She said nothing, just kept staring at him. He could feel her gaze on him, an icy javelin pressing against his flesh until it cooled his entire bloodstream. Another glance at her and he saw she had the shoe box’s lid open. She was caressing the eggs inside the nest.
He turned back to the road, feeling as if he’d just sprinted a mile. He forced his breathing to calm down. When the yellow lines on the highway began to blur, he rubbed his eyes and wished he had a cup of coffee or maybe some pills to keep him awake. For whatever reason, the image of Ellie’s stuffed elephant jumped into his head then—the elephant that had been her favorite toy that was now lost forever since they deserted the Oldsmobile. For whatever reason, the damn thing seated itself in the center of his brain, as if there was something vitally important about it. The more he concentrated on it, trying to figure out its significance, the more texture it took on in his head. And then it was there, a dinosaur-size elephant undulating beyond the trees at the horizon, its thick hide pink in the waning dusk, its tremendous bulk toppling trees and causing the earth to shake, its massive face turning, tusks like lances severing the treetops, the gleam of a single melancholic eye, brown-yellow, agonized, a pupil as black as ichor, as deep as space, and as it charged them, David could make out its every detail, down to the minute blond hairs in the creases of its knees, the fat white mites scuttling through the caverns of its ear canals, the dried black mucus pressurized into a pasty gruel at the corners of its mouth— David cried out. He jerked the steering wheel sharply to the left and felt the car fishtail. He overcompensated, spinning the wheel to the right. The tires screamed and gravel peppered the windshield. Ellie screamed.
There was a loud pop then a shushing sound. The Monte Carlo canted to the left and the steering wheel began to vibrate. The shushing sound followed them as they bucked along the road—shhh-fump, shhh-fump, shh-fump.
Ellie sat up straight. “What happened, what happened?”
“Flat tire,” he said. He slowed the car down and eased it to a stop on the shoulder.
“Now it’s your nose,” Ellie said, pointing at his face.
He glanced at himself in the rearview mirror and saw a fine thread of blood dribbling out of his left nostril.
43
Blessedly, there was a spare tire and a jack in the trunk. He changed the tire while jacked up on the shoulder of the highway, working up a sweat despite the autumn chill in the evening air. Ellie stood beside him, studying him for a time, then turning her attention toward the headlights that occasionally cruised along the road. She held the shoe box against her chest, cradling it in both arms.
“All right,” he said, standing up and wiping the grease from his hands. He was out of breath and trembling, though less from exhaustion and more out of anxiety. For some reason, he felt like they were standing still while the whole world shifted beneath them. He felt as though he might be knocked flat at any moment.
He opened the passenger door for her. “Come on. Get in.”
Back in the car, he cranked the ignition but nothing happened. Not a series of clicks, not a grumble from the engine, not the stubborn rrr-rrr-rrr of the motor struggling to turn over.
“No. Come on.”
He cranked it again. Again. Again.
Dead.
“Son of a bitch!” He pounded the steering wheel with a fist. Then he ran his shaking hands through his hair. Ellie stared at him from the passenger seat. After closing his eyes and counting to ten in his head, he turned to her, forced a smile, and tried not to let her see the fear in his eyes.
“It’s broken,” she said. It was not a question.
“I’ll have a look under the hood. Is there a flashlight in the glove compartment?”
She opened the compartment, but it was obvious there was no flashlight in there.
“Okay.” David nodded at her. His arm ached. Again, he felt light-headedness threaten to overtake him. He took several deep breaths to regulate his respiration. “Just sit tight. I’ll go have a look.”
He climbed out of the car and pulled up the hood. His arms felt like rubber. As he stared at the assemblage of mechanical parts, his vision threatened to pixelate. He felt his respiration ratchet to a fever pitch . . . yet at the same time it seemed impossible to suck any air into his lungs.
This is it, said the head-voice. This is the end of the road. This is as far as you were meant to go. The Night Parade stops here and death takes over. What will it be? A heart attack? Or maybe Kapoor and that Craddock guy weren’t pulling your leg after all—maybe it’s the Folly that’s getting ready to take you down. You will die of a hemorrhage and leave your daughter stranded all alone and in the middle of the night on the shoulder of a Colorado highway.
“Go fuck yourself,” he muttered. His voice sounded hollow and tinny in his ears.