M Sellars: Never Burn A Witch

The van met me full force for a third time and remained locked against my bumper. We had dropped below 80, and I continued to pump the brakes as the indicator fell. We were barreling down the center of the highway, straddling the white line. Tortured banshee cries screamed from my tires each time the brakes took hold. As our speed dropped below 70, I applied the pedal longer each time while still fighting with the steering wheel to keep him behind me.

Glowing lights slowly bloomed in the veil of grey mist before me, and I was soon able to discern the dim outline of an exit. Apparently, so could the killer.

As we came upon the ramp, there was a sudden roar from behind as the engine in the panel van wound up against a lowered gear ratio. The screaming transmission protested the abuse it was receiving as it was downshifted mercilessly. Before I could react, the killer veered off onto the exit, clipping the right corner of my rear bumper hard and sending me into a shallow skid.

I reflexively twisted the steering wheel in the direction of the skid and pumped the brakes slowly. Each time they would catch the wet pavement, the truck would slide farther toward the center of the highway. As the bed of the truck whipped around, I was now facing the opposite direction, and I straightened the wheel as I jammed on the brakes hard.

The tortured squeal of rubber against asphalt married with the sound of scraping metal as the passenger side impacted the concrete barrier dividing the highway, and I jerked to a sudden halt.

I had finally stopped at a point twenty yards beyond the exit ramp on the Riverview Drive overpass. I was pointing west in the eastbound lanes, and I was butted up against the concrete median, so I couldn’t see for sure where the van had gone. Without a second thought I let off the brake and jumped once again on the accelerator, shooting diagonally across the traffic lanes and making a hard left down the ramp.

At the bottom of the hill I locked up the brakes once again and slid to a halt with the battered nose of my truck sticking out into the intersection. I flipped a mental coin and turned left, ignoring the stop signs as I went. I was less than a mile down the road when my head began to clear, and the throbbing pain that had once occupied it drained away.

I immediately slammed on the brakes and turned around.

The category five migraine returned as soon as I cleared the underpass heading south, and I knew I couldn’t be far behind him. My misaligned driver’s side headlamp canted awkwardly at the pavement, illuminating it in a harsh swath of blue-white. If it hadn’t been for the bizarre angle at which it now shone, I probably would have missed the shining skid marks.

In June of 1929 the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge opened. The fifth bridge to cross the Mississippi, linking Missouri to Illinois, it was one of the longest continuous truss bridges in the country at slightly over one mile in length. By 1968 a newer, wider bridge had been opened up river, and the “Old Lady” had been closed. After over thirty years of sitting silent, the structure had finally been renovated for use as a pedestrian-only bridge linking hiking and biking trails on either side of the river.

It was here to which the skid marks led.

Yet again I applied my overtaxed brakes and slid the truck to a slightly canted halt. At this stage the bridge was only open on weekends between early spring and late autumn. A tall, chain link fence surrounded the entrance to what was originally a park-like area leading up to the old toll bridge. The wide gate that would normally be locked shut was now splayed open in a deformed mass, barely hanging from its hinges.

This close to the river the fog was nearing terminal density, and visibility was threatening to disappear. I twisted the steering wheel and followed the marks through the ruined gate, advancing with caution as I pushed through the opening.

With my engine revving barely above idle, I made my way around the left perimeter of the gravel parking area, fully expecting a large black panel van to loom dully in my headlights at any moment. It never did, and as I came upon the entrance proper to the old bridge, my fear was confirmed.

Two evenly spaced metal posts had been set at the mouth of the bridge to bar vehicular traffic from entering. The leftmost of the barrier posts was now slanted at an outward angle from a recent impact. If I strained to follow the beam of my one still-aligned headlamp, I could just barely make out the Iron Gate slightly beyond the posts that was used to close off the entrance. Just like its chain link predecessor, this one had been violently flung open.

I slowly idled the truck up the ramp and between the metal barriers. The rampant itching on my forearm had intensified and joined with a painful soreness that I knew to be a precursor to yet another weeping stigmata. Urgent emotion was declaring that I needed to race across the bridge to catch up with my quarry before the gory symbol was brought into being. Bitter logic was arguing that I was crossing a bridge that hadn’t been used by vehicles in over thirty years and that visibility was near zero.

My throbbing temples told me that he wasn’t far away, so logic won out for a change.

Now at the opposite end of the scale from the earlier chase, I cautiously urged the truck along at just over ten miles per hour. The Old Chain of Rocks Bridge was only a two-lane structure, and I steered up the center, casting my intent gaze forward as I made my way along the slow incline.

The clinging mist combined with my headlights to create an eerie forced perspective. The rust-marred superstructure rose around me to blend with the shadows. The lower beams bore a recent coat of dull green paint, and a four-foot fence painted a bright blue lined each side. The sight line of the structure faded quickly into the veiled atmosphere to join with an imaginary vanishing point.

The old patched pavement before me was marred by graffiti imprinted upon it throughout the years of non-use. Some of it benign declarations of so-and-so-loves-so-and-so, some of it disgusting epithets, all of it enhanced by the shiny wetness overlaying the asphalt.

I had traveled maybe a third of the distance across the bridge when I finally saw the red taillights of the panel van peering back at me like a pair of demonic eyes in the grey ether. I forced myself to maintain my wary pace and much to my surprise continued to gain on them. In less than a minute a perfect outline of the vehicle was visible, and the swath of my headlamp fell across the back to reveal the rear doors hanging open.

In an automatic motion I halted the truck and pushed the gearshift into park. A demolition crew was now working with a jackhammer directly behind my eyes, and the rabid itch on my forearm had mutated into a fiery burn. Somewhere within all of the pain, it crossed my mind that I was suddenly in way over my head.

I sent my hand in search of my cell phone and fumbled the device out of the dash-mounted holder. When I glanced down to punch in Ben’s number, I realized why I hadn’t heard from him yet. I had forgotten to switch it on. I quickly pressed my thumb against the power button, and the moment the unit completed its flashing and self-diagnostic chirping, an urgent peal emitted from it. I stabbed the button to answer and placed it against my ear.

“Ben?”

“GODFUCKINGDAMMIT, ROWAN!” my friend’s voice distorted through the earpiece, “WHAT THE HELL DO YA’ THINK YOU’RE DOIN’?”

“He’s here, Ben,” I stated urgently. “I’m right behind him, and I think he might have someone else out here!”

“WHERE? WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?”

I had quickly switched the phone to my left ear and was reaching to the dash to turn down the volume on the CD player when the battered driver’s side door of the truck swung violently open with a loud groan. Before I could utter anything more than a surprised yelp, a massive hand slapped against the back of my neck, its bony fingers wrapping around to almost completely encircle my throat.