"We passed from laughter to terror which, like love and hate, are close relatives."
- Lisa Deharme
02:45 a.m
8 days earlier
Having grown up watching countless Hollywood action movies with his father, Tim had high expectations for his first car chase. One of the idea he had was they would be jumping from car to car, swinging swords and shooting guns at everything that moved. Sadly, reality was much, much more boring. Having driven for over 7 hours without stopping, Clay Barber's initial adrenaline of driving away from Joseph had all but waned and was on the verge of keeling over at the wheel from fatigue. He yawned every other minute and nodded off once for a brief second, nearly swerving off the empty highway. Without any other cars around and the added incentive of a homicidal maniac chasing them, they had been driving at full speed for nearly 2 hours, with Ridge Valley shining just over the horizon.
Joseph's pick-up's top speed was apparently, brimming with coincidence, clocked in just a notch under their SUV.
Clay took a quick glance in his rear view mirror and sure enough, Joseph's pick-up was still trailing behind them, though the slower vehicle was now only a small headlight in the distance. “This isn't going to work,” he voiced out.
“What are you talking about,” Tim replied, checking his air rifle for the twelfth time in the past two hours. “We can barely see him now and we're almost back into the city.”
Stella chimed in, “And I've managed to call the cops. They said they would get a unit out so we should meet somewhere between here and the city.”
“That's not what I meant,” Clay said sheepishly, swaying left and right as he desperately fought to keep himself awake. “We're running out of gas.”
“What?” Tim leaned over and confirmed via the gauge. The needle was already on 'E', meaning they've been running of the reserve gas in empty. “How's that possible?”
Clay replied, slightly annoyed, “How the hell are we suppose to refuel when we've been chased for the past two hours?”
From the back, Stella passed the loaded pistol they took from the looter in Roagnark to Clay. Her brother then slotted it into a cup holder by his gear-shift. “You think he's tired?” the girl asked. “Joseph that is.”
Tim laughed at her ability to joke under such situations. “Why don't we stop and ask him?” he turned back to look at her but saw something that made his heart beat twice instead. “Where's the pick-up?”
“What?” Clay glanced back up to his rear-view mirror and to his fenders'. The light from the pick-up had disappeared and the only thing following them was darkness. “Do you think he ran out of gas?”
Tim replied, “I highly doubt that,” noting to himself that if Joseph had stopped at the diner for long, he would have refuelled.
“I have to slow down or we're going to lose the lights,” Clay said.
“No!” Tim cut in suddenly, an idea forming in his mind. “I think I know what Joseph in doing. Cut the lights, cut everything. And stop on the opposite side of the road.”
“But we'll be sitting ducks!”
“I know,” he replied solemnly, acknowledging the disadvantage. “Stella, get the torches out but don't turn them on yet.”
“Got them already,” the girl replied with torches in hand, somehow having seen into the future.
Though not fully convinced, or even know what his friend was doing, Clay let loose of the accelerator and kept one hand on the keys in the ignition. “Turning off in three...two...one.”
Clay turned off the engine and they were engulfed in shadows. Without street lamps or headlights, and the stars and moon covered by cloud, the light from the city was their only source of illumination, barely showing the outline of each of their faces. Their breathing prominent without the hum of the engine and air-conditioner.
“What's your plan kid?” Clay asked, taking off his seatbelt to face the others.
“If my hunch is right, Joseph turned off his lights to sneak up on us. He won't be expecting us to do the same,” Tim explained.
Stella chimed, “So we just wait and hope for him to drive by us?”
“That's the plan.”
“That's a terrible plan! It's all luck based. How often do your plans fail?”
“It's a rare occurrence,” Tim admitted, “One in ten? Plus or minus a few. I'm quite lucky.”
“Wait,” Clay shushed him with a hand on his shoulder. “Do you guys hear that?”
In the shroud of night and deep silence, the trio raised their ears to the air. The soft hum of an engine approached them and Stella turned back to watch the rear. However, she could see nothing behind them, despite the angle of the city's lights giving them an edge in sight.
“Nothing,” she informed.
Clay asked, “Where's it coming from?”
Tim read somewhere once that a human had more senses than the traditional five. Amongst them were a sense of time, a sense of heat, and for the occasion, a sense of direction. He looked out his passenger side window and could only make out half the outline of the pick-up barrelling towards them from the field. But it was enough.
“Shit,” was all the reaction time he had before the truck rammed into them.
He felt himself fly through the air on impact and tumbled through space. Flung out of his seat, Tim catapulted through the air and slid over the smooth, waxed floor of an empty stadium corridor, slowing down enough to make his contact with the wall as just a light tap. In a panic, he attempted to get to his feet but instead flopped back on his chest as his decapitated arm found no ground to hold below it.
With his nose against the floor and a vision of the empty hallway, he calmed himself down enough to wish the lack of a right hand meant he was back in his dreams and that he had not actually lost it in real life. Slowly, he managed himself back onto his feet and sure enough, his right arm remained in the makeshift bandage Sister had made for him.
“Okay. I'm probably unconscious right now,” he theorized of his situation in the real world. Looking down both paths of the corridor, he found himself alone again in the dream world. “At least I'm not dead.”
It's our jobs, he remembered Sister saying once. We're grim reapers.
He wondered if his physical body might have actually died and this was his final sleep. A part of him wished that if it was his time to die, that Sister would be the one to send him on his way. One last chance to see her again.
“Stella!” he shouted out, only to listen to his voice echo down the hall. “STELL!”
Zoot. Zun. Zoot. Zun.
He physically jumped at the sound of the saw. Settling, he cursed the lack of time to compose himself or to decide where to run. Right. Left. Only two ways to escape.
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Zoot. Zun. Zoot. Zun.
“Come on. Come on sonofabitch!” he egged, more to psych himself up than to antagonize the monster. “Where are you?!”
From down his left, a familiar voice reverberated to him. “Come on you asshole!” Clay shouted. “Fuck this shit! Fuck you!”
With his choice made for him, Tim bolted down the corridor towards the sound of his friend, glimpsing the elongated shadow of the man in the straw hat from the other path and was alleviated of the fear of running into The Father.
His footsteps slammed like gongs against the concrete floor, ringing through the corridor as he ran. He followed the winding road and swore to curse everything if he was running in some dream loop, only to be proven false as the light from the exit tunnel shone brightly around one of the turns.
Blasting out from the hallway, he jetted up a flight of stairs and shot out onto the first level of the stands of the baseball stadium, right behind third base. The flood lights lit the field in an otherwise starry night. On the pitcher's mound stood Clay in dark blue shorts and a white shirt which had been muddied brown. Obviously unprepared for his dive into Sin, the teen had no footwear on, his feet soaked in the mud of the field. He had a wooden baseball bat in his hand, ready to swing. Nervously, the white-haired teen turned on the spot, scanning the empty field.
Tim yelled, “Clay!” and vaulted over the rail of the stands, falling three meters onto the soft mud, his shoes digging in as he landed.
“What the fuck are you doing here, kid?” Clay asked, shocked at the appearance of another person in his dreams.
“We've got to get out of here, now!” Tim said, ignoring the question. He started to jog towards his friend.
“NO! Don't come any closer!” Clay stopped him, raising his bat as if it was a gun capable of firing stop signs.
As he said that, a teenage boy in a white-with-black stripes baseball uniform appeared on third base in a rupture of sand and dust, bringing Tim to a halt. It stood between Tim and Clay, facing the former, his cap covering his eyes and the tip of his aluminium baseball bat set in the sand.
Tim raised his hand in peace and attempted to parley. “Okay, you're The Brother right? You can talk. I know you can. You're not like The Father I'm sure. Whatever he's offering you, it's not worth it!”
He blinked and Brother seemingly teleported towards him, a trail of risen dust behind it. Shocked by the sudden movement, Tim fell backwards onto the mud. The Brother raised its bat menacingly, ready to bring down the metal weapon on him. From behind, Clay swung his wooden bat at The Brother's head and the creature disappeared in a burst of dust just before the weapon collided.
Clay pulled his friend to his feet. “Okay, I have a lot of questions for you, kid.”
Brother reappeared with a whirl of dust and wind on the pitcher's mount and began its advance on them again, dragging its bat behind it. The pair stood their ground, Clay with his bat raised and Tim looking left and right for an escape route.
Zoot. Zun. Zoot. Zun.
The sound of the saw rang out loudly in Tim's mind, worrying him enough to turn his attention away from one homicidal dream creature to another. The door to the dugout burst off its hinges, flying out onto the muddied field. From the darkness of the corridor behind it, the Sawman stepped out, walking as calmly and slowly as it always had, which was what terrified Tim the most. The confidence in its invulnerability.
“What was that?” Clay asked, a rare tone of anxiety in his voice.
Back-to-back, Tim replied, “Nothing. Just prepare to run and keep your eyes on The Brother.”
“Brother? What brother?”
“That fucking baseball kid!” Tim yelled frustratingly. He continued to look for an escape but the only way out of the field – which was the door to the dugout – was guarded by the Sawman.
The Sawman stepped onto the grounds and the two felt their hearts trying to burst out of their chest from the sudden fear that swallowed them. Tim's mind went into overdrive, trying to figure out if The Father had been able to mark him as his victim before The Brother did. He was sure that since Clay had been marked by The Brother, the Sawman could kill his friend with no life and death consequences. Almost sure.
Then, as if remembering a homework he had forgotten to do, Tim realized something was amiss and urged, “We need to wake up. We need to wake up now.”
“Why?”
“Cause Stella's not here,” solving the puzzle that was his train of thoughts, Tim finished, “And neither is Joseph.”
XXX
02:53 a.m
8 days earlier
Lying on her neck on the ceiling of the car, Stella stayed as still as she could, trying to stop the drum bursting ringing that had built up in her ears. Warm blood flowed out of her mouth and around her nose, making it all the way to her strawberry blonde hair. Held upside down by her seatbelt, she watched dizzily as the gas tank from their car, which had detached itself in the impact and ensuing tumble, burn softly in the dark outside her window. The right half of the back-seats of the SUV had been crushed by the collision, compacting just passed the middle, almost reaching her side of the car by mere inches. The passenger's seat has been twisted outwards, but she could still see Tim's chest rising and falling with each breath. Reaching around the driver's headrest, she felt for her brother's neck but found his wrist instead, but breathed a sigh of relief when a pulse was detected.
She knew that from her position, she would be unable to do anything for them. Unable to turn her head in the awkward pose, she held her weight up with her left hand while searching for the release button for her seatbelt. She traced the strap and found the mechanism, but fumbled with the button for a moment before pressing it. Her body crumbled over the unsupported side and she winced as she twisted into an uncomfortable position.
Remaining her composure, she manoeuvred onto all fours despite the tight space, thanks to her small size, and began checking her body for injuries. Shoulders, elbows, hands, ribs, hips, knees, ankles. Everything seemed fine saved for a lost right premolar and a cut on her left temple, which explained the blood. She wiped the red off her face with the sleeves of her shirt, staining the green to brown.
Clay's body laid entirely face down on the ceiling of the car. Having unbuckled shortly before the crash, her brother was entirely out of his seat, leaning unnaturally with his right leg stuck out of the broken windscreen and his left below Tim's dangling head. The latter was still buckled in, his legs held in position against the side of his seat by the crushed door, though not in a noticeable vice hard enough to break them. Just a gentle pin. Both of them bled from more parts of their bodies, having taken more of the impact, but otherwise looked physically fine.
“Brother...” she shook his arms gently, with too little strength left to raise her voice and worried she might accidentally further any injuries if she shook too hard. “Wake up...”
She turned to Tim and did the same. Neither replied. Then, the fire from the near-empty gas tank flickered and she heard the closing of a car door. She could see the wheels of the pick-up from the right side of the car, as well as Joseph's feet heading towards them.
“Joseph...” she reminded herself of their adversary.
Miraculously, the pistol still hung from the cupholder it was last placed in. A silver lining in the cloud, since if the gun had been kept anywhere else, it would have likely be flung out of reach. Taking the firearm, she held it at her side, finger lightly on the trigger.
She grabbed one of the torches on the ceiling and climbed out of her window, hiding behind the overturned vehicle.
The gas from the tank ran out and the fire flickered to an ember.
Back in the dark.
The ringing stopped.
Safety off.