Midnight Crossing

Ken lost himself in the troubling memories of his youth, too much to crack up open to his boss alone in a car in the middle of the night.

Their conversations had trailed off and the car was comfortably silent until the bright orange of safety cones, arranged in several rows, were lit up by the headlights.

A chuckle escaped Taryn, and mockingly she made a ghostly Ooo.

They both were laughing aloud as the rental pulled up to the security checkpoint station on the side off of the road by the cones. A bright white beam of light made a circle pattern in front of them, casting the guard holding the flashlight in shadow, except for his glowing yellow vest.

As their rental car slowed to a stop by the small guard shack, a single motion light on a short pole outside the station clicked on, and casted dim light on the guard.

He looked like every man in a uniform does whether he is a cop, security guard, or mailman.

The flashlight beam disappeared, and he took a step toward the passenger window.

His face was stoic, but friendly enough as he asked them standard protocol questions like where they were going and if they had any exotic plants or seeds in their possession.

They shook their heads, and both tried not to snicker since they were on their way to aquire way more serious contraband.

“Just one more thing before I send you folks on your way. Did you happen to notice anything strange up the road?” The uniformed man asked.

Neither of them answered for a moment, and he continued, “There were some kids on dirtbikes that came sped up in a cloud of dust, babbling about a massive animal chasing them, almost outrunning their bikes. They wanted me to call the conservative police or something, but I told them to forget and get lost before I held them for biking in an unauthorized area.

“Right before I saw your headlights, I could have sworn I heard howling and rummaging around, but nothing was out here.” The man paused and took a quick look around.

Before either Ken or Taryn could respond, the guard waved it off, “Nevermind me, you two have a nice night. Drive safely.”

He backed away from their car, but stayed outside the shack as they slowly pulled away. In the rearview, Ken could see the flashlight sweeping across the cones behind them.

The rental was quiet for the rest of their ride, leaving Ken to stay awake by getting lost again in his imagination and memories. He mostly imagined how horribly terrifying it would have been to hear or see a creature that howled in the night and chased down teens on loud dirtbikes, instead of running away as most predators on their own would have.

Ken never thought it possible to be grateful for that night all that time ago, but he was feeling very thankful that he had not actually seen anything.

The hours it took the GPS to finally bring within the last turn of to their destination drifted by. Ken was disassociating for most of it, and could not account for all the curves in the road, and the stop signs and traffic lights over that time.

They were driving along a private road, tucked away among massive trees, that finally looped around a paved circle driveway. In the middle of the loop was an elegant fountain, and hugging the outer edge of the drive were thick lush green hedges that lined the front of a modern built cabin house. The front of the house bowed slightly inward to align with the top of the circle driveway.

Almost as soon as the car came to a stop, a tall and burly man wearing all black stepped out of one of the sturdy wooden french doors, and into the pale light of the early morning.

“He’s in the kitchen. Good to see you, Taryn.” The man’s voice was too deep to sound very welcoming.

Ken got out of the car, headed to the trunk to get both of their go-bags, but was stopped by the man’s stern tone that he would take care of their stuff and the car. Ken couldn’t help a glance at Taryn, who was yawning and waving her hand for him to follow her inside.

The inside of the cabin had even more modern tones than the outside, but still had a stone fireplace in the center of the living room, an immaculate antler chandelier, and a deep red stained wooden staircase that led to an upstairs loft. Everything else, like the television and personal snack vending machine, seemed state-of-the-art.

An older man called for Taryn from the kitchen.

“My child! So very good to see you again after all this time!” An excited middle aged man, dressed in lounge shirt, loose pants, and a pair of comfy house shoes said as he came shuffling out from behind the kitchen island.

They hugged and Taryn replied while in embrace, “It has only been a few months. We can’t go very long without getting into some trouble together sooner or later. “

The man, a family member that Ken assumed was at least not her father as he knew of his passing, bellowed out a laugh in agreement.

“Well, that comes with the territory of being my favorite niece. Your father raised you right, but your cousins…” He flicked his hands in indifference. “Pigs, the lot of them.”

Taryn chuckled and pushed her Uncle’s shoulder, explaining that her cousins couldn’t help but follow his own sister who was a lawyer. They both agreed her cousins were too stupid to be lawyers and had to settle as cops.

“Enough talk of the swine, let’s eat some bacon!” Taryn’s uncle exclaimed with a big grin on his face.

Ken was introduced once they all sat down, and he ate a few bites before excusing himself to follow the guy with his and Taryn’s overnight bags.

He had a shower and laid his head down, trying to let himself drift to sleep, but his mind would not stop spinning. He sat up on the side of the bed, and looked out into the huge picture window, the blinds were not drawn together completely so there was a slip to see the wilderness outside.

Even in the daylight, the massive tree canopy loomed over the forest floor, blocking out the sun. It was brighter than it was when he first arrived, but the whole property looked to be under the shadow of the trees. He could see even a sliver of a light beam among the tree trunks, only an arms distance away from each in most spots. There were spots that were completely blacked out by thicket and bushes, especially near the edge.

Ken flopped back on the bed when he began to feel vulnerable to what he could not see.

Sleep came with difficulty, but his exhaustion kept him asleep for hours until it was in the afternoon. He felt groggy, and was damp in cold sweat that reminded him of his nightmares. All he could remember was it was an awful mash up of an old asylum, cornfields, and wilderness.

With his back turned to the window, Ken readied himself, packed back up his bag, and straightened out the room he was sure a maid would clean.

He was a little embarrassed to open the bedroom door to hear Taryn and her Uncle talking in a room that could not have been that far. Ken hoped that they had not been awake too long so he would not feel like he was seen as a lazy bum who sleeps in. Even though he felt it was in his defense that he had driven for almost 10 hours straight the day before.

Of course, neither of them cared how late he had gotten up, and her Uncle even expressed his surprise that Ken had not stayed asleep longer. The man of the house did care that Ken had his fill of food and waved him to join them at a table with a buffet of all types of food on a different table along the wall.

Ken piled his plate with breakfast foods and a couple triangle pieces of a club sandwich, and tried not to pay attention to the looming wilderness right in front of him through the grand floor to ceiling windows and patio door. He picked a chair with his back to the outside, and tried his best to focus on his food.

After a while of chewing, and forcing away intrusive thoughts, Ken told them he was stepping out for a smoke.

He walked through the living room and out the front door. The rental car was parked broadside facing him, and the guy that had greeted them last night was shoving the last of what looked like three duffle bags into the trunk. Ken casually looked around, trying to make it look like he was minding his own business, and followed the stone porch away from the guy.

The porch turned to steps that led down to a stone path that rounded the side of the cabin house. The sun was up at high noon and was shining on a wooden bench swing in the yard, partially shaded by a slatted wooden archway.

Ken couldn’t help but feel a little childish as he rocked on his heels, gently swinging himself as he lit a joint.

It only took a couple puffs before he leaned back against the swing, looking into the depths of the forest to admire its beauty now that the sun had filled it with beams of light. He laughed to himself about how he was so freaked out by this same scenic woodland, and all it took to relieve his panic was some pot.

The anxiety creeped back almost immediately after he had thought himself rid of it.

Ken could not shake his unreadiness to drive along the deserted desert back roads again. He knew that even if they left in a hurry right then, they would still be in the middle of nowhere when the sun went down. They would probably be routed on the same road, and go through the same security checkpoint where the guard was maybe pranked by some teenagers, but seemed worried about it.

He remembered the guard briefing mentioning hearing howling and rustling outside, and wondered if those kids were just really trying to freak him out, or if there was something out there.

As Ken was puffing away, thinking about what kind of animal in existence would run after loud dirt bikes, and be able to keep pace, he heard a voice behind him.

Nearly jumping out of his skin, and dropping the half-smoked joint, Ken jerked his head around to see Taryn walking down the path.

“Already got that pothead paranoia huh?” Taryn jokingly asked as she strode over and plopped herself down next to him. She gave him a shove, took it from his fingers, and inhaled deeply before coughing up smoke.

Ken laughed at her, but decided not to return the friendly nudge. “Yeah, it’s been awhile for you too? I have just started smoking it again.” He plucked his joint back from her fingers as she was bent over in the middle, smiling and coughing.

Through her hacking up a lung, Taryn told him she never stopped but had the world’s smallest lungs. “Hope you weren’t having too much fun out here because we should get going unless you want Unc to make us stay another night?”

Ken shook his head, and offered her one last puff, which Taryn took and coughed up joyfully.

As they rounded the path back towards their parked rental, Taryn’s Uncle was walking out the front, behind his burly errand boy who had their bags in each of his meaty fists.

Taryn embraced her Uncle, and he scolded them both for smoking pot before their long trip. Like a teenager, Taryn lied and said Ken was just smoking a cigarette and she smoked the joint, but her uncle gave her a disbelieving smirk.

Ken shook the man’s hand, thankful Taryn mostly saved his reputation with her overlord Uncle, who he had heard some serious gangster stories about.

He waited in the rental car to give them some privacy for their long winded goodbye.

The pot had calmed him down for the most part, but now that he was behind the wheel again, Ken was feeling anxious by the resurfacing thoughts about what creature could have been out there in the middle of nowhere. He managed to force away thoughts of it having to be paranormal or an unknown species, only to become helpless to his own memory of the most terrifying night of his life.

Much to his joy, Taryn snapped him out of his own thoughts when she plopped down in the passenger seat by him, immediately expressing her wanting to make it home to her own bed before the sun came up again.

They were blocked from the early evening daylight by some clouds and the dense tree canopy above the private drive. Once they turned off the Uncle’s miles-long driveway and were on the road again, the orange orb lowered just above the treeline was not offering much sunlight even in the moments when the sky was clear.

Judging the time and GPS, Ken guessed they would be back in the perpetual darkness of the desert by midnight.

He stayed preoccupied with their conversation for a couple hours, and then the roads got longer before turns, the sun dipped below the trees, and Ken looked over to see Taryn was asleep. She was curled up, facing the window away from him so he couldn’t see her face, but he could hear her slow steady breathing.

He yawned, and turned up the radio to avoid being lulled to sleep by the quietness. It was enough to keep alert, but not enough to keep him from thinking about creatures and other things that could be lurking in the darkness.

Ken was in deep thought about the weirdness that had been talked about lately between him, Taryn, and the checkpoint guard. He was certain his eyes were just playing tricks on him because of his state of mind, but he was sure that he was seeing pale colored blurs pass by the windows and rearview mirrors. Ken knew that could not be possible though since there were no headlights or street lamps also passing by, and so his eyes must be lying to him.

The security checkpoint came rushing up on the left side, and Ken barely tapped the brakes, slowing down gently.

This time there were no rows of cones, and Ken did not see the guard shack until it was on the far side of the headlights. He sped back when he realized there was no need to stop, and remembered the duffle bags of some type of criminal contraband stuffed in the trunk. As Ken sped by, the motion light over the shack flicked on, and he quickly glanced over to see an empty station and nobody around.

Taryn stirred awake, looking around confused why their speed had fluctuated. Ken explained he thought they would have to stop again but there was nobody around. She nodded sleepishly and rested her head back on the seat.

Within a few minutes she was forced awake by the pressure of the seat belt around her chest and stomach as Ken brought the rental to an abrupt stop.

Ahead in the headlights was a row of orange safety cones, and standing behind them was the guard they had seen the night before. His posture did not make either of them feel as if this was about to be a friendly interaction. His face was blank, and he had one hand resting in the ready position on top of his service weapon, and the other motioned with an extended thumb for them to get out of the car.

“Go. Now, right now.” The panicked voice of Taryn commanded Ken as she sat straight up, almost crawling on top of the seat.

Ken put in reverse, but Taryn grabbed his hand and shoved it back into drive, “No, go forward. Hit him! Now!”

Ken slammed on the brake, stopping the car from moving forward, but not before it lurched forward and knocked over a cone.

The guard looked down at the cone, his face changing to aggravated.

Ken cursed at Taryn, and threw the gear shift back into reverse, but the car did go backward. The wheels squealed, and they both looked out the back window to see that the guard had somehow gotten behind them.

In the red taillights they saw his hands gripping the trunk, but the smoke of burning rubber quickly blocked him from their view.

They were both yelling at each other as Ken fumbled around for the gear shift, but the car went silent when Tayrn yelled that something had come back for her, that it had killed her brother and was coming back for her.

In his shock, Ken let off the accelerator, and stared at Taryn for just a moment before he slammed on the brake pedal and put the car in drive.

Once again, the car did not go in the intended direction.

The rental car was suddenly airborne, twisting in the air like a flipped coin. It somehow landed wheels, but it was now off the side of the road in the sandy desert.

Inside the car, both the driver and passenger had been knocked unconscious. Their lifeless bodies were slumped in their seats, and their luggage and road snacks were tossed everywhere. Outside the car, the trunk had been busted open, and the duffel bags holding counterfeit money and other important documents, as well as thin sheets of meth tucked between the papers, had been tossed out.

The moonlight reflected off the pale pastel blue skin of a lurking inhuman figure.

It strode away from the cold body of the security guard that it had controlled, and left it to be found with the rest of the scene to later be ruled a vehicular manslaughter and homicide. Its feet, like that of a massive wolf, did not leave any trace or track of its presence, but there would still be questions and mystery around the accident to be found.

Its wolf-feet led up to long slender legs that it stood on as if human. The creature had an equally long and narrow torso that twisted unnaturally as it moved, and its thin arms ended in long knife-like claws that also left no trace as they dragged across the desert sand.

It leaped in the air, landing on top of the rental with ease, and forcing out groans from the damaged machinery as the thing’s weight bent and broke it down further. Before the car completely crumbled in on itself, the creature reached in from the broken windows on either side, and pulled out what was left of the mangled bodies inside. Which was not much after it had collapsed the roof on them.

It took little note of Ken, and flung his broken body aside.

It stepped off the crumbled car that it had smashed into the dirt, and with its talons for hands, it cracked open Taryn’s skull the rest of the way.

The dark blue orb that sat on top of the creature’s shoulders like a head opened up to reveal a single eye, more circular than oval, colored all different shades of blue, and black, and speckled with white like stardust. Below the galaxy colored eyes was a void that was opening and salivating.

It was the deep cavity of its hungry mouth.

Her skull crunched, and it slurped at her brain matter. A black slippery tongue, that could barely be seen in the night, came out from the void and inspected the bloody pink pieces of her mind, thoughts, emotions, and most importantly, her memories.

In her childhood, Taryn and her brother had found two identical rocks that had washed up along the creek bed behind their home. The rocks were perfect smooth spheres, and they both agreed the rocks looked like planets because of the swirls of dark blues and whites. Taryn and her brother made a pact to always keep their find, and when they were old they would see how much they were worth because they were obviously worth something.

Neither her or her brother lived along enough to find out that they were worth nothing to a jewel appraiser. They were only worth an infinite lifetime of power to a creature that had been pulled apart and spread across the world when it crash landed.

The thing that had fed on her brains, as it had her brother’s as well, traveled through her memories until it found the forgotten hiding spot where Taryn places her priceless rock.

It’s eye looked up at the moon, and then it’s skin became a deeper blue as if it to match the night sky. It let out a disembodied howl, and purple smoke flowed from the face void until the thing was completely enveloped.

It disappeared with the dissipating purple smoke, carried away with the cold desert breeze.