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When Ian opened the passenger door of the big-rig a big, full moon of a face was smiling down at him from the driver’s seat. The trucker was a portly man as big around as he was tall. His skin was pallid, ghost-like. He had very little of his gray-black hair left, which he grew long and combed to cover his entire scalp. His dark, beady eyes, which seemed to have a life separate from the man using them, were set close on—and in contrast to—his colorless face. They disappeared into little slits when he smiled. This was all topped off with an obvious lack of self control when it came to eating, for between his legs was jarred a Big-Slam Mountain Dew, and he had just started eating the first donut from an open box next to him when he picked Ian up. Little white flakes of powdered sugar were crusted in the corners of his mouth and dotted his flannel shirt.
“Hop in,” the man said. He put the uneaten portion of donut back into the box and wiped his hands on his shirt.
“Thank you,” Ian replied.
The trucker’s odd smile smiled even wider, hearing Ian’s accent. “Where you from?”
“Scotland,” Ian said as he plopped himself in the oversized passenger seat.
“You sound like that guy from Braveheart, oh—where was he from again? Ireland, wasn’t it?”
“Scotland, he was from Scotland, I’m from Scotland.”
“Oh yeah. You already said that, huh?” The man just kept staring at him with that queer grin.
Feeling uncomfortable, Ian adjusted his coat and reached back to put the seatbelt around him and fasten it at his side.
The man took notice of his collar. “You a priest, huh?”
“Aye, I’m a priest,” he answered impatiently because the man still hadn’t pulled back out onto the highway yet.
Finally, as politely as he could, Ian motioned out at the interstate on-ramp beyond the windshield and said, “I’m headed to a place called Thurmond—in New York. However far you could take me would be greatly appreciated.”
The man suddenly realized his rudeness and slapped himself on the forehead. “Right. Sorry, Padre. Didn’t mean to stare like that.” He looked out his over-sized side mirror and after two cars passed, he swung the blue Kenworth back into the flow of traffic.
“Name’s Arthur, but my friends call me Art. You can call me Art.”
“My name’s Ian, Ian McConnell. My friends call me Father Ian, but you can call me just Ian.”
“Well, Just-Ian, I must say that I never seen a man put away coffee as quick as you did back there at that truck stop. Can’t say as I’ve ever seen a man put ice cubes in his coffee and gulp it down the way you did, either.”
“You were there? You saw me?”
“I was having breakfast when you walked in. If your voice didn’t draw attention to you, then the coffee bit sure would have.”
Ian blushed. He never realized how strange he must have looked dumping all those ice cubes into those three cups of coffee. An unbathed and unshaven Scottish priest sitting in a booth at a truck stop with an unfolded map of the United States in front of him eating a Danish and washing it down with three cups of ice coffee. What a sight that must have been. All he could think to say was, “I was in kind of a hurry.”
“Isn’t that the way it is anymore? Rush, rush, rush. Never enough time to savor a good cup of coffee or a nice meal. It’s always gulp, gulp, thank you then good-bye. Sometimes not even thank you.”
Ian nodded politely then turned to look out at the passing landscape, but Art brought his attention back with more conversation.
“Where was it you were going again?”
“Thurmond, New York.”
“Well, I’m going to—-.” He paused for a moment as if deep in thought.
If Ian didn’t know any better, he would have sworn that the trucker couldn’t remember where he was going.
Finally he said, “Rochester. I’m going to Rochester.” He grinned. “The ol’ knocker ain’t what it used to be. I must be getting Frito brain. Anyway, It’s not that much outta my way, so I can take you right there, if you
want. I’m starting my vacation, so I’m in no hurry to get home. That’s why I could pick you up. I had no load on this baby, just dropped it off. If I still had it, I wouldn’t have stopped. Not easy stopping and starting one of these babies when she’s got a full load behind her.”
“I can’t thank you enough. Really.”
At the I-90 exit Art stopped at the tollbooth and picked up his fare-ticket, then they set off with diligence. He quickly picked up speed after the toll road was behind them and soon was buzzing down the Massachusetts Turnpike at a good clip.
“Hope you don’t mind the speed,” Art interjected. “I’m a bit of a lead-foot.”
“Ian shook his head, “Not at all. I’m in a wee bit of a hurry t’get where t’is I’m goin’ anyway, so the faster you make this lorry go, the better.”
“Now that’s what I like to hear.”
As the blue beast lurched ever faster down the interstate, Art reached above him to the visor and turned on his radar detector. He noticed Ian’s quizzical stare. With a wink he said, “This baby lets me know when its time to slow down, if you know what I mean.”
Though he didn’t, Ian nodded anyway. Then, as he turned and watched the crowded buildings give way to larger and larger stands of trees the farther they got away from the congestion of Boston, he began to think. Where was it, he wondered? The demon seed had gone to ground and was out there somewhere, searching out the very thing he was after. Now more than ever it would be a race against time.
But even with the head start the thing had gotten, Ian felt that it was close by, almost as if he could just reach out and touch it. Now that it was daybreak, the odds favored Ian. Surely a beast as hideous in nature as this one was could not risk being seen. No, it suckled the night when it could fuse with the shadows and move unseen.
At least that was what he thought. In reality, he knew very little about the monster he tracked. He didn’t know that it only moved at night, he only hoped it did. If he did get to that prize for which they were both contending first, he didn’t know how he’d bring the creature down, only that he’d hoped he could figure something out. It was the best he could do. He’d been flying by the seat of his pants for some time now with little time to fill in guesswork with facts. The truth was he was scared. Very scared. Ian looked down and noticed that his hands trembled slightly. Funny how the fate of the entire world rested in those unsteady hands.
He fixed his gaze out through the windshield at the road rushing underneath them trying to form a coherent hypothesis of what exactly he was up against. The ancient Gaelic documents had given little pertinent information on the creature. There were pages missing, and the pages he had were extremely lacking in key areas: like what exactly it was, how it got to be caged in the catacombs under the monastery (which would shed light on how he could deal with it presently), why it was there, how long had it been there. He wanted to pull out the papers and study them some more. Maybe he’d missed something or misinterpreted words, but he didn’t want any unnecessary questions from his host.
Speaking of host, from the corner of his eye, Ian saw Art staring at him again with that stupid grin on his face. He seemed to stare and grin a lot. There was something about that twisted smile that unnerved him. On any other face it would give off an air of alarm. On Art’s Pillsbury-Dough-Boy face it just looked corny.
After a respite of conversation, with quiet and constant glances from the corner of his eye, Art at last said, “So are you on some holy journey or something? I mean, it ain’t too often you see a priest from another country hitch-hiking down an interstate.”
“Of sorts, yes.”
“Well, you picked a grand place for it, Padre,” he said cynically. “Yessiree. You picked a dandy place to come search for God. Only in America do you find more people per capita that believe in God but who are the most amoral people on the face of the earth. A place where people believe in the sanctity of marriage but have a fifty percent divorce rate. A place where people in jail live better than a family a four whose parents each work two full-time, minimum wage jobs. How about a guy getting cut ear to ear for his wallet and all that was in it was ten bucks. Or kids being beaten to a pulp for a pair of hundred-dollar sneakers or a coat. Padre, I doubt seriously that your quest for God’s going to be fulfilled in this place. Maybe never.”
“Well, you’re quite the optimist, I see.”
“I’m a realistic man, Padre. This place is going to Hell in a hand basket,” he said—surprisingly with a grin.
“We all might as well just lay down and wait for the end, accordin’ t’you.”
“Might as well. It’s coming soon. Revelations says so. Hell, I suppose in my own little way I’m even contributing to that free fall into the Pit.”
“How so?” Ian asked with more than a little curiosity.
“It’s no secret I’m prone to indulge now and again, as my appearance so gracefully shows. I do believe that gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins.”
“Aye, it is. So you believe you’re doomed t’eternal damnation because you eat a bit much? It could be hereditary, somethin’ psychological, somethin’ you don’t have any control over. If that were the case then gluttony isn’t your problem.”
“Maybe. But I love to eat more than anything else, sleeping, work, sex—anything. I’ve even stolen food. Couldn’t help it. I just felt an uncontrollable need for it and took it.”
“None of us is perfect.”
“I’m carrying around more skeletons than just that one, Padre. It just happens to be my most obvious one.”
Art had to slow the Kenworth down as they approached a slower, more congested vein of traffic. He peered out over the line of cars and RV’s and other big-rigs for a serpentine avenue through the bottleneck then looked out his side mirror as other automobiles slowly girded the truck.
“So Padre, what about you?” he continued. “Any deeds you’re not too proud of? Any skeletons in your closet?”
“We’ve all done things we’re not proud of at one point in time or another.”
“Come on. You can do better than that. It won’t go any further than me. You’ll never see me again. What could it hurt? Give me some juice, Padre.”
“Those matters are quite private, and I don’t think I’d like t’discuss them, if it’s all the same t’you.”
“Well we got a while to be together yet, so I’ll give you some time to think about it.” He smiled and winked at Ian.
As Art returned his full attention out to the interstate, Ian said nothing, just adjusted himself more comfortably in the seat and stared out at the countryside. As autumn colors raced by, he became increasingly sleepy. The moving landscape was acting like a lead weight pulling his eyelids down over his bloodshot eyes.
The fact was, he indeed had a skeleton in his closet, but it was something that someone like Art would not understand. At times he doubted that anyone would truly understand, even as basic and human as that skeleton was.
As sleep quickly overtook him, he began thinking about that transgression for the first time in a month. And as the grayness around his weary eyes turned to black, he felt Art staring at him again.
©2004 StoriesByEmail.com
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