The story of the giant ants ended in a disappointingly predictable way.
My night, on the other hand, not so much. I'd put my book away and run
through some of the usual nightly duties: fronting the shelves, resetting the
lawn gnome display, pulling all the sausages from the hot dog roller once
they had turned too purple. A little of this, a little of that. Keeping the place
tidy and in order for the eventual morning rush. When I had done nearly all
there was for a person to do, I returned to my spot behind the counter and
dug through my backpack in search of a new book. That's when things got
interesting.
A man and a woman came into the store. Not a couple. Just a man and
woman. At a glance, I could see that they were from two different worlds.
He was gruff and unkempt, with a black wife beater and skeleton sleeve
tattoos. His skin was sun-darkened and dirty, with a haircut that said he
neither needed nor wanted to impress anybody and a mouth that suggested
he didn't have dental insurance. He looked like he could have been a local,
but I didn't recognize him.
She was young and beautiful, with blonde hair and big blue eyes. She
wore a short pink dress on her thin body and a look of abject terror on her
pretty face. I would have bet my last dollar that she was an out-of-towner if
I could find somebody to take that bet.
I would never have assumed that they were together if it weren't for
the fact that they both ran into the building at the same time, the man
yelling at her to "Find a weapon and hide!" He slammed the door shut and
fumbled at the deadbolt until it slid into place.
The woman screamed dramatically and fell to the ground on the junk
food aisle next to the off-brand snack cakes, crying like a newborn howler
monkey. The man was panting like he'd just run a marathon, walking
slowly backwards away from the glass doors as he let out a "What the hell?
Where is it?"
The woman managed to form the words, "Is it still there?"
"It's gone. How can it be gone?! It was right behind us!"
"Hello," I said in my friendliest cashier voice.
The man yelled at me, "Get down! Don't let it see you!" and ducked
underneath the booth table next to the door.
I came to the obvious conclusion that these two were being chased by
one of the more aggressive raccoons, but a quick glance out the glass doors
showed no signs of any predatory bandit cats. More interestingly, I didn't
see any cars. The parking lot was still empty, which begged the question:
Where are all these customers coming from?
"You guys alright?" I asked.
The man slowly picked himself up enough to see out the window and
scan the edges of the lot. Satisfied with what he saw (or didn't see), he got
to his feet, crossed to my counter, and yelled the words, "I need to use your
phone. Now!"
"Okay," I said, "It's twenty-five cents a minute. Pay in advance. No
exceptions."
"Listen to me, you little shit!" he continued yelling, "I don't have
time to pay you! There's something out there following us! It's already
killed someone. Now quit playing around and give me the phone!"
He reached across the counter towards the receiver, but I slapped my
hand on top of it before he could reach.
"Twenty-five cents a minute," I reiterated.
Look, I get it. I know how this comes across. Me, sitting behind the
register, being a hardass about the business's weird phone policy like a man
selling life preservers on a sinking ship. I get how--to someone who doesn't
work at the gas station--this might seem like I'm being a little ridiculous.
But if you knew how often I deal with people (not even customers--just
people) coming into the store asking to use the phone, you'd see where I
was coming from.
There was a payphone set up outside the gas station for decades, and
we never had this problem. But after cell phones killed the cost-call
industry, the operator sold all of his units for scrap metal money just to buy
a bus ticket out of town. Ever since then, the store landline has been like
Woodstock for poor folk in need of a free call.
The owners have been very clear. They're willing to cut a lot of slack
when it comes to scheduling or dress code or customer complaints or
general safety concerns. But this was the hill they picked to die on.
"We can't let word get out that our store is a place where phone calls
can be made full-gratis. You know what kind of people go out to businesses
expecting to make free calls? Bad people, Jack. You get a reputation as that
kind of establishment, you'll be overrun by Gypsies in no time. The whole
parking lot will be a shanty-town, and you'll be up to your elbows in
wooden nickels."
I forget which one of them said that, and I still have no idea what a
"wooden nickel" is, but my takeaway from the warning was that this was
serious, so I made it my habit to enforce the rule on a "no exceptions" basis.
The man screamed and cussed and yelled at me like a parking lot
preacher until he was red in the face, and then he finally stopped, pulled out
a dollar bill, and handed it over. I turned the egg timer to four minutes and
passed him the phone.
"Thank you," he said.
"You're welcome," I responded, even though I'm pretty sure he was
just being sarcastic.
He dialed a three-digit number and held the phone to his ear for a
second, then he gave me a dejected look, "It ain't working."
I took the phone from him and listened.
"Ah," I said, "I know what's going on."
"What is it?" he barked.
"Yeah, this happens from time to time. It's not that unusual, really. It
would seem as if somebody has cut the phone line."
"What!?" he screamed.
"Somebody has cut the phone line," I said a little louder.
The woman let out a dramatic, high-pitched wail and continued to cry
on the floor next to the Los Poco Debitas cakes.
The man put both of his palms on the counter and lowered his head,
defeated. "So that's it then, huh? We're screwed. That thing is out there
hunting us, and nobody even knows we're here."
I reopened the register, took out the dollar bill, and handed it back to
him, fully expecting him to scream again, but instead he went calm. He
stood up straight and walked over to where the woman was still crying on
the floor, then he bent down and sat next to her.
"You guys are welcome to sit at the booth and wait for the sheriff's
deputy to make his rounds. He usually shows up in the mornings to grab
some coffee and check on things."
"You don't get it, do you?" the guy asked.
"Probably not," I answered.
"We were in an accident, right down the road. Her boyfriend came
driving up behind me like a lunatic."
"You slammed on your brakes!" the woman yelled.
"Some kind of animal ran out in front of me! If you weren't riding my
ass, you would have been able to stop."
"You were driving too slow!"
"You shouldn't have been tailgating!"
SLAM!
A loud noise from somewhere immediately above us echoed around
the tiny room, shutting both of them right up. The woman continued to sob,
but she shoved her hand into her mouth to plug the noise in a most
ungraceful manner. The guy stared straight up at the ceiling.
After a few long seconds without any more sounds, the man
whispered "What the hell was that?"
"Most likely, a tree branch falling on the roof." I said. "They do that
sometimes. So, go on, what happened next?"
"What?" he asked.
"You stopped short, and she rear-ended you-"
"She didn't rear-end me. Her idiot boyfriend was the one driving."
The woman, still fist-in-mouth, collapsed dramatically onto the ground
again. The man changed his tone. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to call him…
Never mind. He hit me and we pulled over and traded words out there on
the side of the road. Then something came out of the woods. Some kind
of…" The man took a long breath like he was willing himself to say the
word. "...monster. It looked human, only it wasn't."
I waited for him to continue the story, but he didn't. Not right away.
Instead, he looked at me like he wanted me to say something, to somehow
validate the insanity he was espousing. So I said exactly what I was
thinking.
"I bet that was just Lurch."
"What the hell is a 'Lurch?'"
"He's one of the cultists. They hang out around these parts. They
don't have real names. Part of their sacred rules. No labels from their pre
cult lives. I give them all nicknames to keep track. Lurch is the tall one.
Like, basketball player tall. I bet that's who you saw."
The man said this next part in an emotionless, matter-of-fact tone, like
a news anchor reporting war death statistics. "The thing I saw out there
reached down from the top of the trees, wrapped a tentacle around her
boyfriend's neck, and pulled him into the branches like it wasn't nothing."
"Oh," I said, "In that case, no. It probably wasn't Lurch who you
saw."
"I looked up and see this one," he pointed at her with a quick chin
thrust, "She was all ass and elbows up the road, and I run back to my truck
and try to lay down some rubber, but I had it redlining and wasn't going
nowhere. That thing was holding me in place. Then it ripped my door right
off the hinges like wet tissue paper. I didn't even think. I jumped out the
other side and booked it up the road behind her. She tripped and fell
halfway up the hill so I scooped her up and we ran together. I swear I felt
that thing's breath on my neck the whole way here."
The woman, finally with her sobbing under control, leaned up and
pulled her hand from her mouth, "I felt it grabbing at my hair while we ran.
I was scared. I was so scared. Too scared to turn around and look to see. I
knew it was about to get us."
"But it didn't," the man added. "We made it here. We got a fighting
chance. We just need to get back to civilization somehow."
"But, how?" she asked.
I
really just wanted to get back to my book, but I was slowly
accepting the reality that I would not be getting any more reading done that
night.
"I have a plan," the man said heroically as he climbed to his feet,
"I'm going to make a run for it."
"No!" she squealed, "You'll never be able to get all the way to town!
Not with that thing out there!"
He walked up to the doors and looked outside, "I need to at least try.
Y'all stay here and hide. If I make it, I'll come back for you both. I swear.
But if I don't, I want you to give a message to my little girl. She's only two
years old."
The woman stood up and screamed, "Don't talk like that! We're all
going to get out of here alive!"
It was then that I first noticed the woman's choice of footwear. Her
clean, white shoes had three-inch heels and looked terribly uncomfortable
for running. How strange, I thought.
"Maybe," he responded. "But maybe we won't. And if this is my time
to go, I need my child to know why her daddy won't be there when she
wakes up."
I pulled out my cell phone and checked the time. It was 4:30 in the
morning. About two hours away from the morning rush.
"Excuse me," the man snapped angrily. I looked up to see him staring right
at me. "Are we boring you?"
"No, I'm totally listening. I just wanted to see what time it was."
The girl scoffed and asked, "What the hell is wrong with this guy?" The
man shrugged.
"Well," I said, "Sounds like you know what you're doing. Good luck.
I'm about to get the store ready and make some fresh coffee, so-"
"Wait a second," the man perked up, stepping towards me and
pointing. "You!"
Oh crap. Here we go.
"You've got to have some way of getting out of here! Right? You got
a car? Where ya parked?"
"My car?" I asked. I tried to think up a good lie, but couldn't come up
with anything on the spot, so like an idiot I blurted out the truth, "I'm
parked around back by the dumpster."
The woman clasped her hands together and squealed with a smile,
"Oh my god!"
The man walked right up to the counter.
"We have to get out of here. Now."
He must have already anticipated that I wouldn't be too keen on
leaving my post. Which is probably why he held up a six-inch pocket knife
and flicked the blade open with one hand. A friendly way of saying, "Let's
not waste any more time discussing it." Just in case there was any
confusion, he stabbed it into the countertop right in front of me.
I got the point. He was in a stabbing mood. I stood up and said,
"Right this way," and led the two of them down the hall towards the back
exit.
"Give me the keys," he said over my left shoulder. "Here's the plan. I
go first, once the car's unlocked, you two run out. Don't drag ass. Just get
in and shut up. We ain't got time-"
He stopped talking. Something had interrupted his attention right as
we reached the big metal door.
A piece of haunting music was coming from the other side of the exit.
"What is that?" the woman asked.
This was still the instrumental portion of the song, but I recognized
the tune instantly.
"Sounds like Louis Armstrong's cover of La Vie en Rose," I said.
The gravel-rasp of Louis's voice floated in the air. Even muffled
through walls, I could pick out the words clear as day.
"Hold me close and hold me fast. That magic spell you cast…"
The man asked, "How did you know that?"
By now, I've heard Louis sing his sweet, sad, song of love during war
enough times that I could recognize it after two notes. We don't pick up any
radio stations in the area worth listening to, and I try not to read too much
while driving. So on long car trips, I listen to this tape over and over.
"Somebody is in my car, and they're messing with my tape player," I
explained.
Louis continued his enchanting verses. "When you kiss me heaven sighs,
and though I close my eyes..."
The man asked, "You sure you didn't just leave your car on with the radio
running?"
Bang-Bang-Bang.
Before I could answer, there were three loud knocks from the other side of
the exit. We all stood in silence. After a few seconds, I whispered over my
shoulder, "You guys heard that, too, right?"
But then I noticed that the others had totally Batmanned out and left me
standing all by myself. Whoever was outside did it again. Three more loud
knocks, just like before.
Bang-Bang-Bang.
"Who is it?" I called out.
But there was no answer.
"Hey dude!" the man whispered loudly. I looked back to see him
frantically gesturing for me to join them back at the front of the store by the
registers. I tiptoed away from the door.
"Yeah?" I said once I was within earshot of a whisper. The woman
had her hand crammed into her mouth again, so I looked to the man for an
answer.
"That must be it. The thing found us here."
I responded, "Sure, that makes sense."
"Give me your keys," he said.
"Why?" I asked, "If it's around back, you're never going to-"
"I have a plan. But we'll need a distraction."
I rubbed my eyes and sighed deeply. It wasn't an intentional gesture, but the
man picked up on my growing annoyance.
"Is there a problem?" he asked in a voice that suggested there was most
certainly about to be a problem.
"Look, guys, I'm not trying to be rude. This all sounds like the beginning of
a truly exciting--albeit generic--story, and I applaud the effort. Really, I do.
But, you know, come on."
The man cocked his head at me and asked, "Alright. What exactly do
you think is going on here?"
I returned his steely gaze, then turned my eyes to the woman, who
had now removed her fist from her mouth and completely stopped crying.
"Hey, why don't we call this what it was, alright? It was a nice effort.
A valiant attempt. Really impressive, but... you know."
"No," he insisted, "You clearly got something to say. Let's hear it.
What are we doing here, Jack?"
I took a deep breath.
Here we go.
"Well, if I'm to believe what I'm being told, you two were both
driving around the backroads of BFE at four in the morning on a Tuesday,
came upon a monster, and then in the dark, uphill, and against all odds, you
outran it to this lonely gas station without a scratch on you."
"Yeah," he said.
"Let's talk about this monster. It pulls people into trees and holds
vehicles in place, but now our back door is keeping it at bay? And you said
it looked human. Then you said it had tentacle arms. So which is it?"
The man and woman looked at each other briefly, but there was
meaning in that short eye contact and I knew I was on to something.
"I see how it's supposed to go. First you hit the phone lines. Next you
come inside and start asking if I have any hidden weapons you need to
worry about. Then you get me away from the store. Somebody else swoops
in while the register is unattended. This early in the morning nobody's
likely to interfere; they can start with the cash register and end with the
security tapes."
"Sounds pretty slick," the guy remarked. "This sort of thing happen
often?"
I shrugged. "It ain't my first rodeo."
The man cracked a smile and put an arm around the woman. "Well
shit. Looks like he figured it out. Babe, you wanna go tell your friend to
turn off that stupid song?"
She clicked her tongue and rolled her eyes while he pulled the knife
from his pocket again.
Bang-Bang-Bang.
The girl jumped at the sound of another three knocks against the back
door.
"Quit that!" she screamed.
"That's the only thing I don't get. What is your getaway driver doing
out there? Seems counterintuitive, trying to scare me if you wanted us to
leave the building. Why even turn on my radio in the first place?"
"Beats me," he said, "Dumbass wasn't never supposed to leave the
truck."
She elbowed him in the ribs and said in a brand-new voice, "Shut up,
babe. Don't tell him nothing he didn't ask for. Just get the money." This
voice, her real voice, was shrill and carried a heavy southern drawl. She
leaned up to kiss him, then she walked past me towards the alcohol aisle.
"Alright," the guy said, making a show of slowly reopening his
pocket knife, "If this ain't your first rodeo, I guess you already know the
drill."
I searched for words to fill the awkward silence as I emptied the cash
register at knife-point. "This was all incredibly elaborate. Why even
bother?"
"Why not? I'm sure you get bored with your job, too."
"What was the point of the lady with the tarot cards?"
"The what?" he said with a snicker.
The girl sauntered up to us with a bottle of our most expensive
whiskey, saying, "He's trying to trick you into saying something that'll get
us caught. Just shut up already," before she hopped up to sit on the counter.
"That true?" the man scowled, "You trying to trick me, punk ass?"
When I didn't answer right away, he shoved me backwards into the
cigarette case.
"Sorry," I said.
They both laughed like drunk hyenas, and I went back to emptying
the register. I didn't need them to confirm it. The old woman was obviously
the scout, and probably also the getaway driver, but none of that mattered
now.
"One of these days," the woman said as she filed her fingernails, "I'm
going to be a rich and famous actress, and we're going to remember this
night and laugh." She had her back to us, but the man was staring at her and
smiling proudly.
I had my doubts about her future acting career but kept them to
myself. After all, she wasn't talking to me. She wasn't even talking to the
guy. She was talking to herself, and who was I to dash her dreams?
The strange truth was that I preferred this part of the robbery to the
first act. At least I knew what I was supposed to do in this situation. I made
a quick count of the cash as I pulled it all out and dropped it into a plastic
bag (I'd need to know for the police report). About eighty-five bucks and
change.
The man cussed at me like it was somehow my fault the store had so little
money to steal, but I explained that times were tough for locally-owned
businesses. He satisfied his anger by taking my wallet, cell phone, and book
bag. Next, he pulled out the security tape and threw it in the bag alongside a
pack of Skittles and the bottle of liquor the woman had picked out. He made
a few of the usual threats about what would happen if I tried to follow them,
but I just held up my hands and asked, "Do I look like a hero?"
He laughed again and--just to be a dick--kicked over a display of
canned sodas that had taken me over an hour to put together. And then they
left. I didn't see which way they went, nor did I care. It wasn't my problem
anymore, and I had no desire to change that fact.
As I put the soda display back together, I tried not to think about what
would have happened if I'd actually gone out back with them. I sure as hell
wasn't going to fall for any more of their tricks, so when I heard them
screaming bloody murder behind the building a few moments later, I knew
to stay put. I ignored their pleas for help and focused on restacking the
canned drinks until the screams finally came to an abrupt stop.
***
Passing time at the gas station without the benefit of a book or other
distraction is a special kind of mental torture. Without my phone, I couldn't
even tell how many minutes or hours had passed before the old woman
came back into the store.
My initial reaction was an overwhelming urge to say, "You've got a lot of
nerve showing your face around here again" in my best cowboy voice. But
of course, I didn't say that. She was part of a trio of armed robbers, after all,
and it was in my best interest to make nice until she left again.
She came right up to the counter and said with a smile, "Remember me?"
Her voice still sounded the way wasabi tastes. If her voice had been a
physical feature, someone could get rich by putting it on display and
charging two bits a gander.
"Yeah, I remember."
She burped and patted herself on the chest. "Pardonnez moi, I seem to
have eaten something that didn't agree with me." She burped again and
laughed and said, "Oh man, I really pigged out tonight. But you know
what? I don't get out that often. Might as well splurge while I have the
chance."
"Okay."
She bent over and let out a long belch, putting a gloved hand on the
counter to balance herself as she filled the air with her horrid expulsion.
"Wow," she laughed as she straightened up and looked back at me
from behind those purple rimmed sunglasses. "Whatever you do, Jack,
don't ever get old."
"I wasn't planning on it."
She looked out the doors at the empty lot and noted, "It sure is dark
out there. Even with the store lights. You could walk outside and never even
know that something was waiting for you in the shadows until-" She
slammed her flat hand against the counter. "Bam! Something could jump
right out and get you." She turned and faced me. "Isn't that scary? Isn't the
very thought terrifying?"
"Sure, I guess."
"You guess?" She echoed back. "Well, mister bravery. If that ain't
scary, then I don't know what is."
I looked around the empty building and mentally kicked myself for
not reloading a new security tape into the recorder right away. It was just
her and me in there, but I couldn't shake the feeling that we were being
watched, that she was saying all of this for some unseen audience. I decided
to lean into the skid and go with it.
"When I was younger, I used to go to summer camp in the woods
near here. The camp counselor, Mr. Buddy, would always tell us the same
scary stories around the campfire before lights out.
She grinned. "I like where this is going already."
"His favorite was this one about a hyper-intelligent monster with
black fur and red eyes. He called it the 'Deathits.' Every night, he would tell
us about some poor hiker or camper that came across the monster. Some
people ran, some fought, some tried to reason with it. No matter what, the
story always ended the same way--with the Deathits tearing the person to
shreds. In retrospect, it maybe wasn't the most appropriate story for a bunch
of kids, but he loved to tell us that if we weren't good, the Deathits would
come for us."
She laughed delightedly. "Is that what scares you? The Deathits? I
guess it's all a matter of taste, but that doesn't really seem so scary to me."
"Yeah, me neither. What's scary is how two years ago Mr. Buddy got
pulled over for a DUI. They found the body of a young missing woman in
the trunk of his car. She had been stabbed forty times."
The old woman raised her bushy eyebrows above the rims of the
glasses as she silently mouthed the word, "Oh."
I continued, "Sure, it's scary when the monster jumps out at you. But
I think the scariest thing of all is realizing that the monster was in the room
with you the whole time."
She burped again.
"I like you, Jack. Much more than I thought I would."
"Thanks."
"So I bet you're probably wondering why I'm back here again so soon."
"Yeah, something like that."
"Well, I remembered my debt. I know you didn't care for the Tarot
reading, but it so happens that I've recently come across a little extra cash
money."
"You don't say," I responded flatly.
"Yes. I'd like to pay you back proper for the road map."
She pulled a twenty-dollar bill from her pocket and extended it to me.
Holy crap, are we really going to play this game?
"I don't have change," I said, trying and failing to mask the
annoyance. "I was robbed earlier tonight."
"Who said anything about change?"
She placed the bill on the counter between us with a smile.
I reached to pick up the money, and she snapped her hand out with
insane speed, catching me by the wrist and yanking me halfway across the
counter with the strength of a roided-up chimpanzee.
I meant to scream, but it all happened so fast, and in the confusion of
the situation it totally slipped my mind. Instead, I simply asked, "What are
you doing?" But even before she answered, I could see that she was
studying my open palm, holding it in place with an unnatural strength
inches from her face. She kept me imprisoned in her grasp for a few
seconds, then she grunted and let go, dropping me back into my chair.
"I've seen your future," she reported. "It's even worse than I thought."
I rubbed the spot on my hand where four tiny, finger-sized bruises
were quickly beginning to form. "Yeah, I told you already. I know about my
curse."
"There's more. There's something coming. Something dark, and
powerful. Forces are awakening, intertwined with your fate. You will see
amazing things in the coming days. And you will be doomed to live through
it all. You are cursed to watch all of your friends, everyone you love, die
before your very eyes."
"Wow," I said, "You must be a real blast at parties."
"I'm going to leave you with this, Jack. Whatever comes, try not to be
too hard on yourself."
And with that, she turned and left