Chapter 10

Jonathan and Clancy: Now

     At first neither of the men really knew where to go or even what to say. For awhile Jonathan simply drove. It was Clancy who finally broke the silence. "Much as I fear the place, I think I know where we need to go." Clancy stared out the window of the pickup as he spoke and his voice took on a far away quality. "Before I ... left... before he sent me through, I had collected pictures of several dragon drawings in bathroom stalls all along the interstate. There were dates on some of them. If the date on the newspaper in the hospital lobby was current then that means the next dated dragon falls two days from now." Jonathan considered this for a moment then asked Clancy where they needed to go. The other man didn't respond immediately, he just stared out the window. Jonathan was about to ask again when Clancy spoke in a low whisper. "Connecticut. There's a motel off I-95... room 319." Jonathan pulled a well-worn atlas from the truck's console and offered it to Clancy who refused it. "I know the way." he said. "I've driven this route so many times I could travel it in my sleep, probably have a few times actually."
     The pair drove for hours on end, stopping occasionally to swap seats or to use the restroom, only at places Clancy had deemed "safe". When he wasn't driving Clancy studied the contents of the wooden box mostly in silence. Jonathan was so focused on the road ahead and his own troubled thoughts that at first he didn't even notice that the former salesman was crying in the passenger seat beside him. The man was holding the newspaper clippings that detailed his own disappearance and unusual return. Clancy was sobbing, his whole body trembling. Jonathan didn't think he'd ever seen a more broken person in all his life. He pulled the truck off the highway and parked in the shade of an overpass. For a moment he was unsure what to say, the man's tears made him feel awkward. After a brief bout of embarassed hesitancy Jonathan placed an arm around the crying man's shoulder. Clancy buried his face in Jonathan's jacket. Jonathan could feel a feverish heat pouring out of the other man and as he attempted to speak words of comfort he found his voice shaky and his own eyes wet. He hadn't truly allowed himself to mourne his father's passing or that of his uncle and now he saw a reflection of his own broken heart in the pitiful, tortured being weeping against his chest. He was alone. Truly alone, and yet he felt that if somehow he could complete this one journey, he might be able to find the strength to move on. Clancy finally stopped crying and though his eyes were rimmed in red he seemed better, more resolved.
     Several hours later Jonathan pulled the Chevy into a parking spot at a less than impressive motel and left Clancy waiting in the truck as he entered the lobby. Returning with room keys for 319 Jonathan found Clancy already standing in front of the room's door. Jonathan joined him and found that it took almost more courage than he had to place the keycard in the reader. The little light above the reader flashed first red and then green with a barely audible click from the mechanism within. Jonathan opened the door and stepped inside. Jonathan froze and when Clancy pushed past him he understood why. The room was wrong. It looked exactly as it had the previous two times Clancy had entered it and there was nothing in its appearance that spoke of its wrongness and yet the room was incredibly and unbearably wrong. There was a heaviness in the air and a sense of barely restrained danger. It almost felt like there was a freight train silently plowing toward the two men from the otherside of the drab and faded wallpaper. The shadows seemed to be wanting to rush out from under the twin beads and nightstands and plunge the room into living darkness. Their stomachs were suddenly sick and a cold sweat had broken out on each of their faces. It seemed that each step deeper into the room required a herculean effort. Clancy could feel the trucker's presence in the room like a physical thing. The space reeked of him. The bearded face flashed unbidden in his mind's eye and Clancy couldn't stifle a whimper. He cringed as Jonathan stepped to the bathroom door and opened it then reached into the pitch black to flip on the overhead light. Part of him was certain that unseen teeth would bite Jonathan's arm off right at the elbow and that the dragon's face would emerge slowly from the blackness, its eyes bulging in their sockets while its other heads whispered his name. Instead the bathroom was illuminated in harsh florescent white. The dragon was still there, drawn on a four inch square title just to the right of the shower nozzle. Underneath it the date was also still there. "Tomorrow." Jonathan said. " Whatever is coming, it will happen tomorrow."
     It was then that Clancy turned and almost missed the brief flash of pale flesh that darted back into the darkness under the nearest bed. He screamed for Jonathan. Together they cautiously approached the bed. With a silent nod they each grabbed a corner of the bed frame and overturned it. The hooded figure flew from the shadows crawling up the motel room wall, shattering the nightstand lamp, and finally perching upside down from the center of the ceiling. It must have somehow passed through the shower then sought the familiar darkness of the shadows. Jonathan wondered how many people had slept in the bed not knowing what lurked beneath. As the figure hung from the ceiling the hood fell to the floor revealing a yellowish head of bees, which scattered from the stump of its neck and filled the room.

Laura: Now

     Just as she heard the trucker enter the room beyond the kitchen Laura's eyes found a thin line tracing up the center of the wood paneled wall beside the cupboard. It was barely visible and had she not been so desperate for escape, Laura may have missed it but there it was all the same, and now that she'd seen it, Laura was certain it was more than a simple crack. She pressed her shoulder against it and felt despair flare in her heart when nothing happened, but as she leaned against the panel harder it gave inward. She pushed the panel aside enough to slip through and then slid it back into place. She could still hear the man storming through the living room area. Laura heard the crashing sounds of furniture being overturned and the almost primate sound of his grunting and heavy breathing as he searched for her.She backed stealthily away from the panel and nearly toppled as she found herself stepping into empty space. She hadn't realized she was standing on stairs until she'd almost fallen. Taking each step slowly now and bracing herself with a hand on the wall to her left, Laura carefully descended the stairs at last finding herself in a damp basement. There was moonlight peeking through the cracks between the 2x4's that formed the basement wall on the far side of the room. The light cast a zebra pattern of across the dirty concrete floor which was littered with trash and rusted tools. Leaning in one corner was a rusting wood-handled sledgehammer but Laura found it too heavy to lift in her weakened state. Moving the hammer aside however, she found a hatchet with a rubber grip lying atop a pile of old, yellowed newspapers. She lifted the hatchet from the pile and instantly felt more prepared. From somewhere behind her, Laura heard movement and as she spun she raised the newly found weapon.
     The man tied up in the corner was very thin and seemed quite sickly. Had he not lifted his head to look at her she would have thought he was dead. Long dried blood had colored one side of his face a dark brown. His voice was little more than a low cough but Laura didn't have to hear the words to recognize "Help me." come from the man's cracked lips. She hurried to his side and used the kitchen knife which was sharper than the hatchet to cut through the cables around the mans arms and legs. He was older, in his sixties or perhaps even his seventies, his condition made his age hard to determine. "Is there a way out?" she asked as quietly as she could. The man gestured towards the far wall where Laura could just make out the faint outline of a door. Helping the man to his feet Laura offered him her shoulder which he refused; somehow the old guy was able to stay upright. Laura thought he must be tougher than he looked. She found the door locked with a rusty chain which fell away after two strikes from the hatchet. She hated to make the noise, but it seemed to be the only way out.
     She scanned the yard beyond and saw no sign of the trucker. The eighteen wheeler stood silhouetted in the light of the moon like a sleeping beast. She silently motioned for the older man to follow then sprinted from the basement to the side of truck and crouched behind one of its enormous tires. The man again impressed her by matching her almost step for step. The house was silent and dark which unsettled her. She could no longer hear the trucker and now a feeling of being watched overwhelmed her. Was he standing just out of sight behind one of those blackened square windows looking right at her? A sudden instinctual drive compelled her to check under the truck but she didn't see the man there either. Still crouching she eased past the old man, making her way toward the back of the trailer. She didn't see the attack coming. The trucker had been waiting perched upon the tailgate of the vehicle and when Laura rounded the corner he lunged at her, knocking her to the ground. The red scales were back now and more pronounced, covering not just his neck but now his arms as well. The trucker's eyes were nearly bursting from his face, red with burst vessels. The old man suddenly threw himself at the trucker and while his attention was distracted Laura buried the head of the hatchet in the trucker's skull. The man collapsed and in a moment was still, a pool of blood forming around his head. She turned to the old man. "Thanks." she said. "What's your name?" He extended a hand toward her and replied. "Reginald. Reginald Bowers."