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“I don’t know,” she said, her voice a rasp.
“How did you get to the side of the road?”
“I walked.”
“From where?”
She seemed to fade out a little, then back in again before she answered. “I don’t know.”
“He found you somewhere?” I asked her. I gestured to her body. “And he did this?”
Rhonda Jean shook her head, but I wasn’t sure if that was a response to my question. “It doesn’t even hurt,” she said. “Is that weird?”
The headlights behind us had receded, then come forward again. As if the car had seen us accelerate and had accelerated to match us. We were already speeding through the black, empty night, but Eddie must have seen what I saw in the rearview mirror, because I heard the Pontiac’s engine open more as we went faster.
I reached back and grasped Rhonda Jean’s hand. It was ice-cold, slick with blood. “We’re taking you to the hospital,” I said.
Her expression didn’t flicker. “Sure, okay.”
“But tell me what happened to you. Stay awake and tell me.”
Her hand moved faintly in mine, but I gripped harder and didn’t let her go. “He’s following us,” she whispered, as if someone could overhear. “He knows I’m in this car.”
“Who? Who is he?”
“Coldlake Falls,” Eddie said from the front seat as a sign flashed past our speeding car. “Five minutes, tops.”
Rhonda Jean’s hand twitched in mine again, and her chest moved up and down. Breath gasped from her throat, and I realized she was starting to panic. “Calm down, baby,” I said to her, the term of endearment springing from my lips out of nowhere. “Just be calm. We’re ahead of him. We’re getting to the hospital. We’re going to win.”
She didn’t believe me. Part of her wanted to, but she didn’t. “I’m not going to make it,” she said, gasping.
“You are. It’s just a little blood. They’ll sew you up, good as new. Hold on and tell me what happened.”
But she shook her head. There was something inside her mind, something immense that cast a giant shadow over everything, like a monster in a horror movie.
“Is this real?” she asked.
“It’s real, baby,” I said. “It’s real, and we’re going to get through it. Just hold on.”
Incredibly, the headlights behind us were gaining on us, their brightness beginning to flood the car. “Jesus, this guy is fast,” Eddie said.
The headlights got brighter, brighter. I squinted into them, trying to see the vehicle or the man behind the wheel. All I saw was light and part of a grille—he was in a truck of some kind, high off the ground.
“Eddie,” I said.
“I know. The turnoff’s up ahead.”
Another sign flashed past us—coldlake falls—and without dropping speed Eddie took the turn, flying us off the two-lane road. He glanced back at the truck and swore before turning back to the road again. For the first time, he looked shaken, pale. I’d never seen him look like that before.
Still gripping Rhonda Jean’s hand, I turned and watched through the back window as the truck—it was some kind of large, dark thing, gleaming like a beetle—sped past the turnoff and into the night. Then it was gone.
Seconds later we were bathed in light again, this time from the streetlights of Coldlake Falls.
He was avoiding the light, I thought. He let us go because he didn’t want to be seen in the light. What did Eddie see?
I gripped the cold, bloody hand in mine. “We’re almost at the hospital, Rhonda Jean. Hang on.”
There was no answer. The girl in the back seat had passed out.
