Strange Highways

that."
     "Listen, Joey, here's what makes sense. My dad has a gun cabinet full of hunting rifles, a shotgun. That's what we need."
     "But what if going to your house draws him there? Otherwise maybe your parents wouldn't be in danger from him, wouldn't ever encounter him."
     "Shit, this is deeply crazy," she said. "And you better believe, I don't use the word 'shit' often or lightly."
     "Principal's daughter," he said.
     "Exactly."
     "By the way, a little while ago, what you said about yourself - it isn't true."
     "Huh? What did I say?"
     "You're not nerdy."
     "Well."
     "You're beautiful."
     "I'm a regular Olivia Newton-John," she said self-mockingly.
     "And you've got a good heart - too good to want to change your own fate and ensure your future at the cost of your parents' lives."
     For a moment she was silent in the roar of the sanctifying rain. Then she said, "No. God, no, I don't want that. But it would take so little time to get into the house, open the gun cabinet in the den, and load up."
     "Everything we do tonight, every decision we make, has heavy consequences. The same thing would be true if this was an ordinary night, without all this weirdness. That's something I once forgot - that there are always moral consequences - and I paid a heavy price for forgetting. Tonight it's truer than ever."
     As they descended the last of the long slope and drew near the edge of town, Celeste said, "So what are we supposed to do - just cruise around, stay on the move, wait for that avalanche you talked about to hit us?"
     "Play it as it lays."
     "But how does it lay?" she asked with considerable frustration.
     "We'll see. Show me your hands."
     She switched on the flashlight and revealed one palm, then the other.
     "They're only dark bruises now," he told her. "No bleeding. We're doing something right."
     The car hit a narrow band of subsidence in the pavement, not a deep pit with flames at the bottom, just a shallow swale about two yards wide, although it was rough enough to jolt them, make the car springs creak, scrape the muffler, and spring open the door on the glove box, which evidently had not been closed tightly.
     The flapping door startled Celeste, and she swung the flashlight toward it. The beam flared off a curve of clear glass in that small compartment. A jar. Four or five inches tall, three to four inches in diameter. Once it might have contained pickles or peanut butter. The label had been removed. It was filled with a liquid now, which was made opaque by the glimmering reflections of the flashlight beam, and in the liquid floated something peculiar, not quite identifiable, but nevertheless alarming.
     "What's this?" she asked, reaching into the glove box without hesitation but with a palpable dread, compelled against her better judgment, just as Joey was, to have a closer look.
     She withdrew the jar.
     Held it up.
     Floating in pink-tinted fluid was a pair of blue eyes.

    10

GRAVEL RATTLED AGAINST THE UNDERCARRIAGE, THE MUSTANG THUMPED across a depression, and Joey tore his gaze from the jar in time to see a mailbox disintegrate on contact with the front bumper. The car churned across the lawn of the first house in Coal Valley and came to a stop just inches before plowing into the front porch.
     Instantly he was cast into a memory from the first time that he had lived through this night, when he had failed to take the turnoff to Coal Valley:
      ... driving the Mustang recklessly fast on the interstate, in a night full of rain and sleet, in a frenzy to escape, as though a demon were in pursuit of him, torn up about something, alternately cursing God and praying to Him. His stomach is acidic, churning. There's a roll of Tums in the glove box. Holding the wheel with one hand, he leans to the right, punches the latch release, and the door in the dashboard drops open. He reaches into that small compartment, feeling for the roll of antacid - and he finds the jar. Smooth and cool. He can't figure what it is. He doesn't keep a jar of anything in there. He takes it out, The headlights of an oncoming big rig, on the far side of the divided highway, throw enough light into the car for him to see the contents of the jar. Eyes. Either he jerks the wheel reflexively or the tires hydroplane on the