“Hardy har har.” I glared at him, enjoying our sparring. He gave me a wink and turned his attention back to the road.
“So, how are you?” he asked. The sincerity in his voice made me suspicious.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re a terrible liar.”
I cocked my head at him. “What? I’m fine. I didn’t say I was great.”
“You should be great, Perry. You should be jazzed as shit. New Mexico, man. Just look at this place.” He gestured at the darkness then took a quick peek at me.
“Something’s different with you.”
I shrugged. “To be fair, you don’t know me all that well.”
“This is true. But there’s something you’re not telling me.”
It was my turn to laugh. “There are many things I’m not telling you.”
He peered at me, his brown eyes glinted like black stones. A flicker of intensity ran across them. “I’ll get to the bottom of you before this is all over.”
I held his gaze while an impulsive smile gently tugged at the corner of my mouth. There was a current of tension in the car, but of what kind I didn’t know. It was wishful thinking on my part to think it was sexual in any way.
I looked away first and just in time to see a car parked up ahead in the middle of the road. We were seconds from colliding with it.
“Dex!” I screamed and thrust my hands out on the dash, bracing for certain impact.
The rest was a blur. The high pitched squeal of brakes filled my ears as Dex slammed on them and whipped the wheel around. The Jeep slid and lurched beneath us but thanks to his fancy maneuvering, we came to a stop on the shoulder, a few yards past the car. The road was dark and devoid of traffic at that moment, which probably saved our life.
But alive and well or not, I could barely breathe and my poor heart was skipping loudly. Dex was leaning forward, clutching the wheel desperately. He slowly loosened his grip and looked over at me. He looked absolutely stunned.
“Are you OK?”
I nodded, trying to regain my breath.
He nodded too, as if to say he was OK. He looked behind us. “What the fuck was that?”
I turned around in my seat. The car was a small compact and was parked at a diagonal across both lanes of the highway. The lights outside and inside the car were on and all four doors were open wide. There was no one in the car at all. It was like they all ran out and vanished into the darkness. That thought made me very ill and very afraid.
“What happened?” I whispered. He shook his head and then unbuckled his seat belt. I immediately put my hand on his to stop him.
“What are you doing, you can’t go out there!” I hissed.
He unbuckled it anyway and opened the door.
“You stay here. People might be hurt.”
And with that he shut the door on me and left me in the car. Fuck that!
I quickly unbuckled mine, leaped out of the car and ran over to Dex. I expected him to tell me to go back but it’s like he knew I would join him anyway.
There were still no other cars around, which I thought was eerie considering we weren’t that far from the city. The lights from the abandoned car and our Jeep were the only lights we could see.
The car wasn’t running. We saw no tire marks on the road to indicate they had to stop quickly (unlike our Jeep which left hefty marks in its wake). It was like someone calmly decided to park it there and leave.
“I don’t like this,” I started but Dex quickly threw his arm back at me and held me in place, finger to his lips. He stopped and peered intently at the car. We were only a few feet away. I wanted to grab on to him for dear life.
I also wanted to ask him what he was looking at but didn’t dare speak. Or breathe.
He took a tentative step forward.
Then I saw it.
Something popped up in the backseat and then disappeared. I didn’t know what it was but I can tell you it wasn’t human.
Dex slowly turned and looked at me, the whites of his eyes glowing madly in the sparse light.
“We better leave,” he said quickly, turning around and yanking me towards our car.
“What is it?” I cried out, still wanting to see despite the thick fear in my throat. I looked back as Dex dragged me forward, his grip on my arm strong.
Something shadowy moved in the backseat again. The car rocked back and forth for a few seconds…
The head of a coyote poked out of the car. Seeing us, it jumped out of the backseat and onto the road.
I gasped. Dex turned to look and stopped.
The coyote held us in its gaze, its eyes strangely familiar. I’d seen coyotes before; they were a nuisance in the countryside around Portland. But there was something strangely terrifying about this one. Maybe it was the circumstances…had that coyote just eaten everyone in the car?
I couldn’t tear my eyes away from it. It just stood there, as still as the air around us, but I had this feeling like it already had its teeth in me. Its eyes were the strangest green color. They sparked with intelligence. Did coyotes even have green eyes?
Suddenly, I felt a hard pull on my arm again. Dex dragged me towards the Jeep. I looked back and the coyote was gone.
It was like some heavy fog lifted from my eyes, as if the last few seconds had been a dream and I was finally coming to. We quickly got in our vehicle and without saying a word to me, he thrust it into gear and we sprinted down the highway at an alarming speed.
I stared at him. His hands were back to holding the steering wheel with a Kung-Fu grip, his mouth was set in a firm line and his eyes…well, his eyes weren’t fearful but they were lost in thought.
I wanted to ask him what had just happened…where did the occupants of the car go? Why was there a coyote in the car? Why did we have to leave so fast? But I could see I wouldn’t be getting anything out of him tonight. I had to come up with the answers by myself. I turned my attention to the blackness sweeping past us, made more mysterious now knowing a party of people could be out there, just wandering the desert.
I didn’t know what had happened to the people in the car, but I knew they weren’t attacked by a coyote. Coyotes wouldn’t dare attack a party of humans, no matter how hungry they were. If anything, the car was abandoned and the coyote was scavenging for any…leftovers. I shuddered at the thought of rogue body parts in the backseat.
I wasn’t quite satisfied with that conclusion but it had to do for the remainder of the drive. Within an hour we were pulling up to a nondescript motel perched at the edge of a deadbeat town. We hadn’t said a word to each other the whole time.
~~
My room looked straight out of a bad 70’s porn. The wallpaper was peeling in the corners, there were nicotine stains on the walls, and the bed was one of those coin-operated models. The only thing missing was the shag carpeting.
I plunked my bag on the lone chair, not willing to trust the patchy ground, and carefully sat on the corner of the bed. I had a bad experience with bedbugs once and that was in a quality hotel. I didn’t want to think of what could be hiding in the scratchy sheets here.
I sighed and took stock. Had my life really come to this? Staying in a gross motel in New Mexico on some crazy ghost hunting expedition? Things always sounded cooler before you actually lived them. We hadn’t even seen any ghosts and already I had the creeps, which explained why I jumped out of my skin a bit when there was a sudden knock at the door.
I got up and peered through the peephole. My heart eased as I saw Dex, though I wasn’t quite sure who else it would have been.
I opened the door. He leaned against the frame, not moving. He looked a bit stoned; his eyes were glazed and looking past me at some blank spot on the bed. A toothpick jutted about lazily in his mouth.
“Um, hey. Good hotel pick, by the way,” I joked. “I was thinking we could put our beds beside each other and race down the hallway…might cost a couple of bucks extra though.”
He grinned. “Are you coming on to me?”
I wasn’t but I felt heat come to my cheeks anyway. I rolled my eyes. “What do you want?”
“Just checking up on you,” he said defensively.
“That’s…considerate. What’s wrong with you?”
The glaze left his eyes for a second before he laughed it away. “OK, suit yourself. Thought you may have wanted some company.”
Was he coming on to me? I narrowed my eyes, studying him. I can’t say the thought didn’t entice me. But aside from his languid gaze, I couldn’t pick up on anything different. It was just Dex. Standing seductively in the doorway of my seedy motel room (OK, so you can see why I would naturally jump to such conclusions).
And suddenly, while this dialogue was going on inside my head, I realized the situation had become awkward. At least for me, anyway. Dex didn’t seem disturbed in the slightest.
Regardless, he said, “Anyway, we’ll be setting off at 8AM tomorrow. The town of Red Fox is about a two or three hour drive from here. Just be ready and primped and all that before then.”
“Do you think I’m gonna get much sleep…or primping…done in this place?”
He laughed. “Princess, I don’t care. See you in the morning.”
And with that he spun around and walked to his room next door. I heard his door close. I slowly shut mine and felt incredibly alone. And miffed. Princess? Who did he think he was?
I turned and nervously eyed the bed. I decided to sleep on top of the sheets that night.