//------------------------------// // Chapter 1: I Believe Some Things Can't Be Explained // Story: I Guess It Doesn't Matter Any More // by Jordan179 //------------------------------// Long Haul was bobtailing through the evening as the Sun set behind the western hills and day faded away into night. He was glad of the lack of a semi-trailer, as the road was narrow and poorly-lit, and though paved was prone to partial washouts when it rained -- which it was doing right now. He had driven it by daylight two days after it had rained hauling a semi-trailer and had not enjoyed the experience, in fact he had been forced to swerve while turning because part of the hill above on his right had blocked his lane; if he hadn't been very careful turning back he probably would have jack-knifed, and it was a two hundred foot slope down to the river on his left side then. He'd come out of that with no damage but to one tire, which hadn't been blown or deflated, but he'd also come out of that clutching the wheel white-knuckled, having just seen the whole forty-five years of his life flash before his mind's eye; and he'd had nightmares about that moment for weeks afterward. He hadn't talked about it to anyone, save Rose Brew at the diner on I-20 at the Rimegold Truck Stop, Rose Brew who was his on-again off-again lover, and whom he was much sweeter on than he let her know, because he didn't like to talk too much about his feelings. He might have married her if things had been different, but neither of them were the marrying kind: he was just happy to have an understanding friend. She held him and soothed him afterward, and he was more grateful to her than he would ever tell her. He'd also done it once by night, also pulling a trailer, that time it was high summer and the asphalt was bone-dry. The main problem then was that the road was narrow and most of it unlit; but hey, that's what All-Father (or, more likely, Spark Bulb and Black Tee) had made headlights for, right? He'd cruised steadily though carefully; there were old truckers and bold truckers but no old, bold truckers, and Long Haul was in it for what his name said, thank you; he'd had no real problems. Now he was driving in actual rain, and an increasingly serious one, the silver droplets merging into vertical lines and spattering against his windshields. He had the wipers going, but visibility was still way down and he noticed that a fog was rising up from the Motherwater on his left. Just great, he thought. Abso-tively great. He did not want any sort of accident here, because there was nobody to help him. He had his cellphone, but no service, out here driving with the huge uninhabited mass of the Everfree National Forest on his right, like some great shaggy green beast rearing over the hills. There were stories about that forest, each story more unsettling than the last; it was not a place Long Haul wanted to hike through in the dead of night in a driving rainstorm. Then there was his CB radio, but he couldn't count on that still working, if he had a real crash. And the weather interfered with transmission. Heck, his reception wasn't even all that good right now -- there were spots by the Everfree where radios just didn't work all that well, and he was passing one. He switched his FM radio off as the nearest local station, which hadn't been all that good to begin with, faded out into a snarl of static. He was also coming up on a landmark in a few more minutes. An old Esshell gas joint; no service or point in stopping there, it had been abandoned for decades. It remained standing mostly because somewhere, some owner must be thinking of selling it, but there really wasn't much traffic on this road anyway. It may have served some town that was now also defunct; a lot of the towns out here had died when the interstate took the northern route; which was a pattern in the Everfree. One of the unsettling stories, he remembered, was of an old town about thirty miles on, located miles into the forest between the Freestream and the Avalon. Something about it all being cursed and the inhabitants turned into ghosts or vampires or something of the sort. There was even an old song about one of the vampires: a strange golden-eyed girl who met a wandering musician. He'd heard it once. "Wraith-Kissed," something like that. All he could remember was the chorus ... Wraith-Kissed -- you were born to die, Wraith-kissed -- in the ground you'll lie, Wraith-kissed -- now your doom draws nigh, Death waits -- in her glowing golden eyes! He shivered. Not something of which he cared to think, when he was coming up on that very same legend-haunted stretch of woods, in just an hour or so, depending on the visibility and road conditions. All just myths, of course, but still cold comfort to a trucker on a long and lonely stretch of highway. Then he rounded the curve and saw the Esshell station, and all this was driven out of his mind, because the station was lit up, glowing brightly through the cold rain, and right under the main light was standing a woman in a long white dress. At the sight of his semi-tractor, she looked directly at him, and her thumb went up. A hitch-hiker? Long Haul thought, astounded. Here? There was nothing else along this road for many miles in either direction, and behind the Esshell station was nothing but an old dirt road leading into what was now the National Forest. It was cold and wet, though, and she was a woman alone. Common decency told him that he should stop and give her a lift, to at least the next town, which would be North Riverbridge, on the other side of the Avalon. He certainly couldn't just leave her to shiver in the driving rain. Long Haul was no fool, though, and he could see the obvious danger. There were sometimes hijackers on the road, and this would be a perfect lure with which to trap a trucker. So, as he slowed to a stop, he took out of his glove compartment the .45-caliber automatic pistol he had brought back from the Blackstoner Wars almost two decades past, slipped the magazine into place, and shoved it into the inner pocket of his brown, travel-stained leather jacket. If there were thieves out there, he'd be a tougher customer than they were counting on. The tractor bumped over the pavement of the gas station, which had not been properly maintained for decades. There were potholes and cracks aplenty, worn both during the time the station had been opened but failing, and by weather in the years since then. The big tires splashed water as the weight came down again, but Long Haul was careful not to splash his potential passenger. Surely she would be wet enough already. As he stopped he could now see the girl quite clearly. She was gray-skinned, which was a fairly normal coloration for North Amareicans, and had long blonde two-toned orange-and-yellow hair. The light illuminated her quite brightly, despite the mist and rain, and he was struck by the curious fancy that it was not the electric roadlamp overhead, but rather the girl, who was glowing, a diffuse and beautiful golden glow which lit the whole station and the cab of his semi. Keeping the motor running and the driver's side door locked, Long Haul leaned over to the other side and opened the passenger door. She looked up at him, and he was struck by her golden eyes. For a moment, he thought that they were glowing, like those of the vampire ghost from the old song, but then the moment passed and he realized that they were merely reflecting the radiance of the street light. "Need a ride?" he asked her. She smiled at him and nodded, and he revised her estimate of her age downward a decade. She looked healthy and well-built, fairly tall and muscular, and he might have thought her a woman in her twenties, were it not for a certain softness about her features and innocence about her expression that spoke to him of a girl in her teens, probably no older than fifteen or sixteen. He could see her Dream-Mark, embroidered over her hips -- a magnifying glass. He glanced around for a moment, and saw no hijackers. Of course, there were lots of places for them to hide, not the least of which was around his own semi, but if he didn't wait too long they wouldn't have that option. "I'm going to Canterlot," he said. "Through North Riverbridge. If that suits you, hop aboard. No strings -- just a ride." She smiled at him again, and started climbing up to the cab. Or did she? As Long Haul slid back over into the driver's seat, he thought that she almost seemed to be floating, rather than climbing, up to and through the passenger door. The impression was so pronounced that for a moment he groped inside his jacket for the butt of his pistol -- after an exceptionally-strange incident in the Babylonian desert, he'd had a local mystic bless the very same ammunition he was still carrying, and the old Shemite had claimed that with it he could drive off even evil spirits -- but then he realized he was just imagining things, for her weight pressed down on the seat cushion as she got into the seat beside him in a very normal and non-phantasmal manner, and he relaxed. She was just a teenaged girl, nothing more. No threat to him. He needed to calm down. He'd seen some scary things in Babylonia, that was all, and he had to be careful not to bring those ghosts back home. As she came in, the cold mist entered with her, so much so that Long Haul shivered even through his leather jacket and sweater. The poor girl was chilly and drenched -- when Long Haul took her hand to help her to her seat, he noticed that her skin felt both almost freezing cold, and the water almost streamed from her dress onto the seat cover. Indeed, even after Long Haul closed the door, the cab was icy cold, and he immediately turned up the heater, even before fully resuming his own seat, which helped a little. "Brrr," he said conversationally. "That's one mean night out there. Wonder if the rain'll turn to snow?" She smiled and shrugged. "Well," Long Haul continued, releasing the parking brake and shifting into drive, "the sooner we get you out of this cold night the better." He let the semi slide out of the Esshell station and onto the road; he didn't expect any other traffic but he was still careful to watch for it. As he pulled out onto the road, he saw something strange in his rear view mirror. The lights at the Esshell station were off again, leaving it dark and silent as the grave. Long Haul continued along down the lonely road with his strange passenger. He tried talking to her a few times, but she would not speak in return, simply giving him more or less friendly smiles in reply, to show him that she was not actually offended by his attempts at conversation. He wondered if she were actually mute, or simply very shy. She might be intimidated by his size and sex, and the loneliness of the situation; he certainly did not want to frighten her further. The obvious thought, that she might have been traumatized by an assault, occurred to him. She had some sort of mark, like a scuff or bruise, on her left temple. But her clothing did not appear disarranged or torn, and when he asked her directly "Did someone hurt you?" she shook her head vociferously, then softly giggled. Another obvious possibility was that some S.O.B. had taken her out for a night-time drive, he'd gotten a bit too fresh, and she'd either been expelled from or stormed angrily away from the car when she wouldn't give him what he wanted. She seemed a nice girl -- though very strange -- and the scenario quite plausible, but given her unwillingness to speak, he could not confirm it. It also occurred to him that she might be a runaway. Some men would have taken her in to a police station, but Long Haul didn't think that was a good idea unless he knew just from what -- if anything -- she was running away. He knew that some runaways were fleeing real abuse, and it would be doing her no favor to turn her back over to the ones who might want to hurt her. Really, he didn't understand enough of the situation to know the right course of action. That left simply taking her down the road and letting her off where she wanted to go, which had the virtue of being what he'd told her he would do, and hence probably the best way to treat her straight. Maybe he could check in later, find out if she were all right, what happened to her. The Esshell station was now miles behind them, the big semi-tractor splashing along in a slow and steady cruise down the road. It was just two lanes -- one in each direction -- but that didn't matter much given the complete absence of any other traffic on the road. His headlights cast cones of raidiance through the night and into the mist; he could clearly see the shape of his lights on the fog droplets. His tires plashed through puddles and hissed on the wet blacktop between them. The girl began to relax -- Long Haul supposed it was because he hadn't proven a bad person. Really, hitch-hiking alone was dangerous, especially for a young woman. He wondered what her family was like, and if they had any idea where she was, and if they were worried about her. Long Haul did not to his knowledge have any children, of either sex, but he couldn't imagine parents not worrying about a teenaged daughter in this kind of situation, especially on a night like this. As she relaxed, so did Long Haul. Though the girl still did not speak, and he gave up attempting to induce her to conversation, a certain friendly feeling grew between them. They were two beings cruising together through the angry night rain, sharing shelter and basic human trust. As always in such situations, either friendliness or hostility will build; and neither of them was feeling hostile to the other. Though, physically that cabin air remained unwontedly cold, no matter how high he turned up the heater. It was as if a cold wind blew from the passenger side -- though a brief stop and quick check showed him that both door and window on that side were tight shut -- and the trucker wondered if something were wrong with his cab's HVAC system. He was heavily clad, but she just had that white dress, wet and somewhat sheer from its drenching, something he realized when he bent over her to check the door; he could directly see her underwear, and noticed in passing that it was quite conservative; the sort of heavy brassiere and concealing underpants common a half-century or more ago. Kids these days and their retro styles, he thought wryly. When he was her age, teenage girls wouldn't be caught dead in anything that old-fashioned. He also noticed that she was still very cold. Both for the sake of her dignity and to avoid her suffering from exposure, he offered her a blanket from the sleeper behind the seats, and finally prevailed on her to wrap it around herself. That must have both warmed and somewhat dried her, and the glitch in the heating system may have also cured itself, because it started to get warmer in the cab. She obviously appreciated the loan of the blanket, anyway, because she smiled warmly at him when he did that, a look of gratitude in her golden eyes. They drove on a while longer. He had the music off, so he could hear distinctly when she started humming to herself. It was a haunting tune, and one which seemed strangely familiar to him, though he couldn't quite place it. He was sure that he had heard it before. He was coming up on the Freestream now. Despite its name, it was actually a small river, spanned by a steel box girder bridge on concrete pilings. There was no real clearance problem; he'd crossed the Freestream Bridge hauling a trailer before, and he had none now. But it was raining hard, and as he approached the bridge he could see that the river was running high, foaming about the concrete supports on which the bridge stood. He slowed as he did this, peering into the area illuminated by his headlights to make sure that there was nothing wrong with the bridge. This would be a bad night for a swim in the river. He could see no apparent problems; just a sturdy bridge over a river that was high but not actually flooding. As he looked up from this, he glanced over to the girl, and saw that she was clutching at her seatbelt and part of the door fitting, white-knuckled and grimacing in obvious fear. Oddly enough, at that moment the malfunctioning heater filled the cab with what smelled very much like burned meat. Long Haul wondered briefly if a mouse had crawled into his engine and died somewhere near the radiator and air intakes. He'd found the corpses of less likely things in his cab before. "Don't worry, kid," he told the girl. "It's safe. I'll have us across before you can say jack ... um, jiminy cricket," he quickly concluded, not wanting to use bad language in the presence of such a tender young thing. He smiled at her reassuringly. She smiled back, uncertainty obvious in her eyes, and nodded. Long Haul gunned his semi forward. Now that he'd seen no damage to the bridge, he'd rather take this fast than slow, as lingering too long might put too much pressure on the stressed structure, and he wanted the advantage of momentum to carry him past any dubious spots. Just as the front tires slapped onto the bridge, he suddenly recognized the tune she'd been humming. It was 'Wraith-Kissed.'