I return to the cabin to collect my weapons. There on the couch, I discover Odessa. She looks at me when I enter, but makes no effort to flee or fight back despite the knife in her lap.
“You looked up,” I say, sitting in the green chair.
“What is this place?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who are the people in the other cabin?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do they know we’re here?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you know?”
“The answer to what you really want to know.”
Odessa stares at me, and I see her struggling against tears. “Tell me.”
“There’s no escape.”
“How can you know that when you don’t know anything else?”
“Tom told me.”
Shaking her head, Odessa sighs. “How could he know?”
“He looked for an escape for a decade. Or so he claimed.”
“So you don’t know.”
“I know enough not to waste time searching for a lie.”
“What about the highway?”
“That’s where people enter. There’s no exit.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ve searched up and down the highway.”
“There was a town before I merged onto the highway. Can we walk to it?”
“It’s not there. The highway ends.”
“How can it just end?”
“You can walk along the highway for maybe twenty minutes before a wall of darkness stops you. I’ve tried both directions.”
Odessa’s eyes flash around the room as she frantically searches for a logical end to her predicament.
“What happens if you pass through the darkness?”
“You are in darkness. After a minute, something pulled at my flesh. I turned back before it tore me apart.”
“What if you kept going? Maybe if you ran into the darkness, you could reach the other side before you died.”
“Or maybe you’d get lost in the darkness.”
“I want to try.”
“You will need to reach the highway without a Death Dealer killing you. Then you will need to walk along the highway for miles without a Death Dealer killing you. If you take too long, you’ll be out in the dark when the wolves hunt. Assuming you survive all of those obstacles, you are free to walk into the darkness and hope to pop out on the other side. Though I should point out how you don’t know if what’s on the other side is any better than what’s on this one.”
Odessa shakes her head, refusing to allow reality to dissuade her old thinking. “I drove on the highway until I crashed. I didn’t get dropped here by an alien ship. I drove here. If there’s a way in, there’s a way out.”
“You are assuming standard rules work in the Lost Highway.”
“Don’t you want to try?”
“I already did.”
Odessa looks at the knife in her hand before setting it on the table. She leans her head on the back of the couch and cries quietly. I suspect I should comfort her, but niceties didn’t save the others, so I remain where I am.
“What are Death Dealers?” she asks in a quiet, resigned voice.
“We are.”
“We?”
“You, me, Tom, his trophies. Everyone here. That’s what Tom called them. I saw no reason to give them a new name.”
“How did you get here?”
“I drove.”
“Where were you going when you ended up on the highway?” she asks.
“I was heading to the Lost Highway. Weren’t you?”
“No.”
“Why take it?”
“I don’t know. I was curious.”
Her answer startles me. I’d never considered anyone accidentally making their way into this place.
Wiping her eyes, Odessa asks, “Why would you come here?”
“I heard about this place and wanted to see it. I heard people disappeared, and killers roamed the woods. I wanted to hunt those who hunted others.”
“Why?”
“Why does a man hunt a deer? For the challenge. Hunting violent humans in this terrain intrigued me.”
Odessa studies me. “Are you insane?”
“I don’t know, but I doubt it.”
“You killed people before you came here.”
“Yes.”
“What kind of people?”
“Whoever they assigned me to kill.”
“Who assigned you?”
“I told Mary all of this, and she died. I’m unsure whether I want to waste the time of sharing my life story with someone who will soon be dead.”
“Who’s Mary?”
“The last person I brought to the cabin.”
“How many have you brought here?”
“Three before you.”
“How did Mary die?”
I recall the crazed expression on Mary’s face the day I ended her life. She hadn’t meant anything to me, yet I still resented wasting time on someone I couldn’t keep around.
“The Highway changed her. She became feral and attacked me. I don’t know if she meant to kill me, but my instincts kicked in, and I killed her.”
Odessa doesn’t miss a beat before asking, “What about the people before her?”