Bedbugs (27 page)

The tires found the road, and the car gradually gained speed. Soon enough, David was heading toward home, driving a bit faster than he knew he should, given the terrible driving conditions. Any alcohol fumes lingering in his brain had been burned off in his raging panic to get away from that bridge and that jagged black hole in the river ice. Before long, once his hammering pulse began to slow, his mind felt as crystal sharp as ever, and he tried to sort out what had happened.

What he needed to do first, he told himself, was just get the hell home—sit down with a whiskey, maybe a double, give Gail the birthday present he’d gotten for her, and then, after giving his wife a birthday screw, go to sleep and forget all about what had happened.

That’s all he could do!

He sure as hell couldn’t help that poor bastard down there on the bottom of the Stroudwater River!

David’s hands clenched the steering wheel so tightly they began to ache. In his mind, he could imagine—much too vividly—the man as he drifted down to the muddy riverbed where his coat, made heavy by the water, held him as solidly as a coat of cement. David tried—and failed—not to imagine the man’s hollow, glazed eyes . . . dead eyes, staring up at the shimmering, receding glow of the surface. The only comforting thought about any of this was that the cold water probably had killed the man long before he knew what was happening—

. . . probably!

The road unwound slowly as David drove through the swirling snow. The wind whistling around the car was masked by the raging noise inside David’s mind—

I killed a man!

I fucking just killed a man!

He had to accept that. He knew at least that much. More than likely, once he got home, he probably wouldn’t even mention it to Gail.

Why should he?

It made no sense to get her all worked up about it. If, sometime in the spring, the poor bastard’s bones washed up somewhere downstream, then maybe he’d find out who the jerk had been. After all, what the hell was he doing out this late, walking alone in a blizzard? In all likelihood, unless the man’s mysterious disappearance made the newspapers, David figured it was all over and done with . . . history, locked beneath the river ice.

David was having enough of a problem focusing on the narrow spread of his headlights as they sliced through the raging snow. The wiper blades kept icing up, and he noticed, with a touch of irony, how killing a man hadn’t changed everything. His face was slick with sweat, and his heavy breathing made the defroster work overtime. But try as he might, he couldn’t stop thinking about that hole back there in the river beneath the bridge. Staring straight ahead, trying to stay on the road, he couldn’t shake the gnawing sensation that he was driving down a long, black tunnel.

. . . Like that black hole in the ice, he thought, shivering wildly.

. . . Like that long, black ribbon of river, sliding silently beneath the thin crust of ice. . . .

. . . Like the dark, narrow passage between life and death.

The snow-laden trees lining both sides of the road leaned inward, threatening to fall down and crush David’s car as he skidded and swerved his way through the stormy night. The car’s engine whined loudly as the tires spun, nearly useless in the deep snow. The storm swallowed his headlights and distorted his view of the road so badly he doubted at times that he was even driving on the road. For all he knew, he could be carving an entirely new path across the fields and through the woods.

Only a few houses lined the roadside. When he passed them, seeing the warm glow of living room lights spilling out onto the snow-covered front yards made David think it might be a good idea to drive up to one of those houses, ask to use the phone, call the police, and report what had happened. That was the honest thing to do, he knew; but then again—thinking honestly—what the Christ good would it do?

The man was dead . . . drowned like a rat.

If the cops got involved, and if they gave him a breath test, he’d come out point 3 or higher, for sure. He’d get nailed for “operating under the influence” and maybe vehicular homicide. What good would that do either him or that poor bastard back there?

Why ruin his life just because some asshole was out walking in a Goddamned blizzard after midnight?

As the road unscrolled in front of his headlights, David had to resist the illusion that he was actually stationary, and that the road was sliding past him. He had no sense of motion. The steering wheel played loosely in his hands, but more often than not, the car’s motion seemed not to respond to anything he did. The night pressed in close, buffeting the car as it whistled and howled like a dark beast, intent on pulling him out into itself.

Although it didn’t feel like it, David knew that he was driving much slower than he usually did. He realized that, in a storm, time and distance had a funny way of distorting. After a while, though, when he still hadn’t come up to the turn onto Route 22, he started to panic.

Was the junction still somewhere up ahead, or had he missed it in the dark somehow?

Could he be lost somewhere in Scarborough? He could see nothing but snow-covered woods and the occasional house outside his window, so for all he knew, he could be in God-forsaken Aroostock County!

After another few curves in the road, when he still hadn’t come up on anything familiar, he told himself that he would turn around in the next driveway he saw and start heading back. The night closed down around him like a curtain. Snow streaked at him like tracer bullets, creating the dizzying impression that the entire world was slipping past him. His mind began to spin, and he got so lost in his slow-rising panic and the curious feeling that he wasn’t even moving that he almost forgot he was driving. He kept shaking his head and yanking his awareness back onto the road before he found himself nose-deep in a snow bank on the side of the road.

With a sudden drop in his stomach, he realized that it had been—what? Maybe two or three miles since he had last seen a house. Now, he knew damned well that there were houses all along Running Hill Road. The urban sprawl of the Maine Mall and its associated business parks had turned this once gentle, rolling farmland into prime real estate. He should have been able to see the inviting glow of light in at least one window. The snow wasn’t coming down that thick! But strain as he might to see in either direction, the road was nothing but solid black bleeding into the thin gray of diffused light from his headlights.

“Where in the name of Christ
am
I?” he muttered, fighting back a cold rush of panic. He realized that he was breathing heavily and eased back into the car seat, forcing himself to relax. There was no use getting all stressed out about this. He was letting himself get too carried away. For all he knew, he may even have hallucinated that guy back there on the bridge. He’d had too much to drink; even though he would have sworn he was fit enough to drive, maybe the alcohol was still playing tricks on his mind.

     
There had to be a rational explanation for everything, right? And just as soon as he got home and had a drink to brace himself, he’d try to rationalize all of this. Right now, all he needed to do was figure out where the fuck he was. Hunching over the steering wheel, he silently prayed for a sign, for just one thing he might recognize, one tiny landmark so he would know he was still on the right road. It was impossible that he could have gotten lost on a road he covered to and from work pretty near every day of his life.

Up ahead, David saw where the road veered to the right. As he eased on the gas for the turn, thinking this was it—he would see the stop sign he was looking for—his stomach suddenly dropped. His fingers clutched the steering wheel, and a chill sharper than the storm winds swirled inside him.

Ahead of him was the Running Hill Road bridge!

“What in the name of—?” David sputtered.

His foot pumped the brake, and the wheels locked, but the car didn’t slow down as it skidded down the hill toward the iron girders of the bridge.

This is impossible!
he thought, even though he had the testimony of his own eyes. How could he have gone around in a complete circle to end up here? He would have had to drive past the Maine Mall again! There was no way he’d done that! This had to be some other bridge. That’s what it was. He was on the wrong road and had found a different bridge that simply
looked
like the Running Road bridge.

But as his car slid to a stop, belly-deep in the snow in front of the bridge, David looked around and saw that he was wrong.

This most definitely was the bridge he had just crossed over . . . what? No more than an hour ago? The same bridge where he had run into that man and knocked him over the railing and into the river.

With a sudden, sickening rush, David could feel the dark, ugly presence of the hole in the river ice below him.

He could feel it, swelling and spreading, reaching up toward him out of the storm like hungry hands, trying to catch him and drag him down.

A scream began to build inside David’s chest as he sat there for a moment, his car idling as the blizzard screamed all around him. Carefully, now, he stepped down on the gas and started slowly across the bridge. His breath was burning, raw in his throat, and his eyes felt like they had been glued open as he scanned the section of the railing where the snow had been knocked off. He was just starting to accelerate to get the hell out of there when a flicker of motion off to his left drew his attention. For a moment, the storm darkened and congealed; then, swooping at him from overhead, the dark shape of a man came flying out of the raging snow straight at the car.

A scream burst from David when the man landed with a
thud
on the hood of the car. The sudden impact sent a jolt of pain up David’s arms all the way to his teeth. He jerked the steering wheel hard to the left, all the while staring straight ahead in utter disbelief.

The man didn’t bounce off the front of the car like he had the first time. Looking like a dark, awkward crab, he clung to the hood. David’s eyes widened with terror when the man slowly raised his head and smiled at him. Thick, black muck oozed from between his teeth, and heavy strands of slime hung from his face and shoulders. The man’s eyes swelled with rage as he opened his mouth wide, and a torrent of dark water shot out at the windshield.

David cried out and reflexively raised his arm to shield himself as the water splattered against the glass. For an instant, the wipers stopped their steady sweep. As soon as they swept the water away, David saw that this was no illusion—the man was still clinging to the front of the car. His face was underlit from the reflected light of the headlights as he leaned back and opened his mouth in silent, horrible laughter.

“
Get the fuck away from me!
” David shrieked as he quickly spun the steering wheel back and forth, trying desperately to dislodge the man. With his pulse firing like a machine gun, he watched the man lean forward and begin climbing up the hood toward the windshield. In desperation, David stepped down hard on the accelerator. The tires caught on the pavement beneath the snow, and the car leaped forward. In the frozen glare of the headlights, past the looming bulk of the man, David saw the bridge railing—and the small area where the snow had been cleared off—directly in front of him.

He fought frantically to turn the car, but no matter how hard he pulled on the steering wheel, he couldn’t change direction. In flickering slow motion, the car careened toward the side of the bridge. David could feel the jagged, black hole in the river ice below the bridge. It was pulling him forward like the inexorable suck of a vacuum.

“
Leave me the Christ alone!
” David shouted as the man, scrambling forward, brought his face up close to the windshield—so close the wiper blade whisked less than an inch from his nose. The man’s face was pale and crusted with frozen, black ooze from the river bottom as he watched David with glazed, unblinking eyes. A smile twisted his mouth into a horrible rictus.

“Please. . . .” David said, pleading, but then his voice warbled rapidly up the scale until it was nothing but an ear-piercing screech. The car shuddered with another, heavier impact, and then it tore through the railing and shot out into the night. Metal scraping against metal sent sparks flying like fireflies into the storm as the car shot out into the darkness and then plummeted downward. It hit the river ice nose-first, leveled out for a single, sickening instant, and then began to sink. Frigid water seeped into the car, curling its icy fingers around David’s legs, then up to his waist, his chest, and finally over his face. He struggled to get the door open, but before long, his hands and arms were numb, useless. The last sound he made as the water closed around him like a black shroud was a strangled, bubbly gasp.

-2-

 
“Holy shit! Did you see that?” Benny Larsen shouted, even though he knew he was alone, and whoever was in that car certainly couldn’t hear him . . . not anymore, anyway. He ran through the knee-deep snow to the bridge railing and looked down at the bubbling, black hole in the river ice. Waves sloshed out of the hole, but the splashing sound they made was lost beneath the high roaring sound of the blizzard.

Benny’s car had died about a mile back on Spring Street. He knew there was a service station back by the Maine Turnpike entrance, and he had set that as his goal to get the help he needed. If the gas station was closed because of the storm, he could at least ask for help at the Turnpike toll booth . . . unless the Turnpike had been closed because of the storm, too. If that was the case, then he didn’t know what he’d do.