Benjamin Trump acknowledged, "Ashley, Carol Anne."
"Hello," Carol Anne Trump spoke.
"Hi, Mrs., Trump," Rich answered politely but his attention belonged to Ashley.
She wore long dark hair and watched the world through green eyes that could penetrate any heart. Her figure fit oh-so-wonderfully into faded blue jeans and a yellow halter-top. All her proportions had been measured with care by nature and cultivated into a stunning young beauty who had attracted a legion of admirers over the years.
Those penetrating green eyes narrowed to a scowl. Her naturally soft voice hardened with a question that sounded more an accusation.
"Running late?"
"Give the boy a break," Mr. Trump winked at Rich. "He was with a customer."
– He pulled his hand from Ashley’s leg and rubbed his eyes.
The couple sat at the kitchen table under a solitary cone of light. A constant, electronic buzz came from the hard-working refrigerator but otherwise the room remained silent, as it had for over three hours of reception planning.
Ashley’s seating assignment maneuvers had grown in complexity with each passing minute, rising to a level best appreciated by chess masters and Generals. Richard, conversely, played a spectator’s role with occasional mumbles of ‘sounds good,’ ‘doesn’t matter to me’ and ‘why are most of my relatives at the back of the hall?’
His energy waned. Ashley’s energy waned too, but determination and focus hid her fatigue.
"I think that about does it," she whispered and nodded slowly in approval, as if convinced she had reached the final solution. Such had been her expression the night before and the night before that. By tomorrow, he knew, she would find a hole in her strategy and the slips of paper representing guests and tables would march again.
Her thoughts found new focus and she asked, "Oh, how do you want to be introduced?"
"Wouldn’t it be Mister and Misses Stone?"
Her shoulders slumped and a tired sigh slipped from her lips.
"I was thinking I’d like my full name to be used. You know, Ashley Elizabeth."
Richard tried to understand, "So the DJ will introduce us as Mr. Richard Trevor Stone and his wife Ashley Eliza-"
She shook her head ‘no’.
"More like, Ashley Elizabeth and Richard Stone…"
"Richard Trevor Stone."
"No, no, no," she insisted. "That doesn’t sound right."
"But that’s my name. Richard Trevor Stone. I know you might have forgotten since you forgot to put it on the invitations."
She blinked fast, bit her lip, and sniffled.
"Now that’s not fair. I honestly forgot. I don’t know why you’re so upset. I’m under a lot of pressure doing all this by myself."
Richard closed his eyes and placed an arm around her shoulders. She stopped babbling and slumped into his hug.
"You’re not doing this by yourself. We’re doing this together. It’s just that my middle name is important to me. And it’s important to my dad. My grandpa-"
"I know, I know. He fought at Normandy. War hero. I know."
"It’s a lot better than ‘Dick’, don’t you think?"
"Well…" she led.
He tickled her ribs. She giggled to the point of outright laughing, something she had not done in days.
"So," Richard restarted the conversation after she thwarted his tickles, "we get introduced and then all the other couples walk in."
Ashley fidgeted; squirmed even.
"What? What is it?"
She answered too nonchalantly, "I figured we’d just have the DJ introduce us and let the rest of the wedding party seat themselves. That will make things move faster."
His eyes narrowed. The groom-to-be aired the real reason why she suggested such an untraditional change to an otherwise traditional wedding: "You don’t want people to see Dante walking with your sister."
She shuddered in feigned shock.
"No, no that’s not it."
"Then your parents don’t want their daughter walking with him."
"Well, I mean, um, don’t you think he’d be, well, uncomfortable?"
"No, I don’t. And he’s my best man. And he’s my best friend. And I don’t care if some people in your family don’t want to see a black guy walking with a white girl in a wedding. Jesus Christ, I can’t believe your sister cares so why should anyone else?"
"She doesn’t care. I was just thinking…"
"Don’t, Ashley. I’m not asking for much in all this," he swept his hand above the seating chart, "but I’m not going to screw over Dante just because you’ve got bigots in your family."
Ashley squeezed her eyes shut and her soft skin blushed with embarrassment.
Her tone begged forgiveness, "You know it’s not me, right?"
"I know," he hugged her again. "Let’s take a break. We’ve been at this a while."
She agreed, stood, and led him away from the wedding plans and into the lightless living room. Despite the dark, he found the television remote control by instinct and powered on the set. The plush sofa flickered in television light. The couple sunk deep into the couch.
"It’s going to be all right, isn’t it?"
"Sure, as long as I start showing some ambition. We can’t have little Ben and Carol Ann crawling around with dirty diapers, right?"
Her eyes widened.
A voice from the television interrupted: "…State police say it’s as if all the drivers took their feet off the gas pedal at the same time. No skid marks whatsoever."
A camera followed a short-sleeved reporter across a stretch of highway. Red and blue lights flashed off canyon-like rock faces on either side of the road. The reporter stopped and pointed toward a tangled mass of vehicles. Fire trucks and police cars surrounded the mess.
"This is an isolated area. Westbound traffic on Interstate 80 would not have seen what happened here because of rocks, cliffs, and trees. The only evidence left behind is the empty clothes of the victims, who were probably driving along at over sixty miles per hour when something happened. It is an eerie, almost serene sight-lacking the carnage usually associated with highway pile-ups.
"EMS has counted thirty vehicles but no persons, no remains, no blood-not a clue as to what happened. Authorities will attempt to identify the missing persons from license plates and VIN numbers. A command post has been established at the nearby State Police barracks in Milton."
Ashley gasped aloud. Richard shuddered.
They knew Milton to be barely a thirty-minute drive from where they sat.
The news of the weird had reached their corner of the world.
2. Shadows
Rich and his demo car left the suburbs of Wilkes-Barre and headed into the mountains and forests surrounding the valley. The high beam headlights cut through the pitch-black night revealing lonely, boring black top and monotonous double yellow lines encased in walls of featureless woodlands.
Sporadic flashes of light danced behind the clouds overhead. Rich guessed the flashes to be the summer phenomena known as ‘heat lighting.’ Those distant and dull flickers lacked the power to brighten the countryside and served only to heighten a feeling of isolation.
The glow of the gauges reflected off Rich’s tired eyes. The digital clock on the stereo showed 12:30 a.m.
With nothing but trees, hills, and the occasional stream to serve as landmarks most travelers would find the area a bland, confusing maze. To Richard Stone-a life long resident of the "Back Mountain" section of the Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania-those roads traveled familiar ground. Over the years, he had crisscrossed those roads and the surrounding wilderness on dirt bikes and snowmobiles.
He made his way through almost automatically, concentrating more on watching for suicidal white tail deer than on direction. He could probably drive the route blindfolded.
AM talk radio broadcast from the stereo. The host and his callers fed on the rash of disappearances like frenzied sharks.