They Lurk by Ronald Malfi

Author:Ronald Malfi [Ronald Malfi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Horror, Short Stories, Antholgies
Goodreads: 22022628
Publisher: Darkfuse
Published: 2014-04-24T23:00:00+00:00

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The Maverick was discovered roughly two hours later, in a wooded ditch off the main highway. The door was flung open, the interior light on, the seats and floorboards saturated with blood and broken glass. The taillights were out, the bumper dented, the front grille twisted and broken around the trunk of a tree. Pieces of guardrail had scraped along the right side of the car, ruining the passenger door. Inside, a corduroy necktie and a tan-colored dress shirt, both saturated with blood, had been left behind. There was no sign of the handgun. And strangely enough, the driver of the stolen vehicle had apparently escaped on foot. At the scene, police uncovered splashes of blood and trampled underbrush leading away from the open driver’s door, but then the trail immediately vanished.

“How could he have gotten away?” David asked Sheriff Laundau over the phone in the motel lobby.

“Sounds impossible, I know,” Sheriff Laundau said, “but he couldn’t have gotten far.”

“Unless he’s not here anymore,” David said.

“Beg pardon?”

David said, “Unless he simply ate himself.”

There was a long pause on the other end of the phone. “We’ll get to the bottom of this,” was all the sheriff said after several moments. It was a very sheriffly thing to say, David thought.

Before hanging up, David had almost asked the sheriff about the nasty scar that ran down his face. In the end, he didn’t. And as far as David Graham knows, the stranger was never apprehended.

Given the situation, the motel provided David and Rhoda with a free room until their vehicle was able to be repaired and thoroughly cleaned.

“Isn’t that nice?” Rhoda had said after learning there would be no bill. It was the first thing she’d truly said since the incident two nights ago. “Free things are always so nice.” But she sounded tired and unenthusiastic.

“Yes,” David had said without expression. “How lucky.”

When the car was returned, it sat out in the motel parking lot, shiny and clean and looking new. The dents had been buffed out and the front grille had been replaced. The passenger door, which had been mangled by its scrape with the guardrail, had been replaced with the door of an old Comet and repainted to match the Maverick’s puke green shell. The mechanic had laughed when David gave him the go-ahead to do the repairs. Apparently, the mechanic hardly thought the car was worth it. In the parking lot, David found himself circling the car for some time before opening the driver’s door and poking his head inside. He found himself sniffing the air and investigating the seats and floorboards for traces of blood. Now, in the daylight and with the passage of a couple days, the entire event seemed no more than a dream.

At first, Rhoda refused to get in the car. “I just can’t,” she whined. “David, why don’t we trade it in for another car? A newer car? Something clean and new and better…”

“You said you loved this car,” he said.

“Yes,” she said.

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