SEVEN
“That’s great,” Sam said. “What can you tell us?”
“At some point during the drive, I remember looking through the windshield and having no idea where I was. Nothing looked familiar. When I took my foot off the accelerator, I tried to get my bearings, to see a landmark…”
She stared across the room, focused on the surfacing memory rather than anything in front of her. “But it was random curiosity, like I didn’t really care one way or the other. And then I…”
“What?” Sam asked. “What happened?”
“I… I pulled over to the shoulder, parked and got out of my car…”
“Why?”
She shook her head. “I have no idea.”
“Where were you?”
“Halfway up the overpass incline,” she said, almost trancelike as she relived the memory. “Jefferson Avenue. Must have been somewhere between Second and Fourth.”
“What happened after you left your car?”
“I walked up to the overpass,” she said, almost in disbelief as the words came out of her mouth. “There’s a chain-link safety fence there and the top is slanted inward. Sometimes people attach flags to the fence and you can see them when you drive by below. Political signs too. And never one. Always in bunches. So annoying.”
Knuckles rapped on the doorjamb.
Startled, Dean looked to his right and saw Nurse Beth standing there, a question on her face. “Everything okay in here?”
“We’re fine,” Sam said. “She’s fine.”
“My legs itch,” Nancy said, back in the moment, free of the reverie. “And my arm. These casts are driving me nuts.”
“I’ll see what we can do,” Beth said in a soothing tone.
As the nurse withdrew, Nancy called after her. “I’m really not suicidal!” She listened for a moment. Silence. “Damn it,” she said to the Winchesters. “They think I’m crazy, don’t they? Or terminally depressed?” She sighed. “This is nuts. Not me! The situation is nuts. All of it.” She looked from Sam to Dean and back again. “You believe me, don’t you?”
“We want to understand what happened on the overpass,” Sam said, his calm and measured voice almost parroting the charge nurse’s.
A safe approach, if they were assuming Nancy had attempted suicide of her own volition, but Dean had his doubts about that. If some external supernatural force was responsible for the odd, violent and suicidal behavior in Moyer, whether it was hex bags or something else, the victims would be as baffled as the police and the Winchesters at this point.
“You and me both,” Nancy said. “So, where was I? Oh, right, walking up the overpass. There were no flags or signs. Just the fence. And the traffic rushing below. Everyone drives too fast on Jefferson. Act like it’s the interstate or something.”
“You climbed the fence,” Dean said, attempting to get her back on track.
“I guess I did,” she said softly.
“You don’t remember?” Sam asked, disappointed.
“I… It’s hard to explain,” she said, her gaze beginning to lose its focus again. “I watched myself park the car and walk up to the overpass. Kicked off my heels and climbed the fence in my stockinged feet. And I struggled around that slanted top section of the fence, like a kid on a jungle gym. But I was watching myself from the inside.”
“Help me understand.”
“I had no thought, no control over my—what do the doctors call it—motor functions? I felt… removed. Like a passenger in my own body. I witnessed it happening. Yes”—she nodded—“that’s the right word. I witnessed it—but I had no say in what I was doing in each individual moment or what happened next. I could see the details, but I couldn’t feel—I couldn’t feel anything.”
“No sense of touch?”
“Emotions,” she said. “I had no control over my actions, but I had no emotional response to them either. When I witnessed my body climbing over the safety fence, I guessed what was coming—I was about to fall or jump into oncoming traffic—but I had no sense of fear or dread.”
“Could someone have drugged you?” Sam asked.
“Spiked your coffee?” Dean suggested.
“No,” she said. “I was running late. Skipped the coffee pit stop. Figured I’d gulp down the bitter metallic crap Stewart brews in the office. But…”
“What?” Sam asked.
“Now that I think about it, you’re right.”
“Which part?”
“The sense of touch thing,” she said. “The memory I have… it’s visual only. I can’t remember the feel of the chain-link fence or the smell of car exhaust or the sounds of traffic. And even my vision, the visual memory, it’s like I was looking…”
“Through the wrong end of a telescope?” Dean asked.
She nodded. “Yes! I was numb. And everything seemed distant, even though it was happening to my body.” Absently, the fingers of her right hand scratched beneath the edge of the cast that rose to her left elbow. “I clung to the other side of the fence for a moment. The drivers had only a few moments to notice me up there before they passed beneath. I could see some of them waving frantically, pounding on their horns, but I couldn’t hear anything. Some swerved out of the lane right beneath me, others braked, some sped up to get by before I could—I jumped. No hesitation. Almost flung myself away from the fence. The fall lasted a split-second. I saw the cars rushing toward me in complete silence, the startled, horrified faces of the drivers convinced they were about to run over—kill me and then… darkness…”
“You blacked out,” Sam said, nodding. “That’s understandable—”
“No, the darkness rippled and flashed away, and everything rushed back into me, the suffocating smell of exhaust, the hiss and screech of tires, blaring horns, voices yelling and”—she closed her eyes for a moment and her body shuddered as if an electric charge blasted every nerve in her body simultaneously—“the pain! Oh, my God, I had been so numb to everything and in that one moment I felt my legs break, the sound and the give inside.” Sweat began to bead on her brow. “A motorcyclist swerved away, narrowly missing me but the car behind him, squealing tires, the metal grill rushing toward—I flung out my forearm, in front of my face, squeezed my eyes shut, gritted my teeth—a blast of pain in my elbow, shooting up to my shoulder and collarbone and I could feel myself spinning, almost flipping aside and then… that’s all I remember until I woke up briefly as paramedics strapped me to the ambulance gurney, hysterical, completely confused. I couldn’t remember any of it. The last thing I recalled was leaving my home that morning, driving to work. I thought I’d been in a car accident, that it must have been bad and then everything faded away. I think I woke up a couple times here, but not for very long until about a half-hour ago.”
“Wow,” Sam said.
“Crazy, huh,” she said with a lopsided grin. “The story, not me. I’m checking the ‘Not Crazy’ box on any forms they have me sign.”
“No,” Sam said. “When you started, you said there wasn’t much to tell.”
She smiled. “When I started, there wasn’t… I mean, I couldn’t remember anything but driving to work and the few moments after I fell.”
“You strained your ribs,” Dean said. “When you started talking to us.”
“You’re right,” Nancy said. “That pain, I guess it triggered the memories I couldn’t recall. Maybe I was blocking it out, or didn’t want to believe I could do something like that.”
“Maybe,” Sam said, thoughtful.
“But it’s not like I’m secretly depressed or anything,” she said. “I’ve applied for some design jobs in Jefferson City and Columbia. I have a few interviews scheduled…” She frowned, looked down at her arm and leg casts. “Interviews I’ll never make it to now. If I’m not careful, I’ll talk myself into a state of depression!”
“They’re tech companies, right?” Sam asked.
“Yeah, why?”
“Maybe you can interview with video chat,” he suggested. “Telecommute if you get a job.”
“Maybe,” she said, looking down at her broken and casted body doubtfully. “Eventually.”
“This is gonna sound weird,” Sam said before she could spiral into actual depression. “But, do you have any enemies?”
“Enemies?”
“Someone who might be glad you got hurt,” Dean said. “Almost died.”
“Someone who wanted one of those jobs,” Sam suggested.
“God, no,” she said. “The job market’s bad but not that cutthroat.”
“So, no enemies?”
“I design signs, marketing campaigns for businesses,” she said. “I show them comps and they approve or ask for revisions. Even if the campaigns failed, I doubt they’d be coming after me.”
“Relationship problems?” Dean asked. “Jealous exes?”
“First, that’s kind of personal,” she said. “And second, no, nothing like that. Wait, is this because you think someone drugged me?”
“We’re investigating all possibilities,” Sam said. “Someone with a personal grudge, business deal gone wrong, that sort of thing.”
“Even if any of that happened, if I had a mortal enemy, how could that person make me jump off an overpass?”
Dean looked at Sam. Neither of them had an answer.
* * *
In the heart of Moyer’s business district, Alice Tippin, a retired bookkeeper, left the Sweet Town Bakery and walked along the westbound side of Central Avenue, carrying a box of cupcakes for her niece’s birthday party in her left hand, keys in her right. Since her retirement, she walked at least five miles a day, often with no destination in mind. Sometimes, however, she’d walk along the main strip of businesses for a little retail therapy. Mostly, she window-shopped. Because she lived less than a mile from the stores, she left her car at home. This day was no different. Out of habit and warnings from self-defense classes for women, she held her keys in her hand, apartment key clutched between her thumb and index finger. As she passed in front of a hair salon, she turned toward the window and stumbled when she saw only blackness.
Alice regained her balance and her head turned toward the curb. She veered toward the row of cars parked in all the metered spaces and her white-knuckled hand stretched out, key poking from her hand like a metal claw. One by one, she walked by the cars, minivans and SUVs and pressed the tip of the key into their paint, scraping a continuous line interrupted only by the spaces between the front and rear bumpers of each vehicle.
At the intersection, she paused beside a trashcan and dropped her keys to the sidewalk. She reached into the bakery bag and removed the box of cupcakes, untied the string wrapped around the box and proceeded to eat the cupcakes. She shoved the first one in her mouth, as if to eat the whole thing in one bite, smearing swirled icing on her lips and the tip of her nose. She tossed aside the liner and ate the next one in the same manner.
People walking past her on Central Avenue stared first in curiosity, then in apprehension, giving her a wide berth as she ate a half-dozen cupcakes with increasing messiness. Bored—or simply full—she dropped the uneaten cupcakes to the ground and heedlessly stepped on them as she made her way to the trashcan.
She looked down into the jumbled mound of debris for a moment, then reached into it, pushing aside fast food wrappers and cartons, empty soda cans and plastic bottles until her fingers curled around the neck of a whiskey bottle with a red “Paid” sticker from the Moyer Liquor Shoppe. Only a few amber drops remained. Nevertheless, she upended the bottle over her icing-coated lips and waited for them to drip onto her tongue.
When nothing remained of the liquor, she raised the bottle over her head again, but this time hurled it toward the windshield of the nearest car, a midnight-blue hatchback. The bottle shattered, leaving a starburst and one long crack in the windshield.
“Hey!” a man shouted behind her. “What the hell, lady!”
Alice staggered, suddenly aware that a gray-haired man had shoved her and was about to do so again. “Stop it!” she yelled at the man. “What are you—?”
She became aware of the cake and icing smeared all over her face, the crushed box of cupcakes at her feet near her discarded keys, and a slight feeling of nausea.
“What happened?”
* * *
Across the street, a few blocks away, one teenaged boy chased another, leaping from one parked car to the next. Each would land on the trunk of a car, bound over the roof across the hood and jump to the next car in a variation of the-floor-is-lava game. Hatchbacks and SUVs presented more of a challenge. If the pursued failed to make a jump or fell to the street, the roles and direction of the game reversed. Both teens laughed breathlessly, seemingly oblivious to cuts, scrapes and bruises.
After two reversals and extensive damage to two dozen cars, including a cracked windshield and several busted headlights and taillights, a good Samaritan rushed between two cars and tackled the lead teen in mid-air. They both collapsed in the street. One moment the teen was tense as a board, then he sagged, grumbling in pain.
The chasing teen, who had suffered a lacerated scalp during a previous fall, stopped on the hood of an old station wagon, kicked at the hood ornament, missed and fell on his rear with a metallic thump. Disappointed, he shook his head, flinging droplets of blood to either side. Then he too seemed to deflate, falling onto his side, moaning as he clutched the gash on his brow.
* * *
Miles away, Hal Greener, a Moyer mail carrier for almost ten years, drove his truck along the route he knew like the back of his hand. Minute by minute, he made stuttered progress, stopping at each mailbox along the sun-dappled streets to drop off letters and mailers, shifting into park when he had a box to run up to a welcome mat. Except for Christmastime, when the number of boxes increased significantly, requiring longer stops, he made his rounds like clockwork, starting and finishing within a few minutes of the same time every day.
Hal was less than thirty minutes into the day’s route, in the shade of a maple tree, when his hand paused next to the slot of the Gallaghers’ mailbox. Between his fingers he held several bills, a postcard advertisement and what looked like a birthday card for Susan, the Gallaghers’ youngest child. They had five kids. Susan was the only girl.
The shade seemed darker than usual, obscuring Hal’s vision. He tried to blink it away. His body trembled briefly and, convulsively, his hand crimped the letters and card. Then, instead of stuffing them in the mail slot, he tossed them high in the air. They fluttered to the ground like crude confetti.
The mail truck jerked forward, as if Hal had forgotten how to drive it. He weaved back and forth across the quiet street, never coming quite close enough to put any mail in a single mailbox. Instead, he grabbed each packet of mail in the tote on the front seat, yanked off the rubber band that bundled them, and flung them out the window, laughing hysterically as he left a scattered trail of undelivered bills, catalogs, magazines and advertisements. After a while, he started to toss the boxes, big and small, out the driver side window, making wide U-turns up driveways and onto lawns as he steered the wheels of his truck over each package.
When the last package had been delivered—somewhere on some street—he drove onto the state road, steered the mail truck into a drainage ditch and slumped over the wheel.
A moment later, with the truck listing at a forty-five-degree angle, he pushed himself back and fell sideways against the opposite door, wondering what trick gravity was playing on him. Nobody heard him mutter, “Where am I?”
* * *
The lunch crowd had thinned at Giogini’s Ristorante by the time the Scheidecker party of six pushed back their chairs, gathered their belongings and left. They had run their server, Savannah Barnes, ragged with all their sides, add-on orders, drink refills and desserts, pushing their check well north of two hundred bucks, but she had smiled and stayed pleasant throughout, despite the rush and numerous distractions, especially after Jordan had called in sick at the last minute, nearly doubling the number of tables she had to cover. They’d hurried out while she’d been preoccupied. And she discovered why when she swung by their table with a serving tray under her arm and opened the check presenter. Above George Scheidecker’s crimped signature, he’d brought down the total as-is, with a line drawn through the tip section of the check. Then she noticed some loose change by the candle holder, totaling $1.13 if she subtracted for the Canadian dime, not to mention the roach-sized blob of pocket lint he’d left behind for her.
By design, Giogini’s ambient lighting was dim, even in the morning, but Savannah felt a darkness blot out her vision. She squeezed her eyes shut, frozen where she stood for a moment. The serving tray slipped from under her arm and crashed to the floor, startling the remaining diners.
Turning on her heels, she stormed over to a nearby table and grabbed a plate of spaghetti and meatballs as an elderly woman was about to sprinkle parmesan cheese on the mound of pasta. As she left with the plate, knocking a fork on the floor in the process, the woman called out to her.
“Miss, why are you taking my lunch?”
By the time the woman struggled her way out of the booth to follow her or flag down the manager, Savannah had shoved open the doors to the waiting area and exited the restaurant.
Savannah crossed the parking lot, the steaming plate of spaghetti and meatballs held aloft, and spotted the elder Scheidecker behind the wheel of a white SUV that looked as if it hadn’t been washed in months. When he saw her, his eyes opened wide and he gunned the engine, rumbling toward the exit. She darted in front of him and hurled the plate at his windshield.
Pasta and marinara sauce splattered and clung to the glass, blocking the driver’s side. Meatballs slid down to the hood, rolling along the windshield wipers until Scheidecker flicked them on to clear the mess from his field of vision. But he never slowed, and Savannah jumped back to avoid a collision. The SUV surged into traffic, eliciting a barrage of horns and squealing brakes, before jumping the median and the opposite curb, clipping a bench and bowling over a trashcan.
Savannah waited for Scheidecker to come back, either to berate her, threaten to sue or lodge a complaint with her boss. She stood there waiting, a steak knife taken from his table clutched in her right fist, but he continued to put distance between his damaged SUV and Giogini’s parking lot, driving well over the posted speed limit.
She blinked at a flash of light, looked down at the knife in her hand and followed the trail of spaghetti and meatballs leading out to Queen’s Lane. Behind her, she heard her manager, barking her name repeatedly.
Finally, exasperated, she called, “Savannah! What’s gotten into you?”
Savannah turned to face her. “Dina… what just happened?”
* * *
Gabe Longley, local barber, turned into the produce aisle of Moyer Market holding a plastic basket by the wire handle as he made his way to the organic section, stopping first at the peaches. A contingent of appreciative gnats hovering over the display elicited a frown of distaste while Gabe decided whether to move on to other offerings.
The overhead lights buzzed and flickered suddenly.
Gabe blinked at the sudden darkness.
He cast aside his empty wire basket, leaned forward and gathered as many peaches as he could within the embrace of both arms and pulled them all down to the floor. It looked as if someone had overturned a ball pit in a children’s restaurant but, unlike balls, the peaches didn’t bounce.
Unperturbed, Gabe whistled an improvised tune and skipped along the produce aisle, pausing to topple mounds of apples, oranges, cantaloupes and anything else round with the potential to roll.
* * *
Half a mile away, Chuck Wakely, a retired plumber, dropped the leash of his bulldog, Digby, and stared at the half open window of an old van with a faded mural on the side depicting a dragon or possibly a sea serpent.
Sensing something different about his owner, Digby whined and shuffled backward.
Unlocking the door, Chuck climbed into the van and proceeded to hotwire it, a criminal skill he’d neither acquired nor perpetrated in his entire life. He drove away, leaving a confused Digby behind. For the next five minutes, he veered into parked cars on both sides of the street with the apparent goal of ripping off as many sideview mirrors as possible, bonus points for every car alarm he tripped.
His earlier misgivings gone, Digby padded along the sidewalk, attempting to keep the receding van in his line of sight. When the van turned a corner, Digby barked nervously. Trailing his leash, the bulldog faithfully jogged through the carnage.