Every drifter worth their salt knows you don't stop if you hit something mysterious while driving in the dark.
If you didn't see it, you don't want to know.
Leaf Somerville was a drifter. He'd played by the road rules all his life on the great American highway.
Not that he had strictly followed the wisdom of the road or anything like that. Give a dude a break, he's only human.
And sometimes drunk.
Not on the road, though.
That was one he'd stuck to.
He was on his way to Joliet when it happened.
The gas station was a couple exits down, he'd been this way plenty of times before. Truth be told, he ain't got no business in Joliet.
No business worth its doin', anyway.
Just that Sweet Cherry lived down this way an' he -
well, he really oughtn't, is what.
And he knew that, God's honest.
But here he was drivin' hell for leather anyway, like the car'd made its own damned choices and oh, looky here, we're on the road to Joliet, aw shucks how'd such a thing occur?
Thing was, the road to hell may be paved with good intentions.
The road to Joliet was paved with, well.
Horny intentions, if he was bein' honest, and Leaf always was and never was and so it was.
He pulled off and parked the beast at the pump, headed inside for an iced tea and strawberry Twizzlers, the road man's best friend. Little kick, energy, coffee was always bad news 'cause you had to go to the can too fast an' a drifter needs road time.
Sadsack Billy standin' behind the counter didn't pay him nonevermind, but rang him up dutiful an' Leaf threw down a fifty for a tank an' Leaf remembered, well, the days when tens of less scratch would do from here to Kalamazoo but times was what they was an' so on.
He muttered a vague thanks to Billy who gave him a convenial menial nod, the nod of gas station men everywhere, an' they were the both of them road men for that moment aware of the might an' the mercy of that long great ribbon of highway or so said Saint Woody patron saint of all roads and roadpeople, or maybe that was just the quick wanting stab of camaraderie in ol' Leaf who was like to live an' die on those ol' convolutin' highfalutin' arteries of this great nation, young though he still may be.
Whatever it was an' however it was, Leaf filled the tank all dutiful, and with fuel for both man and steed set, he climbed back inside with his provisions an' gunned it outta that station, forever to forget Billybeans there behind the counter like so many other Billys and Lilys all around the place, all around his life.
The road, in its ins and its outs, was a sacred profane profundity and Leaf never tired of the old thing no matter how long and no matter where or when because every single moment breathed a new horizon into the experience enough that he marveled at the expense some of these thoses paid for travel. In his considered opinion they missed everything that made it great, because money deleted the problems yes but it deleted much else besides, and he envisioned a kind of white boredom endless in perfect white tablecloths and white sheets and white walls and modern furniture and white white white. Hospitals are white an' the world is full of color, Leaf knew the value of such things without slapping a dollar sign on it all.
So he and Gregor, his car, once upon a time a beast of mighty muscle but now a workhorse daily driver of a Pontiac from a place that no longer existed, traveled into the approaching night, Leaf in anticipation of what he'd find in Joliet, he told himself he was lookin' for day labor even though this wasn't the time of year for it in Joliet no way, an' he could lie an' lie an' lie to himself but some body parts were truth-tellers an' he knew the score.
He was arguing with himself, one Twizzler in his mouth as he cruised down the empty by-road in the darkness, a shortcut to Joliet he'd known back when his entanglement with Sweet Cherry had meant three years caught in a web until he broke free.
But then, there he went again, with that liar's reasoning. Ain't no fault of Cherry. He'd made the web. Heard all the folderol about life with regular people, Christmases and friends and so on. His mama used to tell him he needed a social support but he'd had enough betrayal and allsorts during his early years to know that as they said trust was earned in drops and lost in buckets and so he steered toward road life and had steered clear, until Cherry.
There was a loud thump.
Right beneath his wheels. There in the dark.
"Ah, hell no," he said aloud quietly to himself or perhaps Gregor.
He ain't seen a damned thing, not in the headlights or otherwise.
"Don't slow down. Don't stop. Don't get outta the car," he whispered the road rules to himself like he were countin' the rosary. "Just keep drivin'."
But what if it was a person?
"It weren't no person, I'da seen that," he argued himself back. "Nor no creature. Ain't seen a thing."
Yeah but you definitely ran over somethin'.
"Right, an' I don't really believe in monsters but I don't wanna have no reason to start," he said aloud. "An' humans are monster enough as it is."
Okay but what if it was a little kid
Now this was the first time any of it had really given Leaf pause.
You wouldna seen a little kid. 'Cause they're little.
"An' what the everlovin' fuck would a little kid be doin' all the way out here in the boonies?" he demanded of his own mind.
Plenty. You remember when you were a kid, you an' that neighbor boy were always runnin' around in the woods, an' you ain't listen to your mama hollerin' to come home for dinner 'cause you were havin' such a great time an' you worried her half to death -
"Called the cops on us an' everythin'," said Leaf, smiling at the memory. "First time I had cops called on my dumb ass. Wouldn't be the last, neither."
He sighed.
Against all his better judgement, he pulled over.
Gregor was ticking down, engine cooling in the darkness, as Leaf got out of the car and was led by the red taillights back a few hundred paces from the initial sound.
There.
In the ring thrown from his cellphone light, he could see blood seeping toward him on the pavement.
When he got closer, all he saw was blood.
Whatever had been there moments ago had already left - or been dragged.
"Fuck," he said to himself, dragging a hand down one side of his face.
He hoped to hell this wasn't some kinda ambush.
He was no newcomer to the road. He'd heard stories.
Stories he wished he hadn't heard, because they meant he was doubly stupid, falling for one of the oldest tricks in the book, ignoring one of the oldest rules in it too, probably made around the same time.
He flashed the light of his phone toward the sides of the road, where the blood trailed off into the bushes. He was unwilling to go much further, and had put quite enough time into such folly by this point.
The woods on both sides of this particular highway were thick and overgrown. He hadn't been this way in a while because the new freeways made it easier for drifters to get around and they no longer used the former highway systems for the most part. It just so happened that the way to Cherry's apartment building was somewhere along this way and he was something of a sucker for the scenic drive. Freeways were great and all, when he had work or he was looking for it, all business, but the romantic in him enjoyed a little bit of nostalgia and reconnecting with nature in a way only drifters really seemed to do.
Sometimes, though, life on the road could easily tumble from mundane and unremarkable to eerie in a remarkably short amount of time.
This was that moment in horror films, he knew, when the audience already knew the character onscreen was most likely toast and had already pushed their luck to the extreme.
But sometimes they got lucky. And with a wistful thought for Cherry, he hoped he'd win that particular roulette spin, both ways.
He agreed with the horror movie audience, though - he'd already tempted fate enough and as they said these days had been playing stupid games with the likely outcome. He didn't want to win any stupid prizes, today or any day.
So it was high time he hightailed it outta Dodge and went back to his original mission of searching for some tail of his own.
He turned around and headed back to Gregor, when the phone flashlight randomly illuminated a different part of the forest, as well as something in it.
And now there were two things Leaf really wished he didn't know.