Kaleb Nation: Harken

Holy hell, no… I thought. The gas was nearly on empty. If this car died, so would I.

I checked the mirror, but suddenly the man was gone. I hit the steering wheel. This was exactly why I never met clients at my house. I had a website and a special email address for them to reach me. I didn’t want any of them knowing where I slept at night. But that insane gaze behind his eyes—that Glimpse I still hadn’t had a chance to fully process—had been so intent on my death that I knew he’d find a way to track me down.

My car engine whirred in protest. I checked the mirrors for him again.

In answer, there came a gigantic slam on the roof of my car that nearly threw me swerving off the road. The ceiling had dented above me from being struck, the hand of Mr. Sharpe clinging to the top of my car outside the front window. I wrenched the steering wheel to the left to get back on the road, sending him sliding over the side of my roof. His face stared at me wide eyed again, punching the glass with the rounded handle of the knife, breaking a hole in it and spraying me with the shards.

“Why won’t you give up?!” I shouted. He tucked the knife under his arm and reached through the hole to grab me with his free hand as the road and trees sped on behind him. I pushed myself against my door. He swung his hand further, catching the end of my shirt, seizing it and pulling me toward his growling face.

The pull on my arm caused my hand to slip, sending the car flying over the edge of the road and into the grass. My right headlight exploded when I bounced off a tree—the same tree that threw Mr. Sharpe from my car as I careened into the woods.

I couldn’t regain control as I sped over sticks and brush, tires rumbling against pointed rocks as the bottom of my car rattled from being beaten. My head hit the ceiling painfully, my hands struggling to turn the car away from the trees as my shoes tried to find the brakes. I could see a clearing ahead, coming so swiftly that I knew it was a precipice.

Suddenly, there was a pair of trees too close together for me to pass between. My car bumped one and then the other, slamming me hard into the steering wheel airbag as I came to a stop.

I waved the bag out of my face, breathing heavily and looking up. There was nothing out my front window but the glittering landscape of the San Fernando Valley, houses and cars and streetlights sprawling for miles. The car had come to a stop with its front wheels over the cliff’s edge, the car’s body sandwiched between a pair of tree trunks and tilting dangerously forward.

Somehow I managed to regain control of myself, diving into the back seat and wrestling the door open. I slid to the ground and crawled away on all fours as the grass and sticks cut my palms, and I collapsed behind a thick bush with my head buried in leaves. Dizzy, breathless… I had to force myself not to pass out as my vision faded in and out of black.

No more than two seconds later, I heard something tearing through the woods, branches being knocked aside like a ferocious animal approaching. The terror brought back my wits, and I buried myself deeper into the bushes, just as Mr. Sharpe appeared from the path my car had created.

Gone were his decorous jacket and his perfectly styled hair: now, his clothes were tattered from thorns and covered with tree bark, his hair a wild fray above his head. But even more shocking than his frenzied state was the leap that Mr. Sharpe suddenly took, taking to the air like he was weightless. He was lifted with a shriek of anger, slamming feet-first into the top of my car, fingers curled open.

To my shock, ten pointed blades sprouted from the ends of his fingers, emerging from his skin like a cat’s claws. The razors were long like a lizard’s though, six inches at least, flashing and gleaming as if they were silver implants. They struck the roof of my car, embedding into the metal so powerfully that they split through the roof like blades against paper; claws aligned exactly where my skull had been moments before.

But they hadn’t struck anything. I couldn’t restrain my gasp, unable to believe my own eyes. Mr. Sharpe heard me and looked up, catching my gaze.

He jerked to stand; tiny sparks flying where the claws of his right hand scraped my car. But unexpectedly, he slipped when he found that his left arm was still stuck in the metal, the jagged edges drawing deep lines down his arm. I couldn’t move. He pounded the roof with his other fist and pulled harder, but this only served to upset the already unbalanced vehicle. My car began to tilt forward.

Mr. Sharpe struggled to pull his arm free, digging his free claws into the roof and tearing through the metal like it was paper. But it did nothing: no matter how hard he pulled, he was held tight. With a sudden scraping and crumbling of rocks, my car fell over the edge.

I heard a single crunch of metal against rocks, against skin and bones.

Everything went silent again. I trembled in the bushes, too terrified to move, the grass shaking against me. When he didn’t reappear, I managed to stand, fingers tearing into the bark as I breathed in dizzy gasps. My mind was so shaken that I was in a daze, so I stumbled uneasily to the edge and looked over.

My car—my beautiful, gleaming car, whose mere down payment had taken me months to afford—was not far below, upside-down with its now-beaten underside showing. One of the wheels was still turning leisurely. The car had fallen against a tall part of the mountainous rocks, spiked in the middle so abruptly that it had been smashed almost flat. It was between this rock and my car that I saw what was left of Mr. Sharpe: two feet, one arm still stuck in my roof, and the other hand sprawled open in death’s weakness, its silver claws gleaming like daggers in the moonlight.

Fear was usually a foreign sensation to me. In my mind, being afraid of something was little more than a waste of time, and at my hourly rate that meant quite a big waste of money. No matter whom I was meeting, or how dangerous my job became, I was always in control.

But this time, I wasn’t. This time, I ran.

My pounding footsteps carried me out of the woods—carried is a fitting term, because I was hardly controlling my movements as I darted in one direction and then another. When I had no more breath to drive me, I found myself far away from my car, stumbling across the yellow line in the middle of the road, in the middle of nowhere, so deep in the middle of the night that I could barely see my own hands. My mind told me this was a nightmare, but that wasn’t possible—not with the very real pain that stung from the knife’s gash down my arm.

The solidity of the gravel against my shoes was a strange security that nursed my senses back. I remembered all of a sudden that I still had my cell phone in my pocket. But it had no service. Typical Los Angeles . I kicked the grass so hard that some of the tall blades went flying, and I wanted to throw my phone at the nearest tree, but that wouldn’t have helped anything.

So I started running again, every hit of my shoes against the ground clicking into the woods like a steadily beating snare.

I am always in control… I told myself, over and over. This lie wasn’t its usual comfort.

Somehow—I wasn’t sure how long it took me—I found a spot in the hills with service for my phone and dialed 911. What followed was a dizzying rush of sirens, people in uniforms collecting me, an ambulance appearing and lights, lights…a cacophony of flashing, headache-inducing lights that burned my eyes and sent me reeling again.

Thankfully it was those same lights that broke me back into my senses. What had just happened to me? I expected for people with cameras to come running out and say that this was all part of a reality television show. That never happened.