//------------------------------// // Chapter 3: .... And in the Silver Rain // Story: I Guess It Doesn't Matter Any More // by Jordan179 //------------------------------// "Grey Hoof," Long Haul said in a deliberately calm tone -- though in truth, his heart was racing and his pulse pounding in his ears -- "this just ain't no good idea. We're from two different worlds, and they just shouldn't mix." "Nonsense!' replied Grey Hoof, his voice redolent with jovial good cheer. "The farmers and the teamsters should be friends! Why, we grow the crops you haul to market -- though, admittedly, our yields have been piss-poor this last millennium -- but still, we need each other!" Long Haul caught Grey Hoof's temporal reference, and had a brief, hilariously-nightmarish mental image of his semi sitting in a shed somewhere, gathering cobwebs and dust and rust, while his skeleton sat behind the steering wheel, while the ghosts of Sunney Towne, the worst farmers in the ten-millennia or so long history of agriculture, struggled to actually grow a crop for him to haul. Despite his own grim situation, Long Haul could not quite suppress a short barking laugh, followed by a snickering chuckle. "I was thinking more about the world of the living -- and that of the dead," Long Haul said. Grey Hoof grinned amiably. "Oh, thou needst not fret on that," he said. "Thou wilst soon enow belong wholly to mine own world!" He chuckled heartily at this, as if this were a particularly funny joke. Long Haul laughed too. He knew he should have been terrified -- Grey Hoof had as good as promised to kill him -- and, while Long Haul wasn't exactly certain how a ghost could kill the living, but 'Wraith-Kissed' gave Long Haul an inkling as to how such a murder might be accomplished. On another level -- though he did not know exactly why -- he found himself liking the big cheerful ghost. This was not like the sympathy he had felt for Ruby -- he did not really understand the source of his new emotion. Grey Hoof's merriment was mesmerizing -- and that term for it was more accurate than Long Haul realized, for in fact he was falling under Grey Hoof's supernatural sway. His fears were being damped down; his suspicions lulled and his loyalties subverted against his own survival and towards the ends of the Master-Wraith of Sunney Towne. Long Haul had never encountered anything like this before; and his military training provided him no defense, in a mostly-mundane world, against the geas of the ghost. And yet the trucker had a strong streak of stubborness, and a native common sense that beat a slow, steady tocsin of warning in the depths of his mind, and so his will did not totally yield to the power of the phantom. Long Haul's soul was assailed, but it still remained his own, and while his power of active resistance was temporarily paralyzed, he did not wholly give in, and he did not cease what he had been doing before Grey Hoof had manifested in his cab. So it was that, even while Long Haul laughed at Grey Hoof's merry jests, which all amounted to how Grey Hoof would take him back to Sunney Towne, end his mortal life, and in the darkness bind him to unstintingly serve Grey Hoof's will as one of the celebration planner's helpless undead thralls, still the trucker continued to reverse his semi along the muddy dirt road, toward the widening circle of light which offered hope of resuming the main road and gaining his freedom from these accursed woods. Long Haul did not wholly know why he wanted to do this; a large part of him wanted to go with Grey Hoof to Sunney Towne and enjoy the promised delights of the proffered party. And yet Long Haul continued to do this, his eyes automatically watching his rear-view mirrors, his hands making the necessary motions on his steering wheel. And the motor of Long Haul's semi-tractor, which recked nothing of wraiths or of mind control, obeyed Long Haul in its simple mechanical fashion, and through its transmission conveyed its power to the wheels, driving him backwards to salvation. And, as he pulled farther and farther away from the epicenter of Shadow upon Earth that was Sunney Towne, the power of Grey Hoof weakened with the growing distance, and Long Haul's struggling mind began to remember another consideration. An overriding consideration, that acted to combat the fiend's fell might. Long Haul liked parties. He was a trucker, and one thing truckers know how to do is to whoop it up with the best of them at the end of a run. But he was a good trucker, and he knew better than to whoop it up in the middle of a run -- worse, in the middle of a leg of that run, with many weary miles to drive before he made it to his first destination. He knew his duty, in detail. He had been told -- and he had entered this information into the distance-and-speed-and-time calculating engine of his brain -- that he had to be in Canterlot by 4 in the morning at the latest, so that he could pick up a semi-trailer full of paper goods that had to make it to the Crystal City by 4 in the afternoon the next day; and from there he had to take on a load of electronics for Dodge City. Distribution schedules hung on this, with penalty clauses in contracts which would be invoked if he was late in these tasks. There was some leeway -- though the faster he made these runs, the longer the meals and naps he could take between the legs of this itinerary. But there was by no means enough leeway for him to just turn off his route and drive into the Everfree for an unplanned party. This would have been true, even if the party had been merely song and dance and food and drink, instead of what Grey Hoof really had intended for him. And ... Grey Hoof did not know this! His mind-magicks were all pitched to overcome Long Haul's dread of death and revulsion at the thought of becoming one of the damned undead in his own person. And they overcame those fears -- but they did not overcome the pride of the elite trucker, the knowledge that the loads must go through, the routes run on time, the desire to be the best and fastest and most reliable driver of all. So the semi rolled on backward through the cold and wet and mud, rolled on backward toward the freedom of the highway. Grey Hoof, focused as he must have been on clamping down on Long Haul's mind, did not at first seem to be aware of what the trucker was actually doing. Perhaps it was because the Head-Wraith was concentrating upon Long Haul's consciousness, while the actions Long Haul were executing were at the level of routine and muscle-memory. In any case, it was not until the semi actually broke out from under the trees, Long Haul turning the wheel hard left to execute a tight reverse-right turn, that Grey Hoof seemed to awake to the fact that they were actually pulling away from Sunney Towne. When he noticed, Grey Hoof did not seem to be very happy. "What are you doing?" the specter shouted. "You're going the wrong way!" Long Haul completed his turn, shifted into drive. "Sorry, Mr. Hoof," he said. "I've gotta be in Canterlot by four this morning, and that hasn't changed. It's a shame I can't make your shindig, but I've got to make my run on time. Maybe I'll stop by your town some other time. Do you want me to let you off here now?" "Let me off? Grey Hoof asked incredulously, and his face twisted into a snarl. For a moment, his eyes flared a murky crimson; and a cold, charnel-reeking wind blew from the passenger side of the cab. There was a flash of light, and Long Haul thought for a moment that he saw Grey Hoof's face not as that of a fleshy, jolly good fellow, but as a skull, horribly still draped in some tatters of flesh and hair, litten from within by a hellish reddish-black radiance. Long Haul gasped sharply. This was not, like Ruby's similar transformation crossing the bridge occasioned by the running water. Here, the loss of control appeared more emotional than physical. And unlike Ruby, who had seemed apologetic about revealing her more frightening form, Grey Hoof was very obviously angry at him. This awareness -- of the ease with which Grey Hoof could flash over from apparent cameraderie to to sudden rage -- percolated its way into Long Hoof's mind, gradually penetrating the fog of the geas which Grey Hoof had laid upon Long Haul's consciousness, like an invisible net entangling the trucker's free will. Slowly -- too slowly? -- Long Haul began re-awakening to his true peril. So when Grey Hoof, recovering his composure in more than one sense of the word, smiled and said more politely "'Tis of little concern, kind drayman. Canst thou drive me to Sunney Towne, so that I need not walk through this driving rain?" Long Haul did not do as Grey Hoof had suggested, and turn around to drive right back onto that narrow, dark and muddy road, taking direction from his spectral passenger, under conditions which would negate most of the advantages of his vehicle, all the way to Grey Hoof's village, where he would be at the mercy of Grey Hoof and a whatever number of similar undead horrors awaited him" there. He would have done so, without questioning the command, a moment earlier. Instead, Long Haul replied: "I'm sorry -- I really can't. My semi's too big for that road -- I'm lucky I was able to take it down as far as I could without bogging down. I could let you off here, it's --- Aaah!" That sudden scream was occaioned by the fact that Grey Hoof had very suddenly -- moving with frightening speed for someone so big -- surged toward Long Haul and grabbed him by his right hand and the nape of his neck. Grey Hoof was terribly strong; even stronger than Long Haul would have suspected from his sheer size. But the strength of the ghostly grip ws far from the worst of it. For Grey Hoof's grip was supernally cold -- colder by far than the physical contact Long Haul had already experienced from his daughter Ruby. Pain flared where that chill touched him, pain and then a deathly numbness, as if the nerves in the flesh so affected had overloaded to the point of shutting down. In that instant, Long Haul dimly comprehended just how, centuries ago, Ruby must have maimed Chiller Tale during that single disastrous kiss the minstrel had so unwisely stolen from the ghost girl. And Long Haul knew he was utterly at Grey Hoof's mercy. The pain was so agonizing, the numbness so total, that it was all Long Haul could do to retain his left hand's grip on the steering wheel. Continuing to drive the semi along the road was impossible. The best Long Haul could do was gently pump the brake, drift to the right, and run the right side wheels of the truck up on the right-hand shoulder -- the one on the opposite side of the road from the river-cliff -- in what he hoped would be a controlled crash. The semi shimmied, shuddered and shook as the right-side tires rode up on the shoulder and branches from roadside trees slapped the cab. The truck tilted alarmingly, but Long Haul's driving instincts and skills had been sound. His semi did not overturn. Instead it stopped, with a rattling of small objects inside storage compartments. Little actually came loose into the cab -- Long Haul was careful putting things away before he started driving. This was not the first crash in which he had been, controlled or otherwise. At some point during this process, Grey Hoof had let go of him. Long Haul looked at Grey Hoof, trying to rub some feeling into his own right wrist, where Grey Hoof had grasped hin. The skin there was blackened as if by a sudden severe frost-bite, in a pattern matching the wraith's fingers. His neck did not seem hurt nearly as much;, though Grey Hoof had gripped him equally as firmly there; Long Haul was not sure why. Grey Hoof made no further move to harm him, merely glaring at him ominously from his ebon eyes, but obviously ready to at a moment's noticed administer more chilling pain. His expression was entirely unsympathetic. "Why -- ?" Long Haul managed to recover his breath. "Why did you do that?" "Thou mayest have noted," Grey Hoof said in a tone even more chilling for its controlled calm, "that I have been dead for many centuries. I am well aware of mine own antique ways, and the olden cast of mine own speech. I am also well aware of the great strides made in recent centuries by the artisans of the North Amareican Federation, including this very truck in whose cabin we do sit. Perhaps, thou dost imagine that this means I am as a babe in swaddling clothes, gaping in ignorant awe of thine own superior craftsmanship? "I am not stupid, Messer Motor-Drayman. Nor I am I a child, nor some naked savage who doth imagine thy truck to be some magical miracle and trembleth before its mysteries. I have watched thy world. I have read thy books and news journals. Aye, Messer Drayman, I can read -- I learned my letters as a lad from my mother, who was likewise mistress of that art, for she came of a good family of Pie-Towne, which is long vanished into legend but which I knew well in my youth. "We Hoofs were no ignorant peasants, but a family of sturdy yeomen and goodwives, who bowed before our lords but did not lick the boots of any of them. We were educated -- mine own youngest daughter, Ruby, whom you did carry here, is quite the scholar, and doth keep an extensive library. She is a brilliant and well-loved girl; before the Doom that came to Sunney-Towne, she stood high in the favor of the Moon-Queen herself, and was assured of a position at her Court. We are no gaping, slack-jawed yokels! "The gist of what I say being, Messer Drayman, that I am not a fool. And I did behold, with mine own manifested eyes, thee as thou didst drive onto our road in thy truck. Not only that, I then did behold, from this very same seat in which I now do sit, as thou didst drive thy truck out again, backward. So I am well aware that thy motor-wagon is capable of taking our humble dirt road, if not at the speed that it doth fly on a better-surfaced one. "Slow passge does not fret me. I was born in an age when the fastest any man moved was on a fleet horse, and your truck is at least as fast, even splashing through mud puddles. 'Twill stain thy truck, to be true, but I can always have some of my thralls clean it after. They do little enough, just rotting away in the ground and needing my power to keep bone sinewed to bone. They might as well serve as a crew to keep the truck looking fine and pretty as any noble's carriage. He grinned, and his smile was that of some great beast beholding its prey. "I have all the time in the world, Messer Drayman. More time than it shall take thee to drive thy dray to Sunney Towne. So let us begin!" Long Haul made as if to consider this point, continuing to rub his right wrist. The worst damage was only skin deep, and sensation -- along with some pain -- was starting to return to the member. He could handle the pain, but the remaining numbness was a real problem. For he would soon need that hand for strong and precise work. The trucker knew that Grey Hoof meant to kill him, perhaps turn him into another of those 'thralls' whose existence Grey Hoof had just mentioned in such a disturbingly vague manner. Long Haul had but one ace in the hole, one chance at survival, whose very existence he hoped the wraith did not even suspect. A .45-caliber automatic pistol, with seven blessed bullets in its magazine, still-concealed under his leather jacket. He did not know for sure if the bullets would even affect Grey Hoof -- both Grey Hoof and his daughter Ruby had demonstrated that they could become insubstantial at will. But it was his only hope of survival, so he might as well try it. The thing is, Long Haul's right hand was only gradually returning to full functionality. And Long Haul was right-handed. He knew that in time his hand would come back. But he might not have enough time. He had to stall the spectre just a little bit longer. Without angering him to the point of launching another attack. "What ... what about my schedule?" Long Haul asked, deliberately putting bit of a frightened quaver into his voice. At this point, it didn't taake much acting. "Worthless mortal!" Grey Hoof snarled, his face once again becoming the skin and hair-dangling half-decomposed skull Long Haul had seen before. The fires in his empty sockets were now only slightly red-tinged; they were mostly black fire, impossible though that might seem by normal logic. "Thou dost belong to me, now! Thou knowest full well that thou shalt not see Canterlog ag ..." Grey Hoof paused for a moment. He calmed slightly, and the fleshy face of the jolly fat man returned to clothe the naked bone. "... Any time soon," the wraith continued. "Thou shalt serve me for a space, thee and and thy truck. Then, if thou hast pleased me, I shall permit thee to ... pass on." And Long Haul knew that Grey Hoof was not talking about letting him drive away again.