The Light Is the Darkness by Laird Barron

Author:Laird Barron [Barron, Laird]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: alternate world, Action & Adventure, General, Fantasy, apocalyptic, gladiator, Fiction
ISBN: 9781937771454
Google: tlu_XaCE4WsC
Amazon: B008RDKN7W
Goodreads: 15781005
Publisher: DarkFuse
Published: 2011-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Three

I

It was night when he stopped at the flashing arms of a railroad crossing. The klaxons twisted his insides. He opened the door and puked. Murderous thunder of passing flats vibrated his bones. While he was spilling his guts onto the pitted asphalt, someone climbed in on the passenger side, slammed the door hard enough to rock the car.

Conrad wiped his mouth, regarded the dark-haired girl in the denim jacket and bellbottom pants who was calmly checking her makeup in the visor mirror. A livid strawberry keloid ripened on her left wrist, partially occluded by a charm bracelet. She smelled of cigarettes and Prince Matchabelli and seemed unpleasantly familiar. One of those malleable faces he’d seen a lot of lately; it glowed a blurry white in the gloom.

“Ever wonder what’s in those boxcars?” Her voice was husky from the rawness of the country air. “Could be cattle, could be people, political prisoners on the way to Gitmo. Anything, really. See their eyes in the headlights, peeking between the slats.”

Conrad was dizzy. Concussion, definitely. Goddamn, he hoped it was a concussion. Looking at her almost caused him to be sick again. Was he hallucinating? He didn’t think so. He wasn’t certain of anything, even gravity.

“I’m Rhonda. Where you goin’?” Her eyes were small and lively. She nervously rifled a leather handbag with a peace symbol stitched on the flap. “You don’t mind, I hope…? I was freezing out there.”

He hadn’t noticed her at the crossing, hadn’t seen her at all. She likely planted herself nearby, hoped to catch some poor sucker who got blocked by the train. Popped up like a trapdoor spider.

Rhonda nodded at her bag. “So…where’d you say you were goin’?”

“West.” His mantra. And in truth, the answer was South if he kept on to the end. South into the magma boiling heart of the world, and onward to Hell.

“Cool. Me too.” She lighted a clove cigarette, glanced around the interior, wrinkled her nose. “Old car you got here. Wow, is this your mom?” She tapped a black and white photo pinned to the visor; a dark woman in a gypsy kerchief smiled from the shade of an elm.

“It’s a classic.” Conrad stared at the train, the lights.

Rhonda exhaled gustily. “Wow. Somebody kicked the shit outta you, didn’t they. You feelin’ alright, man? Train’s gone.”

Indeed it was gone, reduced to a shadowy wedge lit by blue and red beacons. His hands shook as he put the Eldorado into gear. Seem to fly it, it will pursue…hadn’t Ben Jonson said that about shadows? Jung knew; Hesse knew; Nietzsche absolutely knew. The Germans were canny. Conrad thought about shadows, how there were so many to choose from, how hungry and insatiable they proved to be. Relentless as cancer. “You picked the wrong car.”

“Oh, yeah? Are you a psycho?” The girl smiled as if at a joke.

“It’s a bad time for me.”

“Well, it ain’t so wonderful for me either. My last two hitches were from horny truckers. Some fun. Home, James.”

Conrad sighed.

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