something that has been numb for the last month. It’s a mixture of hope and curiosity. The ground seems to sway as I stand back up and begin to follow him. Julian passes my car, keeping a wide berth, finding safety in the darkness of the church, and then
moving into the trees that line the path to the road. Had I still been in the car, I would never have known he was there.
Julian crosses the road to where his car is parked and starts to work the key into the lock. I turn back and race to my own car, then wait until I hear Julian’s starting before I start mine. Out on the road, I see that he is about three blocks ahead of me. The fog that had attached itself to the cemetery and church has just as strong a grip out here, only the street lights make it look thinner.
Julian turns left. I turn my lights on and begin to follow him. I can just make out his tail lights through the fog about two blocks away.
The occasional car comes towards us. Julian drives around
the cemetery, then turns towards town. He starts to drive faster and I do the same, knowing if he gets too far ahead I’ll lose him as soon as another set of tail lights appears. He races through the intersection, and I follow suit. He isn’t making any evasive manoeuvres, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t figured out I’m
following him. And it’s quite clear that if he parked out on the road and snuck past my car he didn’t want me to know where he
was going.
The lights ahead turn orange. Julian makes it through. I put
my foot down, gaining on him a little more quickly than I would have liked, though I’m pretty sure he’s not going to …
Only I don’t make it all the way through the intersection.
The car emerges out of the fog like a train. I turn my head
towards it, then lift my hands up to cover my face as it slams into me, the shrieking sound of metal loud enough to make my ears
bleed.
For a few moments there is nothing but madness as I scramble
to gain control of the car, but it’s impossible. There is another explosion of sound as I come to a stop, and then nothing as the world slowly darkens around me.
chapter twenty-nine
Alcohol and burning metal. That’s all I can smell. The windscreen has shattered into thousands of tiny diamonds. The engine has
stalled, the front of the car has folded around the lamppost.
The hood has twisted and bent up into a V, and from beneath it plumes of steam are rising and mixing into the fog. More steam is coming through the air vents into the car. The stereo is going.
The heater is going. There is a high-pitched ringing in my ears.
The lamppost is on an angle. Its fluorescent light has busted
and sparks are slowly raining down on the car. I can taste blood and bourbon. There is a pain in my leg. My chest. There is pain everywhere. I tilt my head back, close my eyes and wait for it all to disappear. It doesn’t.
My neck hurts when I move, but I manage to unclip my
seatbelt. The door is buckled and there is safety glass all over my lap. There are chips of paint on my hands, cracks in the dashboard, and sharp pieces of plastic sticking up. One of my fingernails has lifted up and bent all the way back, a few threads of skin the only things stopping it from touching my knuckle. Before thinking too much about it, I wipe it backwards across my leg so that the strands of skin stretch and break and the nail sticks to my pants and stays there. The door won’t budge, so I try to climb over the passenger seat. It is then the floodgates open and pain wracks my body, one knee jamming into the handbrake, the other into the mostly empty bottle of bourbon that has somehow jumped from the foot-well and onto the seat in the crash. It is all I can do to not cry out as I push open the door and stumble out to the road. My feet skid on stones and glass, and I fall onto my knees.
The world is caught in the grips of an earthquake, but I’m the only one feeling it. I get up and balance myself by holding onto the side of the car. There is a shooting pain rolling up and down my leg-The glow from the traffic lights changes colour as one set goes red and the other green. Glass grates beneath my feet as I move, pieces of it cutting into the soles of my shoes. There is blood on my shirt and pants and more of it flowing down the side of my face. I reach up and pull away fingers covered in blood. Only one of my eyes is focusing.
I look back into the car at the empty bottle of bourbon, and
I understand instantly that its contents have brought me to this. I lean in and grab it, then pitch it into the distance. It disappears into the night. Jesus is looking down at me from above the hovering fog, his eyes open, his mouth in a tight smile. He is looking into me, but he is not admonishing me. He is too busy.
His hands are wrapped around a bottle of McClintoch Spring Water. The bourbon bottle crashes and the sound brings the world into focus. It tones down the ringing in my ears and allows a flood of other sounds to pour in. I look away from the billboard and wipe smoke and blood from my eyes, and I move away from my car to draw in clean air.