Chapter Seven
Betty flew down the road to the rhythm of Tom Hamilton’s bass guitar and Steven Tyler’s maracas. Flashing red and blue lights wailed in hot pursuit, but they were lost to sight as the GTO went over a hill. Betty scraped bottom briefly at the speed they were doing and then caught a little air. Silas loved the shudder of the road coming up through the car’s chassis; it made him feel like he was running himself, barefoot and free.
“I take it you’ve done this before?” asked Stacy as she leaned around the back of her seat, watching for the pa-troll.
“Once or twice. I’ve delivered a little moonshine, like I told you.”
“Ha! Now tell me the whole truth.”
“More than once or twice.” Silas hesitated. “I was raised ditching the law.”
“But you said these were the highway pa-troll.”
“Still the law. And they can’t drive any better than the revenue men did back when I was a kid.” Silas looked toward a covered bridge on a dirt road running roughly parallel to his own. He couldn’t get there yet—a line of trees and wire fence blocked his path—but the sight let him know options lay not too far ahead. He took his foot off the gas, scanning the shoulder. “I learned how to drive my pa’s moonshine pickup when I was ten years old. He was a drunk, but he was our drunk, and I wasn’t gonna let the law catch him.”
“They’re going to catch us,” Stacy warned, as the red and blue lights came over the hill.
Silas shook his head. “I’m letting them gain. I want them to see my taillights going this way.”
Stacy gave him an incredulous look.
“You’ll see.” Silas sped up slightly, going over a low rise that hid them from view. Still scanning the shoulder, he saw a small reflector along the left side of the road and raced toward it. He spun the GTO around and came to a stop, low and far onto the shoulder, partially hidden amongst tall grass and reeds. “Now we wait a minute. You can sing along with the radio if you like. What does this one say? Suntan lotion!”
“Very funny. I know this one.”
“Sure you do.”
Stacy slapped him across the shoulder. The sound of sirens approached. “It’s brand-new Aerosmith.”
“You sure?”
“They won’t be able to miss this bright red car!”
“Her name is Betty. You may also refer to her as ‘the Pontiac,’ ‘the GTO,’ or ‘the fine-looking muscle car.’ ‘Bright red car’ is disrespectful. It makes her sound garish. And trust me, trolls ain’t any better than people when they think they’ve got the scent. They’re gonna be looking down the road and gunning it.”
Stacy sighed and slumped back in her seat, folding her arms across her chest. She closed her eyes and murmured to herself.
“Pray if you like, we don’t need it.” Silas shrugged. “They’ll pass by quick, sure they’re on the right track. Trolls are natural blunderers. Same way that dwarfs aren’t half as smart as they think they are and grays are pushovers if you get the drop on them.”
“Grays?”
“You know. Flying saucer people.”
Stacy shook her head and resumed murmuring.
The sirens got louder and came over the hill, then slowed down.
Silas’s brow furrowed. “It’s like they can sense us. How?”
“It’s a bright red car! That’s how,” Stacy said, eyes still closed.
“Don’t call her that,” Silas growled. “It makes her sound like a strumpet.”
The three pa-troll cars slowed, and Silas could see the ugly yellow face of the lead troll jutting out the window, clearly scanning the near vicinity. The pa-troll were only going about five miles an hour now and were just fifty yards away in the oncoming lane.
At this speed, there was no way they could miss the Pontiac, which was indeed a bright red car. Silas had bet that the trolls would be flying by with the sun directly in their eyes but now he was mystified how they hadn’t yet seen him.
Stacy was still murmuring to herself, eyes clenched shut. Sweat was beading on her forehead.
“Yeah, if you don’t see them, they won’t see us,” Silas scoffed.
“Shhhh,” Stacy urged.
Silas could swear the lead highway pa-trollman was looking directly at him, but without the slightest look of acknowledgment on his scabby face. There was no light in the troll’s dull eyes, nothing to say he had just found his quarry. He was looking right at Silas but not seeing. How was that possible?
Silas couldn’t guess what they were playing at and couldn’t run the risk they would take a shot at him as he sat there unmoving. He kicked Betty into first and tore off the shoulder up to the blacktop. The trolls shuddered to a halt and he slammed through a healthy succession of second, third, and fourth.
The pa-troll cars spun about in hot pursuit.
“Why did you do that?” Stacy cried. “They hadn’t seen us and they weren’t going to!”
“There was something off about them. Maybe they have a shaman in one of the cars.” Silas shook his head. “I couldn’t take the chance of getting boxed in, don’t know how they knew to slow down back there.” He shifted into fifth gear and roared down the road.
“It was me,” Stacy said.
“What?”
“It was me; I was doing it.” She spun her hands in front of her face like a television genie.
“What?”
“I was casting an illusion so they wouldn’t see us. Somehow, they were suspicious and sensed us anyway, but they couldn’t see us. I did it. It was me. I have some powers. I told you.”
“Powers?”
“My dad was a magician. He taught me a thing or two.”
“You make it sound like all he taught you was farm league stuff,” Silas pressed. “Maybe you could have said, ‘Hey, I can make us invisible, and I’m going to hide us from the trolls now.’”
“Maybe I wanted to impress you!” she snapped.
Silas gritted his teeth and kept his eyes on the road. “What’s with you being all astonished at Other America, then? Surprised by gargoyles, caught off guard by trolls, never heard of the Seeming?”
“I’m blown away by all these things happening. Dad never told me about this stuff, I never anticipated all of this. I thought magic was a thing you had to drive three hours to find, not something lurking in the bodega on the corner.”
“Stay away from bodegas,” Silas agreed. “Those are hot spots.”
Stacy was shaking. “It’s too much. I thought I was special and I’m not, everything is more special than me!” She sniffed and wiped at tears running down her face.
“Illusions,” Silas said. “Invisibility.”
“Yes.” She sniffed.
“Hold on. Take it easy,” Silas said, as he glanced in the rearview. Red and blue were falling behind for the moment; the trolls weren’t nearly as fast as Betty. “We’ll figure this out. Can you do it again, if you give me a heads-up and I say where and when?”
Stacy wiped away a tear. “Yes, I can.”
“Good, I’ve got another idea.”
They passed by the covered bridge he had seen earlier, and a half mile down the road, he found a flat meadow where the parallel roads ran close. He stomped the brake and slid into a right-hand turn, hopping from one track to the other.
The other road was dirt and quickly wound serpentine through thick trees dotted with fields and ditches. A small river snaked through the shadowy trees close by. The light of the afternoon sun glimmered on its rippled coils as they raced past.
“You made the trolls not see us. Can you make them not see a bridge?”
Stacy wiped away a tear. “I’ve never hidden anything that big. The car was as big as I’ve ever tried, and I was really concentrating.”
“Can you try?”
Stacy nodded vehemently.
Silas looked back over his shoulder and saw that red and blue lights had followed him through the change of roads.
The dirt road wound back and forth and Silas took the curves as fast as he could at speeds up to forty-five miles an hour, hugging the bends like a babe clutched to its mama. When the curves were large enough and the terrain permitted, he saved time by cutting across patches of dirt, grass, and wildflowers.
Then they came up a slope to the bridge, connecting the two sides of the river where the land was a little raised. Silas stomped the brake. They skidded to a halt in a cloud of dust.
“What?” Stacy asked.
“Look!” Silas said as he threw Betty into reverse, backing down the slope.
The covered bridge sagged. The entire structure leaned to one side. The bottom had timbers hanging low, even touching the green swirling river. There were gaps in the floor of the bridge. Paint flaked off the sides and appeared to be the only thing holding the structure together.
“Can we go back?”
“No, they’re coming, and these woods don’t allow for serious off-roading.”
“I don’t think I understand your plan.”
“I meant to cross the bridge and have you hide it, so they wouldn’t know they could cross. But we’ll have to improvise. Hand me a vial of the holy water.”
Stacy gave him a puzzled look but opened the glove box. She reached in gingerly, careful to avoid the desiccated hand, as if it might become animated and grab her. She took the small flask and handed it to Silas.
He backed Betty up as far as he could and still see the bridge.
“What are you doing?” Stacy asked. “I don’t think I like where this is going. Is one of Betty’s powers that she can fly?”
“We can do this.” Silas was talking to himself as much as to her. “With a little help from the demon.”
“Help from the demon? The demon’s going to help now? What about a house divided against itself and all that?”
“Not sure what Abraham Lincoln has to do with it, but I make do as best I can in this world. Just be grateful I can direct this show.”
Silas gave Betty some gas while staying in neutral, revving the car up. The lights and sirens were getting closer. He had to hand it to the pa-troll, they were persistent What was so interesting to them about the deck? Or was their target Stacy, after all?
He opened the flask, still revving the engine. “Don’t hide the bridge. Hide its condition. Don’t let the trolls see it’s falling apart, let them think they can cross it like normal, just like they’ll think we did.”
“I don’t know if I can do that. It’s too big.”
“Forget about the top and sides,” Silas said. “Just don’t let them see how bad the bottom is.”
“All right.” Stacy took a deep breath.
“Good girl.” Silas splashed holy water on the stain between and behind the seats. The demon wailed and flames shot from the exhaust. Silas put his foot to the floor and shifted into third. Betty spun out and jumped forward, going from zero to sixty to one hundred twenty miles per hour up the slope in a matter of feet.
Stacy was sucked back into the seat as the car soared through the tunnel.
The demon screamed and the Pontiac touched down on the opposite side with a crunch. The car’s tires churned and spat gravel and the body fishtailed. Silas breathed a sigh of relief, bringing them to a stop not far away. He avoided looking in the mirror. “Okay, do your thing.”
“I’m still catching my breath. Unbelievable!” She was panting.
“Do you need a bag?” Silas looked toward the approaching pa-troll. “Breath in and out, but do it fast. We need you to do your thing, and we need you to do it now.”
“Why? We’re across and they can’t do what we just did right?”
Silas smiled and shook his head. “Probably not, but I’d sure like to take them out of the running entirely so they can’t cut us off as we head west.”
“Let me concentrate.” Stacy closed her eyes and murmured again under her breath.
Silas watched the bridge. He thought he saw a shimmer around it, if only for a heartbeat. He took off his sunglasses and blinked but didn’t see anything. He could hear the sirens, piercing like the demon’s cry. The trolls were close. “Concentrate, sweetheart.”
“Don’t call me that. And I can focus better if you’re not talking to me.”
“Sorry,” he whispered.
The sound of the sirens drew closer and then he saw the pa-troll cars in the rearview as they raced around the bend into plain sight. They didn’t slow in the slightest and the first sped up the slope and across the bridge.
Had he miscalculated? Silas grabbed the gear shift, but then he heard the crash. He flipped about in his seat to watch. The first pa-troll car fell through the bottom of the bridge and splashed into the river. The second one, close on its heels, fell through on top of it. The third car, a few lengths back, managed to stop and teeter at the edge of the gap. Its driver tried to back out and slowly pivot, but the wood crumbled beneath its tires until it too slowly fell. Its tusk-faced driver kicked the door open and scrambled out just before it careened into the drink. The trolls roared at each other and at Silas in impotent rage.
“That was good.” Silas chuckled. “Good job. Great job.”
Stacy smiled and sniffed a little.
“You did good. Those three won’t be on our trail anytime soon. Now I just gotta get us back to the interstate.”
Stacy composed herself, saying, “Thanks. I’d never tried anything like that before. It was always just when I didn’t want to be in the same room with someone, you know? Make myself disappear. Make myself seem to walk away.”
The trolls were beginning to slosh from the river, so Silas shifted into gear and started driving down the road. That was what had happened to the gargoyles back at Nooper. “I think I know what you mean. I understand wanting not to be seen.”
They turned around a stand of pine and were out of sight of the bridge.
“You, not want to be seen?” Stacy snorted. “You’re short, but you have those broad shoulders and that whole Steve McQueen action figure look!”
“Short?” Silas frowned. “Who’s short?”
“I’m complimenting you, for Pete’s sake!”
“I’m five foot six,” Silas protested. “That’s average, at least. In Japan, I’d be a giant.”
“We’re not in Japan,” Stacy reminded him. “And in troll land, you’re bite-sized.”
“How is any of this a compliment? Are you saying I don’t mind people seeing me because I’m short? I guess your dad didn’t have time to teach you manners when he was putting you through wizard school.”
“Manners?” Stacy’s voice was ramping to a shriek. “You want to talk to me about manners, you surly, uncommunicative clod? Fully three quarters of your conversation consists of grunts!”
“Grunts can be polite,” Silas snarled. “Especially when the alternative is to tell a man you think he’s a midget.”
“Someone is sensitive. I never said you were a midget…even if you’re not five six.”
Silas glowered at the comment.
They drove through a thick grove of elm trees and around a knob of rock and Silas suddenly found their route blocked by a half dozen pa-troll cars. He braked hard.
The big brutes had completely blocked off the road with two cars and stood taking cover behind the vehicles, shotguns in hand. One troll stood in front of the cars, a hand up to signal them to stop and get out. Silas recognized the troll.
Shagruk gave a ferocious grin over a newly scarred face.
“Oh crap,” Silas cursed.
“You know him?” Stacy asked. “Is he a bad egg?”
“Well…you might say I gave him a bad egg.”