"You'll be good, right?" Todd asked.

The end of the gun barrel bobbing up and down in slow motion, mouth wide in a silent 'oh', told me I had better.

"Yeah. I'll be good."

"I like you a lot more than your bitch friend Alicia. You know she's not your friend, right?" He kept one hand one the steering wheel and the gun pointed vaguely at my face. I watched his face as he studied the road and oncoming traffic. I could try to time something – push the gun and wheel at the same time, but even at thirty-five, I was in danger. Especially if we hit a car in the opposite lane.

I didn't answer his question.

"You seem like a smart girl to me," he continued. "Are you a smart girl?"

That gun was still nodding his head.

"Yes, sir, I am."

"For a smart girl, you do some dumbass shit."

There had to be good reply to that, something to appease him, but my neurons were short circuiting.

Run. Run. Run.

"Sorry." I choked the word out.

"I said, for a smart girl, you do some dumbass shit." He must have thought I had asked him to repeat it.

His hand swiveled with the wheel to turn onto a side road. We were leaving town. Headed for the woods.

His car, or the car we were in, had a long bucket front seat and a dangling air freshener in the shape of a pine tree. It danced and danced and danced as the road got rougher and we went deeper into the trees.

No one came back here except for hunters and campers or high schoolers looking for a place to party. I stole a glance at the back seat, hoping to see clues of his intentions. It was clean. Weirdly clean. Too clean to kill someone in.

I had to correct my weird thoughts; he might have cleaned up for the special occasion of killing me in it. Several minutes passed while snakes bit my insides with venomous fangs.

"The closest I can come to explaining it all is sinkholes," he said.

I jumped in surprise at his voice.

For a split second I pictured drains in sinks. Holes were in the sinks. But then my brain kicked in and I understood sinkholes as in geographical phenomena.

"How do you figure?" At least it got him talking.

"Would you build a house over a sinkhole?"

"No, I wouldn't."

"The whole town is built on a sinkhole. With a whirlpool around it. Or maybe a bunch of sinkholes. They've got..." He squinted at the road and maneuvered around a craggly pot-hole. "They've got small openings. For the rats."

My forehead furrowed. Rats in the forest. Rats in the apartment building? "Do you hear them in the walls?"

"Walls?" he asked, peering watchfully into the forest as it flew past us.

I leaned closer. "The walls. Do you hear things? Do the scratched words appear on your walls?"

He shook his head. "I'm telling you, the whole place is a goddam sinkhole. I need you to see something."

"What? A sinkhole?" Did he know something? Really know something?

He shook his head, eyes cutting a path straight through the car. He turned to me and that gaze carved me up and left me for dead.

The gun was at my head.

I was shaking.

"Look out the window when I say so."

I forced my face to turn away from him and the weapon in his hand before he had to tell me to do it.

"Wait."

I was shaking, but tried to nod.

"Look at that sign, there!" Todd held the gun out to point with it. I had to cross my eyes to see it clearly, it was so close to my nose.

The sign! I looked up.

Red Water Rapids 4.2 miles

It grew larger and then streaked by in a flash of Crayola grass green.

"What about it?" I asked.

He put the gun on his lap and air filled my lungs like a deflating balloon in reverse.

"We wait. We keep driving." The car dipped and crunched on the pulverized road. I put a hand on the dash to steady myself.

Todd's eagle talon fingers and ragged nails kneaded the wheel. If it was bunny he would have torn it apart for lunch.

Silence.

I waited. He kept driving.

I couldn't be sure, but it felt like ten minutes passed while we drove the same narrow, broken asphalt road with piles of rust leaves and tree trunks crowding the edges. It was all the same. No hills or patches of open ground to break the monotony.

We should reach the turn-off that led to the lake fairly soon, I calculated. At the speed he was going – much faster than was safe – we should have been there any second.

"Ready?" he asked, voice coming up from a rocky pit.

"For what?"

"Watch for it." He pointed with his sharp chin out my side of the car.

Another sign appeared in the distance. He slowed the car, but not enough for me to try and jump out. Not that I would.

Grass green again. He pointed his finger and slowed to a crawl. With his attention on the sign, I knew I should grab the gun and try to jump, but I was afraid. I knew his reflexes were quick, and his head messed up.

My skin prickled and electricity raced through my nerves.

The sign.

I could see it.

Red Water Rapids 4.2 miles

Son of a biscuit eater. The most obvious reason to this problem came to mind.

He jabbed his finger once at it in accusation, accelerated, and then faced me. "What do you say now?"

"Someone put up the same sign twice." I meant for it sound sympathetic, that I felt his anger, too. How dare those state highway employees fuck up their one job?

But....Satan's balls, he didn't buy it for one second. I was screwed.

"Dumb as dirt, girl. It's the same sign!" Spittle flew with his words. "The same one! I marked it yesterday with a rock. The dent. Did you see the dent?"

I stammered. Yes, no, not sure.

"I put a dent in it for you to see. For everyone to see! Except not everyone is trapped in the whirlpool. It's like energy we can't see. Evil that's wrapped around the town, keeping us in. If I keep driving, I keep driving all day, we're gonna see that sign again and again. That bitch Alicia opened his lines. She opened the sinkhole lines and we can't get out."

"So keep driving." Driving was a great idea. It kept his hands strangling the steering wheel and his mind on the road, on that stupid sign. We would hit the turn off soon where there was much more traffic, and someone might see us.

"I should take you back and bash your face in that sign. Maybe you would recognize your own blood all over it."

"I saw it. I swear I saw it, but it was so weird. My brain had to find the most logical explanation."

The gun. That gaping mouth was inches from my face.

"Mr. McIntosh, I—" We hit a hole and the car lurched and scraped loudly before balancing. I watched the gun end go up, slightly, slowly up and then right back down. A chill understanding crept over me.

It could have been the same hole we had hit earlier. It could have been. There could be rats coming from holes no one could see and evil wrapping itself around the whole town to keep us trapped inside. What if he was right? I shivered, trapped in my seat and shaking harder than the car.

"Can I go home?" I asked. Two tears escaped the prisons where I had held them until now. The forest and car were blurs, only the gun was in focus.

Todd didn't answer.

"Please?" I begged. "Can you take me home? I believe you about the sign and I won't tell anyone I saw you."

We sped up and he put the gun in his lap again.

But I didn't breathe easier.

"You seem like a nice girl."

My throat clenched too hard to reply.

"But I have to take you back to the motel and see if I can't figure a way to..." He muttered something.

"I know there is something wrong with this town," I said. "I've seen it. I feel it when I'm walking around and I hear it in the walls. Todd, I believe you when you say we are trapped here."

"Not we! Me! Aren't you listening?"

"I'm listening." I force myself to inhale. "I'm listening. I think we should talk about it. Why don't we – just a suggestion – why don't we get some coffee and talk? Duncan Donuts is on this side of town, and they have a drive through. We'll get something to eat and some hot coffee and go sit down in a park or somewhere and try to figure this out together."

He didn't say no.

I pushed my luck. "Hell, coffee and donuts makes everything better, in my opinion." Anything but back to his motel. Claustrophobia squeezed my body. I had to get out of this car. I had to get out of here.

The lines in his forehead and around his mouth softened. It didn't seem possible, but I thought the hollow pits of his cheeks filled making him look less like a psychotic murderer. Stockholm Syndrome or not, I sensed a bond forming after my words, an understanding between us.

We were up shit-creek together and maybe there wasn't a paddle in sight, but there were Dunkaccinos and bite-sized munchkins. We were human beings and coffee made everything better.

Todd stopped the car. I held my breath. One of the trees ahead of us leaned dangerously over the road like a drunken hitchhiker and I was sure I saw it before. He was right. We weren't going in circles because the road was straight, but we were being looped by some thing. Some powerful, strange thing.

"I do hear them scratching. It's not rats." He rubbed his face with the barrel of the gun. A faint sandpaper on wood sound was clearly audible in the hush of the car. "Not rats. Rusty nails on the walls or fingernails, I don't know. I don't want to know. It gets inside your head, but you can't make sense of the words and it eats every thought away until there's nothing left but that noise. But no matter what you can't understand and even though you wish you could so the scratching will stop, you know you don't want to hear words."

The sour stench coming from his mouth filled the tight space. I didn't know what to say. "What about Alicia and the lines?"

"It picks and picks and picks at you. When you sleep, when you eat, when you fuck—" He stopped and stared at me. I froze, a deer in headlights. "It drives you crazy. Then one day you know."

"Know what?"

"What he wants you to do."

"Who?" I asked softly. "Old Man Feros?"

His expression contorted, turning ugly and he hit the steering wheel. "That nasty little bitch!" He grabbed my arm and pulled.

"No!"

"Come on!"

He was dragging me to his side and he opened the door. I didn't know where the gun was. He twisted me around to get me in a headlock, still yanking me across the bucket seat.

Words came out of my mouth, garbled and frantic. I clawed and punched, aiming for soft spots. I hit the ground. He knelt with one knee on my chest and forced my hands together. He placed a zip-tie over my hands and I clenched my fists to make space.

As he struggled to tie me, I adjusted my legs clear of the car and kicked hard at his face. He dodged partly and cursed at me.

"I don't want to hurt you, but if I'm gonna get out of here I have to use you as my bargaining chip. You think I wanted to hurt them? You think I enjoyed watching them go off the bridge and into water? Now hold still, or I will hurt you."

The tie clicked and cut into my wrists.

"You'll go in the trunk a while. Just a little while and then we can stay at the motel. I won't hurt you unless I have to, but if he wants you, there's nothing I can do about that."

I screamed and kicked. He grabbed my hands, dragging me through dirt and dead leaves to the back of the car. The trunk squealed. Todd pulled me upwards and tried to shove me in.

I twisted and planted my feet on the rim, then threw my head back to hit him in the nose. Pain exploded in my ear, he had boxed me. I tried to shrug it off, but during my moment of weakness, he pushed me down inside the dark trunk.

The lid crashed down and the sudden darkness swallowed me whole.

*** Thank you for reading! While waiting for updates (I know, I'm going slowly on this story) be sure to check out Lessoc Fountain if you enjoy creepy fairy-tale stories, or Walking in Shadows for witchery in novella size. ***