A sign by the road said, KING CITY WELCOMES YOU across a drawing of two dolphins leaping in fat, blue arcs over a faded sketch of a factory. The wooden sign had grown pale with water damage and disrepair, so the factory building looked hidden in its own smog.
Below the factory was a banner that read MAYOR E… But the remaining letters had long ago lost their legibility. There was a very large crow standing just below the sign in the red desert dirt, but, as they drove slowly past, Jackie realized it wasn’t a large crow at all, but a very strange dog.
The dog (or perhaps it was a crow; it was tough to tell) stared at Jackie as they rolled by, mouth agape, displaying small, sharp teeth and a thin, red tongue.
“Guess it worked,” Diane said, smiling, but not feeling any joy.
“Yes,” Jackie said, cringing, but not feeling any fear.
There were few cars on the road as they entered what seemed to be the business district. The cars that were there were taupe, long, flat-hooded with short windshields, and they moved slowly, well below speed limits. No pedestrians were on the streets.
The dusk brought a sandy mist to the hot air, turning the sky ocher. There was a dull roar from above, as if a seashell had been placed directly atop the town.
Diane drove past the post office, which was a one-story stucco building with no front door, a splintered parapet wall with letters missing from its marquee, and a tree that had grown through the broken sidewalk and into one of the many shattered windows lining its front. There was no sign of movement inside.
The hum of the sky did not let up. It sounded like a low-flying jet in a never-ending holding pattern. Diane began to hear whispers in the noise, the way one sees patterns in clouds. The whispers were not words but had the rhythm of language, the tone was needy and desperate, but no matter how much she concentrated she couldn’t understand any of it. The whispers sounded like her own voice.
Diane felt both here and elsewhere. Like she was in the car with Jackie, but also entering addresses into a spreadsheet at work. She was sitting at her desk, clicking keyboard keys, with headphones in listening to soft rock. Diane felt two of herself. She had never looked at herself before, not like this. She did not recognize herself, but she understood who she was. Diane looked at her hand on the flamingos and felt her hand on her work desk.
Jackie’s good arm was out the window, the sandy air tickling her skin with hundreds of inconsequential stings, a tangible Morse code saying something meaningless. Jackie could almost hear the staccato pings of grains, the sound traveling through her skin into her body, bypassing her ears. She closed her eyes, partially to force rest on herself, partially to block out the deep amber of King City’s early evening.
Neither told the other what she felt.
Diane noticed a store with a charcoal canvas eave with bold silver sans-serif font reading VHS AND VHS AND VHS… She parked the car in front of the store. Neither of them knew exactly where to begin, but if Josh were here out of his own free will, he would certainly find his way to a store like this. He had the teenage attraction to petty bravery, like doing skateboard tricks and watching unmarked VHS tapes.
Jackie stuck a quarter in the parking meter, which was bent in the middle, like it was bowing. There was a hollow clink followed by a hiss. The meter hissed continuously. She circled it, trying to find the source of the noise, and realized it wasn’t coming from the meter but from a few feet to her right.
The hiss was coming from the very large crow, or the very strange dog. It had four legs, but stood on only one. It had sharp teeth and a sharp face.
The dog’s mouth (Jackie was going with very strange dog) was open, and it was hissing. It didn’t seem to need to stop for breath. She took a step backward, and its three unused legs unfurled from its thick barrel body. The legs dragged its body toward her, and then curled back into itself like landing gear. The hiss continued.
Jackie yelped and limped around the back of the Mercedes, grabbing Diane with her good hand. They crossed to the VHS store, Jackie turning to see the dog following them, disappearing and appearing like a figure in a badly constructed flip-book, a little closer each time she looked at it, still hissing, still staring.
Diane was alarmed by Jackie’s alarm as she was firmly pushed into the shop. The store was dark. It was unlocked and the lights were on, but the lights were dim and inconsistently placed, leaving pockets of deep shadow throughout.
There was no clerk’s counter at the front of the store. Only tall shelves full of loose tapes, some labeled and some not. Some shelves were densely packed to the point where tapes lay horizontally across the tops of the vertically pressed rows. Others were nearly empty save a couple of loose tapes scattered on their sides.
They walked down the best-lit aisle toward the back of the store. After several feet, the light grew dimmer, and their aisle grew dark. There were no side aisles to turn down, so they kept walking. Jackie, a teenager herself, couldn’t help but run her hand over the tapes on the shelves. Most had stickers with handwritten titles. She did not stop to browse the selection, but she was certain that some simply had rows of Xs instead of titles or descriptions.
The dog, or whatever it was, was not visible through the shop window, but Jackie could still hear the hissing coming from somewhere. She hurried them down the aisle. It was too dark at this point to see the dead end until they were right up on it. Diane extended her hand just before running into the shelf. She expected her hand to hit a wall of tapes but instead felt something damp and soft and cold. It gave way slightly to her touch. Her jaw tightened and she pulled her hand away. It was wet, and in the low light she could see her fingers were covered in what looked like soil.
As they headed back to where they had entered, there was the hissing again in front of them, source unseen in the distant light or, worse, unseen in the nearby dark. Diane walked behind Jackie, Jackie’s hand on her own shoulder, fingers intertwined with Diane’s. As they walked faster, the hissing grew louder. Ahead was a deep shadow in the aisle. Neither could see anything beyond it.
Jackie’s left arm pulsed. Her body hurt badly. Her legs wobbled, and her eyes felt tender and loose in her skull.
“Diane,” Jackie whispered. The hissing was only a few feet in front of them. She heard the soft click of claws on the floor. “Diane. Grab those tapes.”
“What?” Diane was alarmed by Jackie’s alarm. Jackie was grabbing tapes off the shelf near her waist, and so Diane did the same.
The sides of the tapes were all marked with strings of Xs or Js or Ps or Us. As she pitched them to the floor, she felt the same cold dampness as before. The tapes came apart in their hands, falling away into soft clumps of wet soil. A long beetle crawled out of one and tentatively made its way across the pile they were forming.
There was another soft click on the wood floor as they tore away enough tapes to reveal an open passage to another aisle. Bright light poured through. The hissing stopped.
In the dark quiet of the store, Diane felt the wet tapes pool around her ankles. Jackie felt her atoms letting go of one another. They both watched the shadow where the hiss had been.
“Jackie.” Diane’s eyes filled but did not flood. She placed her hand on Jackie’s back.
They stood, hand to back, teeth together, feet apart, faces parallel to an unknown unseen. They waited for an attack. A tear came loose and trailed down Diane’s cheek. They waited.
A scream came from the shadow ahead of them, a scream like that of a terrified child.
Jackie crouched and dove through the hole in the shelves. Diane stayed, staring, streaks down her face as her mouth loosed itself open, silent, lip-synching the scream she was hearing. Her ears hurt. The scream burrowed into her head, splitting her brain, crawling down her throat, and coming to rest deep in her guts.