The Road to Safety
By Erik Gustafson
Copyright 2011
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The night was cold and the access road was dark. Andy Rence knew both of these truths first hand: Andy sat in his stalled car, watching puffs of his cold breath roll out of his mouth like dust from the depths of a tomb freshly opened after being sealed up for hundreds of years. And it was dark outside, a darkness that shrouded most of the world around him. A world he knew he didn’t want to see anyway because the access road ran he was stuck on ran along the back of West Moore Cemetery.
Even though Andy could barely see the cemetery, he knew that the still, beyond the ice cold rod iron fencing that looked like rows of medieval spears, silent stone markers of lives long past dotted the hills.
There was no moon and no clouds. Just the silver twinkling stars. The only light was a faint orange glow in the distance. The light was probably a half mile further down this seldom driven road where it crested a long, low hill.
Andy had never been down that road and tonight he did not intend to walk down there either; stupid nonfunctioning car or not. He didn’t need to investigate the light anyway, he thought.
Andy had been driving back home from the vast miles of fields and farmland that separated his town from the next town. He had been doing is regular Thursday night activity: cribbage with a bunch of buddies. Maple Street, where he was stranded, connected the two towns. If you were coming into town on Maple, the first sign of civilization ironically was the graveyard. If you were to come in from the Interstate, this cemetery would be about the last thing you saw before you realized you were lost, unless you were traveling onward to other town to say for example, go play in an amateur cribbage tournament.
Andy was in his mid 30s and was an exceptional cribbage player. In fact, this evening he had beaten all his friends. That victory meant he didn’t have to pay his share of the pizza the following week. But what Andy wasn’t good at, among many other things, was preparing for emergencies, like having his car die out in the middle of nowhere.
He felt alone and isolated. He didn’t have a blanket, coat, or a flashlight. He didn’t even have a first-aid kit, which he hoped he didn’t need.
The night was blistering cold and pitch black on that night in January when Andy’s car died at the intersection of Maple and an unnamed road that ran behind the cemetery.
He tried his cell phone; of course, the small device filled the dark car with bright light when he flipped it open. He noticed there was only one charge bar left. Andy glanced up at his eyes in the rear view mirror, admired his dilated pupils and how his facial features looked sunken and heavily shadowed in this odd light. He wanted to call his father but there was no signal.
He cranked the car again and heard a click clank; his car was still dead.
He had to do something. Andy pulled the handle on his door and gave it a soft push. He heard the familiar creek and groan of the heavy door, as if the old car was tired of letting him in and out. Cold air assaulted him and he shivered. Andy noticed that opening the door didn’t even cause the dome light to come on.
He climbed out and looked up in wonder at the millions of stars filling the night; the thick band of the Milky Way seemed to follow the same general direction as the side road. It was breathtaking and Andy admired the stars for a time. There were so many stars that he was not able to pick out familiar constellations like the Big Dipper.
It was so quiet outside.
No sounds at all.
Andy stood in the intersection, already shivering, and turned his attention to the roads around him. It was dark in every direction except for the tiny circle of light far off up the side road. The road itself was empty and lifeless; no cars anywhere he could see and no one was out driving. He flipped his phone open again and held it high, scanning for a signal.
Nothing.
Andy didn’t know what to do.
He could wait for help but he face was already numb and his fingers were getting tight. He could continue along his route up Maple on foot. He guessed it was about three miles to the nearest homes. He could scale the rod iron fence and steal across through the cemetery, probably decreasing that three-mile hike by close to half, but the graveyard was too dark and creepy. He could walk the back road and investigate the light- it could be a place to get help. That wouldn’t take long- 30 minutes tops and he might be safe and warm. It might just be a street light. Andy could clearly hear his father’s voice telling him to remain with his vehicle- that’s how you get found.
But Andy kept looking up the road at the distant light. It might be a warm building. He pushed the door closed.
He abandoned his car and trudged off into the wind toward the light. He recalled the expression that there is light at the end of the tunnel and he chuckled. His laugh sounded loud in the quiet night and lingered inside his head.
He left the pavement on Maple and stepped onto the crunchy gravel access road. Off the main road, to his left was farmland and fields (it was black darkness rolled over those fields but he knew from living here all his life) and to his right was the cemetery, neither of which provided any protection from the piercing wind or the biting cold. He didn’t have a coat, but he did have on a long sleeved shirt and jeans. He walked fast, taking long exaggerated strides.
The access road was like a tunnel with darkness on either side.
Andy kept glancing nervously toward the cemetery as he walked. It looked peaceful in the dark: vast open areas of gently rising hills populated by perfectly placed trees: an obvious illusion of death. Those sinister trees were actually sentries guarding their dead. It was too dark to see much else. The headstone are mostly flat slabs these days not like the creepy old fashioned head stone you saw in movies, Andy thought.
No ominous, leaning crosses or huge rounded headstones that looked like tongues or arms reaching out of the ground. There were no eroding, broken concrete angels out here. In the night, and probably the day too, these burial grounds looked more like a park than a place for the dead.
There was a low howl off somewhere in the cemetery. A sound he had not heard while he was still on Maple. He felt his heart sped up and he fought off an urge to run.
Instead, he flipped open his cell phone and walked up to the tall iron fence surrounding the cemetery. He stared through the bars but couldn’t see anything. He turned the phone around so the light shone outward and stuck his hand out through two bars. That provided no assistance in the light department but it did make him think something would reach out and grab his arm.
The howl continued. He strained to see anything. A shadow seemed to move, far off. It could be just blackness on darkness shifting somehow together. Still, it made Andy retract his arm and step backward. He saw the movement again- high up on the hill. He imagined a twisted, howling, rotting corpse stumbling its way down the hill toward him.
This time he was sure he saw something: the stars over the crest of the hill vanished for a moment.
So dark.
The soft wail returned and another patch of stars vanished.
He was scared but he boldly approached the fence and strained to see in the dark. There it was again. The young man watched in terror at the same movement at the same spot. Al
most all the way up the hill, toward the horizon. His heart was thudding. What was up there?
In the darkness, he could make out the outline of a black tree and realized he was only watching a branch blowing in the wind; back and forth, hiding and exposing stars as it did. Andy laughed and looked down at his phone.
He realized he left it open and the battery low indicator was flashing, screaming to be charged. He snapped the phone closed and muttered under his cold breath, which dissipated in the chilly night air.
But still, something had to have made that murderous moan. He tired to ignore those thoughts by walking toward the lone light up the road. The light he prayed was connected to a building and safety.
The road was getting steeper and the light was getting closer. He pressed on.
Andy sensed he was dangerously colder now. How long had he been staring at the branch blowing in the cemetery? Stupid.
He was shivering and his hair felt ice cold to the touch. So did his clothes for the matter. His toes were icy cold as well and his footfalls sounded distant and muffled, which is what alerted him in the first place to his impending hypothermia. Did that mean his ears were freezing and he was losing his hearing? He did not know. His frosty breath puffed out from his mouth and, in an attempt to warm himself, he imagined he was a fire breathing dragon burning his way through a village.
Still clutching his near-dead cell phone, he continued his desperate march.
He was maybe half the distance from where he thought he would be far enough to see the source of the light when his cell phone rang. It clamored loudly but only once. In fact, the phone was silent before the startled man realized it was ringing.
Maybe it didn’t ring at all.
His fingers were to cold and non-functional to maneuver the phone and flip the cover open. It took several tries and finally it flipped open. He almost dropped it.
The phone lit up faithfully in the dark night like a newborn star shining in the vastness of space.
One missed called, the phone read.
Andy screamed out in frustration. The phone also had the ‘view now’ message up and his cold, stiff finger moved over to the OK button.
Instead of a phone number flashing up on the scream, the screen went black and for an instant, Andy thought the charge died but instead a grayish-white figure with hideous red eyes and tangled rotten teeth was staring up at him from inside the cell phone.
Andy gasped and dropped the phone. It crashed to the ground. The battery cover popped off and the battery fell out.
The cell phone stayed lit.
“What the hell?”
Andy blinked, recoiled and stooped toward the phone, hoping his mind was playing a trick on him.
As he bent down to grab the disassembled phone, he saw the ghostly white figure was still there. Grinning, the figure swayed in the confines of the cell phone screen. Andy screamed again and watched in horror as tiny ribbons of white smoke started to rise up out of the phone, curling up and out of the phone into the night.
Andy bolted.
Unfortunately, he panicked and instead of running down the street, he charged straight into the iron fence and fell down with a hard thud. He put his hand to his nose and felt warm blood. It burned but the warmth made his face tingle and feel good. He looked back and saw that the hazy, white smoke was growing out the cell phone like a serpent rising out of a snake charmer’s basket.
Andy sat on the cold ground transfixed by the gray funnel rising out of his cell phone. The smoke was like genie coming out of its bottle. It was taking the shape of some demon. It couldn’t be real. It had to a side effect of his dropping body temperature.
He saw an evil apparition. He heard laughter and from the center of the smoke, he saw two rotten, unfocused red eyes form.
Andy picked himself up and ran.
He didn’t realize it, but instead of running toward the light or even back to his car, he was running across the barren field on the far side of the road. The field was plowed and full of ruts. Andy kept twisting his ankles and jerking from side to side; falling and screaming.
The last time he fell, he looked back and saw the creature fully formed and floating across the air, menacing down over him. It looked like a circus clown with a ghastly white face and bright red nose that looked like it was on fire.
He got up and intended to flee.
Andy right foot was throbbing from the last fall and he could hardly put any weight on it. It didn’t matter. Before he could take another step through the field, the phantom collapsed on top of Andy. He coughed and looked away, toward the heavens. He saw the innocent twinkle of millions of on-looking stars.
He thought the stars looked like eyes.
The specter pressed against him and howled. Andy felt a heavy pressure on his chest and let out a half-hearted moan as his ribs snapped and tore through his lungs and heart. He felt like he was drowning.
The last thing Andy saw was the glow of his cell phone, he was vaguely aware he was being drug toward it.
** THE END **
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