Shape Shifter

Shape Shifter

Somebody runs into the road. I slam the brakes. The anti-locks vibrate as I skid twenty feet through snow. There's no thump of impact, so I rest my forehead on the wheel, heart hammering.

A tall figure, edged in the snow-reflected headlights, looms outside the passenger door. Big guy, looks like, standing motionless. I open my door, fight to get free of something entangling me. I’ve forgotten my seat belt, that’s how out of it, how scared shitless I am. My hands tremble while I unbuckle, climb out, hurry around the back. My boot soles squeak as they bite snow.

The world beyond is dead silent, flakes huge and wet, falling as forgetting falls, and I struggle to know where I am, how I got here.

“Hey, you okay?” I say, and draw up beside him, taller than me. He wears a heavy wool coat, hippy-long hair and beard caked in snow, dried blood crusted on his chin. Stares straight ahead. Puffs of breath every few seconds.

“Sir, are you okay? God, I’m sorry I almost hit you! Why did you run out in front of me?”

My heart jumps, half fright, half joy, when he turns his head and stares at me. After all, a dead man can’t turn his head. He nods solemnly.

“Yeah,” he says. His voice is faint, breathy. “I’m okay.”

“Are you broken down somewhere? Spun out in the snow? Man, we’re out in the middle of nowhere.”

He shakes his head hesitantly, eyes drilling mine.

“Just walkin through the woods,” he says. “Got lost, I guess,” and shrugs.

It’s too dark to clearly make out his face. Is this guy all there? He acts odd, strange somehow. Like he’s not sure who he is.

“There’s blood all over your chin. You hurt?”

Another long pause.

“Fell in the woods and bit my tongue bad.”

“You want a lift to Coalsburg? Hey, or wherever else you wanna go, buddy, so long as it’s off this God forsaken mountain. Not much longer, we’ll be stuck here for a week.”

The engine grumbles, snow behind my car swathed in bloody scarlet. Exhaust boils up into a hovering cloud.

“Okay,” he says.

I open the door, and he bends low, peers inside. Is he looking for other passengers? His bare hands stroke the door frame, reach in and feel the seat, press into it, making squeaks.

Five minutes later, we’re moving. The seat belt confounded him, but the hell if I was going to reach across him to do it. We have to get down four or five thousand feet, in a hurry. The road is blanketed in four or five inches of virgin white. No tread marks except the ones we’re making.

I keep it slow – around twenty miles per hour. Then we start down the first slope toward civilization. And safety.

Glimpses of him as I drive, grizzled features edged pale green in the dash lights – scabbed lips and a patch of either dried blood or frostbite, abrasive as tree bark, on his left cheek.

With the high beams off, I can barely see through a storm of flakes streaming outward from straight ahead. Always marveled at that. No matter which direction you drive, snow always pours from that central point, like some black hole is birthing them as fast as you can chase it through the storm.

That’s how it feels with this stranger beside me. Like he really isn’t here. That my own words, spoken out loud, make him real. Make him know how to talk.

On the road winding across Darnold Ridge, the silence between us weighs on me. Each second piles on another pound, until I can’t take any more.

“So, what’s your name? I’m Sam. Sam Dreyfus.”

We start down the steeper downgrade, and the snow slows a bit. It's deep enough that my car’s bottom scrapes here and there. After getting no answer, I take my right hand off the wheel and lay my forearm on the rest between our seats.

Then, and God I almost jump out of my skin when it happens, he covers my hand with his. It’s cold and trembling, his touch, and rough-textured – unnaturally so, like his palm is covered in heavy sandpaper. His fingers wrap gently about my hand, but I sense no danger, no threat.

“Hold my hand?” he says. “I’m so scared. Almost died back there.”

I flip my hand, palm up, squeeze back and search for the last time I held someone’s hand while in the car.

About ten years ago, when Sue was still alive, God rest her soul, and we were driving under gorgeous, snow-edged trees. On the way to a special dinner at Milton’s Tavern for our thirtieth anniversary. We went quietly. No need to talk, just held hands and knew we weren’t alone.

I glance over and nearly lose the wheel. My grip on reality slips, muscles tighten. The hand I hold is now warm, soft, smaller. Sue sits next to me, staring straight ahead, that gorgeous half-smile on her face when she’s content. I brake hard, then think better as we start fishtailing. I keep driving.

“Who are you?” I shout.

She doesn’t flinch, doesn’t blink.

“Does it matter?” Sue says, and it’s her, by God it’s her, my wife.

It hits me – I must be dead. Must’ve careened off the road, flown off a cliff, died on impact upon tumbled boulders. But this doesn’t feel like afterward, like heaven. I still taste mint gum. My belt feels too tight, and I have to pee. No, I’m alive.

“You’re a lonely man, Sam Dreyfus,” she says.

But this can’t be Sue. That big, scabbed hobo-looking man took on her form. How in the hell? Is it lulling me with the sounds and sights of my wife, the feel of her hand, before devouring me? Am I in some kind of hypnotic trance?

“Who are you? How’d you do that?” I need it to know I’m aware of its deception, and maybe have a trick or two up my own sleeve. My shotgun, zipped up in its case, is in the trunk. Unloaded.

“You’re fine,” she says, and looks at me, dark eyes glittering in the green glow. “Just hold my hand. I’m here for you. We’ll both reach safety from this blizzard, I know we will.”

We continue on, down and down. The snowfall lessens, the temperature outside climbs from twenty to thirty degrees.

“You can’t be her.”

“I've missed you, Sam. And I'll see you down off this mountain. Until you’re safe.”

Tears prick my eyes. Sue always cared about me and everyone she loved. If this creature reached into my mind by holding hands, maybe she knows all my thoughts. My emotions are a jumbled chaos – part fear, part crushing sadness, and a powerful falling in love with my dead wife sitting beside me. I can smell her, the honeysuckle shampoo, that delicate perfume she puts on for special nights out.

“Besides, we don’t wanna freeze up here,” she says. “I could feel it coming.”

So that’s it. Keep me happy until we get out of this massive storm – blizzard of the century say the forecasters.

I remove my hand, reach out and flip on AM 1090 to catch the forecast. Out this far, you can receive AM stations but not FM, especially between the ridges.

And as road conditions rapidly deteriorate, state police are still searching for suspects in the murder of John Beaman, found stabbed to death and mutilated in his car yesterday near Darnold Ridge.

Holy shit! My heart races, fear grips me – like I haven’t felt since the war. She retakes my hand.

Police are unsure whether the post-mortem mutilation was from scavengers feeding on the deceased’s body, or if it was done by the killer. Anyone with information on this case is urged –

The radio clicks off, and Sue’s right hand withdraws from the dash.

“I can’t hear you over the radio,” she says, smiling over at me.

I have to get my hand out of hers, out of its grasp. The moment the thought occurs to me, I pull my hand from hers.

“Woah!” I say, and purposely jitter the car’s path a little. “The road’s really slippery! Sorry, gotta keep both hands on the wheel.”

The road levels out, when a kind of whump hits my car – and we enter the heaviest snow squall I’ve ever seen. Wind slams the side as I struggle to stay on the road. The trees are a ways back from the road, and I can’t see the edge. Please, God, I can’t end up in a ditch with this thing beside me!

Up ahead, around the next big bend, a flashing haze of blue and red lights hovers just above the trees, and I see my chance. Sue, if you’re watching down from Heaven, please help me.

That... thing squirms in the seat. A barely audible noise, like something sliding against rough fabric. This is it. I know that she, it, is preparing. I have to do something.

So I floor it.

There are times when we operate purely on what’s called physical memory. Our bodies can quickly dial the numbers on a phone without thinking of each number. That’s me, right now. I’ve driven this stretch of road enough times that if I can just get close to those lights without being able to see the damn road, I might live.

“What are you doing?” she says, and I can hear some difference, some shift in her voice. Part Sue, part long-haired hobo wandering the woods.

As we come around, there’s a police cruiser parked across the road, lights and wipers on. Then a sharp pain jabs my left side.

“Stop,” Sue says, “or I’ll kill you.”

I slam the brakes. The car spins, faster than I thought possible. Round and round, like a top, toward the cruiser until we come to rest. The strobing police lights fill my windshield. Then a loud knock on my window jolts me back from nausea, from vomiting in terror and dizziness.

Sue was knocked off kilter, too, I think, because the knife point is no longer against my side. Then the point jabs me again. I’m on autopilot - I hit the down buttons on all four windows, and huge snowflakes swirl in.

A flashlight beam blinds me.

“You okay?” a man says, and I can’t see anything but the beam.

In silence, I struggle to open my eyes and shift them sideways, toward my passenger, while mouthing out “HELP ME!” over and over again.

In the roar of wind and snow, a piece of Velcro peels away, and metal clicks on metal.

“Both of you, freeze! Hands out the windows where I can see them!”

The beam swings from my face, but I’m still blind.

“Car seven, car seven. Holding a suspect passenger in a red Chevy Malibu, Colorado plates. I’ve drawn my weapon, at the base of Darnold Mountain, road 548. Need backup!”

A radio squawks while the wind whistles around and through the car.

“It’s him!” she shouts from beside me. “He killed that guy up on the mountain! Took me hostage when he stole my car!”

“Ma’am!” the cop shouts. “Unbuckle yourself and get out of the car!”

His shoes crunch the snow. Seconds later, the flashlight blasts through the passenger window. He’s on the other side. But why? To rescue her from me?

“Thank God you're here!” Sue says. “He’s some kind of psychopath!”

She opens her door, starts to climb out, then a loud smack of skin on skin, and Sue, no it, goes down hard on the snow. The cop drops down and kneels on her back, grabs for her wrists. Seconds later, cuffs ratchet tight.

“Sam, it’s okay now,” the cop says, and somehow, in this blizzard of wind and snow and temperatures dropping toward zero, I know him. I know him!

“Frank?”

“Yeah. Backup’s on the way. Sit tight.”

“Frank, be careful! That thing! That thing is deadly dangerous. Keep your gun on it. Don’t touch its hands!”

I scramble out, round my car, plant my boot sole on its back, while Frank, a guy I’ve known for twenty years, continues to kneel.

“Found a knife on her,” Frank says, tosses it away into the snow. Then rests the muzzle of his service weapon against its head.

“I don’t know what’s going on here,” Frank says. “I set up a roadblock to keep people off the mountain, and now I’m looking at your dead wife’s twin sister.”

“It’s not Sue’s sister. I don’t even think it’s human.”

Heavy snow swirls around us. From down the road, a muffled police siren sounds louder and louder…

“Sam,” it says, desperate. “How could you do this to me? I’m your wife! Sam… I love you!”