Helltown - Jeremy Bates Page 0,13

and the silt and the clay would swallow him whole just as it had swallowed the baby shoes.

This didn’t happen, of course, and when he was on the road again, the night sky above him, he chided himself for spooking so easily.

Everybody was back inside the two vehicles. Headlights pierced the omnipresent fog, turning it iridescent so that it seemed to glow with a radiance of its own. Jeff honked the BMW’s horn impatiently.

“Yeah, yeah,” Steve mumbled, swallowing the lump in his throat. “I’m coming.”

CHAPTER 3

“You know that part in scary movies when somebody does something really stupid and everyone hates them for it? This is it.”

Jeepers Creepers (2001)

As soon as Steve climbed into the front passenger seat, the cool leather crackling beneath his weight, Jeff said, “Well?”

Steve looked at him. “Well what?”

“Show me the shoes.”

“Did you take them?”

“Take them?” Jeff said. He was chewing a shoot of beard grass, which dangled from his mouth like a long, limp cigarette.

“Are you really going to play dumb?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“The baby shoes,” Steve said patiently. “You took them.”

“They weren’t there?” Jenny said.

Steve shook his head. “They took them.”

“Whatever you say, li’l buddy.” Jeff tossed the beard grass in the foot well, swallowed a belt of vodka from the bottle in his hand, then tucked the bottle neatly into his jacket’s inner pocket. He turned the key in the ignition slot. The engine vroomed to life. Hot air roared from the vents. “Need You Tonight” by INXS blasted from the speakers.

“I like these guys!” Mandy said. “They’re from the UK or Scotland, I think.”

Jeff snorted laughter.

“Australia,” Steve told her, deciding not to point out that the UK included Scotland. He turned down the volume. “Anyway, I’m serious. Let me see them.”

Jeff seemed pleasantly exasperated. “There were no fucking baby shoes, bro,” he said. “Mandy—tell him.”

“We didn’t see them,” she said.

Steve shook his head; he didn’t care. He knew they were having him on. In fact, now that he thought about it, he wouldn’t be surprised if one of them had leaned over the side of the bridge and made that noise he’d heard.

He was about to mention this when a black car thundered past them so fast it left a wake of air that rattled the BMW.

“Fucking hell!” Jeff said, the curse drowned out by Mandy and Jenny’s exclamations of surprise.

“Asshole!” Mandy said.

“That was a hearse,” Steve said, noting the vehicle’s distinctive quarter panels.

“Bloody kids!” Jeff said.

“It was a hearse!” Steve repeated.

In the distance the red taillights flashed, angry red eyes in the eddying fog.

“Look, it’s stopping,” Mandy said.

The brake lights disappeared, replaced by the sweep of the headlights as the vehicle turned to face them. Two small, bright orbs glowed malevolently.

“Are they coming back?” Jenny said, a tremble in her voice.

“Maybe we should turn around?” Mandy said.

The hearse high beamed them.

“Oh the little pricks!” Jeff said, grinning. “They’ve got balls!” He flashed his high beams back.

“What are you doing?” Mandy demanded. “Jeff? Answer me!”

Jeff buzzed down his window, stuck his fist out, and effed them off with his middle finger. It was a pointless gesture, considering there was no way they could see his finger through the mist.

The hearse’s engine revved, building into a chainsaw-like screech. Then the vehicle shot toward them.

Jeff released the parking brake, shoved the transmission into first, popped the clutch, and goosed the gas. The tires squealed as the car lurched forward.

“Jeff!” Mandy wailed. “Don’t you dare!”

“Stop!” Jenny cried. “Please! I want to get out!”

Jeff smashed through the gears, reaching third and sixty miles an hour in a few seconds.

The g-forces flattened Steve to his seat. He fumbled for his seatbelt, tugged it across his chest, buckled it. He wanted to tell Jeff to stop, but the girls were already shouting at him to do exactly that, and he wasn’t listening.

As soon as they shot past the end of the bridge the canopy knitted together and blotted out the sky once more, creating the sensation that they were bulleting down the bore of a pistol.

Jeff stared intensely ahead at the road, his mouth twisted into a bitter grimace, his hands gripping the steering wheel in the ten and two positions tight enough to squeeze the blood from his knuckles.

He was a man who’d just gone all in on the pot of a lifetime, and right then Steve knew that he wasn’t going to yield the road.

Steve was suddenly furious. He couldn’t believe Jeff was risking a potentially fatal head-on collision, risking all of