It’s not going to stop, she thought. This realization was devoid of emotion at first, as if what was happening was no more remarkable than her noting it might rain soon. But this emotional numbness lasted only for a second before panic exploded inside her. Her body wanted to freeze, to remain motionless in the hope that the car would miss her, like a small animal in the presence of a larger, hungry predator. It was the hardest thing she’d ever done, but with an effort of will, she made her body move. She was closest to the row of cars on her right, and while their shelter tempted her, if the Volvo slammed into the vehicles, she might be caught between two of them and squashed like an oversized bug. Instead, she ran toward the vehicles on her left. They were farther away, but the Volvo was angled to her right, and as fast as the vehicle was going, the driver would, most likely, end up striking one or more of the cars in that direction. So left it was. She ran all out, adrenaline flooding her system and providing her with strength and speed.
She caught a glimpse of the driver as she ran in front of his car – ashen face, wide, staring eyes – and then the Volvo flashed past her, veered toward a parked minivan and slammed into it head-on. She continued running, not looking back to check what was happening, wanting only to get as far away from danger as fast as she could. She heard a tremendous crash of metal striking metal, the impact so loud and violent that the vibrations in the air made her teeth rattle. The Volvo’s engine cut out then, and aside from the soft ticking sounds coming from beneath its crumpled hood, there was silence.
Believing that the worst of the danger had passed, Lori stopped running and, more than a little winded, turned to see what had happened. The Volvo had plowed into the minivan so hard that it appeared as if the two vehicles had fused into a single mass of twisted metal. The air was thick with the scent of engine exhaust and burning oil, as well as the tang of spilled gasoline from the Volvo’s ruptured tank. She knew she should stay back, should call nine-one-one and report the accident, but she found herself hurrying toward the damaged vehicles in case someone was hurt – which seemed more than likely – and needed assistance.
When she reached the Volvo, she saw that the driver had been wearing his seat belt and remained buckled into place. The vehicle’s airbags had activated, but they were already mostly deflated, their work done. The impact had driven the dashboard inward, and the steering wheel now pressed tight against the driver’s chest. Even with the protection of the airbag, it looked as if he’d been badly injured. Besides being pinned back against the seat by the steering wheel, his head had smashed into the driver’s-side window. The impact had broken the glass, and most of it had fallen to the ground, giving her an unobstructed view of the large bleeding gash over the man’s left temple. He was bleeding from his mouth, too. She didn’t know if that was due to internal injuries he’d sustained or if he’d bitten his tongue during the collision. But as bad as those injuries looked, she could tell by his pallor and the way he was struggling for breath that he was probably having a heart attack. She didn’t know if the attack had caused him to veer wildly into the parking lot or if the attack had been brought on by the accident, but either way, he was in serious trouble.
“Hold on,” she said. “I’ll call for help.”
As she pulled her phone from her purse, she gave the van a quick glance and was relieved to see it appeared unoccupied. She quickly called nine-one-one, but as it began ringing on the other end, the man’s head flopped to the side and he looked up at her.
“Her…eyes…” he whispered, “like a…goat’s.” This was followed by a hissing exhalation of air, and although his own eyes remained open, Lori no longer saw any sign of life in them.
A woman’s voice spoke in her ear.
“Nine-one-one. What’s your emergency?”
Lori tried to speak, but words wouldn’t come.
Her…eyes…like a…goat’s.
She felt a sick crawling sensation in the pit of her stomach. She continued holding the phone to her ear, and she heard the dispatcher repeat herself, more loudly this time.
“Nine-one-one. What’s your emergency?”
Lori still couldn’t answer. She had the sensation she was being watched, and she looked around. Cars on the street were passing by slowly as their drivers tried to get a good look at the accident and satisfy their morbid curiosity. A few drivers had pulled to the side of the road, and a couple were getting out of their cars, probably intending to offer what help they could. She didn’t pay attention to any of the witnesses or looky-loos. Her attention was focused on the goat-eyed woman who stood on the sidewalk next to the street, staring at her. The woman’s mouth moved, and although she was too far away for Lori to make out her words, she knew what she said.
Confess and atone – or suffer.
* * *
As the prime witness to the accident, Lori had to stay at FoodSaver and give a statement to the police officers who arrived to investigate. She told them everything that had happened – except for seeing the shadowy figure and the goat-eyed woman. She told herself the woman had nothing to do with the accident, and as for the shadow thing…it had only been a product of her imagination. Besides, she feared the officers would think she was crazy if she told them about the encounters.
When the officers were finished taking her statement, they asked her to remain at the scene in case they had more questions. Lori said she would – she was too shaken up to drive yet anyway – and she sat on the sidewalk outside the store, back against a brick wall, knees hugged to her chest, purse on the ground next to her. She felt a headache coming on, and she dry swallowed a Fiorinal in hopes of forestalling it. She watched as a pair of paramedics removed the old man from his Volvo, laid him on the ground, and began CPR. A layperson might’ve wondered why they bothered, but Lori knew that as long as someone wasn’t obviously beyond saving – like if they were decapitated – paramedics would do everything they could to revive that person for as long as they could, just on the chance their efforts might save his or her life. Lori feared the old man was beyond medical help, though.
Before he’d died, the old man had spoken about goat eyes. Lori was certain he’d been speaking of the same woman who’d confronted her inside the grocery, but there was no sign of her now. A small crowd had gathered to watch the police and paramedics do their work, but the goat-eyed woman wasn’t among them. That was a huge relief. Lori didn’t think she’d be able to stand it if the woman approached her now to once more deliver her incomprehensible message.
A fire truck had pulled into the parking lot along with a pair of police cruisers and the paramedic van. She assumed the firefighters had come to hose down the area around the Volvo to dilute and disperse the gasoline that had leaked from the damaged vehicle, but since the paramedics were still trying to revive the man at the scene, all they could do for now was stand around looking bored. The emergency lights of the first responders’ vehicles were all activated, and as dusk edged its way toward night, their colors seemed to become brighter and more garish. As she stared at the lights, doing her best not to think of anything in particular, she saw a van turn into FoodSaver’s lot. It had a small satellite dish attached to the roof, and Action News was painted on the side. The driver pulled up close to the police cruisers and parked. Three people got out – a pair of men, and a woman wearing a skirt and a blazer. Lori didn’t watch the news, whether national or local. She found it too depressing. She didn’t recognize the woman, but she knew she was a reporter, and that meant she’d want to interview any witnesses to the accident. Especially the woman the Volvo had almost hit. It would only take a few moments for the news crew to get ready to start recording, and once they found out who Lori was from the police, they’d hurry over to get her firsthand account of the accident. No fucking way was she going to stick around for that.
She picked up her purse, stood, and went inside FoodSaver. Forcing herself to walk at a normal pace in order not to draw any attention, she made her way to the back of the store. There was no exit for customers here, but there was a pair of swinging doors with Employees Only written on them. She pushed through the doors without hesitation and found herself in FoodSaver’s storage area. She saw stacks of empty cardboard boxes that hadn’t been broken down yet, as well as wooden pallets containing boxes of non-perishable items. The boxes were labeled – paper towels, breakfast cereal, potato chips – but there was no one present to open them and remove their contents. She figured that whoever had been working back here had gone out front to watch the action after the accident had happened. This meant there was no one to see her, let alone stop her, as she walked toward the receiving dock. The dock’s large door was shut, but there was a regular-sized door next to it, and this was the one she went to. She found it unlocked and she opened it, half expecting an alarm to sound, but she didn’t hear anything. She stepped outside and closed the door behind her. There were several dumpsters back here, some for trash, some for recycling cardboard. The trash stank of rotten meat and sour milk, and her stomach roiled at the smell. She hurried past the dumpsters toward the west side of the building. She walked around the corner and continued on, going slowly, careful to remain close to the wall. She kept going until she could peek out into the parking lot.
She saw the reporter speaking to the police, one of the men recording her with a camera while the other stood by, watching. The paramedics had strapped the old man to a backboard and lifted him onto a gurney. They wheeled him to their vehicle and got him inside. One of the medics remained in the back with the old man, while the other closed the rear doors, jogged to the front, and climbed into the driver’s seat. A second later, the vehicle’s engine roared to life, its emergency lights came on, and its siren began blaring. The vehicle started moving, slowly at first, but once the driver pulled onto the street, he hit the accelerator and sped off. Lori knew they would take the man to the nearest hospital, which was in Ash Creek, about fifteen miles away. The news cameraman had stopped filming the reporter’s discussion with the police officer and shot footage of the paramedics leaving. When they were gone, the firefighters started preparing to wash away the gasoline that had leaked from the Volvo, and the cameraman began filming them.
She drew back and, as she’d done before, she sat on the ground, back to the wall, knees hugged to her chest, purse resting next to her. She wondered what it must be like for the paramedics, knowing that the patient you were transporting was almost assuredly nothing more than a collection of bones and dead meat, but needing to pretend that some small spark of life might be hiding somewhere within him in order to do your job properly. She couldn’t imagine anything more depressing, and she was glad she was a physical therapist. The patients she worked with might be in pain – sometimes quite a lot – but they were alive. They could heal, maybe not all the way, and maybe their bodies would never get back to the point they were before whatever had happened to break them. But they could get better. They could improve. That was a hell of a lot more than the old man would ever be capable of.
She’d ridden in the back of a paramedic vehicle only once in her life – back in high school – and once was enough. She unconsciously reached down to rub her right knee, and although there was no reason for it to hurt, she felt a distant, dull throb. The pain drew her attention to her hand, and she quickly removed it from her knee.
Look forward, push onward, she reminded herself.
* * *
Lori remained hidden until everyone – the police, the firefighters, the reporters – had left, and both the Volvo and the minivan it had struck had been towed away. As she left her hiding place and walked to her Civic she kept watch for the goat-eyed woman, but thankfully she was nowhere in sight. Lori got into her car and pulled out onto the street, and she was halfway home before she realized she had no idea what had happened to the groceries she’d bought for dinner. She didn’t remember dropping them when she’d run to avoid being hit by the old man, but she must have. Someone probably picked them up and threw them away when cleaning the accident scene. It wasn’t much of a loss. She had no appetite whatsoever.
She thought of the old man and wondered if the doctors in the ER had been able to revive him, or if he was – and this seemed far more likely – lying on a table in the hospital’s morgue, waiting to be autopsied. The idea saddened her. She wished the man no ill will. Sure, he’d almost run her down, but that had been an accident.
Hadn’t it?
It was close to nine o’clock when she pulled into the ridiculously named Emerald Place. Whoever had come up with the name had been going for some kind of Wizard of Oz vibe, as if this was a place of enchantment instead of a collection of dull-looking brown-and-gray buildings housing cramped one- and two-bedroom apartments.
Be it ever so crumbled, there’s no place like home.
It wasn’t especially late, but all the parking spots in front of her building had been taken, and she was forced to park two buildings down. She trudged to her building – which lay uphill from where she’d parked – her legs protesting with every step. As a physical therapist, she was usually on her feet during work hours, and today had been no exception. Plus, she felt emotionally drained from the events at FoodSaver so, all in all, she was wiped out. No longer did she want to sit on the couch and watch television. All she wanted to do was climb into bed, curl up under the covers, and sleep for a week. Maybe two.
The sidewalk was lit by a series of lampposts that gave off dim yellow light. She wasn’t certain if the effect was supposed to be aesthetic, or if the company that owned the complex kept the outside lights low at night to save on electricity. She’d never been comfortable with the meager light the sidewalk lights provided. It left too many shadows untouched around the trees and hedges that were positioned between the sidewalk and the buildings. Shadows in which anyone could be lurking – muggers, rapists, goat-eyed women who made cryptic pronouncements…. She remained alert as she walked, continually swept her gaze around to check her surroundings, listened intently for the slightest sound that might indicate someone was watching her from the concealment of darkness.
After what had happened at FoodSaver tonight, she was even more nervous about the shadows than usual. She pictured the dark form that she’d seen right before the old man’s car had come racing toward her. The thing had been like an omen of ill fortune, or a harbinger of doom. Yes, she’d managed to escape unscathed, but that had been a matter of luck as much as anything else. If she’d hesitated so much as a split second, she might well be lying on an autopsy table in the hospital morgue, next to the old man in the Volvo.
Instead of looking away from the shadows, she peered more closely at them, trying to discern any distinct shapes within their mass of black. She had the impression of silent, squirming movement, of dozens of dark forms writhing over and around each other. It reminded her of when she was a child and her parents would take her and her younger sister, Reeny, to play miniature golf. The course was set up as a twisting, turning maze of fake miniature mountains, and a pond wound in and around the holes. There were large koi in the water, and for a dime you could buy tiny brown pellets from a vending machine to feed them. She and Reeny would always beg their parents for change to buy fish food, and once their hands were filled with the hard little pellets, they would walk to the wooden railing that separated the course from the pond and throw the food out over the water as far as they could. The pellets would come pattering down like raindrops, and the koi would rise up from the water in a roiling mass to fight over the food in mindless desperation. That’s what the shadows seemed like to her now – giant, over-eager black fish, all squirming hungry energy as their slick surfaces slid over each other with wet whispers.
She wondered which she’d rather see again the least: the shadow creature or the goat-eyed woman. She decided it was a toss-up. They’d both been equally disturbing in their own way.
The shadows remained where they were as she continued walking, and she didn’t feel the itchy-crawly sensation on the back of her neck that indicated someone’s eyes were on her. She walked up to her building without incident, opened the door – which creaked on old, dry hinges – and stepped inside. The building was small and had no real lobby, just a narrow hallway and a set of stairs leading up to the second floor. The lights inside were fluorescent, much brighter than those outside, almost too bright. Even during the daytime she had to squint when she came and went from her apartment. The building’s interior exuded a faint chemical smell, as if some kind of cleaning fluid had been used recently. She’d never seen anyone washing the faded, threadbare carpet, though, and she had no idea what caused the smell. It was always present and always the same, never stronger, never weaker. She only really noticed the odor when she was out in the hall, though, so she could live with it.
The residents’ mailboxes were located in a central area outside the rental office, but she hadn’t felt like stopping and checking hers tonight. Whatever bills and junk mail that waited for her would keep until tomorrow.
The building only had two levels, and her apartment was located on the second floor. She held on to the thin metal railing as she ascended the stairs, more out of habit than any real need for support. There were two apartments on the ground floor and two on the second. Hers was 2B. She walked to her door – which was painted a particularly ugly avocado green – fished her keys out of her purse, opened the door, stepped inside, then quickly closed and locked it behind her. She didn’t consider herself paranoid exactly, but leaving the door unlocked, even for a short time, seemed like an unnecessary risk to her. And after what had happened tonight, she wanted the feeling of security being in her own place, locked door between her and the rest of the world, provided.
She flipped the light switch next to the door, and the floor lamp in the living room came on. This light was soft and warm, much better than the hallway’s fluorescents, and she sighed, relieved to be home. But her relief was short-lived. As she walked into the living room, she saw it was a mess. A comforter lay in a bunched-up mass on the couch, and a bed pillow lay on the floor between the couch and the glass coffee table. The table was littered with detritus – empty corn chip bag, a bowl coated with salsa residue, a half-eaten chocolate bar, and three empty cans of a highly caffeinated energy drink, along with several books and magazines stacked in a lopsided pile. She knew from experience that the pages in the reading material would be dog-eared, and probably stained with salsa, too. Larry was far from the tidiest roommate she’d ever had. She didn’t want to go into the kitchen. God only knew what sort of state he’d left it in before heading out to play his gig.
