American Elsewhere

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO




Getting out of the house proves to be one hell of a lot easier than getting in, and Mona is quite relieved to hop back over the fence and climb up the brambly hillside. She’s got the key in her backpack, and she can feel it bumping around awkwardly in there. She’s wrapped it up in her gloves, since she was afraid that one of its delicate teeth might get bent, rendering it unable to open… well, whatever it’s supposed to open.

She can’t help but feel that the key is hot, like it’s going to burn a hole in her gloves and her backpack and go sliding down the hillside. The item is forbidden, like the subject of Coburn itself. Like so many topics in Wink, she can tell that the lab on the mesa is always in the background of everything, present but unmentionable. The entire town was built around it, for God’s sake. Though it is distant and dark, she feels it is the heart of this town.

Coburn did something, she thinks as she starts the Charger and begins heading back to the motel. And she cannot help but suspect that whatever happened on the mesa has something to do with what she just saw in that house.

And what did she see in that house? She has no idea.

When she was in elementary school in her podunk town in Texas, one of her classmates, Nola Beth, experienced a sharp drop in grades around the second grade. They quickly figured out that Nola’s vision had steadily become worse and worse: she just couldn’t see the blackboard. One day Nola came into school wearing a set of incredibly thick glasses, and though they did no favors to her appearance, Nola was ecstatic: she could see all kinds of things now, things she’d never known were even there. She’d had no idea trees were so pretty, she said. She could see every single leaf waving in the wind now.

For some reason, this terrified young Mona. It wasn’t that Nola’s vision had changed: it was that her vision had changed without her even knowing it. There were all kinds of things happening around her that she’d never known about, that she was blind to. Though her experience of the world had seemed whole and certain to her, in truth it had been marred, filled with blind spots, and she’d had no idea.

That same terror comes burbling up in Mona now. She wonders, What am I blind to? Is there more to the world that I could never see before? And why can I see it now?

But all these thoughts go flying out her head when she hears the bang and the Charger starts weaving out of control.

Mona immediately knows she’s got a flat, which would normally not trouble her, but this time she’s going about fifty along a mountain road with a two-hundred-foot drop on her right. She can feel panic rising up inside her, but she mentally slaps herself and swallows it. She gently pushes down on the brake and turns the wheel so the car puts pressure on the remaining three tires and comes sliding to a stop.

She does an internal check. She is not hurt, and though all the items in the car have moved about a foot, none of them seem damaged. Then she reviews the last ten seconds…

Did she see a sparkle in the road, just before the wheel popped?

She grabs her flashlight and the Glock, steps out of the car, and locks it. She shines the flashlight ahead up the road, sees nothing, then shines it behind.

There’s a sparkle again. She walks to it—it is farther away than she thought—and stoops down.

They’re tire spikes. Homemade ones, welded together out of wood nails. They look a little like big, crude jacks from a ball-and-jacks game.

Mona doesn’t say a word. She just takes out the Glock, makes sure there’s a round in the chamber and the safety’s off, and shines the flashlight around. She sees nothing but red stone cliffs and the odd juniper. But she remembers that it’s not wise to be out in Wink at night.

She turns out the light and stays there, not moving. If someone put down the tire spikes, then it’s likely that person was waiting for someone—possibly her—to come by and hit them. Which means she’s probably not alone out here, so she doesn’t need a light telling anyone where she is.

She silently moves to the side of the road and hunches there, waiting. She waits for nearly a half hour. She debates abandoning the car and heading back to the motel on foot, but she remembers the multiple warnings she’s received about going out at night in Wink, and after seeing what she saw in that house she now thinks those warnings weren’t idle. Eventually she decides that the smartest thing to do is get to the car, get the tire changed, and get the hell out of here.

She creeps back to the car, turns it on in case she needs to jump in it quick, and goes about the business of jacking up the car and putting the doughnut on. If she weren’t so confident in her ability to change a tire quickly she wouldn’t be so cavalier; but since this is a dance she did about a million times in her previous career, she doesn’t panic and her pulse doesn’t rise a single beat, and soon she’s got the last lug nut tightened.

It’s then that she hears the footsteps. Wooden-soled shoes, walking down the road behind her at a slow, steady, almost thoughtful pace.

She rises, steps behind the car, and turns both the flashlight and the gun in the direction of the footsteps. “Whoever that is, come out slowly,” she says.

The cadence of the footsteps doesn’t change one iota. After a few more steps there’s a pause, then a tinkle of metal—brushing the tire spikes out of the way, she guesses—and then the footsteps resume.

A pale figure enters the beam of her flashlight, walking in the middle of the road. She sees it is a man dressed in a blue-gray suit and a white panama hat: the Native American from Chloe’s, she realizes, the man who was watching her. He still has his hands in his pockets, and he stares at her with coal-black eyes as he approaches, his two-tone shoes clacking against the asphalt.

“Stop,” she says. “Hands where I can see them.”

The man pays no attention, but just keeps walking toward her.

“Stop, goddamn it,” she says. “I am armed.”

He keeps walking, but finally halts when he’s within about ten feet of her car. He looks at her, then at the doughnut, then at the torn, ruined tire, and then back at the road behind him. “Looks like you had some trouble,” he says. His voice is quiet and calm and a little high-pitched. It’s also a little mush-mouthed. He talks like a deaf person, Mona thinks. “I thought I heard something.”

“Please get your hands where I can see them, sir,” says Mona angrily.

“Tire problems are common on these roads.”

“Hands,” says Mona again. “Hands.”

He smiles and takes his hands out of his pockets. They’re empty. “Hands. Hands,” he says, echoing her as if it’s a joke he’s still getting. “I came to help you.”

“You can help by leaving.”

“Are you often so brusque with those who try and help you?”

“No, but I’m often brusque when I hit some f*cking tire spikes and nearly wrap my car around a tree.”

“Tire spikes?” he says. He looks back down the road. “Is that what those were?”

“Yes,” says Mona. “And to be honest, sir, I find it highly coincidental that you happen upon me right after I nearly drive off the f*cking road.”

He smiles at her, his eyes glittering in the ruby-red glow of her taillights.

“What are you looking at?” she asks, disconcerted.

“We’ve met before,” he says.

“No, we haven’t.”

“We have. I know the curve of your face and the light in your eyes. I know you. And you know me.”

“I f*cking don’t. I’d remember you.”

His eyes thin, but his smile doesn’t leave. “Perhaps not… perhaps you were described to me by someone, long ago… I never thought I’d meet you here, wandering these roads. These dark roads. They go a lot of places, the roads. You find a lot of things, if you keep walking.”

“Then please keep walking.”

“What are you doing out here?” he asks softly.

“Go away,” says Mona. “Just turn around, walk, and go away. It ain’t hard.”

“What’s your name?” he asks. “Where are you from? You’re not from here. So where?”

“Turn around. And walk.”

“You were in his house, weren’t you?”

Mona swallows but does not answer.

“Yes,” he says. “Once I knew a woman who was brave and strong and beautiful. We lost her to the horizon. She went a-walking and I saw her only once after that, one sad little moment. For then she died. She died for you. For me. For us. For everyone.”

Mona tries to ignore how her flashlight beam is trembling a little.

“I want to bring her back,” he says. “And I think you do too.”

“Get the f*ck out of here,” Mona says.

He leans forward a little. “She whispers to me, from deep in the earth,” he says. “Wrapped around the mountain’s spine. Do not lose hope. She is not gone. She is only sleeping. She is waiting for you. She’s been waiting for you from the beginning.”

“You have me mistaken for someone else,” says Mona. “Now get the hell out of here, or I will shoot, and it will f*cking hurt.”

“I can show you,” he says. He extends a hand. “Take my hand.”

“Mister, did you not just hear what I said? I am going to f*ck you up like no tomorrow if you don’t get moving.”

“You can’t hurt me,” he says. “Nothing can hurt me. I’ve died so many times. Gone walking through so many starlit fields. I lie rotting in so many barrens, even now. Nothing can hurt me.”

“Then you won’t mind me putting a round in your knee,” says Mona. She points the Glock at his leg.

“I can show you,” he says again, voice still soft and even.

Mona’s grip tightens on the Glock.

“I can show you so much,” he says. The man takes a step forward, eyes shining strangely.

And in the split second before he takes a second step, Mona swears she sees something in his eyes—or maybe behind his eyes—squirming, many little tendrils flicking about in the pools before his brain.

She’s so horrified by this that she almost doesn’t notice the gun go off. Even though she is transfixed by what she sees, Mona’s aim is as straight and true as ever: the flesh above the man’s knee, just where the quadriceps tendon connects to his kneecap, completely erupts. The man grunts slightly (and Mona can’t help but notice that it’s not a grunt of pain, but of surprise, as if the man is saying to himself, Well now that’s inconvenient) and falls forward to the ground.

Yet he does not fall completely. He supports himself with the other knee, steadies himself, and then lunges forward and grasps her right wrist.

There is the crash of lightning, and the world fills with blue, and she hears his voice say, “I can show you.”


She stands on the road, but the world is gray and thin and flimsy, as if made of fog and mist. There is a dark form beside her holding her hand, but she has no attention for it: her eye is immediately drawn to the countryside around her.

She can see the pale shapes of trees and shrubs and hills, but in places the countryside is pockmarked and filled with a bright blue light, as if massive spotlights are hidden in the hills. All of them are pointed straight up, shining directly into the sky, piercing the clouds and rising into the dark heavens.

Or, she wonders, is something above the clouds shining down onto these spots? And do they coincide with another vision she had? Did she not once see coils of lightning streaming down to brush these very places?

But as she stares at these glowing spots in the countryside, her eye eventually falls upon the faint form of the town in the valley. She can see through it, past it, underneath it, and when she realizes this she sees that the earth below the town and even under the mesa is not solid…

There is something underneath the town. Something buried there, sleeping, waiting. It is broken into a million pieces, it feels like. And though it is shattered, she can feel it turn its attention to her, dreaming of her, this lost, broken woman standing on the hillside…

And it recognizes her.

She begins screaming, and she writhes and rips her hand back and squeezes it…


There is a crash, and Mona is released. She realizes she has her eyes shut, and she opens them and sees she is still standing on the road, but the world is no longer gray and misty.

Then she smells gunpowder, and she realizes she has just fired the Glock again.

She looks around. The man is kneeling before her, face fixed in a look of complete surprise.

“Oh,” he says, and he falls back until he is sitting on the road.

There is blood pouring from his chest. She can see the tiny rent in his shirtfront with blood spurting out of it, and she slowly, stupidly realizes that she has put it there.

“Oh, f*ck,” says Mona.

The man touches his wound and looks at the blood as if he has never seen such a thing.

“Oh, oh f*ck,” says Mona again.

He sits in the middle of the road, still staring at his chest in shock. He looks around himself, contemplating his situation, as if he’s just tripped and he’s wondering who saw.

“Just… just sit there,” says Mona. She sticks the gun back in her pants and cautiously approaches him. “Just don’t move, you’ll make it worse. Lie down, and just…”

The Indian appears to come to some decision. He reaches into his coat and produces something dark and glimmering. It takes her a moment to see it’s a snub-nosed .38.

Mona doesn’t even pause to think. She dives to the right, behind the Charger, pulls the Glock back out, and points it at him again. “Don’t!” she says. “Don’t you f*cking dare!”

But the man does not point the gun at her. He examines it, as if trying to remember how such a contraption works, before lifting it and sticking it under his chin.

“No!” cries Mona.

She stands up, but it is too late: the gun goes off. Streamers of red come bursting out of the top of the man’s skull like fireworks, and he topples back.

“F*cking Christ!” screams Mona. She rushes to him, but she can see he’s already far beyond help. His body is totally limp, the asphalt already covered in a spreading sea of blood.

Mona stops and stares, wondering what to do now. She has never shot someone before now, and though she has seen people die it was never in such a horrific manner.

But the man’s body is not completely still. His ruptured head is twitching from side to side. And somehow Mona does not think his neck is jerking it back and forth: instead, she thinks the source of the motion is coming from inside his skull, as if something within is beating against its walls.

There is a squelching sound, and she thinks she can see something sprouting from the gaping wound at the top of his head, tiny gossamer tendrils wriggling out as if trying to taste the air, and as the thing struggles the flow of blood triples…

“What the f*ck,” says Mona softly.

Then with a tiny, reedy cry, the wriggling stops, and the little tendrils appear to foam up (exactly like baking soda and vinegar) and dissolve. The dead man lies still in the middle of the road, gun still in his hand. Mona stares at him, not sure what to do.

There is a flash of lightning from out over the town, the bolt rushing down to strike to ground, and a clap of thunder. Mona turns to look. The cloud lightning above the mesa is roiling as always, but that strike was much closer, and unlike the normal lightning it produced a thunderclap…

She does not need to think about it more. She dashes around to the driver’s side of the Charger, jumps in, and peels out.