Read Lost Highway Online

Authors: Bijou Hunter

Lost Highway (2 page)

Chapter Three

Quill

 

 

O
dessa sleeps too much. I watch
her on the security feed and listen to her labored breathing. She needs to wake
up and stop bleeding. I should shake her and force open her eyes. For now, I
allow her to rest and dream of her life before the highway.

I hold her wallet in my hands.
The ID is a few years old. Her hair is longer and darker now. She lived in
Missouri before finding her way to the Lost Highway. I open her suitcase. Like
with her wallet, the luggage is old and tattered, perhaps used. The clothes
inside aren’t folded. I press a shirt to my nose. No detergent. They aren’t clean.
She grabbed them in a hurry.

Nothing in her suitcase feels
personal. The clothes are generic. I find no family pictures or trinkets.

Odessa stirs in her sleep. She
hit her head either in the car accident or during her struggles against the
other Death Dealers. I saw her kill the woman called Velma. She also cut down
the bald man from the Winnebago group that arrived some time back. After
beating him to death with a bat, she took his ax and tried to kill me.

The other woman from her car is
with the Death Dealers I call Beavers. They show their teeth in an odd way when
they laugh. They’ll hurt the woman for a long time. She might become like them,
or she might be their dinner. I don’t know them well. They tend to stay on
their side of the highway while I remain on mine.

Except Dag crossed the line
into my territory. Others might too. They want Odessa. Many of them prefer
women prey. If more Death Dealers come, I’ll make them bleed. This side of the
highway is mine, and no one survives my traps.

I touch the screen where Odessa
stirs. She needs to wake up and stop bleeding. I don’t dare clean her up. I
don’t want to know her too well. Like the others before her, Odessa won’t
survive. Besides, I don’t trust her. No one worth trusting comes to the Lost
Highway.

When she wakes later, I take
her water and bread. She looks at the food and then at me. She isn’t truly this
passive. I watched her kill two people in the woods. I know she wants to
survive, and I know she’ll spill blood to regain her freedom.

“Do you have a phone?”

I don’t answer her question.
Odessa’s eyes are clearer. She’s more aware now. Despite her improvement, she
needs to move around and stop bleeding. This place won’t wait for her to catch
up.

“I want to call my family and
tell them I’m safe,” she says in a rough voice.

Her screams drew me to the
road. I watched her run into the territory I don’t control. I’m not sure why I
followed her. None of the other people I’ve brought here survived. I don’t want
to learn more names. I can’t pretend their lives matter. They all end up dead,
and silence suits me now.

“My children will be worried,”
she says after drinking the water.

“You’re a poor liar.”

Blinking rapidly, Odessa still
hopes to talk me into allowing her access to the phone. “I won’t tell anyone
where I am.”

“You don’t know where you are.”

Odessa swallows hard,
struggling with her sore throat. She screamed so much when she killed Velma and
the bald man. When she fell silent later, the world felt unbearably quiet.

“Who was the man in the woods?”
she asks, playing her game.

“He wanted to hang you upside
down and bleed you. Afterward, he would hollow out your flesh and store small
animals inside you. His name was Dag, and he is one of many.”

Odessa’s eyes widen, but not
nearly enough for a normal person. She takes in stride what I tell her. “What
do you want?”

I don’t answer. Odessa is
afraid, but she isn’t ready to accept the truth. Once she knows it, I won’t
have her around to admire. I decide to keep my secrets to ensure she’ll stay
with me longer.

Taking away the tray, I leave
her in the locked room. Outside, the wind whips up without warning, and I watch
the leaves hover in the sky. A storm is coming. The Death Dealers won’t attack
until the weather clears. I have at least a day or two before I need to clean
my traps.

Until then, I admire Odessa on
the screen and wait for her to stop bleeding.

Chapter Four

Odessa

 

 

T
he house rattles under the
thunder’s wrath. A splash of green colors the walls from the lightning.

I force my body into a sitting
position. My leg throbs and dried blood acts as the glue between the tattered
pant leg and my flesh. Ignoring the pain, I struggle to stand. A window might
allow me a view outside this room, and I need to know where my captor has taken
me.

Lightning sends streaks of
green across the room again, and the thunder’s intensity nearly knocks me off of
my feet. I hold onto the window sill and scan the scene outside my window.

Absolutely nothing is visible.
Even when the lightning strikes, I can’t see past the heavy fog hugging the
house. I stare through the smudged glass until my leg gives out, and I’m forced
to sit.

This small room has two doors.
One allows the man to come inside. I assume the other is a closet. Instead, I
find a tiny bathroom with a toilet and shower but no sink or mirror. The room
allows for no escape. Nothing can be made into a weapon to end a life.

I turn on the faucet and am
surprised to find clean hot water. The idea of washing away my aches and pains
is nearly as tempting as knowing the blood covering me is mostly from other
people.

In the shower, I can’t wash my
hair but wet it nonetheless. I fear the pain of hot water on my wounds. My leg
smells, and my head still bleeds when I press gently on the wound. The water
washes away the foulness on my skin. The blood and sweat disappear down the
drain.

Having no towel, I dry off
using a shirt from my suitcase. A little part of me wonders if the man is
watching. Looking around, I don’t see any sign of cameras, yet I don’t care if
my nudity tempts him.

I’ve wasted too many years
embracing lies. I can’t do it again. Not here when my fate rests entirely in
the hands of a stranger. He can do whatever he wants whenever he chooses.
Pretending I can avoid a terrible fate if only I remain in dirty clothes is too
big of a lie.

Dressed in a white shirt and
gray sweats, I sit back on the bloody bed. My brown hair drips onto my shirt,
creating damp circles just over my breasts.

My mind wanders but goes
nowhere of importance. I think of Neapolitan ice cream on a blistering summer
day and the way my family’s old Sheltie licked my scraped knees. Unable to
think about John or my sister Athena, who haunts me most days, I am lost in
comfortable thoughts detached from guilt and grief.

At some point, the man enters
the room and stares at me. Incapable of concentrating on him, I revel in the fantasies
of a different Odessa.

Eventually, our gazes meet, and
I stare into the unreadable eyes of a killer.

“We’ve both spilled blood,” I
whisper.

“Everyone spills blood in the
Lost Highway. That or they have their blood spilled.”

“I spilled it before I came
here.”

The man shows no reaction. When
a tear rolls down my cheek, I’m too exhausted to wipe it away.

“Why did you take the Lost
Highway?” he asks a long time after we last spoke.

“I had to get away,” I whisper,
leaning over and resting my head on the pillow. “I was on the run. I sound so
dramatic.”

The man doesn’t share my smile.
He only watches me, and then his gaze is on the light flooding through the
window.

“The storm is over,” I tell him
as an excuse to end the silence in the room.

Disappearing out of the door,
the man shuts and locks it. I close my crying eyes. Outside, the storm passes,
and the world goes on, but I only want to sleep and forget.

Chapter Five

Odessa

 

 

I
dream of hitting the laughing
woman. Even after the bat cracks open her skull, I won’t stop pounding her head
with the weapon. I turn her to mush in my dream and realize I’m the one
laughing. Waking, I feel a smile on my face.

For years, I’d heard the Lost
Highway was haunted. I even watched a TV show about the many reported
disappearances on Highway 202.

John never believed in the
supernatural. He claimed the hills around the highway were home to drug
runners, and the missing people likely saw something they shouldn’t. He also
said the police couldn’t control the area, so they allowed the haunted rumor to
keep tourists from using the highway.

I hadn’t believed John’s
theories. I’d preferred the haunted highway idea. Now I’m trapped in a room
decorated with blood and suffering. A nameless man holds my life in his hands,
and I don’t know how to find my way home.

Forcing my body into a sitting
position, I remind myself how I can’t return home. Freedom from here will only
be a prison somewhere else.

I stare at the door and wait
for the man to return. Where is he right this moment? Is he torturing someone
in another room? I wonder if he suffers nightmares from his sins. I even worry
he might be dead, and I’ll starve to death in this room.

By the time the door flies
open, I’m convinced I’ll never see him again. His expression is no longer unreadable.
He reminds me of a hunted animal. On the edge, he nearly drops the tray next to
my lap on the bed.

“Eat fast. Drink faster.”

“What’s wrong?” I ask, deciding
there’s no harm in antagonizing him when my fate is likely sealed already.

The man says nothing. He
glances at the tray and then back at me.

“You don’t talk a lot, do you?”
I mumble, biting off a piece of bread.

“What is there to say?”

“You could tell me your name.
Or at least give me something to call you, so I’m not forced to think of you as
‘the man’ in my head.”

“I’m called Quill. Does this
information improve your situation?”

“Yes. Is Quill a nickname?”

“Stop talking. Eat and drink. I
need to put you away while I hunt.”

Frowning, I empty the glass of
water. What does he mean by putting me away? Do I even want to know?

Afraid now, I struggle against
his grip when he pulls me to my feet. I reach out to hit him, but he easily
seizes my wrist in his viselike grip.

“Never touch me,” he growls
deep in his chest. “I am trained to kill when threatened. If you harm me, I
will kill you whether I want to or not. I won’t warn you again.”

His words sting as much as his
grip on my wrist. All morning, I hoped Quill was the virtuous type of captor.
The kind of monster uninterested in putting objects in my body and turning me
into a human suitcase. While he’s a step up from Dag, I can only passively
stare while he drags me out of the room and down a tight hallway lined with
family pictures.

Quill nearly carries me into a
country-style kitchen with pale blue cabinets and a butcher block counter. Who
in the hell owns this house? I know it’s not Quill.

Opening a small door, he yanks
me down a narrow flight of stairs to the basement of my nightmares.

“No,” I say, fighting him
despite his warning.

I’m struck in the face by the
scent of torture while my bare feet find the floor sticky with blood. Quill grips
my bicep, effortlessly tugging me forward regardless of my attempt to flee.
When he presses a lever, a small door opens in the wall.

“You’ll stay here while I
hunt,” Quill says, shoving me into the cramped closet.

My hands reach out for him, and
I cry, “No!”

He slaps away my hands. “Don’t
touch me,” he warns again.

“Please don’t shut me in here.”

His dark eyes remaining feral,
he doesn’t care about my panic. I don’t think he even sees me. “If I fail my
hunt, suffocation is preferable to what the Death Dealers have in store for
you.”

“I don’t want to die.”

“Consider it a mercy killing.”

“No!” I scream as he slams the
door.

I hear the latch lock, and the
door doesn’t relent to my pounding. Quill’s footsteps echo as he hurries
upstairs. I listen to him move around the house before there’s only silence.

Crying, I struggle to calm my
panic. The room is sealed shut without even a sliver of light under the door. I
breathe too fast and choke on the stale air. Barely able to turn around, I
can’t sit. When I try to lean against a wall, sharp edges tear into my flesh.

My mind returns to the woods
before Quill took me. I’d bashed in a man’s brains with a bat while he called
me his dolly girl. Upgrading my weapon, I ran with his ax and hoped for escape.

Then in an instant, I went from
survivor to wounded animal when the metal trap snapped on my leg.

Moments later, Quill appeared
from behind a tree. He silently moved toward me, and I couldn’t look away.
Despite the mask on his face and the weapon in his hand, I prayed he might save
me.

And he did.

Only so he could leave me to
die trapped in a standing coffin.

Other books

TietheKnot by Cynthia Rayne
A Holiday Romance by Carrie Alexander
Four Kisses by Bonnie Dee
Tender Death by Annette Meyers
Solitaria by Genni Gunn
Reign of Evil - 03 by Weston Ochse
Slipknot by Priscilla Masters


readsbookonline.com Copyright 2016 - 2024