Chapter 6 Gwen
GWEN
This wasn’t my first encounter with the entity.
My next encounter with it had been during my first fight with Troy.
Couldn’t say what the fight had been about—we’d had so many of them—but he grabbed ahold of my face and squeezed my cheeks so hard that I tasted iron.
The moment that blood touched my tongue, the entity took over.
It slammed one of my fists into his shoulder, it shoved him off me, and it moved my legs.
Moved them so fast I hadn’t realized what was happening until I turned over the car’s engine and tore off down the road.
I didn’t know what it was, not exactly, but I wasn’t crazy. I knew no one else climbed into my body. My brain just segmented. Thought escaped me, and my body did what it needed to survive.
It did what needed done.
The entity stopped outside the gates of Rhiannon’s Ranch and slid them shut. It returned to the vehicle and took over the wheel. I didn’t know, or care, where we were going.
While it manned the road, images flashed through my mind. First, a river five or so miles from the ranch. An overpass, nestled deep in the mountains, that less than a thousand people probably knew about. Far fewer would drive it at this hour.
That’s where the entity was taking me.
The next image was a big yellow box tucked behind a chain-link fence. Almost like an eighteen-wheeler. But not quite. Yellow taxis drove the cement on the other side of that chain-link fence.
The last images were little white tags plastered all over a vehicle. On the dashboard, driver side door jamb, even the engine block. The front of the frame, under the passenger seat, trunk floor, and inside the engine compartment.
When that overpass became visible, I knew what came next. Where we were going. What that big yellow box was. How to find those yellow taxis. Why those little white tags mattered so much.
It was straight ahead, connecting two mountains. Six streetlights shone against the concrete, illuminating only those two yellow lines, the white ones off to the edges, the small walkway flush with it, and the four foot stone banister.
Every time I’d driven past here, I’d admired the gargoyles lining those light posts. Today, rather than watching them, they watched me.
I shifted the car into park in the center of the bridge, idling between two of the gargoyles. There, I stepped from the vehicle and stood on the asphalt.
It would take at least a minute to yank David from the trunk and toss him over the ledge. But sound carried through these mountains. So long as I listened closely, I would hear a car coming well before they saw me.
Once my ears adjusted, hearing the trickle of the water below, an owl hooting in the distance, but nothing else. I pulled in a deep breath.
Careful, cautious, I walked to the trunk. My head stayed on a swivel. Watching. Anticipating. Prepared for someone or something to throw me off.
Nothing did.
I popped open the trunk, grabbed the burrito by the bigger end, and hoisted it to the ground. The beans tumbled out behind.
With all my might, I grabbed hold of David’s feet and dragged him over the curb and onto the sidewalk. A small stream of blood leaked from the edge.
Adrenaline pumped to my frozen limbs.
Now at the banister, I grabbed the bigger half of the burrito again in a bear hug. The banister came to my belly button. As long as I got him vertical, I could tip him over it.
I did just that.
It took longer than I expected to hear the splash of his body hitting the water. Only then did I look over the edge.
Gone. He was gone.
In my backpack, the entity had packed me another bottle of bleach.
I opened it up, dumped it onto the stream of blood I had left, and watched the red dilute into a barely-there pink.
When it looked like nothing more than a spilled bottle of water on the sidewalk, I walked back to the car and hopped into the driver’s seat.
The entity took over again for the drive.
It pulled off on the side of the road, roughly fifty miles from the overpass.
It took the pocketknife from the bag it’d packed me and scraped the VIN off the dashboard.
Then the door jamb and engine block. It checked the front of the frame, passenger seat, and trunk floor, but no VIN in any of those spots.
At the trunk still, it lifted the second tarp, careful to keep the drops of blood inside, and folded it into a perfect square.
Back inside the vehicle, it placed the square in my bag, nice and tidy.
It dug inside the glove compartment and center console. Cleared out all the paperwork and laid it carefully in my bag.
The entity resumed control of the wheel and followed signs for Great Falls, Montana. I don’t remember the drive. I do remember arriving at the junkyard and stepping outside to pull the plate and place it in my bag as well.
It was on the edge of town. Pine trees to the left, a field of rusted metal ahead, a chain link, barbed wire gate before the building, that yellow box I’d seen earlier in my mind, and a McDonald’s on the right.
But there were no lights on inside the single floor, red brick building. Only a sign that said CLOSED.
The twilight sky told me why. Only tiny yellow rays of sun trickled at the edge of the horizon.
That was okay. I had work later, but there was enough time to make it back and pretend none of this had happened.
The entity had put all seven thousand dollars of my savings into my bag. I wanted to open a bakery in a few years, and this was every penny I’d saved since getting to the ranch. But staying out of prison mattered more than the bakery.
Unzipping my bag, I gazed down at the array of twenties and fifties. After an exasperated exhale, I began counting. When I made it to a thousand, I laid the sum in my lap. I counted out another thousand and laid it on the dashboard. The other five thousand? I zipped up.
Into each of my jacket pockets, I tucked a thousand.
Now, to find someone as desperate for money as I was to get away with this.
It didn’t take long. I made it two blocks down the street before someone caught my eye.
A middle-aged man with a scruffy, unkempt beard, a black zip up hoodie, and a heavy-duty puffer coat over top.
He sat on a red flannel blanket. Beside him was an old, even scruffier mutt.
His fur was long, white close to the skin and varying shades of brown at the ends.
Crust caked up the corners of his eyes. At the edge of the flannel blanket, a cardboard sign read, ‘Just trying to eat, man. God bless.’
Shame sat like a ten-pound weight in the center of my chest. I didn’t want to use this guy. Life had already chewed him up and spit him out.
But he could help me, and I could help him. At the end of it, even if the authorities ever questioned him, there was no way they would charge him with David’s murder. David had no connection to this city. He and Simone were from Wyoming. No connection to the city meant no connection to this man.
If they ever questioned him for what he was about to do for me, he could tell them the truth. I wouldn’t blame him if he did.
Slowing at the street corner, I rolled down my window. Twenty-dollar bill in hand, I held it to him.
The man on the flannel blanket was already standing, walking closer. Fingers outstretched to accept, he said, “Thank you, miss.”
Given all my clothing, I was surprised he could tell I was a miss. “I’ll give you a thousand if you do me a favor.”
Face wrinkling with confusion, he cocked his head to the side. “A thousand?”
“A thousand.”
“What’s the favor?” He glanced me over, then the backseat. “I don’t do no funny business, miss.”
“No funny business. I just need to junk this car down the street.”
“What—down at Tom’s?” The man nodded in the direction of the junkyard. “All you gotta do is run in.”
“Yeah, I know,” I lied. “I just—Well, it’s a long story.
I’m not on good terms with the management.
I know if I go in there, he’s not gonna give me a dime for it.
And it’s not that I really care about the money, but my landlord doesn’t want this sitting outside my apartment anymore.
It’s untitled, so if I don’t get rid of this thing, he’ll evict me.
I really don’t want to see that guy, and I really gotta get rid of this car. ”
“Wait.” He cocked his head to the side. “You want me to go in there, junk the car, and then take whatever money they’re going to give you for it? And you’re gonna pay me?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “But they can’t just junk it. They’ve got to crush it.”
The man arched a brow, a half-smile tilting the corner of his lips. “And you can’t do it yourself because you got beef with the guy who works there?”
He didn’t believe me, but I still said, “Mhmm.”
The man snorted. “Alright. I’ll do it. But I’m freezing, so can I have a seat with you in here? And my dog?”
Maybe it wasn’t the most responsible decision, but it wasn’t like I’d made many of those tonight. “Sure. Come on. We’ll go wait for them to open.”