Joe Lansdale - Lost Echoes

He roped on down, and when he got to the tree he put his back to the twisted trunk and took a rest. He pulled the rope off and rolled around so that his belly was against the trunk. He got the flashlight Tad had given him out of his coat pocket and moved the beam around.

There was so much brush you couldn’t tell shit about much of anything. Tad was right. The body could be anywhere, and this was no easy place to search.

Harry decided he would work his way to the bottom, or at least until his rope played out. He had a lot of rope to work with, maybe two hundred feet, but he couldn’t tell dick about how far it was to the bottom. Taking a deep breath, Harry worked the rope around his waist again, and with his back to the tree, digging his feet into the ground and leaning back out into the wind, he began to work his way down.

He had gone only a short distance when his shoes bumped something.

It wasn’t a body. Of that he was certain. It was something more solid.

Harry turned for a look, saw that his feet were on something metallic. There was another tree about ten feet beyond what he was touching, and as before, he made that his target.

When he was up against it, he found the trunk took a kind of dip and that its roots were buried deeper into the slope than he had expected. When he came to rest, his back against the trunk, he saw through a burst of foliage that he was looking directly into the dark windshield of a car.

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In a moment he realized he was actually looking at where the windshield used to be. This one was knocked out, just a few starred fragments jutting up from corners of the frame.

His feet were on the hood, and the hood was crumpled, and brush grew all around it and vines overlapped it.

Could Vincent have had a car?

If he did, they’d have to have disposed of that as well. But that didn’t quite work in with his theory.

He thought about a way to find out, but thinking about it made him feel cold. He leaned back and took a breath and looked up through the branches of the tree and spotted a star and held his vision on that.

He was tired, so tired of being scared.

He had to know. And there was only one way to find out.

The phone in his coat pocket rang.

He positioned himself solidly against the trunk of the gnarled pine and took the phone from his pocket. While he spoke, he looked up to see Tad’s head hanging over the ledge. He was on his belly, and his face was a faded gray mask without features.

“Barbershop,” Harry answered.

“How’s it look for a little off the sides?”

“Well, I should have answered Used Car Lot. I’m standing on top of a car hood, leaned up against a tree.”

“I see you…. A car. No shit?”

“No shit.”

“I don’t suppose there’s anyone in it?”

“I’m afraid to look. The windshield is knocked out, and I’m thinking of going inside that way.”

“It could shift, kid. You and it could end up down there at the bottom of the hill, you trying to pick a transmission out of your ass.”

“Only way this thing would fall is if someone went at the brush and vines with a chain saw. It’s wrapped up tight, Tad. Been here a long time.”

“Maybe you could get it running. It’s bound to be better than that piece of shit you drive.”

“Maybe some new tires…I’m going in, Tad.”

“Hey!”

“What?”

“You seem to have sort of gotten your game on, kid.”

“You think?”

“I think.”

Harry put the phone away, loosed the rope, let it dangle by the tree. He crawled over the hood and went up and onto the sloping front seat through the missing windshield, managing to cut himself on its glassy remains only once. It was his knee. The shard cut right through his pants and got him.

As he crawled, the car remained solidly in place. There wasn’t so much as a budge, a creak. It was held fast by the vines, years of them. He took the flashlight out of his coat and played it about. He didn’t find a body or bones or much of anything in the front seat or back. The trunk, that wouldn’t be something he could open.

He crawled over the front seat and lost his footing, fell onto the backseat with a thud, rolled on his back, put out his hand, and caught the back of the front seat to keep from rolling onto the floorboard—

—and there was a woman lying inside of him, and a man on top of her, holding her shoulders down, the man’s face strained and twisted, his teeth and tongue showing, and Harry felt as if the very nature of fear had slipped into every cell of his body.

She was being raped. And the man doing it was the man he had seen before. The man with the hat. This time without the hat, but the same man. Had his pants pulled down and was going at it.

Harry could feel the woman’s horror, and it stuffed him with nausea and revulsion. He scrambled onto the front seat and landed hard, found a man’s body there, lying faceup, eyes open. A black man. A young man. Dead. Harry’s knee was poking right through him. There was a bullet hole through his forehead. Small. Neat. Behind his head the car seat was dark with pooling blood.

The images began to fade, became outlines.

Harry slapped the front seat with his hand—

—he jerked his head toward the driver’s window, saw that the car was on flat ground, Humper’s Hill, surrounded by trees and moonlight, and his quick glimpse had given him a view of the tail end of a muzzle flash.

As the image faded, Harry slapped the seat again twice, very hard.

—sailed backward through time, and the black man was rising up and the muzzle flash was going back into the gun, and then the image hung, went forward again, instant replay off a rewind, the black man falling backward onto the seat.

In the flash Harry caught a glimpse of the executioner’s face. It was a big man with even features. He looked familiar, but Harry couldn’t quite place him. Behind the shooter, not far away, another man-sized shape could be seen in the flash of the muzzle fire. He seemed adrift, apart from it all. Observing.

Fading—

Slap .

—looking over the seat this time, trying to ignore the gun poking through the window, directly at his face. Harry turned his head, looked through the rear passenger window, could see a woman being shoved against the car, slapped. The back door opening—

My God. I’m moving backward and forward on this, wobbling through time…. This is earlier…maybe.

Slap .

Slap .

Slap .

—woman being shoved into the car, the man coming in on top of her. And out there in the dark, the shooter, and the other man in the darkness, the shadow guy with his back turned, his shoulders heaving. He seemed to be crying, or about to throw up. And then his face turned slightly, as if he might be looking over his shoulder to see what was gaining on him. A piece of light from the moon fell on his features and lit them up.

Kayla’s dad.

Fading.

Slap .

Slap .

Images swarmed him, overlapping and horrible, and he felt the woman’s terror, the quick spurt of fear the man felt when the gun poked through the open window—

—and then it all faded and Harry went limp.

There was a buzzing noise, and Harry couldn’t place it.

It went on for a long time, and finally Harry realized it was coming from his pocket.

He opened his eyes. He was no longer on top of Humper’s Hill. He was now back to being in the banged-up wreck of the car, angled on a brush-covered slope. He was lying up against the steering wheel, uncertain of how he’d come to be there. The sky was lightening. His head was full of confusing images.

Since there was nothing in his visions about the car going down the side of the slope, that meant to Harry that both the man and woman were dead when the car was pushed over.