The Devil's Spot
Bri G. Maxwell
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 Brienna G. Maxwell
Smashwords Edition License Notice:
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
The drifter slipped into the convenience station while the clerk was busy with a particularly loud set of customers. He knew from experience that his appearance did not convey that he was a paying customer, and most clerks would watch him closely while he was in the store.
He had a little money, bummed from the trucker who dropped him off; if he was lucky it would buy him a hot meal.
As he made his way to the men's room he stumbled and knocked himself into a display rack of batteries. He cursed under his breath as he took a minute to straighten himself out. If the clerk was watching he would seem drunk.
The convenience store was big, set up with showers that truckers could rent. He strolled over to the hand sinks, splashing water on his hands and face, leaving traces of muddy water on his skin, while he used the mirror to check the shower area to see if any of the showering truckers had left their shoes on the floor. His own shoes, acquired in another truck-stop shower room, were beginning to fall apart.
He ignored his own reflection, his hair was unkempt and graying, his face hard and haunted, his shirt a grubby cast off that once belonged to a mechanic named Mike; the reflection bore little semblance to the man he remembered himself as.
None of the truckers had been foolish enough to leave their shoes lying about, so he slung the water from his hands and left the men's room. He trailed a line of water droplets from the men's room into the diner adjacent to the convenience store.
He slid into a booth and picked up a menu. It was only when he looked at the menu options that he realized he had been here in his other life.
The life before he became No One, drifting unseen across the nations highways and byways. His life as a drifter included hundreds of convenience stations and hole in the wall diners, but this one, he remembered well.
He looked around, taking into account for the first time the dingy little diner. It had changed with time, in his memory it had been a brighter place; the colors of the furnishings were now covered by a coating of ingrained grime that had not been present on that sunny day so many years ago.
His reminiscence was interrupted by the arrival of the waitress, "Hi, welcome to Grannie Annie's Kitchen, what can I get you?"
She smacked her gum as she talked, and scratched the base of her ponytail with the end of her pen.
“Do you still serve Annie's Famous Rhubarb pie?”
“It's our specialty, sir.”
“Bring me one, and,” he paused to peruse the menu, “a tuna noodle melt.”
He shook his head ruefully. The pie was an indulgence, but he was gripped by nostalgia.
Memories were coming back to him in this place, memories of a time and life he could not return to.
"I'll have some of Annie's Famous Rhubarb pie," the trucker told the waitress.
"Anything else," she asked him.
He shook his head.
"And what about you, honey?" she asked him as he fidgeted in his seat opposite the trucker.
"Oh, I don't really want anything."
The trucker frowned across at him, then tells the waitress to bring him a piece of pie too.
The waitress made a note in her ticket book and left.
"It's a cardinal sin to come into a place this good and not eat something," the trucker told the young man. "Now, best tell me what you're about while we wait. You ambushed me outside, sayin' you had something important you needed to talk to me about. Now, then, let's start at the beginning. Why don't you tell me your name?”
He blinked; surely he had introduced himself?
But thinking back to his hurried scramble to get the trucker's attention, he could not remember if he did.
“Daniel, sir,” he felt the heat of a blush creeping onto his cheeks. “Daniel Crane.”
“My handle is Big Mike,” the trucker stated.
Daniel pulled a small notebook from the front pocket of his shirt and wrote a few notes. He looked up in time to see the trucker giving him an odd look and realized he still had not explained himself.
“I'm a journalist, I work for a small magazine and I'm doing a series of articles about urban legends.”
Big Mike snorted and sipped his coffee.
Feeling in danger of losing the trucker's attention he rushed on.
“I'm gathering information for a piece about the radio phenomenon that occurs on 287.”
“The Devil's Spot? That's a load of bullshit. I've been down 287 hundreds of time. Ain't never anything but static.”
“That's part of why I'm asking you, I've talked to several of your compatriots, anybody who claims to have heard it, refuses to drive through the spot with their radio on.”
“Compatri-what?”
Daniel blushed again, “Other truckers.”
“Oh, why didn't you just say that? You want a ride a long? I don't take hitch hikers.”
“I'm willing to pay you.”
He rolled his eyes.
“Don't need your money boy. I make the run from Dallas to Amarillo and back all the time, and I'm telling you there's no truth to it, it's just a story used to goose the new truckers. I suppose I'll make an exception to the rule this once. Maybe it will lay that nonsense to rest.”
“Oh thank you sir,” Daniel rose and tried to shake his hand, but Mike waved it away.
“I leave in half an hour boy. It's a straight run through; don't stop until we hit Dallas. If you ain't at my rig when I'm ready to leave, you can find someone else to take you. We don't stop, so make sure you can hold your bladder to Dallas.”
The man who had once been Daniel Crane pushed away his empty plate. Although the hunger no longer gnawed in his belly, he was far from satisfied. A condition which had become familiar enough since he left his old life. He made himself stick to the basics necessities, it kept him under the radar.
The waitress had left him a ticket for his meal he looked at the amount on it and dropped enough bills to cover the ticket. He even left a tip; something he would not normally do, but his trip down memory lane had jarred him, he was uneasy inside and did not want to do anything that would make the people here remember him.
Perhaps they were finally closing in? Was it possible that his instincts had picked up on something he himself had not, causing him to react strangely?
He returned to the bathroom, checking one last time for new shoes. He had no luck. He pulled a pair of empty water bottles from his pack and filled them at the bathroom sink.
As he was heading for the door he glanced at the newsstand, Local Man Wanted For Questioning was splashed across the front page of the local paper, and did a double take. His breath caught in his throat, and then he let it out.
He had been mistaken; the headline read Election Results In! He had given himself a scare. Sometime he saw that other headline, the one that they had written to catch him, in his nightmares. His mistake was understandable.
A tiny bell on the door chimed as he went outside.
The sun was beginning to tip towards the horizon; great waves of orange, hues of pink and a touch of purple were beginning to streak the sky to the west. The day had been a scorcher; the radio had said 103 degrees. Now a cool wind was blowing over the plains, and he felt it was cool enough that he could walk the road for a while instead of hitching.
He preferred to walk whenever possible, it made it harder for them to track him.
He stood in the parking lot wondering which direction to take. After a minute he decided he might as well follow memory lane, it was as good as any other direction he could pick, since he had no goal beyond evading them.
He started hiking in the opposite direction he intended to go, then looped around out of sight of the building, if they came asking questions, anyone who might have been watching him would point out that he had gone the other way. Throw them off the scent.
He probably would not walk all the way to Dallas; someone would pick him up on the way. Once he was sure the convenience store was well behind him, he popped the pack of batteries he had palmed off the rack when he bumped it and reloaded his battered old headset radio.
He tucked the spare batteries in a pocket and tossed the package away. It landed under a sign that read, “Don't Mess With Texas” and listed fees for littering.
He smirked and flipped off the sign.
He fiddled with the tuner of the radio, flipping through the Amarillo stations until he found one that played classic country. He set himself a steady even pace, and began trekking through the grass off the shoulder of the highway. The music filtered through his mind stirring up the old memories; country had been playing in the truck as they set off. He wondered if he had chosen this station subconsciously because it had reminded him of that trip?
Daniel fidgeted uncomfortably in the cab of the truck, although well suited to typing at a desk; his office clothes were less than comfortable in the truck. It had taken him three tries to climb into the cab when they left, his clothes caught or pulled and he had to stop and rearrange them. Now they clung to him, the air conditioning in the truck was weak and he was sweating profusely.
Conversation between the two had been sparse; he did not really know what to say to the trucker.
“We're about half an hour to Clarendon,” Big Mike stated, startling him. “The spot, such as it is, is on the other side a ways. I'm curious, what've you heard about it?”
“My editor told me it was a radio phenomenon most often reported by truckers where they claim to pick up a radio signal in the dead air between two broadcasting towers. I've discussed via phone the coverage of the two towers with the respective station managers, and depending on signal strength there is a gap that varies 2 to 5 miles wherein neither station is broadcasting. The station managers say that most likely what gets reported is a garbled channel.
“But, I also talked to some people who reported experiencing the phenomenon. A retired trucker in Oregon, another in Utah. The guy in Oregon said he heard “spooky sounds” mixed with static. The one in Utah says he heard a voice calling his name, he said it whispered things, personal things, that no one else knew. Scared him so bad that he refused to drive the route again.”
“Sounds like the same old story to me. I'd bet it was another trucker jacking with him over the cb radio. Sounds like a prank on rookie drivers. Tell em there's something spooky up ahead on the road, then follow them, or pull off the road and kill your lights and make funny sounds through the cb.”
“It could be. I'm writing a series of articles on the subject of urban myths, I've checked several of the most notorious haunted houses in the country, and interviewed people who have encountered the supernatural. So far I haven't found anything conclusive, but my editor thinks the article series will go over well.”
“You like writing?”
“Yes, it's something that I've always been interested in. I'm not making much at it, but I think this article series might help me break through.”
“How long you been doing it?”
“Well, I only graduated a year ago. The writing market isn't easy to break into, but once your name gets out there and you have some articles under your belt then you can really make a go of it,” his voice warmed as they talked, it was one of his favorite subjects and the conversation carried them several miles.
Step, flap, step, flap, the sole had come loose on one of his worn out sneakers, dragging and catching the pavement. He stopped and sat down in the scraggly grass off the shoulder of the road, to dig through his bag; he had half a tube of school glue, lifted from a store somewhere.
The brilliant colors of the sunset had faded from the sky. The moon washed the wide fields and long road in shades of silver. The sky stretched unbroken in every direction. The road and the fences that ran along it were the only signs of humanity he could see.
For a moment he sat and looked around him, the stillness of the night seeping into him.
He found the glue, mostly by touch.
He removed the shoe and carefully opened the section where the sole had come apart from the shoe.
He slathered a thick layer of glue over the sole and held it together. When the glue set enough to hold he put the shoe back on. The glue by itself would not hold the shoe together another mile. He pulled the drawstring out of a pair of shorts from the backpack and wrapped it around the shoe several times, focusing on the thick section of foot just behind the toes.
He hoped the shoe would hold together until morning. Then he might be able to find a thrift store, or charity that would give him a newer pair.
He continued down the road, remembering how naive he had been the last time he traveled this road.
He had been lying to Big Mike. He had no editor. He had spoken to a friend who was an editor about the idea, and while his friend said the concept was interesting, he had not offered Daniel work.
Daniel had been so sure it would work though, that he could write such a compelling series of articles, that he had taken out a loan to cover travel expenses and set off to investigate. He went to the haunted houses, talked to several supposed psychics, he had even checked out a tire warehouse in Amarillo that claimed to be haunted.
He found nothing.
Still he took notes and tracked down new rumors. He had been certain if he wrote the articles he would be able to sell them.
The writing market carried the conversation for a good twenty minutes before they exhausted the subject.
“You married son?” Big Mike asked.
“Yes, sir. Her name is Amanda.”
He pulls out his wallet and shows Big Mike a picture of a pretty redhead, standing next to him at the altar of a large traditional church.
“Three months ago. We met in college and fell madly in love.”
Big Mike grinned, “So you're still honeymooning then. Have you had your first fight yet?”
Daniel frowned, “Yeah, just before I left. She didn't want me to leave her alone.”
“You settle everything?”
“Mostly. She wasn't happy with the decision, but I think she sees that it is something I have to do to build our future.”
A burst of static cut through the country music that had been softly playing in the background. Big Mike turned up the radio, “This is where it starts.”
His customary scowl deepened as the thought of Amanda crossed his mind. He had not thought of her in years. Had, refused to think of her.
The Bitch!
He shook his head and continued to march across the pavement. The last lights from the city of Clarendon were fading behind him. It was late and the traffic in the town had been thin. Nothing had been open so he had not even stopped.
There was still a slight slapping noise from his shoe, but overall it was holding together. For a while he watched his feet, concentrating on putting one step in front of the other. Blocking his mind. It had worked for years.
In the dark he had lost track of time. The moon was now directly overhead, lighting his way. For a while he kept the memories from crowding his mind.
Patsy Cline is singing in his ears through his headset.
He locks on to the words of her song, doing everything in his power to think of nothing else.
The first burst of static was tiny, a little imperfection of sound. The station segued into another song, something about not trusting a backwoods lawyer, when the station cut out completely. He turned the knob, finding another station.
Daniel pulled a tape recorder from his pocket and set it on the dash, he eagerly began flipping through the stations, he locked onto another country station for a while, then a rock station and finally a pop station, and then he could find nothing. He continuously hit the scan button, listening eagerly for anything unusual.
In the driver's seat, Big Mike shook his head, amused by his enthusiasm.
The minutes that passed were only broken by the static from the radio. It took somewhere between ten and fifteen minutes before the radio began picking up stations again.
Daniel continued to flip the radio for another ten minutes, then sat back and sighed. He had heard nothing. Still, he had the tape; perhaps it caught something he had not.
Most of the stations had given out. A local rap and hip hop station was the last one he had latched onto, and it was beginning to fade.
He paused at the top of a rise. The music was strongest there. He considered turning around and going back. Memory lane was not all it was cracked up to be.
Turning around would throw them off his trail. He could go back to the junction with I40 and follow I40 instead of 287. Unless they were close on his heels. They might have take 40 looking for him. Or they were right behind him, and he would just walk right into their arms.
No, it was better to keep walking. He didn't know what was ahead of him, but he did know what was behind him. He could not go back.
He concentrated on his feet. One in front of the other, on the downward slope away.
By the time he topped the next rise the hip hop station had been lost. He would not pick up the station up again. He was reaching into his pocket to turn off the radio when he thought he heard something. He stopped for a moment and cocked his head to the side, trying to catch the sound again.
There was definitely something there, under the static.
He continued walking, leaving the static running. A strange new thought was occurring to him. With the advent of public computers in libraries, and email, he could write without a system of his own. He thought he had given up writing when he walked away, but maybe he could find a way to make it work after all. If he stopped and used public computers, just for a few hours at a time, they would not find him. He could store the story in email until it was finished.
He would have to find someone who would pay cash upfront, he could not have a bank account, but he was sure he could find a place.
The static cut for a moment and he heard something, although he could not say what it was.
Maybe he could start over, and what better way to start his career again, than by resuming his old story. He was definitely hearing something this time. He could recap what he learned the first time, and then add what he himself heard going through it a second time.
He would not be able to use his own name of course.
But maybe he could make a new name.
A harsh voice whispered suddenly in his ear and he jumped. It had come and gone so suddenly that he had not been able to make out the words.