I thought I saw movements in my mirror, faces, reflections of things in windows, thought I heard whispers, laughs and sighs.
Then it started to get really bad out there. The wind picked up and gathered all the shadows, the popcorn bags, candy wrappers, cups, and posters (I was sure now), all this stuff, and it began to hit the Galaxy and whirl about it and the wind sucked at the car and lifted it up and dropped it down, lifted it up and dropped it down, and once when it went down, the back right tire went with a noise like a six-gun shot.
The car swerved and I tried to turn in the direction of the skid like the handbook says, but the skid said “Fuck You,” and the shadows sacked up the car and took away the light.
Round and round the Galaxy went, over and over. Timothy flew into me and we banged heads and the darkness outside became the darkness in me.
3
I woke up and found that the car had righted itself and that I was lying on the front seat alone. The door on the passenger side was open.
I sat up and clung to the back of the seat until I felt focused. I could see Sue Ellen’s shape in the back, draped partially on the floorboard and partially on the seat. I reached back and touched her and she moaned and sat up slowly and held the side of her jaw.
“You okay?” I asked.
“The movie over yet?” she asked.
“Not yet,” I said. I took her hand gently from her face and saw a thin cut running from the corner of her mouth to her chin, a scratch really. She didn’t seem to be in any real pain.
“Wait here, okay?”
“You going to the concession stand?”
“I’ll be right back.”
“Where’s Timmy?”
“I’m going to get him.”
“Have him bring me a large popcorn, will you?”
I couldn’t tell if the wreck had banged her around and thrown off her timeframe, or if she was having another of those pop-backs. Maybe she was seeing a movie through the windshield of the car.
The wind was still high when I got out of the car, but not as bad as before. I held on to the door handle for a moment, edged my way to the rear of the car. The trunk was open and the keys were in the trunk lid. Timothy had gotten the keys and gotten back here. Maybe he wanted some of the fruit.
I got the keys and put them in my pants pocket and saw that his golf bag had been pulled from under all the fruit. It was sticking out of the back of the car by a foot. I knew then that he had gotten one of his golf clubs. If Sue Ellen was still at the drive-in watching movies, maybe Timothy thought he was participating in the Bob Hope Open, or whatever that golf thing is called.
There was mashed fruit all over the place and the gas can was hanged up, but not open. I set it up and got a piece of fruit and ate a few bites out of it, and started looking for Timothy.
The wind passed on by, and the last of it let popcorn bags and debris flutter onto the car and ground. Plastered across the rear of the windshield was a poster. The moon was brighter, now that the shadows had fled, and I could read the printing on the poster. Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The words looked as if they had been written in blood.
Out in the trees I could see big hunks of whiteness. I decided they were fragments of drive-in screens-chunks of white painted wood.
Draped between the trees like Christmas decorations were lengths of film, the moonlight sticking through the sprocket holes like long, bright needles, and a sort of mist swirl ing about the film itself.
I didn’t see any videotapes, and I didn’t see Timothy.
I went around the car a couple of times, examining it. Except for a lot of bumps and a hairline crack in the windshield, it looked all right. It was no more than ten feet from the highway, and the ground between it and the highway looked firm enough to drive on.
I wanted to look for Timothy, but I didn’t know if we might need the car in a hurry, and I wanted to be ready. I dug around under the fruit and the golf bag and got out the tire iron and the spare.
The jacking up and the tire changing went pretty quick, and I rolled the old tire off beside the road, tossed the tire tool in the back and closed the trunk.
I started looking for Timothy.
Out to the right there was a trail. Maybe dinosaurs had made it. Maybe cars had made it. There was no rhyme or reason to this place.
I went down the trail calling for Timothy. As I went the wind picked up again and it started to rain and lightning began to crackle in the heavens. Still, the moon held bright.
Something moved in the jungle, and I found a good-sized stick and carried it with me. Martial arts or not, another equalizer never hurts. Course, if it was a Tyrannosaurus Rex, something like that, it would eat me and pick its teeth with my stick.
As I went along, the trail widened. I went over a little rise and down into a clearing. There was a lot of grass there were posts for drive-in speakers, and a few of them still had speakers on them. There were rusted cars dotted about.
At the back, almost integrated into the jungle, was a drive-in screen. It was split open in spots and limbs poked through the splits and twisted upwards and spread out in leaf-covered branches that looked like bony fingers from which dangled tufts of dark flesh.
About ten yards in front of the screen, golf club in hand, on the tail end of a classic swing, was Timothy.
I stood and watched a while. He was golfing up dirt and leaves.
I called to him. He looked up, went back to golfing. I walked over and waited until he finished a swing, then I stepped in and took hold of his elbow.
“This is a tough course,” he said.
“You can say that again.”
“I don’t think I’m doing too well.”
“You’re doing fine. That was the last hole.”
“Yeah. How’d I do?”
“You beat the competition hands down. Come along, Sue Ellen is waiting for us.”
I led him along and the wind picked up and the trash twisters coiled at our feet.
4
Serious rain.
Serious wind.
Serious lightning.
Serious lost.
“Where the hell are we?” Timothy asked.
“Well, Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”
“Kansas? We’ve been in Kansas? Who’s Toto?”
“Just close your little mouth and walk.”
Sometimes it doesn’t pay to read or watch old movies. No one knows what you’re talking about.
“Goddamn,” Timothy said. “This is a weird course. What’s that?”
It was shadows. They had collected in our path. On either side of us the trees whipped their heads up and down like drunk women with the dry heaves.
I threw my stick at the shadows and the stick went into them and was not seen again. The shadows flowed over us with a howl of the wind and they felt like wet felt where they touched us. But there was nothing more to them. They went through us, and I turned to watch them blow on down the trail like ink-stained ghosts.
The trail disappeared. It was as if the trees had pulled up by the roots and repositioned themselves. Nothing was familiar. Strips of film dropped down from the branches and clung to us, and when I tore them off they ripped my flesh.
Timothy swatted at them with his golf club. The film wound itself around the club and jerked it away from him. Last sight of it was a silver wink in the moonlight as it disappeared into the rustling leaves of a dark, gnarled tree.
I grabbed hold of his wrist and tugged him. We went between trees and shrubs, wherever there was a space. Film ran along the ground and dropped out of the trees and tried to grab us.
Lightning flashed. I got a glimpse of the highway through the trees. Not much farther.
Timothy was pulled from me. I turned. The film had him by the feet and more of it had dropped down from the trees and coiled around his arms and pulled them up. A thin strip of it was twisting around his leg and working up his body. By the time I reached him, the end of it was tight around his neck.