David Wisehart - Blood Alley

The phone receiver was metal and covered with greasy fingerprints, so she used the tissue to pick it up. It was hot in her hands, but the tissue helped.

Dakota studied the pay phone’s keypad.

“O” was for operator, so she dialed “O.”

That didn’t work.

Then she saw the operator button.

Zero.

She dialed zero and waited.

Dakota put the phone receiver to her ear, but without actually touching it to her head. She made sure there was a good gap, so the germs wouldn’t get on her. But it made it harder to hear, with the wind all around. She heard the dial tone, then a ringing sound.

“Operator,” said a female voice on the line.

“Can I make a collect call?”

“Number, please.”

She gave her mother’s cell phone number.

“Who should I say is calling?”

“Dakota.”

“One minute.”

A minute seemed like an awful long time to wait for a phone call.

It didn’t take that long.

“Karen here,” said her mother.

“Hi, Mom—”

The operator said, “Will you accept a collect call from Dakota?”

“Oh, dear. Of course, I will. That’s my daughter. Of course. Dakota? ”

The operator hung up.

“Hi, Mom.”

“What’s the matter? Is something wrong?”

“With my phone, yeah,” Dakota said. “There’s no reception out here.”

“Where are you? What’s wrong?”

“We stopped at a diner on the highway. Everything’s okay.”

That was a lie, but Dakota knew you had to work your way through a few lies to get to the truth.

“Whose phone are you calling from?”

“It’s a pay phone.”

“Pay phone?”

“It’s okay, Mom. It’s kind of cool. Like an old movie. You’re supposed to use coins, I guess, but—”

“I remember pay phones,” her mother said curtly.

“Well, I lost the signal on my phone, that’s all. Sorry to call collect.”

“What’s going on?” her mother asked. “How close are you?”

“I’m not sure. I wasn’t paying attention. We had to walk some of the way.”

“ Walk? What are you talking about? What happened to the car?”

“Trevor had some car problems.”

“Oh, god.”

“No, it’s okay. we pushed the car to a—”

“ Pushed? ”

“Yeah, to a garage. But it’s okay now. There’s a diner here, and a pay phone, and everything. Trevor’s talking to the mechanic now, I think, and the mechanic says…”

What?

“…says we’ll be back on the road in no time.”

Her mother asked, “What’s the name of the diner?”

“Dinah’s Diner.”

“That’s a terrible name.”

“They got a B grade in the window, so it can’t be too bad.”

“Oh, god.”

“That’s a passing grade.”

“Dakota, don’t eat the food. B is for bacteria.”

“Don’t worry, Mom, we’re fine. There’s food in the car, snacks and stuff.”

“Call me when the car is fixed.”

“Sure, Mom.”

“I mean it.”

“I know,” Dakota said. “Ethan needs something. I gotta go. They need help or something.”

Another lie. She had to sandwich the truth with a lie, so her mom could swallow it.

“Dear, we’re at the hotel already, waiting for you.”

“See you tonight, then,” Dakota said.

“Call me back within the hour.”

“I will. Love you.”

“Remember to call. Collect if you have to.”

“I will. I said that.”

“I’ll have my phone with me.”

“Bye, Mom.”

She hung up.

Jesus, she thought, and went into Dinah’s Diner, suddenly hungry.

The lighting inside was dim, and the place was nearly empty.

A guy sat at the counter, drinking a beer. His back was turned to the door, and he didn’t look around when Dakota entered. His hair was thin and graying. He wore an old bomber jacket and a baseball cap.

That trucker who pushed us in , she thought.

Dakota found Claire sitting alone in a corner booth and joined her.

“I called my mom,” Dakota said.

The seats of the booth were cracked plastic upholstery. When she sat down, her seat whistled.

Claire sipped her coffee, then set her cup aside. “I thought your phone didn’t work.”

“I used a pay phone outside.” She pulled out her cell phone. “No reception, but the battery’s fine.”

She opened the mobile app for Guitar Hero.

“Don’t waste your battery on a video game,” Claire said.

“Relax, Claire. Jesus. You really need to Zen.”

She put her ear buds in, and fired up a new game.

Claire sipped her coffee in silence. She deliberately ignored Dakota, who sat on the other side of the table scowling through a game of Guitar Hero on her cell phone. Claire was in no mood for games.

The man in the bomber jacket was still sitting at the counter, Claire noticed. He was in his fifties, maybe older, and he kept his back turned to the door. He drank alone. Dark beer in a tall glass. The man stared straight ahead, lost in his own thoughts.

Something caught Claire’s eye. She glanced out the window. The glass was dirty, like everything else. Outside, across the road, next to the ghost bike memorial, a man stood alone. Claire hadn’t seen him there before.

The mechanic? she wondered.

He didn’t look like a mechanic. He was old and gaunt and pale. He wore a slouch hat and a black duster. He stood perfectly still beside the road and stared directly at her.

The man seemed familiar somehow, but something was wrong with his eyes. They had bright greenish tint. Claire wiped dirt from the glass pane.

Who is that guy?

“Hey, Dakota,” she said.

But Dakota was busy playing her game. Music blasted from her ear buds. She didn’t look up from the screen.

Claire glanced back at the man across the road. She felt drawn to him somehow, like he was calling to her. But all he did was stand and stare.

Some old hitchhiker, Claire decided.

A semi truck drove by on the road between them—for a brief moment blocking Claire’s view of the old man—but when the truck roared of sight, the hitchhiker was gone.

What the hell?

For a moment she wondered if the man had been there at all.

Don’t go crazy, now.

It was a constant fear of hers, going crazy. She didn’t talk about it to other people, not even to Trevor, but she had crazy thoughts sometimes, thoughts of hurting herself or hurting others. Terrible thoughts. Dangerous thoughts.

She wondered if somehow she had inherited a streak of madness from her unknown parents. According to her biology teacher, most things were genetic—the way you looked, the way you thought, the way you were. If you didn’t know your parents, how could you possibly know yourself?

What if her folks had been schizophrenic? Paranoid? Suicidal? She was pretty sure suicide ran in families. Her English teacher said that about the Hemingways. Claire figured that a parent had to be at least a little bit crazy to abandon a child.

She would never do that. No matter how crazy she was, she’d never do that.

Never.

Claire had been thinking a lot about her parents recently. Sometimes it was all she thought about. It was enough to drive her nuts, with or without genetics. All those Internet searches, emails to potential relatives, phone calls to state officials. Nothing ever panned out.

Still, she had a few potential leads on who her parents might have been.

A grave marker in Missouri…

A lawsuit in Nevada…

A last name…

Fowler .

There had once been a family of Fowlers living near Cedarview. Claire had read a blog post about an alleged phantom named Fowler. Locals hinted at a tragic past but wouldn’t talk on the record to the ghost-hunting blogger, who had called this road “Blood Alley.”