James Jenkins: The Valancourt Book of World Horror Stories. Volume 1

UIRONDA

The cigarette slid from his lips onto his lap. He brushed it away with an irritated swipe of his hand, pulling the truck over to the shoulder.

And descending from the cab so he no longer had to see that writing, his chest squeezed in a clamp, Ermes Lenzi realized he had stopped the Scania about ten meters from a road sign indicating a junction. The sheet metal sign was a dark yellow color, stained with rusty streaks. The writing, in an elegant and out-­of-­place cursive, left no room for logic.

Next Exit – Uironda

He remained standing there observing the sign, his arms hanging slack at his sides. The world – which world? – was cloaked in a terrifying, unnatural silence. Lenzi knelt down on the warm asphalt, bringing his hands to his face, a tormented statue of flesh erected to challenge the road and the imminent storm.

After having tried to phone his ex-­wife and a couple of friends – no signal – Ermes climbed into the cab of the truck like a fat caterpillar. The pain had returned to gnaw at the base of his spine with the tenacity of a mastiff. Somehow the excruciating throbbing that tormented him brought him to a state of quiet resignation. Slumped in the seat, his hands on the wheel, he practiced the breathing exercises to treat panic attacks, trying to find a sense in the madness that he was living.

Hadn’t there perhaps been days when he had wished to be the last man on Earth? Days in which the desire to disappear, to be alone, far away from problems, from anxiety, had become an obsession, a necessity?

You’ve got your wish. No traffic, nobody to interact with, no nothing. Just you and the road, just you and a goal, finally: Uironda.

He smiled, rummaging in his shirt pocket. There was one half-­crushed Camel left in the packet. He decided to save it for a better occasion. Then he turned the key, shifted into first, and advanced at a crawl, passing the road sign that had so greatly disturbed him.

He would drive until he reached the next exit. No, he couldn’t turn back. And if that exit really led to Uironda, well . . . he would take it, enter the territory of superstition, of urban legend. Deep down he was only looking for a way to shake up his dull life, a distraction, a spark that would ignite anew his will to live, his curiosity. This could be his chance.

Uironda .

The storm had caught up with him. Carried on the wind, the first raindrops beat down on the Scania’s windshield. It was a dirty, yellowish rain that the windshield wipers struggled to sweep away, smearing the glass with greasy gunk. Maybe the storm was coming from Africa, loaded with sand and dirt. Ermes rolled up his window and accelerated, launching the truck into the fury of the elements.

It was like entering a tunnel filled with liquid dust. The vehicle’s headlights could barely cut through the rain to illuminate the center line.

The digital tachograph went completely mad, showing sequences of figures and numbers apparently devoid of meaning. Every so often, like the flash of a strobe light, the name of the mirage junction appeared on the display, the non-­place that old truckers whispered about, men like Roby, the first – and last – person to pronounce Uironda in his presence.

Ermes clenched his teeth and squinted his eyes, concentrating on driving, praying to get out of this storm as soon as possible. Violent gusts of wind assailed the trailer, making it swing on its suspensions. He had never driven in similar weather conditions. He was dealing with a freak storm that reduced visibility almost to zero. The wind’s cries were like the howls of a dying beast, and very soon in the overwhelming yellow clouds Ermes noticed some dark shapes outlined beside the windows, in front of the windshield.

Disembodied shadows. Twisted hands that stretched towards him in an attitude of supplication. He tried to ignore them. And he decided to turn on the CB radio, tuned to channel five.

‘Is . . . is anyone listening? Over,’ he whispered into the receiver. He hardly recognized the sound of his own voice, a gritty rasp. ‘This is Ermes, is anyone there?’

The radio crackled, a hiccup of static discharge and chopped-­up syllables.

‘If . . . if there’s someone there, listen, I think I’m lost. There’s no one on the road and I’ve ended up in the middle of this storm that came out of nowhere and . . .’ Ermes swallowed saliva. He didn’t like the cracking in his voice. The tears at the corners of his eyes. He was about to give in to panic, to start crying and shouting like a child who has lost his mother in the supermarket. He pulled himself together. ‘If there’s someone there, respond please. I don’t know where I am. Over.’

And finally someone spoke. A friendly, familiar voice. And just because it was so familiar, it was frightening.

‘Daddy?’

‘Si-­Simone?’

It was his son. The words were faint, barely audible, coming from an unfathomable distance, but without a doubt from Simone’s vocal chords.

‘Yes, Daddy. When are you coming home, Daddy? I miss you.’

Ermes Lenzi gave in to the irrational. He tried to calm the sobs that threatened to shake his chest. ‘Simo, Daddy’s coming soon, all right? Daddy’s coming soon and he’ll take you to the movies, okay? Daddy’s coming as quickly as he can.’

The realization that he was lying came over him. The terrible certainty that he would never see his child again.

‘Mommy and I are waiting for you,’ Simone crackled through the receiver, and now the voice was his and yet not his . Altered by a liquid gurgling, more like the sound of a flooded engine than a human voice. ‘Mommy and I are waiting for you at home. In Uironda. Come.’

‘I’m coming. I’m on my way. Daddy’s coming, Simo.’

On the other end, silence.

Ermes Lenzi put his foot down on the gas pedal, his face disfigured by a mad grin.

‘There’s no escape from the road, the black whirlpools that swallow tar, take the junction, reach Uironda, become part of this realm!’ he began to murmur.

He continued thus until, after an interminable while, he found himself outside the storm once more, greeted by a night without stars, black and cold like damnation.

A viaduct towards nothing, a strip of tar hurled towards a ghostly horizon. A one-­way asphalt road with no guardrails, suspended over the Abyss, on a dark blanket without reflections. This is what Ermes’ reality was reduced to. Everywhere he looked there was only impenetrable blackness. The Scania’s headlights barely lit up the asphalt.

He proceeded at thirty per hour because if he made a single error, if he ran off the road, he was sure he would be precipitated into an eternal void of no return, like an astronaut lost in outer space. A sci-­fi movie he had seen with Daniela came to mind, a film whose title he didn’t remember. There was a spaceship, a metal colossus that moved thanks to propulsion from an artificially created black hole inside it, and there were nightmares that took form to drive the passengers to madness. How did that film end? Not well. Not well. Ermes told himself that happy endings are for the weak. That in real life happy endings were nothing but an illusion.

Far off, on the right side of the road, a point of light materialized. Red. Perhaps a streetlight, or the emergence of a planet or a star.

No.

Advancing, other crimson flowers blossomed in the darkness, reminding him of a swarm of fireflies on the motionless surface of a lake.

They seemed to be the lights of a village, of a small town.

Ermes felt he had almost arrived. He perceived it in a dull vibration in his chest, in his bones. His back pain had disappeared. He kept his eyes fixed on the bright beads that were taking shape on the horizon.