Bent Highway
Chapter Twelve: Rest Stop
I awoke in a glowing white room, unable to tell the source of the light. I was in a chair, a hard one. My leg throbbed. I didn’t have to look to know it was bleeding. Instead, I stared into the snout of the wolf-dog. Towering above him stood a man I needed to ask some questions.
“Where is this?”
“Think of it as a rest stop,” he said.
The wolfdog growled.
“Seems more like a interrogation room.”
“We needed to get off the highway. Explain some things.”
“Where is she?”
“That’s not your concern.”
“It sure as hell is.”
Walt shook his slowly. I imagined I heard his brain rattle. Or maybe it did.
I knew what happened after Chalk Girl and I left Lester’s place… after I left myself behind that is. I had to tell myself that I didn’t die in that trailer, in that hole that opened up around the trailer. I mean, here I was running away from myself, so I had to have made it. I’m here, I’m breathing, talking to a giant and his wolf-dog. Thinking about me back at the trailer and me here was an existential two-by-four to the skull.
And where the hell was here… a rest stop? Like on an actual highway?
The ground had opened up again once the airstream had disappeared into it. I was running after her, but had looked back to see Lester’s house finally give up the ghost, the last post snapped, and the whole shebang collapsed. Like the mouth of one of those big-ass sea monsters, the ground split again, swallowed the house and the surrounding sad bushes. The earth was eating itself. Then, as if they were arrows pointed at us, the cracks moved away from the yard and towards where we ran. And we ran fast.
Then I remembered Walt squealing up next to us in his roadster. I’d jumped into the back seat, thinking Chalk Girl had gotten in the front, squeezed next to the dog. But like so much lately, the middle part between getting into the car and then ending up in barest of all rooms, was missing. Time was snipped right out like an article in the daily news.
“What is my concern then?”
“The rips are widening,” Walt said.
“No shit. I just about got swallowed by one.” I ran my hands along the arms of the chair. “Why was I there? By the trailer. Why did I meet—” I didn’t want to finish the question. Chances are Walt knew anyway. He was getting to be an annoying son of a bitch.
Walt reached behind to an area in deep shadow, funny how I hadn’t seen that space before. He pulled out a tall backed chair, the wood a deep ebony in stark contrast to the room. My chair was some sort of scarred spruce deal. He sat down, the wolf-dog eased down onto a spot in front of him, his eyes still fixed on me.
“Have you thought about why you travel?” Walt asked.
“I think I’ve asked you the same question. You never gave me an answer, so how the fuck should I know?”
Walt stared back at me. A low hum emanated from the walls—they seemed to be casting the warm yellow light that filled the room. Walt waited for me to speak.
“Beats the hell out of me,” I said. “All I know is I hit the highway running, like those old blues songs. And I mean the actual highway, just looking to put some miles between my hometown—and then I ran into you.”
“How much do you remember?”
“Of what? I told you. I left town, my crap-ass job, and I ended up in one of the craziest dreams I’ve ever had. Any moment I’m gonna wake up and swear to never eat chili peppers and peanut butter again. ”
“So you think you’re dreaming?” Walt’s hand’s picked up the colour from the walls, showing a line of scars across both sets of knuckles.
“I don’t know anymore. I just had a talk with myself. And I don’t mean that in the way psychiatrists like to suggest. I mean, me and me, we conversed.”
“Some might say you are finally awakening.”
“Oh thanks, Plato. And what’s this place, the cave?” I swept my arms around the empty room. “Are you the shadow?”
“We all are.”
“When you say that you should have a spooky soundtrack. Better effect.”
Walt reached across and put his hands on my knees. He slid one hand up to the gash on my leg. I was about to yell out, when he reached across and put his left hand on top of his right. Warmth spread through the leg up into my torso and across my chest.
“I—”
“Don’t talk. Feel.”
The warmth reached my neck, slid across my chin, somehow behind my eyes and then deep inside me. The room changed around me. I was unsure if my eyes were open or closed. I was back in my hometown, standing outside my house. Or what used to be my house. I stared at the burnt shell, the boards that still smoldered. When is this? This never happened? Will it happen? Shit.
I heard Walt’s voice coming from somewhere in my head.
“Your friend has been causing some problems.”
“What? What friend?” I yelled into the sky.
“Hey, M. Who you yelling at?”
I turned around and faced the figure walking up what used to be the driveway. He kicked a squarish rock and sent it flying.
“Harold?”
“I don’t see no one else that’d come to that name.” Harold gave one of his big goofy grins and took a long slurp out of his green soda. “Kinda early to be lighting up – I mean, just saying.”
“Why are you here?”
“There you go with your philosophy again, M. You and that mindbending shit. Why are any of us here?” He laughed, finished the soda and tossed it on the burnt pile of lumber that used to be my bedroom.
Ask him what happened.
“Why do you keep looking up like that? Ain’t nothing but low-flying crows up there my fuzzy headed friend.”
“What happened to my house, Harold?”
“Hmm? Fucked if I know.”
Harold walked over to where he had thrown the soda cup, picked it up, turned around and walked backwards. A string of gibberish came from his mouth, like someone rewinding a cassette. His movements were jerky, again like cuts taken out of time. My house reassembled behind him. He turned again, and was suddenly holding a gasoline can, and then walked backwards around the house, leaving a trail of liquid. I heard the crack of a match, and then a larger snip was taken out and Harold stood behind me again. The soda cup was back on the pile, the house was a burnt heap of lumber.
I stared into Harold’s face.
“What’s up, M? Schrödinger’s cat got your tongue?”
Ask him how long you’ve known him.
“How long have I known you?”
“Hmm? Shit, guys like us, seems like there was never a time before we knew each other. Right, M?”
“There was a before. A long time before I knew you.”
An intense pain shot through my head. My knees started to buckle. Harold lunged at me and I fell back. I expected to hit the ground, or stumble into the ashen wood, but I didn’t.
I kept falling.
And falling.
And.
* * *
“Now that he knows, he will make things very difficult.”
Walt’s voice reverberated. But this time not inside my head, but in front of me on his tall chair.
“Knows what?”
Walt stroked the wolf-dog. My leg was bleeding again.
“He knows that you know.”
“Quit hurting my head and tell me,” I shouted.
“He finds people like you, rides their memories, rips them apart like fabric. You’re consciousness is shredded.”
“Wait. Harold?”
“That’s how he appears to you. A friend. An old friend. But he is not. If you are finally awake, and it sounds like you are very close… then you know that he is not now, nor has he ever been a part of your life.”
“He is ripping it all apart,” I said it soft like I didn’t want to hear it myself.
“Now you are awake.”
I believe we are getting somewhere....
Nice to spend a little time with Walt and Wolf Dog and see M slowly starting to wake