The novel project is over and the finished product has a new title.  "Road Show" has been changed to "The Terror of Ed Killingworth". You can find it in the Amazon Kindle store for a very modest donation. Thanks to all my Alpha and Beta readers. Special thanks to Danielle Trombino for all her copy editing work. Couldn't have done it without you Danielle!

Novel Project News

Announcing The First Draught Horror Novel Project!

(Originally Posted in November 2014) Each week, I'll be adding a new chapter to my supernatural, mystery, horror novel "Road Show". Since posts to this site appear in chronological order, if you're new to the story, you could stumble in mid-story. So here are some added precautions.

1. This intro will remain as the first entry each week on the home page of The First Draught. This should provide a little separation so you don't mistakenly start reading ahead in the story.

2. Each chapter has a tag like "chapter1" or "chapter2" that you can access in the sidebar on the right-hand side. Or search the drop down menu in the Blog Archive section, also in the right-hand sidebar.

I hope these modifications will enrich your reading experience. Please don't hesitate to post feedback & comments. Your input is valuable!

Enjoy the story. And from all of us here at The First Draught...pop the top, pour some more and sip sweetly!

June 2015 Update: The project has finished. Only the first 2 chapters are still here on the blog. The rest can be found in the Amazon Kindle store.

"The Terror of Ed Killingworth" -Chapter 1

Waiting for the garage door to rise every morning really ticked me off. Was it getting slower day by day? It sure as hell seemed to be. Getting up at 4:30am everyday was bad enough. Driving an hour and a half just to get to the office was bad enough. Waiting for a 20 year-old motor to drag the creaking garage door up enough for me to duck under it was just too much.

You might think I'm way over the top on this one. And you might be right. But my two car garage is filled with the stuff of our lives. So much stuff that I can't even park a single car in there. Scraping ice and snow off your car in the heart of a Massachusetts winter is nothing to celebrate. Neither is staring at a garage-full of cardboard boxes with stuff you haven't looked at in 5 years.

Neither is losing your mind. Sitting in an idling car parked in a dirt-patch turnaround on the side of dark country road is not worth celebrating. I'm just about out of gas. I've been sitting here for the last twenty minutes trying to get a grip. And all I can think about is that damn garage door! What I should be thinking about is him. Or maybe, "it’s" out there. I’m not positive it’s a living thing.

To preserve what’s left of my mind, let’s say it’s a "he". Yes. That works for me right now. He's out there somewhere. There's no denying it now. I guess he's always been there. I just didn't know it.

What at first seemed like me following in his tracks turned out to be just the opposite. He’s following mine. All those people I spoke to, bought beer from or just smiled at passing through a parking lot. They’re all dead. Not because of him. But because of me. I didn’t understand why, up until now. Until I sat here staring at the snow falling through the beams of my headlights. I get it now. And I’m pretty sure that after all that’s happened, I’m going get it now. I’m next on his list.

In the autumn of 2012, I took a new job. Instead of working 25 minutes from home, I blew up my commute. Chasing the almighty dollar, I switched jobs and earned myself a ninety minute ride, one way. The higher pay sounded great until after a few weeks on the job, I started doing the math. Between gas, tolls, oil changes and all the other wear and tear that commuting produces, I would be in the hole five thousand bucks by the end of the year. And what about next year? Would my car hold up after two years of driving with a horde of speed freaks three hours a day?

It’s funny, starting a new job. Everything sounds glorious and new when you interview. The promise of change, getting away from all the reasons you hate your old job puts a bullet-proof edge on the new one. Until you get there. It doesn’t take long for the “old-guard” to fill the new guy in on all the problems of the place you just joined.

“Hope you didn’t burn any bridges where you ran from,” Tony said. Tony worked in the department I would be working in at the office. He gets all the new people “dumped” on him, as he put it. As a matter of fact, my day one orientation included Tony telling me all the reasons he wished he could quit. The list seemed endless. It was a miracle he got through them all in an eight hour shift.

“That’s how it’s always been and how it will always be,” he said. “The politics is so thick in here, even if one of the ringleaders was to get fired or something, the next exec in the pecking order would just fill in where the last one left off.”

“Nah. Really?” I said. “They can’t all be like that. I mean, doesn’t anybody want to change things around here?”

“That’s the point, Ed. They want to keep things just as they are. A small group holds all the cards. They keep their big salaries, make bonuses off the work us poor slobs do at below-market wages.”

“I’m not making below-market pay,” I thought to myself. I got a fat raise to come here. They must have really been screwing me at the old job. Those assholes!

“As long as they keep us in line, there’s no worries. All the big bosses have something that connects them. Either through marriage, church, kids in the same soccer league. It’s like a web. You step on a strand with the intention of cutting it. And all the spiders descend on you.”

“That’s pretty creepy, Tony.” I said.

“Well, it is close to Halloween.” He smiled. “But it would be true no matter what time of year it was. I’m telling you right now, keep your head down and follow orders. No matter how stupid they are or contradictory they may seem. If you take a stand around for anything around here, especially for yourself, you’ll be out. That’s how they keep things the way they want it. You know, the ‘tallest nail gets the hammer’ in this joint.”

Thankfully, I got to work with a few different people besides Tony as the weeks progressed. None of them came across as negative as he did. In fact, they felt the same way about Tony’s crappy attitude. I appreciated that. It was hard enough driving all those hours every day. Working with a bunch of miserable people would’ve had me looking for another job, again.

The ‘tyrants’ Tony described never did materialize. Did they ask for stuff at the last minute and change their minds all time after I spent hours doing market research for a project? Yes. Did it annoy me? Yes. But they were paying me good cash, so I let it go.

I did see someone get fired, though. This guy Scott who always seemed to come in late and go home early got canned. He sat a couple cubicles away from me. Sometimes I needed to ask him a question about stuff and he never seemed to be there. If he was in his cube, he was usually on his phone texting or surfing the web. I’m not sure why they fired him, but I wasn’t surprised. The weird thing was on the day he got clipped, he cleaned out his desk and walked by me on the way out. A guard from the desk downstairs walked a couple steps behind him. He was smiling and winked at me on his way out.

I watched his back as they rounded a corner to head for the elevator. “What the hell was that for?” I thought.

A few nights later, I sat at the kitchen table with Kaylyn and Emma. It had begun getting dark early and we hadn’t even set the clocks back yet. I was eating a re-heated plate of food. Kaylyn had made dinner for Emma at five o’clock. I didn’t get home until after seven most nights. She couldn’t make an eight-year old wait that late for dinner. Most nights, Kaylyn didn’t want to wait that long either, so I ate alone in the kitchen while they were in another room.

But on this night, Emma drew on a sketchpad with colored pencils while Kaylyn checked her e-mail. I yawned several times. Kaylyn put her tablet down and looked at me.

“Yawns are contagious, you know.”

“Huh?” I said.

“You don’t even have to see someone yawn to make yourself yawn, too. You just have to hear it. It works the other way around, too. You could see someone across a room, like at a store or even walking down the street. Without hearing the yawn, you’ll reflexively yawn too. They were talking about it on the morning show the other day.”

“What are you talking about?’ I said.

“You’re barely awake when you get home. Since you took this new job, we barely get to see you. And when you’re here, it’s like living with a zombie.”

“Zombies don’t sleep,” I said. “The undead have no need for it,” I smiled.

“You know what I mean. Can’t you leave work earlier and get home at a decent time?” Kaylyn asked.

“Hon, I just started. I don’t think it would be a good move to check out at four in the afternoon just yet. They just fired a guy for that last week.”

“They fired someone for leaving early?’ she asked.

“Well, I don’t know that for a fact. But he always showed up after everyone else and I bet he was the first one out the door every day.”

“You don’t know if that’s why he got fired,” she stated matter-of-factly.

I sighed and pushed some rice around my plate with a fork. ‘No. I guess not. But I don’t need that kind of attention. Maybe after a couple of months, once I get some projects under my belt I can leave early on Fridays or something.”

“Oooh. One day a week. That’ll really make a difference.”

I got up from the table and went upstairs and lay down on the bed. I still had my work clothes on. I think I fell asleep in about 30 seconds. When I woke up is 1:30am. I still lay on top of the comforter. I shivered. We decided to hold out on turning on the heat to save money on the oil bill.

Kaylyn’s sleeping face was illuminated by the digital clock on her nightstand. I got out of bed and looked in on Emma. She slept soundly, wrapped in her favorite blanket. Kaylyn’s mother had bought her the fleece blanket with a pair of horses running in field. She loved it because it was so soft and she loved horses. I gave her a kiss and tiptoed to the bathroom. I brushed my teeth and slipped back into bed.

The next morning, I sat in my car waiting for the defroster to clear the windshield. I checked the screen on the dash. “5:45am and it’s 38°. What happed to fall? Old Man Winter’s in a hurry to get here, I guess.” I said. My breath formed a small cloud in front of my face.

Once on the highway, I drove 75 mph and stayed in the center lane. Cars and trucks blew by me at what had to be 90 miles an hour. Some of them swooped in front of me, coming dangerously close to my bumper. Then they would accelerate and jump in front of another car in the passing lane. “Where the hell are they in such a hurry to get to!” I said.

These Massachusetts commuters drove like race car drivers on those road courses that curve a lot. Except they were driving vans and regular cars, not high-performance speed machines. The weird thing is that I rarely came upon an accident or a car pulled over by a State Trooper. They must be pretty lucky. I didn’t think I could drive like that every day and not flip the car over or plow into a big rig.

Work crept by as usual that day. I left at the appointed time, not any earlier like Kaylyn and Emma probably hoped. The highway had no lights. With only two lanes in either direction, it could get pretty jammed up. But at this time, six thirty, I didn’t have to deal with many other cars. It started raining. I clicked on my wipers and was annoyed at the mess they left behind. Some kind of film coated the windshield leaving it streaked and harder to see than when there was just rain water to see though. I pulled on the wiper control for the washer fluid, but none squirted out. I pulled again and again, but got nothing. I could hear the wiper gizmo hum each time I pulled, but still nothing happened.

I had a long way to go but I couldn’t drive like this. I slowed down and strained to see the side of the highway. I picked up on the white stripe that marked the shoulder. On the highway’s edge, a gapless barrier separated the pavement from a slope. I had seen it in the daylight before it started getting dark so early. I knew there a gully down there, a stretch of tall grass and then thick clustered trees formed a forest’s edge.

“Hey,” I said out loud. I saw that the guardrail ended here. I slowed down some more and I could see a dirt path leading off the highway down the slope. A larger, gravel and dirt circle sat at the forest’s edge. I pushed the button for my hazard signal and eased the car off the road. The car bumped up and down as I switched from asphalt to dirt. I came to a stop at the bottom. My headlights shone on the swaying boughs of a hundred trees.

I thought I might have a jug of windshield wash in the trunk. I got out and switched on the flashlight on my cell phone. The rain had picked up and instantly coated my glasses with beads of water. Searching in my trunk yielded nothing helpful. I did find an old golf towel hidden under a folding camp chair. It had plenty of dried dirt on it, but I thought I might be able to get at least some of that grime off my windshield. I rubbed out a circular spot on the driver’s side glass. The dirt mixed with whatever was already on there.

After a minute the towel was soaked and dirtier than ever. I jumped back in the car, cold and wet. Tossing the towel on the floor mat on the passenger side, I switched on the wipers. They dragged back and forth. I could see the trees ahead of me a little clearer where I had scrubbed. But as the wipers kept working, they smeared the grime from other sections of the glass and smudged my clean spot all over again.

“Shit, shit, shit,” I said. The rain pounded on the hood and roof of my car. It was really coming down now. I thought about how the hell I would get out of this spot if the slope turned to mud. I reached for the shifter, ready to put the car in reverse when I heard the “whoosh” of air brakes. In my side view mirror I could see the illuminated roof of a tractor trailer. A bobbing flashlight moved to the edge of the slope. It panned back and forth over my car.

I pushed my door open and raised a hand to the trucker. The spotlight settled on my face, blinding me. I put my hand up defensively, shielding my eyes.

“You ok down there?” the man said, shouting over the noise of the road and the driving rain.

“Yeah,” I said. “But my windshield has some stuff on it. Trying to clean it off but no luck. I can’t see enough to drive on.”

“You picked an interesting spot to pull off. You know where you are?” he asked.

I shook my head. The rain ran down my back and chest now. It had soaked through my light coat.

“Let me get something out of my truck. I’ll give you a hand.” He disappeared out of sight.

I decided to wait in the rain. The seconds passed slowly in that downpour. Something the man had said suddenly jumped back into my thoughts. “You picked an interesting spot to pull off. You know where you are?” I knew I was on the Mass Pike between exits 9 and 8. But exactly where I was? No. Was this a Department of Transportation site that was off limits to the public or something? I looked beyond my car at the woods. The tree tops were swaying in the wind. I could hear a groaning sound, like some huge being struggling to move a heavy object. The trees strained against the wind. Some of them would snap tonight and fall to earth. Broken and twisted leaving a shattered edge at the point in the trunk that couldn’t take the strain.

My shadow loomed up large against the tree line. On the edge of my projected outline, something moved. Was that a person under a big pine? I wiped rain from my glasses but my hands had muck from the towel on them. “You’re an idiot,” I told myself. No. It had to be more shadows. A small tree or…

The sound of small rocks sliding came from behind me. I turned to see the trucker starting down the slope. I cupped my hands around my mouth.

“Careful! Looks like its getting slick!”

The trucker’s boots dug in as he descended. He jogged to a stop near me. He was wearing a hooded, orange rain poncho. He held a jug of windshield wash and a long-handled squeegee.

“Name’s Carl. Carl Goldberg. I’m from Tennessee. In the middle of a long haul to Nashua and back.”

I extended a filthy, wet hand and then pulled it back feeling foolish. Carl didn’t have a free hand and touching mine wouldn’t help either of us. “Ed Killingworth. I live about 40 miles or so from here. On the way home from work. Thanks for stopping.”

“We’ll try this stuff on it.” He held up the jug. “But even if it works, I don’t think that Civic is gonna get up that slope. It’s getting pretty slick.” I nodded.

He handed me the flashlight, then walked over to the car. He splashed some of the cleaning fluid across the top edge of windshield. As it ran down, he caught it with the squeegee and pulled it across. A grey sludge accumulated where the glass met the frame. He held the squeegee in front of the flashlight beam. He smelled it.

“Could be road oil or silicone. Not sure.” Carl pulled a rag out from his back pocket and wiped the squeegee blade. He went back to work on the driver’s side. When the glass looked done, he wiped down the wiper blade. We walked around the hood and repeated the process on the passenger side.

“Pop the hood, Ed. I’ll fill your washer reservoir with this.”  When we were done, Carl and I looked at the slope with the flashlight. Small canals of rain water were running off the highway and down the dirt and gravel path. A car passed close to Ed’s truck and a wave of water splashed up and over the edge of the road.

“If I were you, I’d leave the car here until tomorrow. It’ll never make it outta here now,” Carl said. I nodded. My teeth were chattering from the cold rain.

“Tell you what. I’ll give you a ride to the next exit or rest area. Whatever you want. We’ll call the State Police so they don’t think you abandoned it. Got someone who can pick you up?”

“My wife’s home with my daughter. But I’d rather call my friend. Kaylyn doesn’t like driving at night in a storm like this.”

“Ok.” Carl said. “Let’s get the heck out of here.”

Carl went up the slope first. I shone the light so we could both see where it was safest to walk. His rugged boots had bright yellow letters that spelled CAT just above the heel. Once he gained the top, I started up. I slipped a bunch of times. Then I went down hard to my left. I bent my arm to protect the flashlight. My elbow took the brunt of the fall. My whole left side was now covered in mud. I heard Carl yell down to me.

“Ed! You hurt?”

I struggled to my feet. My elbow thrummed in pain.

“Nothing serious. I’m ok. Loafers aren’t too good for mud climbing.”

Carl put down his squeegee and jug. He came to my side and helped the rest of the way up to the road. Standing in front of the truck’s headlights, I looked at my condition. A soaking, muddy mess. I felt panicked for a second and patted my pockets.

I groaned. “Forgot the keys.” I looked back down at the car.

“I’ll get them, Ed. Give me the light.”

Carl managed the mud with no problem. I could see the door open. The flashlight moved around the Civic’s interior. It seemed like it was taking him a long time to just grab the keys. I heard the door slam and the chirp of the door lock. The parking lights flashed twice and then the car sat dark and quiet. Carl came back up the slope.

 He handed me the keys and my work bag.

“Thought you might want to bring this home with you. No need to leave it in plain sight in the car. Some fool might break a window if they thought something valuable could be in there.”

“Thanks, Carl. You're a life-saver.”

“No problem, Ed. The road’s a dangerous place to be stuck. Been broke down enough times myself to know that. Go ahead and climb up the passenger side of the cab. Don’t get in right away. I have a sheet of plastic to throw over the seat before you dirty the place up.”

Carl waited for me at a table in the dining area of the rest stop. I did the best I could in the rest room to clean myself up and dry off what I could. They only had air dryers in the bathroom. Most of me was still either wet or plastered with semi-dried mud.

Carl sipped on a steaming coffee he bought from McDonald’s. He shook his head as I approached.

“You are a sight, Ed. Did you get ahold of Stuart?”

Stu was the friend I called to pick me up.

“Yup. He’s on his way. I called my wife and told her what happened.” I should be all set now. I can’t thank you enough, Carl.”

A second cup of coffee sat on the table. Carl pushed it toward me.

“Here. I bet you can use this.”

I reached out and picked it up. Just holding the warm, Styrofoam cup made me feel better. I smiled crookedly.

“Ever see those car insurance commercials for State Farm?” I said.

“Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there?’ he said in a sing-song voice.

“Yeah,” I said. “They need to re-write that jingle and say Carl Goldberg is there. Helping me out has got to have put you off schedule for your trip.”

Carl shook his head. “Not a big deal, Ed. My brother-in-law is the dispatcher. I let him know what’s going on. You can’t make great time in weather like this anyhow. That being said, though, I’m gonna get rolling if you’re ok.”

I held up the coffee and took a sip. “I’m all set, Carl. Stu will be here in about 20 minutes.”

I held out a hand. This time Carl shook it. He smiled warmly.

“You be more careful out there, Ed. Not all truckers will stop for you when you’re stuck. Most of them don’t have family back at the shop running their schedules.”

“I will, Carl. I will.”

I watched Carl push through the glass doors and jog through the sheets of rain to his truck. I walked over to the big glass windows. I was too wet and uncomfortable to sit down. The lights came on as he fired up the engine. In a minute he was rolling past the gas pumps and up the on ramp.

I couldn’t see much outside because of the rain. The inside of the rest area reflected on the glass came into sharper focus. I looked like hell. Stu would have a good laugh when he got here. That’s when I noticed him. The man standing in the open archway leading into the men’s bathroom. Dressed in hooded coat that hung past his waist. I saw deep blue pants and boots on his feet. It struck me that he didn’t move. He just stood there facing  in my direction. I closed my eyes for a long couple seconds and then turned to look over to the rest room. He was gone. I didn’t see anyone moving in the place except the counter man at McDonald’s and a guy in a light blue uniform mopping the floor near the entrance.

I started walking toward the bathroom. I don’t know why, but I needed to see where the hooded man had gone, though a creeping fear of him compressed my chest. My heart pounded like my rib cage had started shrinking. It thumped off the sides of its cage, seeking more room to beat. I tried to catch my breath and slow it all down. When I got near the bathroom, I saw muddy footprints on the tiled floor. A pair where he had been standing, looking in my direction and four more that went into the bathroom. Had he just appeared in the door way? Where were the rest of them? The guy mopping the floor was working near the entrance door about fifty feet from here.

I took another step toward the bathroom. I put my right hand over my mouth to keep from screaming. My nostrils flared, having taken over the work of oxygen intake. It wasn’t sufficient.

Another step closer. A shadow appeared on the wall just inside the door way arch. Quiet steps approached. I froze in place. The shadow grew larger. I could see the shadow of the man was holding something long in his left hand. I dropped my coffee cup and put my left hand over my mouth, two hands now barricading the scream in my throat.

The guy in the light blue uniform, who I saw mopping the floor by the door came out of the rest room. He had thinning, brown hair. I could see his scalp through most of what was left. A colorful set of tattoos covered his right forearm. The left forearm had intricate designs in black ink. Later I would remember that this was only an outline. It was unfinished. So many things are left unfinished.

In one hand he held a wood handled mop. In the other, a yellow, caution cone that had “Wet Floor” written on it. He stopped when he saw me.

Looking me over he said, “Bathroom’s closed. Hey, you gonna throw up?”

I almost said ‘yes’ since some bile had crept up my throat. I swallowed and lowered my hands. I whispered a hoarse, “No.”

“You drop that coffee,” He pointed to the floor with his mop.

I nodded without speaking.

He sighed. “I just did this floor.” He put the cone down beside my feet.

“Well, if you really gotta go or if you think you’re gonna really puke, use the ladies room. Nobody’s in there and on a night like tonight shouldn’t be too many people coming through. Just hurry it up.”

I backed away from him and the yellow cone. I turned and went inside the ladies rest room. I marched over to the sink. I wanted to splash some water on my face and snap out of this, whatever temporary madness had come over me.

The faucet worked on motion, no knobs to turn or handle to push and pull. I waved my hands beneath and received streams of scalding hot water on my palms.

“Ouch!” I said. Jerking my hands up, I inspected them for damage. Other than looking slightly red, nothing happened to them. I tried another sink and got the same too-hot water. I wanted nothing more to be dry so I approached the hand dryer. “You’re an idiot,” I said out loud. “Burned hands under a hand blaster throwing hot air.” But I did it anyway. I wanted to be dry more than anything. After the scalding water, it wasn’t bad at all.

I felt calmer now. My hammering heart stabilized. I felt better about things. I glanced around the ladies room and noticed there were no urinals. All stalls. It made the place seem so much smaller. The last stall in the corner was labeled with a handicapped emblem. I could see a pair of muddy boots under the door, positioned so that they faced the back corner of the stall.

I made a low groaning sound. My body went rigid and the fear took hold again. The boots lifted and turned. Clomp. Clomp. Now the toes faced in my direction. I needed to scream but my hands covered my mouth again. I turned and ran. Rounding the corner, I twisted toward the dining area and those big windows. I slid across the wet floor and my feet went out from under me. I slapped the tiles hard, my head rang. My vision blurred. A pair of dark boots appeared beside my shoulder. Then I blacked out.

Chapter 2

The next thing I remembered with any clarity was sitting in Stu’s car. We were moving.

“Highway,” I said. The words came slowly to my lips.

“About time you said something I could understand,” Stu said.

My head ached. The rain hitting the windshield moved too slowly. It looked thick and ran slowly before the sweeping wipers. It took all my focus to turn and look over at Stu. My chin lolled to the left and stuck to my shoulder. The last time I felt this groggy, I had drank way too much vodka at a Fourth of July party.

“The car,” I mumbled.

“Yeah, yeah. Your car is getting towed. Don’t worry about it. It’s not like you’re gonna be driving it anytime soon. We’re swinging by Ella’s house on the way home. I texted her and she wants a look at you.”

“Ella’s house?” I said.

“I’m not sitting in some emergency room unless she says to go there;” Stu said. “There’s a nice lump on the side of your head. I think you’re fine, but when your best friend is a doctor, why not ask?”

Stu, Ellen and I went to grammar school together. We rode the bus together right until junior year of high school. When we became seniors, I got a used car after I passed my driving test. I drove those two everywhere.

Memories of those nights cruising through town, weekend trips to Boston, and hanging out at Hodak’s farm floated through my hazy mind.

“Kaylyn,” I said.

“Yup. Been texting her too. She’s put Emma to bed. She’s worried about you. We’ll call her once Ellen gets a look at you.”

I braced myself against Stu walking up Ellen’s driveway. She met us at the door. I smiled when I saw her shaking her head like a disapproving mother.

Ellen didn’t have a family of her own. She focused so relentlessly on medical school and her residency that a social life took a distant back seat. I was grateful of that right now.

I sat in a chair in the middle of her kitchen while she looked me over. The recessed lights burned my eyes. My head started aching all over again.

After a few minutes, I sat in straight-backed chair in her mostly glass sun porch that looked over the backyard. Rain hammered the aluminum roof so I couldn’t hear the two of them talking in the next room, though they were only fifteen feet away from me. Stu shook his head while Ellen lectured him. I saw Stu pull out his phone and make a call.

“Probably calling Kaylyn,” I thought.

After a minute or so, they came into the room. Ellen pulled a foot rest over and sat in front of me.

“How you feeling, kid?” Ellen had nicknamed me “the kid” a long time ago. My birthday is late in the year and I was always the youngest kid in our class. My parents probably should’ve held me back and started school the following year, but they didn’t.

“Things are clearing up. My head still hurts but I can see straight and everything doesn’t feel like slow motion anymore.”

“That’s good,” Ellen said. “I don’t think you have a concussion. But you did hit your head on a hard surface and you need watching. I told Kaylyn what she needs to do for tonight.”

“Thanks, E. I owe you one. You too, Stu.”

 “Yes, you do,” Stu said. “Let’s get you home.”

I called in sick in the morning. I didn’t tell my boss what really happened. I just said I had been throwing up all night.

“Sounds like a stomach bug.” He said. “Stay home until it passes. We don’t need you spreading that around the office. I’ll have Tony disinfect your desk just in case.”

“Really?” I thought. “I bet Tony will love that.”

I only slept a couple hours. Whatever rest I got was born out of exhaustion and mental fatigue. I woke up to the dull ache. It hurt less than when I was at Ellen’s, but I wasn’t 100% yet.

The entire day consisted of nothing but ibuprofen, tea and lying on the couch. Not only did my body ache but I couldn’t shake the image of the guy in the boots. It haunted me. I kept trying to convince myself that he wasn’t looking at me from across the rest stop dining area. But I knew he was. Feelings of dread covered me like a too-heavy blanket on a warm night. Sweat beaded up on my skin while I struggled to keep my fear under control.

The footprints. How could they just appear with no trail coming from anywhere that made sense? Where had he come from? What did he want? How did he get from the stall to right beside me when I fell?

I didn’t tell Kaylyn about him. Considering the fall on the hard floor, she would chalk up my fears to a mild concussion and delusion.

After hours of wrestling with all the ‘what if’s’, I had nearly convinced myself to let it go and move on. That’s when Stu texted me.

He wrote, “Dude – how you doing?”

“Better. Love daytime TV.”

“Good, Wanna get your car?”

“Yes.”

“Ok. I’ll leave work early. Get u @4.”

“Cool. Thx.”

“Hope tow guy doesn’t have muddy boots!”

I stared at my phone, re-reading the message. I didn’t remember telling Stu about the muddy boots guy. Maybe I mentioned it when I was going in and out of consciousness in the car. While I thought about what to write next, Stu sent another text.

“Cat got yur tongue? Or yur fingers?!”

I powered off my phone and put it on the coffee table.

Stu picked me up a little after four o’clock. We didn’t talk much on the ride to the towing company. He didn’t bring up the muddy boots guy. I felt relief that he didn’t go there.

We pulled into a wide parking area in front of a gray, sheet metal building as big as an airplane hangar. We could see a few guys working of some vehicles with hoods up or elevated on lifts. From inside a small office, a man in his 60’s came out holding a clipboard.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

“Yes. I’m here to pick up my Honda Civic. You took off the side of the Pike last night.”

“Right.” He looked down at his clipboard. He flipped a few pages.

“Here it is. Killingworth. Edward?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll need to see some identification.”

I handed him my driver’s license. After looking it over he handed it back.

“That’s you, all right. Name’s Desmond White. I brought your car in myself last night. Pretty tough spot you picked to wash your windows.”

“Yeah. Well, I didn’t have much choice. Some nasty stuff on my windshield.”

“I saw that,” Desmond said. “Looked like oil. I got all of it off for you. Wasn’t too bad. I have some pretty strong stuff we use here. I put a can in your trunk in case that happens to you again. Get yourself some clean rags so you can take care of it right next time.”

I thanked and paid him. I thanked Stu yet again. He got all melodramatic and said, “Let this be a lesson to you, kid. How many times have I told you to keep that car of yours clean? Five hundred? A thousand times? Next time, I won’t be so quick to come to your rescue.”

“Get the hell away from me,” I said.

“No problem,” he said.

We went our separate ways for the night. As I drove down Page Boulevard, away from White’s Garage and Towing I zoned out. The processing part of my brain took over operating the car while I kept playing the events of last night over in my head.

The shadow in the trees on the side of the road. There, in the darkness behind the whipping rain and thrashing boughs. A space that was too dark. A shape that wasn’t natural. It was no shadow. It was him. I knew it had to be him.

“You picked an interesting spot to pull off. You know where you are?” Carl’s words repeated back to me. What did a truck driver from Tennessee know about a dirt patch on the side of one of a thousand miles of road he travels every week?

“Well. He must know something about it?” I thought. “Why else would he ask me?”

I didn’t watch the news regularly. I tried to think about what I had heard or read about something happening on that stretch of the Pike. Nothing came to mind. I mean, people had accidents all the time. I remember a Trooper being hit while he walked back to his cruiser after stopping a drunk driver.

I could picture a bunch of makeshift shrines on the side of the highway. You know the ones with small crosses and flowers. Sometimes balloons or candles were set up when their birthday came around every year. The Pike had been built in the 50’s, I think. So it had been around 30 years before I was born. Maybe something bad had happened in that spot. Carl was twice my age and I might talk with other truckers at rest stops all the time. He would know more about something like that than I would.

When I got home I talked to Kaylyn for a few minutes when small feet tapped into the room. Emma had drawn a picture of me. Daddy with an ice pack on my head and a thermometer sticking out my mouth. She handed it to me, smiling.

“Are you feeling better, Daddy?”

“Yes, little one. But Daddy’s real tired. I’m going to go lay down.”

“Don’t you want something to eat?’ Kaylyn asked.

“Not now. I don’t have any appetite. Maybe later.”

Emma gave me a hug. “Brush your teeth before you lay down, Daddy. You could forget and wake up with yucky-mouth.”

I laughed. “I will, honey.”

My boss, Mitchell Baker called me into the office as soon as I got to work the next day.

“You sure you’re feeling better, Ed? You don’t look like you’re 100%.”

“I’m not at full strength but my doctor says I’m clear to work. I’ll be back to normal tomorrow.”

“Fine. Check with Tony. He picked up the slack while you were out. And buy him lunch today. He wasn’t thrilled at having to wipe down your cube.”

“Sure, boss.”

I watched the clock all day. Nothing could motivate me to be there. The work from the past few days and some new requests that just came in stared at me in defiance on my monitor. By the time everyone around me was packing it in for the day, I had hardly accomplished anything.

But as people started saying goodbyes to each other and the office thinned out. I got a second wind. I looked at the clock. If I pushed through till 6:30, I could finish at least one these reports. I texted Kaylyn and told her I’d be late catching up. She wrote that it was no problem. She and Emma had rented a movie and would watch it after dinner. By the time I got there, they’d probably both be asleep on the couch.

With a small amount of satisfaction, I sent the completed file to the manager who requested it. I checked the time. 6:45pm.

“Not too bad. At least I won’t have to fight traffic at this hour,” I thought.

My car sat alone in the mostly deserted parking lot. The rainstorm that had swept through the region was long gone. Tonight was calm and a little warmer. I’d probably make it home by 8:30pm. I could see a couple more late nights in my future before I got my head above water at the office.

I drove with far fewer cars on the secondary roads around the office. “What a difference an hour makes,” I thought.

Once on the turnpike, I hit up the first rest stop to get gas and grab a coffee. The clerk, Arline by her pre-printed name tag, took my money. “Arline,” I thought “I wonder if they spelled it wrong.” Thankfully, I got in and out of there in about 10 minutes despite it being pretty crowded.

As I merged back into the three lane highway, the usual commuting traffic of passenger cars was replaced with big trucks. For every four-wheeler on the road there were five big haulers taking up the center and right lane. As long as I stayed in the passing lane doing 80mph, it was smooth sailing.

The truckers’ driving patterns reminded me of a flock of geese. One truck would pass another one as they climbed an incline in the road. Once they crested the hill, the heavier tractor trailer would gain speed and pass as many trucks as he could before the next climb. I wondered if it was a game they played. Maybe they were drafting like NASCAR drivers. How many points for passing one truck? Did you get double points for passing two? And what if…

Brake lights illuminated the entire road ahead. I hit the brakes and barely had enough room to stop behind the SUV I was following.  I could see the driver throw two hands up in the air like I had actually made contact. “Whatever,” I said to myself. “Take a chill pill.” The traffic looked like it was crawling along where the Pike bent to the left.

I tried searching on the radio for the traffic advisory channel. Why didn’t I save it as a pre-set? Stupid. I checked the State Police Twitter feed. The last few posts were about accidents that were hours old, near the outskirts of Boston. The further we crept, I could see we were being funneled into the passing lane. “Road work or an accident,” I said to no one. After about 30 minutes I could see where the traffic was opening up again. I texted Kaylyn to let her know I would be later than I thought. She replied with a single letter; “K”.

Then I saw the overturned tractor trailer. The back double doors of the trailer pointed up in the air as the rest of it lay along the slope on the side of the highway. I noticed there was no guard rail here. My skin felt cold all over. I swallowed hard in my throat. The panic I had felt just 48 hours ago came rushing back in a flood of fear.

“No,” I breathed. The back of the trailer read “THS” in big block letters. That meant something to me, but I couldn’t remember what. The closer we crawled, I knew that was the spot where I pulled off the road. The exact freaking spot. I started to text Stu but my hands shook and I couldn’t spell anything right. I saw a Trooper putting new road flares down where the original ones were sputtering out. Once I got through the bottle-neck, I pulled over to the right side shoulder and put my hazards light on. I stopped the car and got out. I looked down the slope. Police spotlights lit up the disabled truck. On the side of the trailer I confirmed what “THS” stood for: Tennessee Hauling Systems. A sour taste climbed up my throat.

I stepped over the guard rail and started running down the slope. From my right, a Trooper who couldn’t have been more than 25 grabbed my bicep and stopped me cold. He was so strong my feet came off the ground for a second before landing again. He raised me up so I didn’t land on my ass.

“Where do you think you’re going, pal?” he said.

“Carl. Is that my friend Carl?” I said.

“You know the driver?” he asked.

“Is it Carl Goldberg down there?” I asked. Panic obvious in my tone.

The Trooper stared back without answering me. He examined me like a doctor looking for symptoms of illness.

“Well is it!?”

“Yes. The driver is Carl Goldberg of Oak Ridge, Tennessee. But how do you know him?” he said in a flat, even voice.

“He helped me the other night. I needed help and he stopped for me. He helped me right here. Right there.” I pointed at the truck with my free hand.

The Trooper’s eyes narrowed. After a few seconds he said, “Come with me.”

He never let go of my arm, but the grip eased up a little. We walked across the slope over to a two more Troopers. He told me to stay put, about ten feet away from them. He turned his back on me and talked low enough so I couldn’t hear them. The other two looked in my direction a couple times. One of them nodded and then walked up to the road. He shone an incredibly bright flashlight up the highway. I looked and saw he shone it on my Honda. He walked straight over to me. “He just checked my tags,” I thought.

“That your car?’ he asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

“I had that car towed two nights ago from this location.”

“I know,” I said. “I called to report that I had to leave it. Oil on the windshield during the rainstorm. I picked it up from White’s Garage.”

“And you’re saying that this trucker, Goldberg helped you out?”

“Yeah. He tried to clean off the windshield, but the rain turned the slope to mud. He gave me ride to the next rest stop instead of trying to drive it out.”

“Huh.” He said. “Wait here.”

“Is he ok?” I asked.

The Trooper didn’t answer me as he walked back over to his cronies. More flashing lights rolled up on the shoulder. In a minute, two paramedics descended the slope carrying an orange back board. It was the kind that had handholds cut out all around the edges and several straps tied across to keep someone from falling off.

Insticntively, I ran down the slope toward the front of the tractor. The Troopers shouted in a single voice, “Stop!” I didn’t care if they arrested me. I had to see him. He could be hurt badly.

I made it around the rig and found Carl lying in tall grass. I’ve never seen someone injured so horribly. His eyes stared into the sky. His mouth gaped open. Parts of his legs were…were missing. His belly had been ripped open and his insides were all pulled out. The sour feeling in my stomach rose like a geyser into my mouth. I puked a hot stream of coffee and lunch into the grass. Bent at the waist, I coughed until it hurt. I dropped into a squat that lasted five seconds. I rocked forward onto my knees, gasping for breath.

With nothing left inside to eject, I shuddered. A coldness gripped me, causing me to shiver. My arms were pulled back by strong hands. I heard the handcuffs snapping into place. The merciless steel clamped around my bony wrists.

Coughing once more, I said, “Who…did this? What happened…to him?”

“We were going to ask you the same thing, Mr. Killingworth,” one of the Troopers said.

Another one said, “Let’s go.”

They stood me up, turned me around and marched me back up the slope. They ignored my repeated questions. I was stuffed into the back of a cruiser. I looked to out the window and saw faces in the procession of cars. Their scanned back and forth from me to the truck, back to me. I saw smart phones pointed in my direction.

I turned my head toward the woods. A couple minutes passed and I saw them carrying Carl’s body toward the ambulance. More emergency vehicles had arrived behind me. I saw firemen and guys with State Police coats carrying big utility boxes down toward the truck.

I wondered for a second and then I knew it was the crime scene guys. A Trooper broke free from the group and got into the front seat. He looked over his shoulder at me.

“Looks like your car is getting towed again, Mr. Killingworth.”

“Why?” I said.

He didn’t answer me. He put the car in gear and pulled into the mass of automobiles and trucks. He sounded the siren briefly and the cars opened a space for him. He gunned the engine and we raced ahead. He kept his flashers on and cars moved aside.

“Where are we going?” I said.

“Barracks,” was all he said.

“I need to call my wife. She’s going to be worried about me.”

“Uh-huh,” he said. The rest of the ride was spent in silence.