“What, Demon Road?”
“Yeah. Try to be, you know … a little cooler about it.”
“Oh,” said Glen. “Yeah, sure. Blasé, like? Yeah, no problem. Kind of a nudge nudge, wink wink kind of thing, right? If you have to ask, you’ll never know. First rule of Fight Club, that sort of vibe? Yeah, that’s cool. I can do that.”
“Good.”
“So how long have you been on it?”
Amber turned in her seat. “He just said we don’t talk about it.”
“But how am I supposed to ask questions if I’m not allowed to talk about it?”
“Don’t ask questions, then.”
“But how am I supposed to learn?”
Amber went back to glaring out of the window.
Milo sighed again. “I haven’t travelled these roads in years.”
“Why not?”
“I didn’t need to.”
“Do you know them well?” Glen asked.
“I did. Once upon a time.”
“So what are you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, Amber can transform into this beautiful demon girl, I’m dying of some monster’s creepy Deathmark … how come you’re here? What did you do or what was done to you?”
Milo didn’t answer.
Glen leaned forward. “Could you not hear me?”
“He’s ignoring you,” said Amber.
“Why? What’d I say?”
“You’re asking a whole lot of questions,” said Milo. “I like to drive in silence.”
“So do I,” said Amber.
“You do?” said Glen. “I hate driving in silence. I always have to have the radio on, even if it’s country music or something horrible like that. God, I hate country music. And I don’t mean the country music you have here in America, I mean the stuff we have in Ireland. Country singers here sound like they’ve been in a few bar-room brawls, you know? Back home they’re just blokes who walk around in woolly jumpers.”
“Woolly what?”
“Sweaters,” Milo said.
“Oh,” said Amber.
“My dad was a country-music fan,” said Glen. “At his funeral, they played all his favourite songs. It was awful. I wanted to walk out, y’know? Only I didn’t because, well, I’ve never been one to walk out of places. Well, no, I mean, I walk out of places all the time, obviously, or else I’d never leave anywhere, but I’ve never walked out of somewhere on principle. I can’t even walk out of a bad movie. My dad used to say I was just too polite for my own good. Suppose he was right.” He quietened down for a moment, his cheerfulness dimming, then looked up again, smile renewed. “So, Milo, how’d you get to be a guide? What qualifies you? Do you have, like, a dark and tormented history or something? Are you a demon, too? What’s your angle?”
“You writing a book?” Milo asked.
“Uh no. Just making conversation.”
They lapsed into a short-lived silence.
“You know what this car reminds me of?” Glen asked. “You ever hear of the Ghost of the Highway?”
Milo was done talking, so Amber took up the reins. “No,” she said. “Never have.”
“It was this guy who drove around, years ago, with his headlights off,” Glen said. “He’d drive up and down all these dark American roads at night, looking for his next victim.”
“That’s an urban legend,” Amber said. “When someone passes the other way and flicks their lights at him, he runs them off the road. We’ve all heard it.”
“No, but this is real,” said Glen. “Or, well, okay, maybe sort of real, but he did kill a few people back in the nineties. I looked it up. There are a load of websites about him.”
“There are websites about everything.”
“Yeah, I suppose. But it was a seventies muscle car he drove, I remember that much. Black, too. I think it was a Charger. Or a Challenger. So cool. Is this a Charger?”
Amber’s gaze drifted to the window again. “Yeah,” she said, hoping he’d shut the hell up now.
“There were a few survivors because he didn’t, like, get out of the car to finish them off, or anything. All he was interested in was bashing them off the road. Though he did run a few down, but, if you ask me, anyone who thinks they’re gonna sprint faster than a car kind of deserves to be run down, am I right? Ever since I heard about the Ghost of the Highway, I’ve wanted a car like that. And now I’m in one!”
“A dream come true,” Amber muttered.
“Just to drive in something that cool … We don’t have anything this awesome in Ireland. There are a few petrolheads who’ll import the odd Mustang or whatever, but you wouldn’t be able to drive around without people going, Who does your man think he is? – you know? But here you can drive a car like this and people won’t automatically think you’re a tool. People are more accepting here, y’know? But those police reports, in the victims’ own words, describing what it was like to be chased down by this terrifying black beast of a car … One moment they’re driving along fine, the road pitch-black behind them, the next these red headlights suddenly open up in their rear-view mirror …”
Amber stopped gazing out of the window, and looked at Milo out of the corner of her eye. His expression remained calm, but his hands gripped the wheel with such force that his knuckles had turned white. She suddenly had a knot in her belly.
“It was things like that, y’know?” Glen continued, oblivious. “Things like that that made me fall in love with America. A country so big you can do something as crazy as that as a hobby and never get caught … wow. I’m not saying I want to do something like that, but I appreciate the fact that I could. Land of the free, right? Home of the brave.”
Glen settled back, lost in his own overwhelming sense of wonder, and Milo didn’t speak again for another two hours.
By the time they stopped off at a Budget Inn in Jasper, Georgia, Milo looked a lot paler than he should have. His face was gaunt, his eyes distant. He got out of the Charger slowly, almost like it didn’t want him to leave, and only when they had left it behind them in the parking lot did he regain a little of his spirit. He told Glen to shut up three times as they checked in.
For his own reasons, Glen attempted an American accent that sounded like a cross between John Wayne and John Wayne’s idiot brother. Amber thought that the woman behind the desk would ask her for proof of age, but the woman seemingly couldn’t have cared less. Amber went to her room with a small bag containing necessities, a vending-machine sandwich, and a lukewarm can of Coke. The water in her shower took forever to heat up, but eventually she stood under the spray and closed her eyes. She worked a full mini-bottle of shampoo and conditioner into her hair, which had dried out in knots and tangles following her dip in the river, and when she was done she stood in front of the bathroom mirror naked.
Unimpressed with what she saw, she resisted the urge to shift. She didn’t see the point of feeling even worse about herself.
She turned on the TV. Every second channel had a preacher in an expensive suit talking about God and the Devil. She watched for a bit, hoping in vain to hear some words of comfort, but all she got was fear and greed. She flicked over to a horror movie, but that failed to distract her, so she turned the TV off, and all the lights, and climbed into bed. The mattress was uncomfortable and unfamiliar. The pillows were simultaneously too thin and too soft. She lay in the darkness. Voices came through the walls. TV sets played. Toilets flushed.
She thought about Milo and Glen and Imelda, and the trucker and Brandon. She thought about the Ghost of the Highway, and she thought of her parents, and how they were probably coming after her even as she lay there.
She got up, dragged a chair in front of the door, and jammed it up against the handle like she’d seen people do in movies.
She went back to bed. Sleep was a long time coming.
THEY SET OFF EARLY the next morning. Milo looked healthy and strong again, and he must have been up for a while because the Charger was gleaming w
hen they got in. Glen told them all about his night. It wasn’t very interesting.
When he realised nobody was answering him, Glen dozed for an hour in the back seat before checking on their location on his phone. “Ooh!” he said. “We’re going to be passing Nashville! Can we stop?”
“No,” Amber and Milo both said.
Glen looked hurt. “But … but this might be my last chance to see it. I’m dying, remember?”
“You haven’t mentioned it,” Milo said, making it the second joke he’d told since Amber had met him.
“Can’t we even just drive through?” Glen asked. “You don’t even have to go slow. Come on, please? Elvis started out in Nashville – it’s where he recorded his first record. Elvis!”
“He did that in Memphis,” Milo said.
Glen frowned. “Isn’t Nashville in Memphis?”
“Nashville and Memphis are both in Tennessee. Which is where we are.”
“Oh. Are we going to be passing through Memphis?”
“No.”
“But I’m dying. Why are you in such a rush, anyway? Isn’t it time you told me what’s really going on? We’re friends. We’re on this trip together. That bonds people, y’know. We’re bonded now. We’re inseparable. We should have no secrets from each other. I’ve got no secrets from you. I told you all about the monster who attacked me and gave me the Deathmark and my quest to find The Dark Stair. What’s your quest?”
“Don’t call it a quest.”
“But what is it?”
Amber turned to him. “We’re dropping you off in Wisconsin. That’s as far as you’re going with us. Believe me, it’s safer for you not to know anything beyond that.”
He blinked at her. “But … but we’re inseparable.”
Amber turned back. “Not nearly as inseparable as you think.”
Glen went quiet. A few minutes later, he was tapping away at his phone again.
He chuckled. “They have a Toledo in Ohio,” he said. “Hey, do you think that’s where the phrase Holy Toledo comes from? Do you? Hello?”
“There’s also a Toledo in Spain,” said Milo with dull exasperation. “It’s a holy city.”
“So that’s where it came from?”
“I don’t know, Glen.”
“Makes you wonder, though, doesn’t it?”
“I guess.”
Glen nodded, went back to tapping.
They found a Walmart in Knoxville and pulled in.
“What’re we doing here?” Glen asked.
“Need to buy some clothes,” said Amber.
“Need help?”
She frowned at him. “No.”
She ignored his look of disappointment, and got out. She pulled her cap down lower and turned her face from the security cameras on her approach. Once inside, she scanned the signs for the clothing section, and picked up a few toiletries on the way over. She added some fresh underwear to her basket and followed that with a pair of jeans a little longer than she usually wore. She grabbed a belt, a new top, a few cheap bracelets, and went looking for a light jacket. When she had everything she wanted, she took them to the dressing rooms.
Once inside the cubicle, she tried on the clothes, looped the belt through the jeans, and turned to the mirror. The jeans were comfortable around her waist but gathered at the ankles. She looked like a girl wearing her big sister’s pants. Then she shifted, and her glorious red-skinned reflection grinned back at her. She tightened the belt, noting how the jeans were now the perfect length, how her T-shirt was now flatter around the belly and fuller around the bust. She added the jacket, turned and admired herself, imagining for a moment strolling back through Walmart like this, and wondering if the cries of alarm would dent her confidence. She doubted it.
But discretion, as ever, was called for, and she unbuckled her belt and reverted, and the jeans gathered at her ankles and her belly swelled to its usual proportions. Sighing, she changed back into her own clothes, put everything else into the basket, and left the cubicle, the cap once again pulled low.
She waited in line behind a woman who smelled really bad, and when she was gone the Hispanic boy at the till gave her a smile.
“Hi there,” he said.
“Hi,” she responded.
He started passing her items over the scanner – one at a time, slowly. “I like your eyes,” he said.
Amber blinked at him. “What?”
“Your eyes,” he repeated. “I like them.”
She blinked. “These?”
He laughed. “You have any others I should know about?”
“No,” she said, and blushed. He wasn’t the best-looking boy in the world, but he wasn’t bad, and he had a confidence that she could only manage when she was demonified. It was attractive. Hugely so. His name tag identified him as Eugenio.
“This is the part where you tell me you like my eyes, too,” he said, in a mock whisper.
“Oh, sorry,” said Amber. “I like your eyes, too.” She did. She really did. They were brown like chocolate.
“How nice of you to say so,” he said, giving her another smile. “So does a nice girl like you have a boyfriend? I only ask because if you say yes I will spiral into a bottomless pit of despair and loneliness, and you wouldn’t want that, would you?”
“No, I wouldn’t,” she said. “And I don’t have a, you know … a boyfriend.”
“That seems highly unlikely. Are you sure?”
Before she knew what she was doing, she giggled. Dear Lord, she giggled.
“I’m sure,” she said.
“Well then, how about we meet up later, if you’re free? Do you live around here?”
“Ah, sorry, I don’t. I’m just passing through.”
“Oh no,” Eugenio said, losing his smile and widening his eyes. If anything, that made him even cuter. “So I’ll never see you again? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Probably.”
The last item to scan was a pair of socks. He held them to his chest. “So the moment I put these through and you pay, you’re going to just walk out of here, walk out of my life, and never look back? But what if I don’t scan these socks? Will you stay?”
“I’m afraid not,” said Amber, packing the other stuff into flimsy plastic bags. “I’ll just have to do without the socks.”
He gasped. “But how can you do without socks? They are an integral part of any civilised society. A sockless person is no kind of person, that’s what my father always says.”
“He always says that?”
“He’s not a very good conversationalist.”
Amber laughed.
“Hey, Juan,” said an unshaven guy standing behind Amber, “would you stop flirting with ugly chicks and do your damn job?”
Amber went cold with mortification even as her face flushed bright red. Eugenio lost his good humour in an instant.
“My name is not Juan,” he said, “and be careful what you say about ladies, sir. You don’t want to be rude.”
The unshaven man had incredibly soft-looking curly hair, entirely at odds with the hardness of his face. “You wanna know what’s rude, Pedro? Making paying customers stand in line while you try to get into this girl’s pants.”
Eugenio’s jaw clenched. He dragged his eyes away from the man only when Amber held out her money. “I apologise,” he said to her.
“It’s okay,” she said quietly.
He handed over her change. The rude man was now ignoring her as he dumped the last of his stuff on to the conveyor belt. Amber gathered up her things and walked away, eyes that were filling with tears firmly fixed on the floor.
By the time she reached the Charger, she was back in control again. She slipped the bracelets on over the numbers on her wrist, concealing them, then put the bags in the trunk and got in.
“I’m hungry,” she announced, keeping her words curt, afraid that anything else might result in the others hearing her voice tremble. The topic of food set Glen off on some random tangent. Amber didn’t lis
ten. She replayed the scene in her head, only this time as she stood in the checkout lane she shifted, horns bursting from her forehead, fingernails turning to talons, and in her mind she watched herself tear the rude man’s face off.
They passed into Kentucky, and by the time they stopped at a roadside diner with a startling view of the Daniel Boone National Forest, her embarrassment had been replaced with anger. And anger faded faster than embarrassment. She got out of the Charger and closed her eyes to the breeze. It was still hot, but the air was better out here. It moved through the great slabs of lush forest on either side of the road, brought with it all manner of freshness.
“Big trees,” said Glen, and she had to agree with him. They were indeed big trees.
Inside the diner, the freshness was replaced by the smell of hamburger fat. There was a broken jukebox in the corner that played ‘Here I Go Again’ by Whitesnake on a loop. They sat at a plastic-covered table, and Amber ran her finger along the top, expecting to leave a trail in grease. The fact that it was perfectly clean disappointed her slightly.
They ate their burgers without speaking a whole lot. She could tell this was driving Glen insane, and it provided her with a glimmer of quiet amusement. He took some pamphlets from the stack beside the register and perused them while they ate.
“Did you know that the forest has one of the world’s largest concentration of caves?” he asked.
“Yes,” Amber answered, even though she knew no such thing, and cared even less.
Glen put that pamphlet aside, picked up another. “Hey, this is where Kentucky Fried Chicken was invented! Corbin, that is, not this diner. We should get some KFC! You want some?”
Amber loved KFC. “I hate KFC,” she said.
Glen looked glum. Amber beamed inside.
Amber and Milo shared the bill, and Glen looked embarrassed. She actually had some sympathy for him, the way he sat there, all pathetic and grateful. She was about to say something nice to him when he shrugged, looked up and said brightly, “Well, I’m off for a wee!”
He practically skipped to the restroom.
“Curious boy,” Milo muttered.
He led the way out of the diner, humming the Whitesnake song which was now firmly lodged in Amber’s head, too. She was not looking forward to another half a day on the road. She wouldn’t have minded staying here for a while, looking at the forest, enjoying the air. Apart from anything else, she liked the fact that Kentucky had mountains. Florida suddenly seemed way too flat for her liking.