Chapter Text
Nothing but dial tone buzzed through the telephone receiver. I knew, before I ever lifted it to my ear with faltering hope, that there would be no credit card company on the line. I knew all along. The lock clicked into place behind me with a jangle of his keys, confirming everything I suspected. My pulse rang in my ears, like I was standing under a waterfall.
He lied.
The phone fell from my hand, tumbling through an infinite void.
Dizzying terror threatened to swallow me up in waves of darkness that lapped at the edges of my vision. These were my last moments alive, in a dingy garage, crammed full of too many workshop tables and shelves, which were cluttered with lamps, scattered papers, greasy rags, tools, and bottles of turpentine and automotive fluids. Today would be the day I died on the floor next to a grimy stack of tires because I let my fuel tank run low — because I stopped at this sleazy little gas station in the middle of nowhere.
Rain was pounding against the rooftop of my Ford Expedition as I followed the winding black ribbon of road through endless pine trees. The wipers were working double-time to part the thick curtain of water over the windshield. The moment I could see the road, all was obscured again in the deluge. Then the blade parted the waters again. Driving after dark unnerved me ever since my “accident” senior year of high school, but I was too lazy to leave my parents’ house early enough to reach campus before sundown. Earlier in the twilight, I had a horrifying reminder of why my father gave me such a tank of an SUV — I drifted out of my lane, and narrowly swerved to avoid a head-on collision. “Oh my god,” I gasped. I could have killed somebody else. Flashes of lightening above made me jump in my seat, and to fight back the tension that stung my chest, I sang — badly, and loud — over the sound of the storm.
I was still on edge when I pulled into this place, and its ramshackle appearance did nothing to calm my nerves. If my father’s fuel-guzzling SUV wasn’t running on empty, or if there were any sign of a nicer station on this desolate country route, I would never have stopped. There was only one decades-old pump that wasn’t even covered from the rain like any modern facility. Signs advertised auto repair services, but the rusted-out trucks disintegrating in the lot looked like they hadn’t moved in years. The place could have been abandoned, but for a few yellow lights glowing through the downpour.
Half-doubting anyone was around, I pulled up to the antiquated fuel pump and honked for service. It was late, or it felt late because of the way the storm-blackened sky hung close and low. I blared on the horn again impatiently — a face appeared inches from mine at the window. I stifled a scream. He was a bug-eyed scarecrow bedraggled by the rain, with scraggly greying hair framing a sallow, grease-smeared face. I was struggling to quiet my shallow bursts of breath when he spoke in a broken drawl.
“Rrr-run — run outta g-gas?”
I wasn’t sure whether to pity the inarticulate creature, or to turn and flee. A derelict place like this was the perfect stage set for scary, uneducated hicks, and everything from his mangled voice, to the denim jacket and flannel shirt he wore fit the part. Why didn’t I stop in town?
“Yup, fill it up please,” I replied in my best everything’s-fine mask, rolling the window down a sliver and passing him my credit card. Cold rain dripped down my fingertips, but it wasn’t my prime motivation for rolling up the window again so hastily.
He held the thin plastic card, and he stared. His eyes were sad, and blue, out of keeping with the rest of him. They were soft and deep, but they lingered far too long… lack of practice, perhaps, from being isolated with nothing but trees and a single winding road for miles. Those eyes hungered for another face to look at, and were not eager to turn back to the rain and the dark, and his old familiar run-down station. His tongue pushed between his closed lips, barely parting them before retreating back into his mouth.
It frightened me.
He was older, perhaps in his forties, with rain-frizzled hair that hung limp to his shoulders, and a tall forehead etched with rows of fine lines. He could have been a character out of The Hills Have Eyes. In perfect contrast, I was Snow White, with short hair black as ebony, skin white as snow, and young and ripe for whatever lurid thoughts were hiding behind those long-staring eyes. Goosebumps raised along my skin. We were alone here, miles from campus, where no one would notice if I went missing. Effortlessly, like changing a television channel, I returned to the top of my cheer squad. Escaped to my memories of a time before life changed me, I was warm and safe. In high school, I never doubted my superiority and invincibility. I wrapped myself in a bubble, and reminded myself I was better than he was: too pretty, too young, and too cultured to be touched by some redneck. He wouldn’t dare.
“Freak show,” I muttered derisively when he finally turned to do his job and fill my gas tank.
No sooner did the meter begin to tick up did he return to staring through my windows. My fingers tapped the steering wheel as I pretended not to notice him scoping the back. Don’t wonder if he’s lonely. Don’t wonder if he’s desperate enough to hurt you. Nothing’s going to happen; you’re being paranoid. He’s just a freak. You’ll get your gas, and go, and you’ll forget this lousy night.
He ran inside with my card briefly, then returned to the window. “M-m-m-miss. Could you c—come inside for a mmm-m-mminute please?”
“What is it?” A pit formed in my stomach. Don’t be paranoid.
His face scrunched up with the effort of speaking. Each consonant seemed the stubborn last drop of ketchup in a bottle — he had to strike at it a few times before it would come out. “C-credit card… c-company’s on the… phone.”
“Is there a problem?”
“They wanna… sp-speak with you!” He held up my card and walked away without giving it back, so I would have to follow.
“Shit.” I should have driven away and forgotten the stupid card. Every tensed muscle in my body told me it was a trap, but I fought the urge to run. Maybe he was just an isolated old man with poor social skills. Was it so unlikely that I had maxed out my credit card buying new clothes for my senior fall semester? My icy opinion was based solely on his outward appearance, and I had spent the past three years fighting my former-cheerleader instincts to condemn people for aesthetic reasons.
Still, I stuffed a can of pepper spray in my raincoat.
Now all the swirling apprehension about this place that I had struggled to hold back was confirmed. As I dropped the phone, he came at me, face contorted, but no words coming out. He grabbed my arm, but I lifted it sharply to break away, screaming.
“Don’t touch me!”
Maybe I deserved a comeuppance for what I did in high school, when I thought the world was mine, but I would not let some old man rape me without a fight. I bolted for the door, but it didn’t budge as I pushed and pulled frantically at the handle, forgetting in panic that he had locked it.
I heard him behind me, “Th…th… thh…” His hands were on me again, pulling me away from my escape route.
“No, let me go!” I shrieked.
His teeth were gritted, and his blue eyes flamed in desperation. I braced against the door and kicked him away, sending him staggering back far enough for me to pull the pepper spray from my pocket and raise it. All the while he kept struggling, fighting to force out words that seemed too large to fit.
“S… sss… ssss…” he snarled like a feral beast.
“Stay back! Don’t come near me!” I barked, brandishing the canister at his bulging eyes. To my surprise, he stopped. He held his hands up in surrender, still spitting and choking on syllables which would not cooperate.
“Th… th… s-s-sss…”
“What?” I demanded, mace still pointed at his face. “What are you saying?”
He breathed in, chest inflating. “S… s… s… Someone’s in the back seat!” He shouted, hoarse and panting with the effort. His wild eyes relaxed slightly now that his message was delivered, and searched my face for understanding.
“My back seat? What are you talking about?”
“C-c-c-call… th-the police!” He raised his eyebrows and gave an exaggerated glance to the dropped phone receiver.
My eyes followed his to the weighty black rotary phone, as old and outdated as everything in the small office-workshop. Calling the police on him was exactly what I wanted to do, and it took my mind a moment to catch up with the disconnect of him suggesting it. What was he playing at? How could there have been someone in my back seat this entire time? Then again, the Explorer was big enough that a family of drifters could have moved in without drawing my attention. Either way, calling the cops seemed like a good idea. I backed my way across the room, holding him at arm’s length with the pepper spray.
“Get back,” I ordered him as I circled, and we traded places in the room. He complied, stepping wide out of my path as if I were the dangerous one. The phone still lay on the floor, helplessly beeping its dial-tone. My eyes never left him as I knelt to pick it up, waiting for him to spring. Yet he didn’t move to stop me, even as my fingers dialed the numbers 9-1-1. Encouraging your victim to call emergency dispatch wasn’t the usual Modus operandi of a rapist, or kidnapper, but I had no proof of his tall tale about a stranger in my car. I would tell the operator the whole story — including the creepy station attendant. If his idea was for me to call 911 to paint him as innocent before he killed me, he’d better think again.
As I got through to dispatch, I let my attention slip, and the spray canister lower. The moment my defense was dropped, he came at me again. I screamed in the operator’s ear, but he rushed past me, disappearing deeper into the back of his cluttered mechanic shop. I spun with the phone still pressed to my ear, wrapping the corkscrew cord around me. He was gone. I leaned back on top of the desk, toppling a few tools off it in the process, and watched for him as I gave my location and began to recount my story. I mentioned the alleged backseat intruder, but that I wasn’t certain the attendant didn’t make it up.
Uncertainty came shattering into reality as the large storefront window smashed from the outside. An axe head punched through the center of a spiderweb of cracks. A dark silhouette pulled it out, to swing again.
I shrieked, “He’s got an axe! He’s here! Oh god, help me! Help me, please!”
“Find a place to hide, quickly. The police are on their way.”
That was all the dispatcher could do: tell me to hide. As if I didn’t already know that. Help was coming, but it was too late. The dark figure was already pushing in through the broken window as I blindly stumbled backwards. My foot snagged on something on the shop floor, and my stomach flipped. For a moment, I was weightless, and then a searing pain ripped through my skull as it cracked against the cement. The figure was inside now, and advanced too quickly, until it stood over me like a shadow. There was nothing I could do but scramble backwards on my hands, fighting through spots that clouded my vision.
The axe raised up above its hooded head.
A concussive blast shattered my eardrums and made my already swimming vision turn to white. When my senses recovered, I realized that I wasn’t bleeding. The axe fell silently. I could feel the sharp vibration through my palms as it impotently struck the floor, unaccompanied by any sound but steady ringing. Then the cloaked figure crumpled. Over my shoulder stood the gas station attendant, eyes wide as a spooked horse, clutching an old shotgun with whitened knuckles.
“Oh my god!” I blubbered. Though I could barely hear my own voice, as though my ears were plugged with cotton, I bawled, “I could see my life flashing before my eyes! He almost killed me! Did you see that?”
He stood, chest heaving, unable to process what he had done. Of course he had seen that, what was I saying? Oceans swelled within his eyes, and demons lay beneath the waves, clawing to pull him under. My pitiful bleating was out of depth with his look of horror. He tossed aside the gun like it was a venomous snake, and stumbled past me to the disarmed assailant on the floor.
“No!” I cried, certain the black-robed figure would spring up and stab him. The painful, iron-tasting ringing sound rose in pitch.
The gas station attendant, heedless of my warning, knelt and picked up the would-be murderer’s wrist. He squeezed his eyes closed in concentration, silently hoping. After trying different places on the wrist, his face finally crumpled in grief. Glaring light from a utility lamp exposed an inconspicuous tear running down his cheek. I knew then what kind of person he was. He wasn’t a villainous caricature from a horror movie. That muzzle-loading shotgun was a decoration piece he never wanted to fire — not even at an axe-murderer. He went through a lot of trouble to rescue me.
He pulled back the black hood to unveil the killer’s face, and let out a howl of anguish. “N-n-n-no! God… g-god, no!”
My head swayed, but I pushed my scraped hands against the concrete until I was sitting upright enough to see. It was a young girl, around my age. She had a curly mess of blond-highlighted hair tied back in a ponytail, shaped eyebrows, and a cute silver necklace. She didn’t look like a monster; she looked like someone I would be friends with. Even her clothing was no longer the flowing cult-member robe my eyes had deceived me into seeing — it was just a black winter coat with a fur-trimmed hood. My stuttering savior crumbled beside the body in tears. His head hung between his two shoulders, which jolted erratically with each wave of sobs.
“D-d-d-d-do you… kn-kn-kn-n-nnn-know her?” he forced out between gasps.
“I… I don’t think so,” I said, and the words tasted like iron, too. “Please tell me this wasn’t just a prank or something. Please tell me this wasn’t a prank.” My mind raced with ways this might have been my old sorority playing a trick, that the axe was just rubber, or she was about to pull her hood off and yell surprise! I knew better than anyone how a joke could turn deadly. Tears wet my face, but the mechanic was doing far worse. He sucked in air like a man suffocating, and the skin under his eyes was stinging bright red and swollen.
“I… didn't… I dddidn’t m-m-m-m-m-mean to…”
Dragging my bruised and shaking body across the cold concrete, I closed the distance to the wretched mess of a human and leaned against him, cradling his back in a comforting gesture. I fucked up another decent person, I thought. Here was a gentle soul, and I made him into a killer. When I looked at him, I saw Natalie Simon, just as broken, three years before. She had never forgiven me for what I did. How long until this man realized it was all my fault, and jerked out from under from my clumsy attempt to offer solace? As I thought of it, the mechanic turned suddenly, as if only then recognizing my presence. Rather than pull away with revulsion, he put his hands on my shoulders and attentively looked me in the eye.
“A-are…. y-you…. a… a… alr-r-right, m-miss?”
I squinted back at him, and smiled sleepily. I couldn’t quite answer the question, because my mind had become fixed on the co-captain of my high school spirit squad, and the memory of what had just happened was already jumbled and missing pieces. Why wouldn’t I be alright? My head was swelling on one side, and the axe, glinting on the floor reminded me of the moment it was glinting above my head. That’s right, I was almost killed, and this guy saved me. But how did we get on the ground? All I knew was that, somehow, it was my fault. My chest felt like a hummingbird being crushed in someone’s hand. The station attendant knelt before me, the shattered glass of his office around his knees, as a pool of blood slowly spread. He couldn’t stem the flowing of his own tears, yet he managed to look at me with selfless concern and care I hadn’t felt since I was a child running to my mother with a scraped knee. I wanted to apologize for all of it, but my mouth couldn’t remember how to form words.
The world turned, and I dipped, but strong arms caught me. He gathered me up and held me close against his chest, safe, and warm. He carried me away from the body, and the blood, and slid down to rest against a cabinet in a safe corner of the room while we waited for help. My thoughts slowed, and the pain numbed, though a drumming still filled my ears — whether my own or his heartbeat I couldn’t distinguish. His ragged breath and an occasional droplet on my shoulder told me he hadn’t stopped crying. My eyelids dropped closed and I leaned back into his warmth, unaware of any awkwardness or inhibition. He sat up a little more erect, pushing me upright again.
“Wh-wh-where do you go to school?”
“Hmm?” I murmured dreamily, “no, I’m tired… Later…” I just wanted to lean into his arms, and fall asleep.
“You c-can’t – can’t sss-s-sleep… now.” His voice insisted, wheedling it’s way into my head. “Are… are you a sss-student?”
“Uh… it's… Mountain Lake — no, it’s Pendleton.”
He spoke to me, gently but urgently, stammering out another hasty question wherever the fog of sleep threatened to overtake me. I told him about my friends, and classes, and muttered some confused nonsense about choosing the correct foundation for one’s skin tone. He worked hard forcing himself to continue asking questions, but he wouldn’t give up keeping me engaged in conversation. If I became lucid enough to ask questions about him, he froze up. I managed to coax out of him that he lived and worked there all by himself. He was as alone as I imagined, but I was wrong about what he might do to alleviate that loneliness. Having a concussed co-ed draped in his arms must have been a shock, and a rare opportunity. Yet despite the fear I had held, just a few eternal minutes ago, that he was planning to assault me, he didn’t attempt anything untoward. He didn’t try to “accidentally” touch my chest, or slide a hand just slightly too far up my leg. I was completely at his mercy, and all he did was hold me protectively, keeping me upright so I wouldn’t pass out. This was why I was learning to bite back the ridicule that always threatened to vomit forth when I saw someone who looked different. I’d known handsome young guys who wouldn’t strike anybody as freaks, but who took blacking out drunk as a romantic overture.
He stayed by my side, talking (as best he could) to keep me awake, until sirens screamed through the night air, and blue and red strobe lights turned the rain into a glowing field of laser beams.
Uniformed police officers, guns drawn, peered in through the shattered window and saw us huddled together — me injured, and him still crying — near the dead body of a young girl. They shouted orders for us to separate and put our hands up. I wobbled to my feet in compliance. Then three officers at once sprang through the gaping window and descended upon the gas station attendant, shoving him and putting him in handcuffs. The last thing I had said on the 911 call was “he’s got an axe,” and here was a girl on the floor dead, and only one he in the room. My throat was dry and my head was listing, but I raised my voice above the clamoring officers to clarify that he was not the aggressor. He saved me from the dead girl — she was wearing a hood and I had misspoken.
Whether or not they believed me or heard me through the chaos, the officers insisted on interrogating him brusquely, dragging him from the scene. In stark contrast, only one officer escorted me from the cramped workshop, and he didn’t handcuff me, but offered me his arm to lean on. Outside, the once-abandoned parking lot was ablaze with emergency lights from two fire trucks, an ambulance, and no less than five police cruisers, and dozens of people bustled about taking pictures, cordoning off areas with tape, and setting up tarps against the rain. When he questioned me, he was nothing but polite. My innocence, as an attractive young girl, was a foregone conclusion. The officers’ sensitivity was misplaced. I traded insults like others traded baseball cards; I could have handled nastiness better than my rescuer. His stutter grew worse the more nervous he was, and faced with harsh accusations of murder, his throat seemed to close entirely until his mouth made the shapes of sounds but nothing could come out.
“Hey! He’s got a speech impediment, he’s not stupid!” I shouted, “Just ask me if you want to hear the story faster, asshole.”
The outburst didn’t win me any favors with the detectives, who only then became uncertain whether it was I, or the dead girl, who had phoned for help. I swallowed, and hoped I hadn’t just earned myself an arrest. They asked me if I knew who that dead girl was, and didn’t seem to believe me when I told them I had no idea who she was or why she was in my car with an axe. My frail figure and head wound, however, gave me a pathetic appearance that didn’t speak to “femme fatale.” The cops were naturally inclined to believe me as the innocent victim, and though the car mechanic looked the part of a murderer, I told them otherwise again and again until they understood. Slowly, they seemed to come around. The scene they had walked in on, of two rattled survivors clinging to each other, was unmistakable in the story it told.
The police inspected my Ford Expedition, took the shotgun and axe, and taped off the crime scene. What they found, an officer informed me after what felt like hours, corroborated our story. The axe found near the body was real, sharpened steel. Michael McDonnell had a good case for self-defense.
“A case?” That’s when I noticed an officer putting my rescuer into the back seat of a police cruiser. “Hey! Hey, what’s going on? He didn’t do anything! Stop it, you can’t do this!”
“Excuse me miss,” the officer tersely addressed me, “He shot a twenty year old girl in the chest with a shotgun. You’ve both admitted to that.”
“But… but… you can’t arrest him for saving my life! Am I under arrest?”
“Do you want to be?” he quipped, “If you had anything to do with that Jane Doe’s death that you’ve been withholding, now’s the time to talk. No? Good. There was a homicide. That’s cause for a full investigation. We can’t let a killer run free until we’ve determined that this was truly self defense. So far the evidence is holding in your favor, and if everything happened as you say, he won’t be charged with anything. It’s just procedure, miss.”
It broke my heart to see him sitting in the back like a criminal, eyes unfocused and demoralized. His wet hair clung to his face. I pounded on the glass of the cop car until he looked up from his reverie.
“Thank you… I… You saved me… I’m gonna help you, somehow! Just hold on, okay?”
He gave me a tired smile. Too exhausted to try to say anything, he merely nodded.
I turned back to the officer. “He seems creepy at first, but he just has trouble talking. He’s a good guy. Please don't…”
“We’ll go easy on him, miss. Sounds like he did a good thing tonight.”
Then I was in the back of the ambulance, uncertain whether it had been hours, or minutes since I was attacked. The doors closed behind me, shutting out the commotion of the rain and the busy crime scene. In the hush, my head began to feel fuzzy again, and the desire to sleep returned like a lead weight. Only one thought stood out in the discordant memory of what happened. Somehow, it was my fault.