CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Instinctively, I swerved back to my side of the road, narrowly avoiding what would have been catastrophic damage and probable death. Behind me, I heard the horn of the vehicle I narrowly missed blare out into the darkness, piercing my ears, as I struggled to keep myself on the road.

It had been salted earlier but the new snow, minor as it was, was enough to cause my tires to lose their traction and swerve toward the ditch, after my sudden jerk of the wheel. With intuition leading my actions, I pumped my brakes and laid into the fishtail I had inadvertently initiated (just enough to keep from losing complete control). Thankfully, it worked. Within a second or two, I was back in command of my truck.

Shaken from the near miss, my entire body began to tremble, while I watched the white snow outside lose its color and turn to a bland shade of gray. Seconds later, my head began to throb as the thing inside of it sprang to life. I could feel it flipping about inside of my head, like a fish out of water. While wincing in pain and pushing the palm of my hand against the outer walls of my head, my stereo suddenly switched itself on and began broadcasting that same menacing voice from before.

As before, it’s only command was that I “DO IT,” which it repeated over and over, at 20 percent of the speakers’ maximum volume. While struggling to maintain control of the truck, I let go of my head, threw the transmission into neutral and pushed the brake pedal all the way to the floor.

Despite my efforts, the truck continued on its course, like a mounted horse who had been given the freedom to wander where it pleased. I tried yanking the steering wheel and even engaging the emergency brake but nothing worked. The brake click-click-clicked and the wheel spun freely but neither affected the truck’s mobility in any way. I even tried opening the driver’s side door to jump out but the handle wouldn’t disengage the lock.

The truck just kept casually rolling along until it gradually slowed its pace, in order to enter the turn lane to my right. Ahead of that approaching turn, I could see an abandoned auto mechanic’s garage, which looked like it used to be a gas station before that. Now, it was simply an old, dilapidated building. As I progressed toward the empty parking lot, my entire body moved from a concerning tremble to all-out, violent convulsions.

Nearly overwhelmed, the ghost truck charged forward, pulled into the vacant bay and then stopped abruptly—the way in which one might expect a student driver to stop. Again, I yanked on the door handle but it didn’t yield the result for which I had hoped. During all of this, the volume on my radio had been steadily growing so that the voice yelling for me to “DO IT” was now at an overpowering 65 percent!

Out of sheer panic and desperation, I began driving my bare fist into the radio screen, in an effort to disable it. At the same time, my right was glued to my head. I had moved it there in order to thwart the creature underneath my skin from resurfacing but now it was filling up with warm blood.

The volume reached 80 percent when it began to seep through the gaps between my fingers and drip down my right hand. My left was a ferocious battering ram but the stereo’s volume continued to increase as I repeatedly pounded my bloody knuckles against the tiny screen that was recessed into my dashboard. Each time I pulled my fist away, there were more traces of blood on it but I still persisted, undeterred, like a veritable madman.

By the time the volume reached 90 percent, my ears felt like they were about to start bleeding as well! The voice was driving me mad with its “DO IT! DO IT! DO IT!” Do what? What on Earth did it want this time?!?!

My knuckles hurt; I was near the point of hyperventilating and my brain felt like it wanted to jump out of my skull. My bloodshot eyes were hopelessly searching for salvation. When they landed on the rearview mirror, however, they showed me the last thing I wanted to see. On the other side of the mirror was my faceless stalker and once I noticed him, his arm broke through the glass and his hand wrapped around my mouth.

Something must have been in his palm because I suddenly felt a candy-sized, hard object on my tongue. I tried, of course, to spit it out, but his hand would not budge, despite the fact that I had postponed my assault and let go of my head in order to remove his hand from my face. I might as well have been a toddler trying to overpower the heavyweight champion of the world. His hand wouldn’t budge. Instead, he started jerking my head backward and then forward again.

After the third time, the foreign object inside my mouth fell to my throat and I involuntarily swallowed it whole. At that moment, the slug burst out, from within my head, and the arm that was coming through my rearview mirror released me and grabbed hold of it.

Saddled with an exhaustion I had never felt before, I slumped back into my seat and caught a whiff of that sweet fragrance I’d hoped I’d never smell again. It was the smell I had noted from before, when the wraith was draining the slug of its essence. As the demon’s outstretched hand continued to visibly drain the insect of some multicolored light housed within its innards, I slowly, cautiously and with as little movement as possible, rolled my already-cracked window down a bit further, so as to keep from alerting either creature to what I was doing.

Once I had enough clearance, I then sprung forward in my seat, ripped the mirror off of the windshield and tossed it out the window. Instantly the stereo volume plummeted from 99 percent to zero and the worm inside my head let out a feeble scream before retreating back into my head. I was completely drained of life but I was still breathing.

With the truck still running, I spilled out, into the abandoned garage. In a fetal-like position, where I was breathing heavily and trying to gather myself, I saw some discarded fast-food wrappers and some discoloration on the floor, indicating something large and heavy had once sat there. The floor was greasy and dirty but the room was otherwise empty—likely picked clean by petty criminals long ago. All at once, as I was examining my surroundings, a cold wind hit me and intensified my seizures.

An unbridled desire to escape the outside world compelled me to try my luck at pulling shut the metal garage door through which I had just passed. My body fought against me, as I took hold of the old cord hanging above me and yanked. As the rusted metal wheels ground against the old, steadily degrading track that held them captive (screeching as they went along), I noticed a broken lock lying just outside. Apparently, I wasn’t the first person to enter this place without permission. It took brute force but I eventually closed the stubborn gate, effectively walling me off from the world outside, for which I was granted a morsel of reprieve.

With my convulsions growing in length and ferocity, I hobbled back to my truck and got inside. I felt physically numb and hoped that the warm air blasting through my vents would reinvigorate me. I hoped that I wouldn’t lose too much of it through the slightly cracked window I wasn’t able to shut.

Having been in this situation before, I knew the only thing that would calm me down was something that would take my mind off of the track on which it was currently running. Desperate for anything familiar and comfortable, I opened the music app on my phone. I then found my favorite artist and hit “play.”

With enormous trepidation, I raised the volume from zero to 10 percent and then wiped the blood from my screen with the sleeve of my coat. I then closed my eyes and tried to focus on the music emanating from my speakers. At first, it had no effect. I continued to shake while my mind was unraveling. After a bit, though, the soothing, euphonious melodies began to put me at ease. The truck grew warmer too and this also helped to relax me. The world was crashing down around me but there, in the cab of that truck, I was suddenly content and so I accepted the tranquility of my situation and allowed the music to distract my brain and drown out my worries.

Eventually, my anxiety subsided and the exhaustion left in its wake caught up to me. Part of me wanted to leave, at that point, but I was too comfortable and slightly drowsy as well. Without opening my heavy eyes, I told myself I could listen to one more song before heading home.