Rob Blackwell - A Soul To Steal

The sooner she changed the tire, the better. To her surprise and immense relief, she found both a jack and a spare in the trunk.

“Damn you, Donald,” she said out loud again. “I can do this without you.”

The bastard was probably off with his 25-year-old tart right now.

She stopped herself. That was no help. She needed to stay focused. She returned to the front wheel with a sense of purpose. But as she walked, her foot scraped against something. Bending down, she saw that she had stepped on a nail.

“Crap.” The nail had caused the flat.

Then she saw two more nails on the road. Looking back, she could see a few more faintly glinting in the moonlight.

“Damn it,” she said. Someone had put nails out here. Probably some kid, she thought, and silently she cursed them. They could have gotten her killed. She wondered what kind of little punk had done this.

Mary was still bent over when she heard a sound on the pavement behind her. Wheeling around, she stared off into the darkness and saw nothing.

“Is somebody there?” she asked.

Maybe the kid was here to see what kind of results his prank brought.

“Show yourself, if you’re there?” she called again.

At first there was nothing. Just the sound of a faint echo of her own words. And then she jumped at a voice coming from behind her.

“Sorry,” the voice said. “I didn’t mean to sneak up on you like that.”

She turned around to see a figure standing on the other side of her car.

“It’s okay,” she said, and smiled in relief. “I just…”

And her smile faded. He said he hadn’t meant to sneak up on her, but how was that possibly true? Hadn’t she heard him behind her a second before? Why hadn’t he called out? She looked around and saw nothing near them. Where was his car?

“It’s alright,” he said again, and took a small step forward. “Looks like you got a flat.”

“Yeah,” she said, although she looked at him warily. “Some kid put these nails here and I must have run over them…”

But the words dried out on her lips. Her tongue briefly flickered to the roof of her mouth as her heart seemed to spring directly into her throat. This was no kid.

“Yeah, you have to watch out for stuff like that,” he replied. She could see that he was smiling, but it failed to reassure her. To Mary, the smile appeared distinctly predatory, like some kind of cat (a mountain lion) that had found its prey. Instinctively, she took a step back.

“Yeah,” she muttered, and wondered if her fear was obvious.

He took another step forward and rested one hand on the hood of her car.

“Well, what do you say, let me see if I can help you with that,” he said, but he made no more forward moves.

She could see now in the faint moonlight that he had the other hand behind his back. It made her more nervous. She had no idea what to do. Should she run? Her brain was running through options but coming up blank. Panic was setting in.

“No, I’m okay,” she said, straining to keep her voice calm. “I just called my husband, Donald. He should be on his way.”

“Really? That’s great,” the man replied. “I’m surprised that you would get any reception out here. You know they’ve been debating putting up a cellular tower out here, but the damn environmentalists won’t let them. They say it would ‘mar’ the landscape, I think. I don’t know that much about it, of course. I don’t much care for that kind of news.”

Mary took another step back. She had hoped her ruse would cause him to back off. But it was obvious it hadn’t. The terrible truth finally clicked in: this was a trap. The nails, the dead-zone, the lack of any nearby help. She had a brief flicker of a memory of watching a mouse struggle on a glue trap near her stove. She had hated watching the thing slowly die, thrashing and screaming and begging for help. But she was that mouse now, she knew. And she was beginning to think her fate would be even worse.

“Well, it did,” she said, and sounded lame even to herself. “I was surprised.”

“Well, yeah, you would be,” he said. “I mean, you must have a great carrier around here.”

He took his hand off the car and took another step forward.

“Look,” Mary said. “I don’t know what you are doing out here, but…”

“Waiting for you,” he replied calmly, and the smile slipped from his face.

Now that the smile was gone, she found she wanted it back. In the light, he now looked blank and impassive and his eyes appeared dead.

“You put the nails here,” she said. It wasn’t a question. There was no need to ask.

He nodded and took another step forward. Mary took another back. She wished desperately she had taken her purse out with her. There was an old can of mace in it. As she was, she felt helpless.

“Well, I can’t leave everything to chance, can I?” he said.

“No,” she said, though she had no idea what he was talking about. “I suppose not.”

She looked briefly at her shoes. They were pumps, not exactly running sneakers.

“I mean, I was just lucky someone came this way, you know? Not many people bother anymore. Do you know why that is?”

She couldn’t bring herself to say anything. Instead, she backed away again. Her face felt taut and she could feel pain all through her chest. Every muscle in her body had tensed now and she fought the urge to just run blindly into the surrounding woods.

“It used to be a great make-out area, you know?” he continued, taking another step forward even as she walked back. “The kids all came this way and pulled off the side of the road. Sure, it was a shortcut, but it was so dark out here. You could get away with anything and there would be nobody around to hear.”

“I didn’t know that,” she said, still trying to think of what to do.

“No, if you had, you probably wouldn’t have come,” he said. “Because you would have known what happened to them. You must be new to the area, Ms…”

“I’m not going to tell you my name,” she said.

“Pity,” he replied. “I’ll just have to read about it in the paper, then.”

“What?” she asked.

“When they find your body,” he said. “They won’t find it for a while, of course. But when they eventually identify you from your dental records, then I’ll see the name.”

“Oh, dear God,” she said, and was startled to find water running down her face. She was crying. She didn’t know a person could cry from terror.

“He won’t help you, my dear,” he said. “Anyway, I put a stop to kids coming out here. Do you have any kids, Ms. Soon-to-be-very-dead? They could have told you how. Twelve years ago-on this very night-I gutted two of them. I mean, I really went to work. Not the way I will on you. No, I was younger then, and didn’t have enough artistry.”

Mary was sobbing now, unable to help herself.

“Anyway, just one couple. That was all it took. And in 12 years, they never came back. I know because I waited to see. But they were smart enough to stay away. Too bad for you though.”

“Please,” she said. “Please don’t do this.”

She took another step backward.

“If you don’t put up a fight, I’ll make it quick,” he said. “I promise.”

“No, no, no, no,” she stammered out, and she felt another emotion now. She felt a kind of raw anger coming out of her. These men, she thought. For how many years had she put up with Donald? And now she was finally free of him and this guy comes along? It was unfair. It wasn’t right. She wasn’t supposed to die like this. She was supposed to go quietly in her bed, surrounded by grandchildren.

She felt the anger wash over her and was surprised by how good it felt. Anything that broke through the fear.