On a Bruised Road

Chapter 2-1

Chapter 2

“I’m fine. Really. I’m fine.”

“Right,” Blake said slowly, “and that’s why you’ve been sitting here for the past fifteen minutes?”

“I’m fine.”

“Then get out of the car.”

Edwin stared at his hands. “I don’t think I can.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t think I can pry my fingers off the wheel.”

“Would you like me to help?”

Edwin shook his head. Blake was a big guy, and Edwin was a little afraid that his way of helping would include bodily lifting Edwin out of the Spider.

“Why don’t you just try one hand?”

Edwin shook his head again.

“A finger?”

“You can go back inside. I’m fine.”

Blake paused before saying, “No, I can’t do that. Cathy is watching from the window, and she’s worried about you. You look like s**t, man.”

Edwin wasn’t surprised by his neighbor’s assessment. He still wasn’t sure that his heart was beating, and his blood felt cold. The adrenaline that had been pumping through his system lasted long enough to get him home, but now it had worn off, and his limbs were unresponsive. He glanced up, only for a split second, but it was enough to catch his own reflection in the rearview mirror. He didn’t look pale—he looked gray. The same color as the Spider’s interior.

“Maybe you’ll feel better with a drink.”

“I will,” Edwin agreed quickly, hoping that would encourage Blake to leave the driveway and leave him in peace.

“Cathy! Bring out my bottle of scotch! The good one!”

“That’s not…”

“You look like you need it. Can you at least tell me what happened?”

“I don’t know.”

Blake went around the front of the car, pulled open the passenger door, and settled beside him. For a moment, Edwin wanted to protest. He didn’t just want to protest. He wanted to physically force him out of the car, kicking and punching if he had to. But the desire passed. Mainly because he wasn’t insane, and also because Blake would be able to restrain Edwin with one hand.

“How can you not know what happened?”

“I thought I saw something in my mirror.”

“What?”

Edwin blanched at the thought of the truth. “It must have been a bird or something. But it startled me. I jerked the wheel.”

“Into the other lane?”

“Yeah. Right in front of a big truck. I think my life flashed in front of my eyes, and then I was in my lane again, and the truck was blowing by, honking.”

“And you were fine?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I think so.”

But Edwin wasn’t fine, and he wasn’t about to tell Blake why.

Cathy appeared, fluttering to her husband’s side empty-handed. She fluttered everywhere she went, moving with a sort of nervous energy that reminded Edwin of the tweakers he saw at the drug rehabilitation center where he volunteered. Or a hummingbird. She was also much smaller than her husband—almost comically so. Even so, she ran her household with an iron fist.

“Oh, this is such a gorgeous car!”

Edwin smiled weakly. “Thanks.”

“Do you mind if I climb in the back?”

“Yes!”

Cathy looked at him with wide, confused eyes. That same chill was spreading through him again.

“I mean, it’s really a tight fit back there. I don’t think you’d be very comfortable, but I’ll take you for a drive.”

“Now? Maybe we can go out and get something to drink,” Cathy suggested.

“I don’t know. Isn’t it a bit early for a drink?”

“Nah, it’s never too early. Besides, you need one,” Blake said. “We know this great little bar. They do a happy hour on Saturdays.”

“Oh, Cherry’s?” Cathy beamed. “You’ll love it. Come on, we’re buying.”

Edwin studied their eager smiles for a moment before inclining his head in acquiescence. A drink would chase away the coolness under his skin. And this time, he couldn’t hand wave it away as if it were a cloud, or a shadow. There were no clouds overhead, and he was not parked in the shade.

“Just give me a chance to get changed and cleaned up,” Edwin said.

“Yeah, no problem. Your color still looks a little off. We’ll meet you back over here in about an hour. How does that sound?”

“Great.”

The only reason he was going was for the distraction. He didn’t want to remember, to replay those fifteen seconds over and over as he sought an explanation. There had to be one. Just because he didn’t understand it on a conscious level didn’t mean there wasn’t a completely logical explanation.

“Think you can get out of the car now?”

Edwin checked the rearview mirror again. It was still empty.

“Yeah. Yeah. I’m good now.”

Edwin pulled the key out of the ignition. He was being silly. He was lucky that Blake and Cathy had tried to talk to him instead of calling the happy men in white coats.

“I’m sure. I think I might have just had too much excitement for the day. We’ll get a drink, and I’ll take it easy…I know I’m not as young as I used to be.”

“I hope I’m still as spry when I’m your age.”

Edwin smiled good-naturedly, but he felt like it was frozen to his face. He wasn’t that old. Not so old that Blake should call him spry. He was only forty-seven, for Christ’s sake.

Which was nearly twenty-five years older than Blake.

He must have seemed ancient to the young couple.

“Well, work out every day and eat your vegetables,” Edwin said absently as he pushed open the door.

He fumbled with the keys when he reached the front door. They felt strange in his fingers, like they didn’t fit properly. Like he didn’t know how to hold a key that didn’t fit in the Spider.

He barely remembered to shut the door before shuffling over to the couch. Once he collapsed on the plush cushions, he didn’t want to move again. Not even to go back out to his car. But he didn’t need to see his car to relive that moment over and over. Not the moment when he was staring at the wrong end of a huge truck, but the other moment.

The one right after that.

As a teenager, he had been fascinated by his best friend’s Ouija board. They had played every night for weeks, and Ben had always claimed that he never, ever moved the planchette. Nobody moved the planchette, and yet, they had received countless messages from beyond the grave. Later, Edwin understood how the whole process had worked. Demons weren’t talking to them; they were moving the planchette with tiny, unconscious spasms of their muscles.

That’s all that happened in the car.

An unconscious spasm. An automatic reaction. He’d had to act fast, and his instincts had taken over. That’s why he’d jerked out of the way of the SUV. And that’s how he’d known how to correct the swerve before going over the edge of the cliff.

Even though he didn’t remember either action.

Edwin had been frozen. Worthless. The steering wheel had been yanked hard to the right, pulled back to the left, and straightened, all within the space of ten seconds. And Edwin didn’t remember moving at all.

And the eyes. He couldn’t forget the eyes. The color of spring. Those eyes had locked with his in the rearview mirror. Edwin didn’t currently have any reason to doubt his own mind. He was sober, he ate well, he exercised, he got the appropriate amount of sleep every night. Dementia did not run in his family, and he had been given a clean bill of health at his last physical. Most importantly, he did not have a history of delusions or hallucinations. So how could he explain those green eyes, fringed by long, light lashes?

A drug flashback? Or a dream, perhaps. Momentarily nodding off would explain how he’d ended up on the wrong side of the road. He certainly had no better explanation for that particular mistake, because he had never made such a mistake in his life. But how could his body shut down and his mind drift away while navigating a dangerous road in a mint-condition sports car?

Nothing was making sense.

What if Blake had not been watering his lawn when Edwin had finally pulled into his driveway? As much as he didn’t want to admit it, Edwin knew that he would probably still be sitting in the Spider, still frozen, still feeling more than a little shell-shocked. Blake’s very presence had been enough to center Edwin, and wasn’t it a b***h that Blake was twenty-five years younger than him, married, and nothing more than his neighbor and acquaintance? Edwin wasn’t particularly attracted to Blake, but at that moment, he wished Blake were sitting on the couch with him, holding him, soothing him with the gentle rhythm of his steady heartbeat.

It had been a long time since anybody had been there to do that.

There was nobody to call either. There had been, once. But once the all-night benders stopped, and the drugs disappeared, and the booze dried up, they had all wandered away. Edwin could admit that was probably for the best. But he could have died that afternoon. He could have flown off the cliff or been run over by a massive truck. He could have been nothing more than paste and crushed bones on the pavement. Who would have noticed? He didn’t even know who would have planned his funeral.

He pushed himself off the couch, resolving to put the whole thing behind him. It had been ten seconds. It hadn’t been some life-changing experience, worthy of constant thought. It was barely even worthy of memory. He just needed to set it behind him and focus on other things. Like work.

Edwin’s office had been left in disarray the day before, and stepping into it now didn’t offer him any sort of comfort. He had been too eager to get to the bank in time to purchase his cashier’s check, and he hadn’t taken the time to put his books back in place and make sure all his papers were in order. A clean home is a happy home, as his grandmother would say, and cleaning would at least keep him distracted.

The indoor/outdoor thermometer on his desk told him that it was already over ninety degrees outside, and it was barely lunchtime. It wouldn’t have been much cooler than that in the hills. So why the ever-present chill?

Edwin shook his head. He wasn’t going to think about this. He was going to clean, even though he typically took care of these chores on Sunday. And when he was done, he would mow the lawn. After that, he might indulge himself a little and wash the Spider, then polish it until it damn near glowed.

As he gathered a stack of envelopes, he knocked a pen off his desk with the back of his hand. Edwin bent to pick it up, and cold fingertips traced over the exposed skin on his back. He straightened so quickly, he knocked his head into the corner of the desk. Wheeling around, he prepared to come face-to-face with…something. Perhaps the owner of the green eyes.

But the room was empty.

“Who’s there?” As soon as the words left his mouth, he felt foolish. Of course, nobody was there. He lived alone, and the front door was locked.

Edwin winced and rubbed the back of his head. Pain radiated down his neck, and a bump was already beginning to form. A bird twittered outside the window, but otherwise, the only sound was his ragged breathing. He didn’t think his system could tolerate another shock of adrenaline. Two in the space of two hours was quite enough.

There were no dark corners in his office. It was the smallest room in the house, and the wall was dominated by a huge picture window with the curtains pulled back. His desk sat against the north wall, while the other two featured floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, each level overflowing with texts, picture frames, plants, and miscellaneous knickknacks he had acquired over the years. The room fit him like his favorite pants fit him. When he wasn’t at the pharmacy or one of the clinics, people who needed him could find him in his office.

Now his eyes darted from corner to corner, and he spun in a slow circle, holding the back of his head, his fingertips searching for sticky blood. The room was the same as it had always been, but something whispered to him. Told him the room wasn’t right.

Edwin had felt fingertips. He knew the soft, casual caress of a lover. He knew that fingers, that real contact, didn’t feel like the wind. Not that there was a wind blowing through his house. He kept the air conditioner on at a comfortable, reasonable seventy-six degrees.

He slipped out of the bright room into the dimmer hallway. The throbbing above his neck grew worse by the second, until he wore the pain like a helmet.

A nap. He’d feel better after a good nap. He could sleep away the stress and strangeness of the morning, until he had nothing left but the excitement and thrill of finally purchasing his car. A nap would give him a new view of the world.