Bent Highway: Chapter Eighteen

Hole

“Hang on.”

“To what?” I yelled.

“Everything.”

A couple of seconds ago I had dived into Walt’s sedan - a wide black hellhole opened up behind us.

Walt gunned it and I finally knew what those fighter pilots meant when they were always going on about G-force. It was if some evil aunt had taken both cheeks and smooshed them hard enough to pop out my eyeballs. A roar of wind came from the pit.

“What the hell is it?” I yelled louder.

Chalk Girl was pressed hard against the back seat. She mouthed the word, “Rip.”

Walt pushed the sedan harder. We were in a crazy-ass roadrunner coyote chase with a crevice the size of Montana. The landscape outside was a blur. I glanced at the speedometer, the needle was buried at 140. An orange blur flashed in the ditch, and then launched itself over the shoulder. The Charger caromed off the asphalt, and flew toward us. I waited to die. At least I wouldn’t feel much.

“Here we go.”

Walt’s voice sounded way too calm for the situation, like he was ordering another whiskey sour in an Mexican lounge. 

He cranked the wheel, the tires screamed, we lurched and slid into a tight spin. The front tire hit the edge of the pit and the sedan flipped in. The wind noise disappeared and we fell silently. Outside was sheer black. I expected us to bang against the edges of the hole as we fell, battering the sedan and then our bodies - and again I waited to die.

And waited.

We kept falling, the car righted itself, and it became impossible to judge the speed.

“You know what this is Walt?” It was quiet enough in the car to speak in whispers.

“I had heard this might be coming.”

“From who?”

“Others who have been following the one you know as Harold.”

“What is it? Where does it go?”

“Not sure. It’s outside of time.”

A high pitched whine sliced through the car. Chalk Girl and I slammed our hands against ears. Walt kept his grip on the wheel, even though there was nothing to steer. As fast as the light had disappeared outside, it came on again. The sedan fell like a black spider against the whitest of whites. The whining noise stopped and was replaced by an industrial hum.

“What do you mean?”

“Difficult to explain. Just outside.”

“Aren’t all rips that way?” The hum started to throb.

“Rips end up somewhere.” Walt looked back at Chalk Girl. “This one might not.”

The sedan cast a shadow against the unending white expanse. At least the shadow gave a sense that we were still moving.

“So what? We just stay in here... falling forever?”

“Forever is relative. But it doesn’t matter. I know that somehow we are going end up facing Harold.”

“How do you know that, Walt?” Chalk Girl asked from the back.

“He created this. He’s more in control than he’s ever been.”

“Again – are we supposed to just fall forever?” I had a flash of an astronaut being cut loose in empty space, drifting until the oxygen ran out.

“Chalk Girl and I will stay in the car. You’re going need to leave.”

“Um, what?” I glanced out at the shadow against the white.

“Don’t think of this as falling or like jumping out of an airplane. Gravity is not in charge here - there is no ground coming to meet us.”

“Or kill us.”

“Right.”

I looked outside again. “So I am supposed to just step into it?”

Walt reached over and pulled up the door lock.

“That’ll work.” Still bent over me, Walt pulled on the door handle, and it swung open.

I stared into the white.

“It’s best we separate.” Walt went back to his side of the sedan.

I stared at Chalk Girl. She shook her head.

“He has the least amount of control over you,” Walt said.

I put a leg outside the car, expecting to feel a rush of movement, but there was nothing but stillness. The industrial thrum continued to pulse like I imagined nuclear reactors did - not that I’d ever been inside one.

“So you’re saying that we will eventually land somewhere? You in the car, and me, well… just me.”

“Try to make your way to us.”

“How am I supposed to do that?”

“I have no idea.”

“Didn’t think so.”

I swung my other leg across and pushed off the car seat. I fell. Sort of.

The sedan moved down and away from me, I drifted toward what I thought of as the wall. My shadow got larger, and then I was touching it. The surface was glass-like smooth, yet warm and pliant – I pushed against it and drifted away from the wall, my shadow grew. I looked over my shoulder, trying to find the source of light, thinking it must be somewhere above me. As I looked up, my feet landed on a surface, as flexible as the wall, and then my feet slipped inside it, then my knees and soon I was waste deep in a lake of white. I thought I might just float there for a while, scanning above me for any small dot of black that might be Walt’s sedan. As I dipped to my chest, neck, and my bottom lip - I considered, again, that this would now be my death. I sank below the surface, immediately suprised that I could easily breath. In fact, my exhales created thick bubbles in the liquid. It was a bit like swimming in tapioca - another thing I’d never done.

I came through the liquid and my soft descent was over. I crashed to a flat surface, then banged my elbow and knee against the only piece of furniture in the gray room, a wooden highback chair. The line of a doorway appeared in the wall, and then a small man stepped through the open door. Not a man, but a boy. The recognition took a second.

“You didn’t die.”

“Of course not. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.” His voice cracked, just on the edge of puberty.

“But the trailer, it was sinking down. I thought that maybe…”

“Not sure if I remember that - and like I said, it wouldn’t be possible.”

The kid still had the Neil Young plaid shirt on and those blue Adidas. Damn, I loved those shoes. He stared at me the way teenagers do when they feel the tension but don’t give a shit.

“Well, I guess we should go.”

“Where?” I stared behind him to the open doorway.

“To meet the rest.”