Arkham Roadside Assistance MP3
Read by Katy Darby
“Shit,” said Veronica.
She wasn’t expecting car trouble, even though the check engine light had been on for a few days. The Acura didn’t sputter or complain in any way: the engine just quit, and the car rolled to a stop on the ugly shoulder of Azathoth Road. The headlights still shot their halogen spears into the darkness, and that was welcome, because the long, narrow road that joined Arkham, where she’d visited, to Derleth, where she lived, had no streetlights, and by her observation, even less traffic. It was only 8:30, but the world outside showed nothing but solid September darkness.
Veronica Setter-Pace, twenty-six, was adjusting poorly to life in the wilderness of north central Massachusetts. The condominium she and Phillip had bought last year had been a steal, and the quaint Derleth downtown seemed ready to blossom with new construction, but that hadn’t happened. They’d left the city when she had tested as pregnant, but in the end that hadn’t happened, either, and now she was alone in too big a space while Phillip whisked to Boston and back each day, seventy minutes in the morning, often six hours or more in the evening, as some nights he wasn’t home before eleven. He drove the dazzling new Honda Acura TLX while she was stuck with his old TSX that had so impressed her when they’d first been dating, but now seemed sluggish and sagging. She was quietly afraid Phillip was starting to feel the same way about her.
She swiped her way to the number for Triple-A. The signal was weak—only two bars, which was two bars more than she’d had in Arkham, so good thing that the TSX had made it this far. The man at the far end of the line assured her that a roadside assistance vehicle would be coming out from Arkham. She asked to be towed to Derleth. He said that wasn’t up to him and disconnected, leaving her alone in the deep Massachusetts night.
She didn’t know how long she would have to wait for the tow truck, so she launched a mindless matching game and waited. She left the headlights on, so they could find her, and because the autumn darkness was already as close as she could bear.
Her attention to fitting squares to squares by colour and content was broken by a deep rumbling groan, following by a booming, echoing knock-knock-knock that was like nothing she had ever heard before. She doused the phone and looked around; nothing stirred. She knew the road was banked by ragged tree lines on either side, and beyond those woods were smooth hills, some bald with bare granite caps. It was as if one of those hills had been rung like a bell from within. The sound had been within her as well, resonating in her belly and in her bones. She realized she was holding her breath.
She sat up with sharp relief as headlights flooded her car. They were clearly not halogens, belonging to an older truck of a different generation than her coupe. The truck pulled up, and then it was beside her, a peeling grey side panel with an overalled elbow hanging out the window.
She rolled her window down and almost screamed. The squat, square head looking down at her was a pockmarked apparition, a pale toad’s face behind Buddy Holly glasses. The ugly man’s caterpillar eyebrows rose at her obvious consternation, but he did open the door, and he did not speak.
Veronica would soon realise she was being absurd. She had just been through the decaying village of Arkham: what was she expecting from their towing service, a pristine flatbed driven by Chris Hemsworth? But in that instant, her roadside murder seemed inevitable, and she was swiping furiously at her phone to dial 911 when there was a shadow in the headlights: a man no more than twenty-five, the driver of the wrecker, somehow making his gray pinstriped coveralls seem a respectable fashion choice, smiling at her: “Ma’am, can we help you?”
“Oh my God,” Veronica exclaimed, relieved. “You guys scared me!”
“Sorry about that,” he said. “What’s the problem?”
She didn’t get out; the truck was parked too close to open her door. “It just died,” she said, leaning her head out the window, glad her hair was down so he could see how it framed her long neck. She knew her neck was a strong feature. Veronica thought he looked familiar. After a moment, she realised he looked just like the UPS driver she sometimes watched through her kitchen window as he made deliveries, his lean body working all kinds of wonderful with the brown uniform. She’d made him laugh once when he’d delivered something to her door, and that bit of flirting had kept her spirit up for days. “Do you sometimes work for UPS?” she asked.
The words were no more out of her mouth when the ugly man in the wrecker opened his door with such force that it smacked into the side of the Acura, trapping her inside. He was leaning hard on the door and looking down at her, his eyes lost behind the thick lenses of his glasses.
Veronica did scream then, and scrambled to the passenger side of the coupe while the big man climbed out of his partly open door, his gut pressed against the coupe’s window. She was flailing at the passenger side door handle when the door opened, and she all but tumbled out. The handsome man was there, and he helped her to her feet with a firm grip on her upper arm.
“It’s okay,” he said, almost ashamedly. “I’m sorry about Jerry, he’s, well, he’s… not right.” Veronica looked into her rescuer’s calm green eyes, and then back to his companion, now crab-walking between the two cars with intense concentration. Veronica saw they already had a car up on the hook of the wrecker--a mashed-up sedan with windshield glass shimmering on the hood.
Veronica realized that she was being insensitive. She thought Jerry was terrifyingly ugly, but she hadn’t considered that he could be… not right. “I’m sorry,” she said. The handsome man was still holding her arm, but she’d lost all interest in flirting. Her eyes fixed on his name tag, a capital B and a collection of other letters obscured with grease: Blaine? Baine? What?
He was still holding onto her. She freed her arm from the man’s grip – tried to, anyway. Blaine or whatever hung onto her.
“Steady now,” he cautioned.
“Let me GO!” she exclaimed and tried to take a step backward. She stumbled on the edge of the shoulder and was only spared a fall by Blaine’s bruising grip. She was again close to panic.
“Jerry!” Blaine or whatever his name was called out to the other, who now stood in the tidal flashes of the Acura’s hazard lights. Jerry had a head like a cinder block; flat, square and heavy, and he shook it slowly as if to say ‘no.'
Blaine released her arm. She stepped away, steady now. “I was just trying to help,” he said. “What’s the trouble with the car?”
She paced three steps away from him, furious but careful to stay in the light of the three vehicles. “It just stopped,” she said, rubbing her arm. “I need a tow back to Derleth. NOT Arkham.”
“That’s fine, Derleth’s closer,” he said. “Just a mile or two.”
“How can you tow me with that car on the back?” Veronica asked. “Maybe you can fix mine? Give it a jump or something?” She felt stupid as soon as she said it. The battery was clearly fine.
“We can make it work,” he said. “Take a step back, please.” He gestured down the shoulder.
“I need my phone and my purse,” she said, reaching into the Acura. She tucked the phone into her jeans pocket and put the purse over her shoulder.
“Keys in it?” he called. Veronica nodded, not caring if he could see the gesture or not.
They worked swiftly. In short order, they had Veronica’s Acura chained to the sedan, a ridiculous solution but she assumed they knew what they were doing.
The sedan hung off the wrecker, the sling cradling the flat front tires. The car looked like it had hit a utility pole at high speed, but the sides were crumpled as well. The windows were broken, the remnants of the safety glass jutting up in small jagged fractals.
Something moved in the hanging car, a flash of cream-colored shadow, quickly gone.
Was someone in there?
Veronica was about to take a step closer, but Blaine read the motion before she made it. “Stay back, please!” he shouted from where he crouched by the front tyre of her car. Then more quietly, “It’s not safe.”
“Not safe!” Jerry shouted, speaking for the first time. His voice was all she had imagined it would be: gravel and black oil spinning in a coffee mill. His shout was enough that she did take two steps back, standing in the grass, now. She looked at her phone: it wasn’t even 9:30. They worked fast.
She looked up, and Blaine or whatever was walking towards her. Jerry was throwing the tools they had used in through the passenger window of the sedan.
“Ok, we’re all set,” Blaine said. He was holding a massive torch, very bright and with a battery bigger than her two fists. He set it, still burning, on the road and handed her a business card. The white cardstock was blank save for a hand-written phone number and a perfectly pressed axle-grease thumbprint.
“How is this going to work?” Veronica asked. “I can’t ride in my car, right?”
“Your car will be there when you get home,” Blaine said. Behind him, Jerry was violently jabbing a long steel pinch bar into the passenger-side window of the sedan. The car rocked on the sling; he couldn’t make it fit, apparently. He jabbed it in again and again.
“Wait, what?” Veronica asked, her voice rising. “How do I get home?”
He laughed the same laugh as the UPS driver. “We’re not a taxi service, ma’am.” His face softened, and then grew serious. “Two miles. That way. Stay on the shoulder.”
Veronica looked down the road, saw nothing, no road signs, not even a glow on where she guessed the horizon would be.
Blaine or whatever’s grin returned. “You’ll be fine.”
The huge groaning sound came again, as loud as thunder, if thunder could happen underground. She felt it in the soles of her feet as clearly as she heard it with her ears. It was again followed by three hard-knuckle knocks, from no discernible direction other than elsewhere.
Blaine’s smile vanished. “Jerry, let’s go,” he said, and he walked swiftly to the wrecker. Jerry was somehow already in the driver’s seat. She heard him shift the truck into gear.
“Wait!” she yelled, sprinting after them. She tripped over the flashlight and fell on the pavement, bloodying her hands. They were already moving by the time she regained her feet. The three vehicles slipped past her; first the wrecker with a faded, illegible phone number on the rear fender, then the wrecked sedan, the interior deep red from the taillights of the wrecker. She clearly saw a naked footprint, in oil or blood, on the rear windshield of the sedan; then her own car slid past, hazards still blinking in steady alarm.
She watched them go until they disappeared around the bend in the road, and then she was alone. She picked up the absurd, greasy flashlight, taking some comfort in the strong beam it cast. Once more a low, shuddering rumble echoed around the hills, followed by three hammer blows: nearer now, and closer together.
Then the flashlight died.
“Shit,” said Veronica.
(c) Gregory Adams, 2016
Gregory Adams's fiction combines horror, comedy, and drama. In his stories, you'll find demons, aliens and otherworldly horrors, but they will make you laugh as often as they make your skin crawl, and you may experience both sensations simultaneously. He has published two collections of strange stories, available at www.gregoryadams.net
Katy Darby won the Ronny Schwartz scholarship to the Oxford School of Drama and has appeared in over 30 productions in Oxford, Edinburgh and London. She’s directed several plays, including Time Out Critic's Choice comedy Dancing Bears, and prefers being behind the scenes, but sometimes steps into the limelight.
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