---

 

This writing was accepted for publication in the 84 page perfect-bound issue... Down in the Dirt magazine (v085) (the August 2010 Issue)		Order this issue from our printer as an ISSN# paperback book: or as the ISBN# book “clearing the debris”:

Order this writing in the 2010 collection book of July-December prose from “Down in the Dirt”:		click on the book cover for an author & poem listing, order the 5.5" x 8.5" ISSN# book order the 6" x 9" ISBN# book

The Road Home

David Danforth

    It wasn’t as if I wanted to work Christmas Eve. The call came in just as Cynthia put the five pound ham in the oven. Steve, my boss, informed me that our store in Stockton—two hours away from my house—just lost connectivity. A twenty-four hour store, staying open through Christmas day, so many dollars lost each minute, not well for our bottom line, blah, blah, and blah. He didn’t have to give me the finance speech. I knew how important it was.
    “I can’t believe you’re going to work on Christmas Eve,” Cynthia said, slamming a mixing bowl on the counter.
    “Honey, it’s overtime pay,” I told her.
    “It’s Christmas Eve,” she said, walking three steps to the refrigerator.
    “I’ll make enough money from this one call to make sure we all have a good Christmas,” I pointed out. “Do we really have to discuss this again?”
    “Ray,” she closed the refrigerator door hard, sending a handful of our pictures—held up by cute, colorful magnets— falling to the ground like so many dead leaves. “It’s... Christmas...Eve!” She gestured to our seven year old boy.
    “Hey champ,” I slapped him on the back, then picked up the pictures. “I’ll be back before you wake up tomorrow morning.” My voice trailed off as I focused on the top picture in the pile; myself, Cynthia and the boy, all smiling at the park after one of his pee wee league games. I had asked another parent to take the picture. It was taken six months ago, but it seems three times longer.
    He turned to me, smiling. “No problem Dad,” he said, his smile fading too quickly.
    “Can I talk to you for a minute?” Cynthia said, tilting her head away from the boy, out into out tiny family room. Her long, brown hair seemed to dance and jerk for a moment as her head moved.
    “Sure,” I said, nodding.
    Cynthia closed the white, wooden sliding door that separated the kitchen from the family room, careful not to close it all the way as the missing handle made it impossible to open it if that were to happen.
    “I understand missing his swimming practice, baseball practice, school play, you name any other of a handful of extra curricular activities Wilson participates in,” Cynthia spoke in a raspy whisper, “but this is a family holiday, Ray. We need to spend it as a family, damnit.”
    “He’s on a swim team?” I muttered, then shook the question out of my head. “Look around, Cynthia,” I said, extending my arms and matching her tone, “I work all this damn overtime for us. So I can move our family out of this shithole and into a decent house. So I can retire early to be with you two all the time—”
    “We don’t care about,” Cynthia started to yell, paused, then returned to her raspy whisper. “We don’t care about living in this house, so long as we spend our holidays in it together, as a family!”
    “Well you should care,” I checked my tone as Cynthia put her arm level in the air and slowly lowered it. “The walls are paper thin; the boy can still hesr everything we’re saying.” I shook my head. “You know, I can recite this argument in my sleep. I’m going now.” I looked into Cynthia’s shimmering hazel eyes. “Aren’t you going to tell me to have a safe trip?”
    She said nothing.
    “Fine,” I said, and walked out the door.
    An hour later I drove twenty miles under the speed limit in fog so thick I couldn’t see the reflective yellow borders of the two lane strip that was Highway 4 near Discovery Bay. In the dark, with the dual silver cones my headlights made, I watched what little of the road I could. A headache began to pulse near the front of my skull; my focus began to swim away to my fight with Cynthia. Why did she have trouble seeing the priorities? She just had to be patient.
    “Ah! What the hell?” I screamed as dark shape suddenly appeared in my thin band of light. I spun the steering wheel to avoid it, stamping on the brake pedal. The car jerked and bounced off the road, onto the soft dirt shoulder, into a patch of dry, yellow weeds, finally screeching to a stop. I looked up and, through the windshield, I saw a man. Did I hit him? He stood tall, well over six feet, with jet black, stringy hair that seemed to reflect the lighted fog. He wore black from head to toe: Black shirt, black jeans, and a long, black coat—like one of those duster coats cowboys wear. It seemed to move on it’s own in the wind, like a cape.
    “It’s foggy, there is no wind,” I said to myself, breaking the silence in my car, still staring at the man’s jacket.
    A dark shape loped into the light and sat next to him, coming up to his mid-thigh. That must have been what I tried to avoid.
    “Damn, that is one big dog,” I whispered, pulling on the door handle. I stumbled out into the misty, swirling air. God, I had forgotten how quiet the fog made things, pressing in all around, squeezing any noise out of the area. Anyone could have just slipped behind me and—
    I looked around quickly as I finished my thought. As my eyes passed over the stranger, he smiled, revealing a mouth full of pointed teeth sharper than his companion’s.
    “We are alone,” he said. His voice sounded like a person’s last gasp; their death gasp.
    “What? Oh,” I looked around once more. “I almost hit your dog, pal,” I said. “Who walks their dog in the middle of nowhere on a two lane highway, anyway?”
    “He is not a dog,” the stranger said.
    The dark creature at his side growled, a sound that started low and quickly grew to something loud, something that ripped through the fog like a bullet.
    “Boris does not appreciate one calling him a dog, either,” he said, patting the top of its head. “Do you, Boris?”
    I looked closer. It had to be a dog, what else could it be? Its muzzle looked longer than any dog I had ever seen. Its eyes were a solid, deep red—like a stop sign bathed in bright halogen headlights at night. His ears actually looked more like horns. As the stranger continued to pet him, Boris’ tongue, as red as his eyes and full of thorns I could see from where I stood, slowly wrapped its serpentine way up the stranger’s arm. Thin lines of blood began to appear, then spread on the stranger’s arm marking the tracks Boris’ barbed tongue made. I shivered in the damp air.
    “Well then, I’m sorry I hit your,” my voice lost strength and in the end I nodded and moved back, toward my car.
    “I assure you, no one here is going to harm you,” the stranger said.
    “Where did you come from, anyway? I thought I saw a weigh station a mile or so back, are you from there?” I asked, taking another step backwards.
    The stranger laughed—God, those teeth! Who would willingly grind each tooth down to a point like that? What dentist would agree to do that? “The Weigh Station,” he repeated. “Yes, I suppose you could say that.”
    “Fine,” I said, opening the car door. “Well, have a good night.”
    Boris bounded toward me and growled, drooling over his muzzle. He covered half the distance between us in two seconds. I might’ve been able to make it inside the car, but starting it before Boris could easily smash through a window? I slowly shut the door.
    “You really need to stay and hear me out, Ray,” the stranger said.
    “How do you know my name,” I whispered.
    “I know everything about you,” the stranger in black smiled, those horrible pointed teeth spotlighted in twin beams of light. For a brief moment, that’s all he appeared to be—a large, dark, lanky human outline with 32 bright, pearly white half inch daggers curled upward. “I know you have a wife. I know you have a child,” he walked in a circular pattern, around my car. Around me.
    “What’s your name? Who are you?” I asked. “How do you know that?”
    The stranger stopped strolling, looking excited. He bent down and picked up a spider—from the headlight glow it looked like a tarantula. He chomped into it like a drumstick from Kentucky Fried Chicken. White, cloudy mucus dribbled from the corner of the stranger’s mouth onto his chin as he smiled. He tossed the rest back to Boris, who swallowed it with one snap of his jaw.
    “Who I am is, of course, unimportant.” The Stranger paced back and forth, just to the right of my headlight beams. “I could be a figment from a nightmare you are having, falling asleep at the wheel. I could be a sociopath, and you could be in the wrong place, the wrong time. I could be evil personified, a demon sent up from Hell on a mission to damn those who dare to work on Christmas Eve. I could be an Angel, sent from Heaven—”
    “You’re no Angel,” I said, glancing at Boris.
    “Ah,” the stranger followed my stare. “No. No, I am not, but I could be.” He took a step toward me and my left hand flailed for the car door handle. “I could even be the saint of forgotten children in modern families. I could be any of those entities.” He moved so quick, his ash grey hand was on top of mine before I could even move. Immediately I felt pinpricks, his touch, icicles stabbed my nerves and joints, moved up my arm to my shoulder, my chest. I tried retracting my hand, but he held it tight. It felt like trying to remove my hand from a box full of blades. “The important question is not who am I, but what can I do to your family, Ray?”
    “What? You don’t go near my family, let go of me,” I tried harder to twist free of his grasp. My hand went numb, I felt a stabbing pain pricking my heart. Was this what a heart attack felt like? The ground, the stranger, my car, Boris; they all started spinning and I felt a sick lurch in my stomach. I punched the roof of the car with my free hand, hoping to dull the pain and regain my focus. “You don’t even know where we—”
    “I understand you think working all this time will be your ticket to a better house than that fleabag on tenth street you live in now, but you are not thinking things through, Ray,” the stranger licked his thin lips—his tongue looked thin and bright red, he flicked it in and out of his mouth like a snake. “You are not there to protect them, after all. You would have no clue when we would pay your wife, and your seven year old boy, a visit. Your son would make such a fine appetizer for Boris.”
    I watched Boris wag his tail and my stomach flipped. My chest felt compressed by an invisible vice. I couldn’t catch my breath. I punched the stranger in the stomach and he laughed.
    “Your wife, why, I could paint a Picasso with her innards, prop her severed head on your nightstand, and await your return. Who is to stop me? You? You are not home, Ray, you are working.”
    “Please,” my voice squeaked, “you said no one would harm me you’re hurting me please it hurts please let go.”
    The stranger unclenched the vice grip he had on my hand, and I fell to my knees in the dirt. I gasped for air like I had been underwater all this time. The pressure on my chest eased, and the cold, numb feeling in my arm and shoulder slowly receded.
    The stranger knelt beside me, so close I could smell the mold on his clothes. I could smell the subtle stink of infectious rot on his breath. I looked into his eyes for the first time, they were so dark I couldn’t distinguish pupil from iris. They looked more like two sockets you could plug something into. They darted and moved to match my gaze; I couldn’t turn away. “Make no mistake, Ray, you are at a crossroads here,” he whispered. “You need to chose your next actions carefully, because...there will be consequences for the wrong choices made. I can give you my guarantee on that.”
    I jumped to my feet and flung the car door open, knocking the stranger off balance, and I tumbled into the car, slamming the door. I sped off, kicking up dust and rocks underneath my wheels. I looked in the rear view mirror.
    “Choke on that you son of bitch,” I murmured.
    But he wasn’t choking on the dirt, wasn’t shielding his face from the rocks. The stranger and his pet stood still in the red glow of my taillights. They didn’t run toward me, they didn’t move at all.
    I arrived at the highway, and already the image of the stranger in black and his mutant canine began to fade from memory. I turned and continued toward the store, glancing at the dim blue glow of my car’s digital clock. This whole detour from hell only wasted ten minutes of my time. I could still make it to the store and fix their system in time. Even if he was a psycho, it wasn’t like he had my exact address.
    He had your name, and he mentioned Tenth Street.
    A trick, I answered my paranoia. Something with percentages of male names, he didn’t really know my name.
    How many other guys do you know with the name Ray?
    And another thing, I continued the argument, “Tenth” is a pretty common street name. He played the odds, that’s all; just a jerk trying to scare the crap out of lone holiday travelers.
    He’s a psycho with pointed teeth and black empty circles for eyes and a pet killer mutant dog to do his bidding and he almost killed you just be touching you. If he even WALKS down Tenth Street and gets lucky—
    I gripped the steering wheel, digging my fingernails into the side handgrips, and trying to force the thoughts from my mind. My knuckles turned white. The fog began to lift as I approached Stockton, and it took some of my uneasiness with it. Something about the random lights in the clean darkness made me feel less alone and more a part of reality. Realistically, there was no way that dark-haired nightmare could back up any threats he made.
    Is that what you’ll keep repeating one night when you come home to find they’ve been there?
    For two seconds my mind flashed on Cynthia’s head on my nightstand, her neck tendons draped over the edge, dripping blood onto the white carpet, her eyes open, looking up at me—sad, pleading, and lifelessly dull. Boris sat in the corner of the room, licking a chunk of something attached to a bone, my son’s bloody sneaker lying near the bed.
    “Wilson,” I screamed, making a U-turn. I remembered the drive home in flashes. The fog cascaded around my car like a falling blanket, I let up on the gas only once—the patch of road where I met the Stranger—and looked around to make sure he was gone. Looking back on it, I can only credit sheer, stupid luck I didn’t cause a head-on collision. If it wasn’t Christmas Eve, I would have. I careened onto my driveway, bumping into my garbage can, hoping it would fall so my family would come out to investigate the noise. I needed to see them.
    I slammed the car door, staring at the dark windows of my house. Every gesture, every move I made designed to make the lights come on. Anything that stood as proof my wife and son were alive. I ran to my front door, almost running into the stranger, who stood guard at the doorway, Boris at his side. For a moment I thought the Stranger hadn’t noticed me, instead staring at an ornate pocket watch.
    “You stay away from them you bastard!” I screamed as I ran to meet him. I stopped so suddenly I almost fell in front of his feet when I heard Boris’ low growl.
    “I have not entered the house,” he said, snapping the pocket watch closed. “It seems you have found your priorities, Ray, and just in time. Now, go inside and spend time with your family.”
    “Who the hell are you?” I asked one last time.
    The stranger slowly shook his head and walked by me. “Once again, Ray, you ask the unimportant question.” The Stranger snapped his fingers and Boris immediately heeled as they walked down my driveway. “No matter,” I heard him say. “Tonight, I was your weigh station, Ray. Tomorrow, I’ll be someone else’s. Many more families to visit, many more parents with choices to make.” He turned to face me, this walking dark nightmare with ghostly skin. I believed I still could see a few dark tarantula hairs between his teeth. “I can’t waste any more time here satisfying your curiosity.” He turned and disappeared before he reached the end of the driveway. Just...faded, like melting snow.
    I looked at my watch. Midnight. It was officially Christmas Day. It took me ten seconds to fit my key in the door, and I stumbled over the recliner in the family room. I ran to our bedroom and met Cynthia at the door.
    “Well, at least you made it back before—”
    I hugged her.
    “If you think you’re going to soften me up by—what are you doing?”
    “Smelling your hair,” I said, taking a deep breath. “You smell great.”
    I watched her try hard not to smile. “Let’s go to bed,” she said finally. “Wilson will be waking us up early tomorrow.”
    I didn’t sleep at all that night. I didn’t tell them what happened, only that I never made it to the store, and when the phone rang at nine o’clock Christmas morning, while we were opening presents, I ignored it.
    I haven’t told anyone about it until now, and only have the strength to write it down at that. Perhaps you’ll read this, and if so, just take this piece of advice: If you’re driving down a deserted stretch of road at night and run into a dark stranger and his large pet, don’t call it a dog, and weigh his words to you very, very carefully. It might be your turn.

Copyright of written pieces remain with the author, who has allowed it to be shown through Scars Publications and Design.Web site © Scars Publications and Design. All rights reserved. No material may be reprinted without express permission from the author.

Problems with this page? Then deal with it...