myself, I turn my head to face the blackness. All I see is my own dim reflection and the echo glow of the sunrise from the driver side window, only complete darkness outside the glass. The thing knew it had lost the chase and with that knowledge came a sound from deep within the thing, a sound like a scream but not a scream, a madding sound that shook the truck and entered my head and lodged in my soul, then the thing was gone. The light came along and with it came the rest of the world. I had made it, but I knew it was just a reprieve and the thing would remember.

Now it got personal.




5



Even now after a long enough time has past to make it easier to con myself into believing that it really didn’t happen, writing it down is like opening up a grave. As if the very act of putting it down on paper will somehow raise the blackness back from wherever it had gone, but I’ve kept it to long to myself. Like a festering boil that needs to be lanced before healing can take place, this thing needs to be told.

I don’t drive any more, big surprise huh; also, I don’t sleep very well, only in the daylight then only with the help of a few good shots of Mr. Walker. At night, I keep all the lights on and just in case the power goes out I have my own ac generator, the big kind and I keep it full of gas. The TV never goes off; it’s something to make a human sound to still the inhuman sound that is in my head, the sound the thing gave to me.

It’s out there I know, waiting and hungry. It’s just a matter of time before I go out into the night after I can’t fight any more the sound it left in me, the call that beckons me to a place that isn’t, to a blackness that is and to a road somewhere out there in the darkness.


6



Authors note: There are, to my knowledge two highways marked 666, one is a two-lane route in Virginia and the other, a US route, running through UT, CO, NM and AZ.
The later has been renamed to US 491 by petition.