David Wisehart - Blood Alley

The young girls’ voices echoed. “ Where are you?”

And then: “ Why are you here? ”

Pale faces formed in the mist. Two young girls. Twin sisters, no more than eight years old. As the mist receded, the girls moved forward without taking a step. They stood together holding hands. They wore matching country dresses, light blue, and yellow shoes with little black bows. Perfect white stockings pulled tight to the knees. Braided blonde hair. Dimpled cheeks.

Claire called out, “Hello?”

The children stared at her with curious eyes. “ Hello, Becky… ”

“I’m not Becky,” Claire said. Where are the parents? They must be here somewhere. “I need help!”

“ Yes… yes… yes… ”

All Claire could think about was Ethan bleeding out his life in the back of the car. She had to make these girls understand. “Someone’s hurt!”

“ Where does it hurt, Becky? ”

“Please. Go get your parents. Can you help us?”

“ Help us… help us… ”

Claire walked toward them.

The twin girls withdrew into the fog and disappeared.

“No, wait…”

Claire followed them into the thick whiteness.

Something snagged her foot, and she fell forward, landing hard with hands and knees. The ground was smooth and hard and— paved? Could she still be on the highway?

Claire stood, disoriented, and looked around for the headlights.

“Trevor!”

The fog thinned, and she saw a neon sign flicker ahead. Most of the panel was dark, but letter by letter the sign lit up. It buzzed and flickered.

Red letters: first a “t” then a “p” then an “o,” forming the word “top.”

An “S” changed the word to “Stop.”

Truck stop? Claire guessed. The girls must have gone inside.

She walked toward the sign.

Behind her, a car horn honked. The Hummer.

Trevor’s frustration cut through the fog. “Damnit, Claire.”

More neon letters lit up, forming two words now: “Stop Car”

Claire looked back and saw red tail lights approach.

The rear of the Hummer emerged from the fog. Trevor was driving in reverse. He backed up beside Claire, and paced her as she walked.

Trevor powered down the passenger window. “Get in.”

“There’s a building,” she said, pointing at it. “They might have a phone.”

She saw the final letters illuminated, completing the sign: “Last Stop Car Hop.”

“Trevor, look,” she said. “It’s from that song. Frankie Lamarque owned this place before he died.”

“I don’t care. It looks like a dump.”

Trevor was right. It was a 1950s diner, out of business for half a century. Window frames clung to broken shards of glass. Doors sagged on their hinges. Outside, speaker boxes were mounted on poles next to each parking stall. Inside, the building was dark and secretive. It bore the weight of gloom and neglect.

Parked in the lot were two old cars—classics from the fifties, maybe, or older, but they looked brand new. One was a red Chevy. The other was a bright yellow Ford coupe. The owners were nowhere to be seen.

Claire crossed the driveway.

Trevor said, “Wait for me.”

He’s stalling for time, she knew. If I wait, he’ll talk me out of this.

“I’m going in.”

“Claire—”

She entered the diner alone.

The main dining area was dark and cavernous, revealing only the dim outlines of tables and booths. Faint light spilled from a room in the back.

An office, she imagined.

Claire thought about using the flashlight app on her cell phone, but there was moonlight coming in from the broken windows and that other light from behind the office door.

Save your battery, she counseled herself, like a prudent TV sitcom mother, like the mother she never knew, and probably never would. Careful now.

After letting her eyes adjust, she walked in further, past a sign that read, “Please Wait To Be Seated.”

Her movements stirred dust. Cobwebs fluttered in her wake. She continued past tables and booths, past a row of stools guarding a countertop, past a dead juke box, and arrived with tentative steps at the opening to a back hallway, where she could see light seeping around the edges of a closed door.

“Hello?” she called out.

No one answered.

Must be a phone here somewhere.

Her eyes adjusted to the dim light, and she saw a restroom sign above the entrance to the hallway. Moving into the hall, she felt cobwebs cling to her bare arms and face. But these webs were old and twisted, the monuments of spiders long dead.

Nothing to worry about.

Something brushed her cheek, and she waved it away.

Her spine shivered, and she let it pass.

“Hello?”

She saw an old pay phone between the two doors of the bathrooms. Claire picked up the receiver and listened, but the phone was dead.

Hanging beneath the phone was an old phone book. It dangled from a cord.

The Fowlers once lived around here.

Searching for her family records on the Internet, she’d found reference to the Fowlers in scans of old newspapers, but none of the online directories listed anyone by that name. The earliest directories she could find were from the 1990s. By then, the Fowlers had left the area.

But here was an old phone book.

Frankie Lamarque’s diner must have gone out of business not long after he was killed, which meant this phone book probably dated back to the fifties or sixties. Finding a home address for the Fowlers might be too much to hope for, but an old phone number could be just the clue she needed.

Worth a try.

Claire flipped open the phone book.

Too dark to read.

She tugged on the book, and it came free of its moorings. She carried it back to the dining area. Neon light spilled in from a broken window. Claire set the phone book on a table near the window, and opened the directory to the letter “F.” She ran her fingers down the listings, found “FOWLER, Eldritch,” and ripped out the entire page. She raised it to where the neon light was brightest—

The entire room lit up.

A beam of light traced an arc across the walls. Claire glanced back and saw headlamps through the window. For a moment she was blinded, but then the headlights moved on, and her eyes adjusted.

It was the Hummer parking outside.

Trevor parked the car in a stall next to a speaker box.

The place was old-fashioned, like from the fifties, like that diner in Happy Days or American Graffiti or some old movie with greasers in white tee-shirts and black leather jackets sipping malts, dancing to jukebox rockabilly, and drag racing their hot rods to get their kicks.

He thought of James Dean and the young Marlon Brando. Movie stars with tight-sweatered girls itching for a ride on the bad boy’s bike.

He could picture himself in a scene like that.

Those were the days.

Parked nearby were two other cars, a classic red Chevy and a yellow Deuce Coupe. They weren’t falling apart like the rest of the place, but looked brand-spanking-new. Perfect restorations.

But where are the owners?

They must have been driving by, then stopped to check out the historic location. They’d probably parked, gotten out, and wandered around. Might be inside the crumbling diner right now.

With Claire.

“Wait here,” he said to Dakota. “I gotta check this out.”

He stepped from the Hummer and stalked his way to the coupe. The windows were dark. If there was anyone in there, Trevor couldn’t see them.

“Hello?” called out.