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"She's dead, man. I mean really fucking dead this time."
Pockets filled with the profits made at the concert in Raleigh the night prior, Steve paced around the outside of the T-bird, twitchy with irritation over the unfortunate turn of events. Even though the car was his baby, she was a mighty fine bitch of a girl who broke down at the most inopportune times. Tired, hungry, and completely unenthused about being stalled on the side of the road twenty miles outside the city, Steve ran his fingers through his shoulder-length dark hair and heaved a sigh.
Ghost, seemingly unfazed by the broken-down state of the car, quietly studied the wild dandelions growing between cracks in the road's concrete shoulder as he listened to his best friend rant. He wanted to point out that Steve pronounced the car dead nearly every time it experienced problems, but he offered a more reassuring response instead to soothe over Steve's car-directed agitation. "That car isn't going to die until you do." And despite the fact that Steve was annoyed, he didn't argue; as much as he disliked the T-bird stalling one out of five trips out of town, Ghost just knew things, and if he said the car wasn't dead, then Steve sure as hell had to trust him on that one.
Though that didn't discredit the fact that it had stalled, and if they planned to get back to Missing Mile before nightfall, they'd have to find a phone. Grass stretched for miles in front and behind the car, save for a few lone buildings up the road: two barns, three farmhouses and what appeared to be some sort of eatery, though Steve couldn't tell for certain from this distance.
But Ghost could, not because he had superhuman vision but because he had that innate knowing, and without needing to hear the inevitable 'we have to find a phone' from Steve, he commented, "There's a phone up there, inside. We could stop for something to eat, too."
Eat? Oh, they hadn't eaten anything since the night before, had they? Steve's memory of last night was alcohol-blurred, and the only reason he'd avoided a massive hangover was another dose of whatever it was that Miz Catlin mixed into those mysterious hangover potions. "Shit. What time is it?"
Tearing his attention away from the dandelions so that he could shift closer to Steve, Ghost lifted his hand to peer at the watch on its wrist, its face decorated with a miniature sun and moon. The hands of the watch read 1:47 PM. "Almost two."
Before Steve could open his mouth to make a reply, his stomach complained with a small growl, informing him not-so-subtly that it was well past lunchtime and he needed to refuel. And if Ghost said there was phone up ahead, that gave him an excuse to grab a meal. "Fuck it. Let's eat." After a final half-hearted nudge to the T-bird's nearest hubcap with the toe of his leather cowboy boot, Steve pulled himself away from the car and started up the road, Ghost following half a step behind him.
Both men had little concern about leaving the car on the side of the road, because the only item noticeable from outside the window was the well-worn beige blanket lifted from a Holiday Inn that was currently sprawled across the seat; Steve's guitar and Ghost's notebook of lyrics were locked firmly in the trunk of the car. Who in their right mind would want to hijack Steve's run-down clunker of a '72 Ford Thunderbird? And the better question: who could hijack it? It took half a dozen turns of the key in the ignition and just as many swears to get the massive five-thousand pound gas-guzzler to even start - and that was on a good day.
The eatery up ahead was, Steve and Ghost both noticed, actually a tiny diner with only two cars parked outside – "Cook and the server," Steve commented with a roll of his eyes – and the building itself looked like it was desperately in need of repair. The sad off-white paint was chipped and peeling, the wooden door dry and cracked with age. The only lively aspect of the diner's exterior was the sign plastered to the front window, its text painted in a bright red: BE AMAZED! LIVE WILD! TASTE THE UNKNOWN! The sign wasn't enough to completely break up the monotony of the building, and Steve decided quietly to himself that the inside was probably just as boring. But then again, how much life could one really expect so far away from the big city?
The old door swung open with a sharp creak when Ghost pushed it, and both his and Steve's eyes grew wide at just what they saw inside. The wooden tables and chairs were largely uneventful, but the walls were covered with what reminded Steve of props from a horror movie.
The décor lined on a myriad of wooden shelves throughout the room was a collection of oddities that just managed to pass the fine line between unique and grotesque: long-dead bull frogs pickled in vodka in dusty pickle jars; large broken conch shells; stained Bear River arrowheads; scattered dried lilies; phials of dark, cloudy liquid with yellowing labels that read 'black bile'; bones adhered onto blood wood plaques, each with nothing more than 'human' carved into the surface of the wood. It was a veritable treasure trove of the macabre; if Steve hadn't been accustomed to life's weirdness he might have high-tailed it out right at that moment.
No, disgusting items in jars didn't bother him – after all, he'd seen the odd concoctions in the back of Miz Catlin's shop. What did pose a threat were living persons, and there was something horribly wrong about the server behind the counter that made Steve instantly on edge.
Perhaps it was server's greasy, receding blond hair, or the tattered red flannel shirt that looked more suited to wiping up vomit than acting as a garment. No, it had to be those eyes, those wild, crazed eyes that seemed to spark with some dark excitement. Maybe it was that twisted smirk and the blackened teeth that were revealed when the server opened his mouth to slur, "Care for a Dixie Blackened Voodoo, friends?" Or maybe it was all of the above rolled into one that made Steve grab the back of Ghost's gray sweatshirt and pull him right back out the door. Fuck finding a phone; avoiding a scene from a macabre horror movie was far higher on Steve's priority list. He'd sooner walk back to Raleigh than risk his and Ghost's own body parts becoming trophies hung on the diner walls.
It was a knee-jerk, impulsive reaction to leave, and it wasn't until they reached the T-bird that Steve realized Ghost's expression was calm, if but a little confused. Steve figured then that he might have over-reacted, and while he'd feel like an idiot in the presence of anyone else, Ghost was his point of comfort so he came right out and asked, "Those fucking things aren't human bones in there, are they?"
Ghost paused, stared back toward the diner with a quiet focus that Steve had seen time and time again. The whys and hows of that ability didn't matter; Ghost was magic and Steve had grown used to the idea the decade that they'd known each other. "Hm. Raccoon," Ghost finally answered, tilting his head a little as if pondering information given to him by some unseen source. "The bigger ones, elk. They died on the street."
"…road kill."
"Yeah."
"…So he's got road kill but he's hawking it as some kind of crazy-ass black market shit? Fuck that." With one last desperate attempt, Steve pulled open the door of the T-bird and rammed the key into the ignition, the rough turn of the key fueled by his desire to get the hell away from the side of the road and back toward Missing Mile. To his surprise, the car shuddered to life, purred like an aging cat that had used up eight of its nine lives. Oh, yeah – victory at last. Satisfied, Steve tilted his head toward the passenger seat to encourage Ghost to get in; the more miles they put between here and home, the better.