Caedes

6 | don't move

Thursday, 1:04 P.M.

Before I could consider that crazy possibility further, the faint sound of tires on asphalt had both our heads turning in the general direction of the highway.

With its pointed ears tilted forward, the little fox raised its black nose and sniffed the air. As the low purr of a newer car engine drifted over to us, the canine froze. A moment passed where its crimson and black eyes just looked right through me, and then it vanished right behind the jagged rocks it had first appeared on.

I blinked a few times, but it never came back. A sudden emptiness washed over me as I continued to stare at the spot it had been sitting. Weird.

Disappointed, I turned back towards the highway. Luckily, it wasn't far from where we'd crashed. Unless the next passing vehicle had a half-blind driver or one that was in a fight to the death with other passengers, I would likely be spotted as it drove by. Perhaps I could even find another ride soon.

Then I remembered that I was covered in blood and no normal human in their right mind would actually give me a ride.

Great.

Without thinking, I threw my head back in frustration and, of course, the wound hit the pointy side of the cab hard enough that I could feel it through the crumbled shirt I still had pressed to the back of my head. A numbing pain shot through my entire body and I doubled over, trying to keep the nausea at bay.

Don't faint, don't faint, don't faint.

After a moment, the pain subsided and I took a deep breath, slowly raising my head. The pull was stronger than before and my gaze automatically drifted back to the mountains. I couldn't wait to find whatever it was that was calling me. Not being able to remember anything about myself and, more specifically, whether these strange visions were a normal part of me was starting to weigh on me.

Maybe if I'd known about Annabelle and her husband's fate, I could have prevented it somehow. Maybe that was why I had visions in the first place. If they really were visions.

Yet, for some reason, that didn't feel right. Now that I thought about it, there had been a part of me that had felt excited. I wasn't quite sure what about, but it only confirmed my previous suspicions that something was wrong with me.

"Hello?" A gruff voice with a thick New Yorker accent called out. Trying to avoid another wave of dizziness, I slowly turned my head to look in the direction of the man's voice.

A short, stout man with a slowly receding hairline had stepped out of a silver van and was staring at the wreck over the top of the open passenger door. Shit, I'd completely forgotten about the car. The man hadn't seen me yet, but it was only a matter of time.

After exchanging a few quiet words with whoever was sitting in the driver's seat, he swiftly closed the door and cautiously headed my way. Nearly stumbling down the shallow trench halfway between Jim's truck and the highway, he pressed his elbows into his sides and pumped his arms to regain his balance. Any second now he would look up and spot me.

I made a move to get up, but a sharp pain in my leg made me hiss and drop back down onto the hard metal with a thud.

"Hello? Kid?" The man's eyes found mine and widened slightly as he took in my disheveled state. "A-are you okay?"

Kid?

"I'm okay," I called back to him with one hand still pressing the shirt to the back of my head. Desperately hoping I didn't look like a total psychopath, I lifted the other hand and pointed behind me. "Can't say the same for these two, though."

The man stopped dead in his tracks and tried to see into the cab. After wiping his presumably sweaty palms on his "Yosemite National Park" t-shirt that he'd probably worn straight out of the souvenir shop, he cast another nervous glance at me. "W-we saw the-the truck." He turned around to point at the silhouette of someone sitting on the driver's seat of the van with his thumb.